Mmm, you could be right Brian!! Cardinal Sarah's suggestion has been booted into no man's land. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/07/12/vatican-rejects-cardinal-sarahs-ad-orientem-appeal/ I think someone should write a script for a new movie 'Vatican Farce.' The Church is becoming a joke. I am officially becoming very embarrassed at being a member of an 'organisation' where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Worse - things are getting out of control.
My question is, why is the Vatican so quick to correct Cardinal Sarah, but allows other Cardinals who speak of allowing homosexual couples to have Communion to speak freely with no correction?
That's the 64 dollar question. For that matter, if the Vaticsn can "clarify" within 48 hours this one cardinal's statement, it can rapidly clarify all the pope's befuddled statements. But it chooses not to. The only conclusion is that the goal is confusion.
I think for the same reason it is fashionable to knock sparks out of Medjugrje; but get ready to be lambasted if you defend it. This mentality is a modern problem.
Unfortunately I believe you are right Brian. It's so easy to read about future prophesies of purposeful confusion and opposition in the Church - much much more difficult and painful to actually live it in real time. The only comfort I have is that it has all been known to us beforehand. I believe it was/is a grace and Mercy of God to allow us that fore knowledge so that we can cling to our faith with hope and not give into despair, knowing that this all will pass and we shall be purified.
This Cardinal Sarah stuff is very troubling to me and should be for anyone who truly loves the Lord and wants to worship Him with all the due respect he deserves. How could anyone even question or deny the fact that we should be on our knees for the Lord. I ask the Lord to give me the courage to take a stand and begin to do this myself in my own Parish. Sadly though I don't know how it would be received by the priest or the laity. I never feel worthy to receive Him but trust in His acceptance of me to come to His table and receive something so precious. I always go back to the videos of Marino Restrepo which I absolutely cherish, such wisdom. In one of them he said if we could truly see what was going on at the mass as if the thin veil would be pulled away like he was shown, we would walk into the church on our knees and remain there all of mass. [5] For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: [6] Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: [7] But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. [8] He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. [9] For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: [10] That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: [11] And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.
Cardinal Burke stands firmly behind Cardinal Sarah’s call for ‘ad orientem’ worship ROME, Italy, August 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke has given a strong endorsement of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s recent encouragement for priests to begin celebrating Mass in accord with the ancient posture that recognizes God as the center of the liturgy. Cardinal Burke said he is in total agreement with Cardinal Sarah’s recent request for priests to celebrate Mass ad orientem, or facing the Lord, because when a priest celebrates Mass, he is acting in the person of Christ and the focus should be on God. Ad orientem, Latin for “to the East,” refers in liturgy to when the priest and the people in the congregation face the Lord in the tabernacle. It is how all Masses used to be celebrated before Vatican II. Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, made the request at an international sacred liturgy conference last month in London for the priests to celebrate Mass ad orientem whenever possible, beginning this Advent. The Vatican liturgy chief’s remarks had subsequently stirredsome pushback. “I agree with him completely,” Cardinal Burke said in an international teleconference Monday. The former prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura went on to say he could not agree more with Cardinal Sarah and that much of the negative reaction to his request was baseless, unfair, and uninformed. “And I believe that many of the comments which were made afterward are not well informed and are not fair.” The fundamental point of Cardinal Sarah’s request, and the question of the position of the priest in the congregation is key, Cardinal Burke told the journalists on the call, because the priest being at the head of the congregation is acting “in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, offering this worship to God,” and so all are facing the Lord. “It’s not that he’s turning his back on anybody,” Cardinal Burke clarified. “This is often times what people say, ‘Well now the priest turned his back on us.’” “Not at all,” the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta said. “The priest as our spiritual father is leading us in this worship to lift our minds and hearts to God.” Cardinal Sarah had also asked all Catholics to receive Holy Communion kneeling on the tongue, which is the Church’s norm, despite the allowances many western dioceses have to administer Communion in the hand. While supporters of traditional and reverent liturgy applauded the request by Cardinal Sarah, the Vatican’s top liturgist since his appointment by Pope Francis in November 2014, response from both the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and then Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi played down the cardinal’s request. UK Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, in effect told priests in his diocese to disregard the request after he and othersincorrectly implied that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal holds that Mass should be celebrated with the priests facing the people. Cardinal Sarah reaffirmed that Mass had become overly focused on the priest and the congregation earlier this month in an address to the clergy of the Archdiocese of Colombo. The Guinean cardinal echoed Cardinal Burke’s assessment that his encouragement last month for a return to more sacred liturgy was misinterpreted, according to a Catholic Herald report, with Cardinal Sarah saying, “This talk received a lot of attention — some of it not always very accurate!” Cardinal Burke also made clear in his international press conference on Monday, when he addressed the many issues brought up in his new book Hope for the World, that there is nothing in the documents of the Second Vatican Council that demands or even suggests that Mass should now be celebrated with the priest facing the people. “This is a discipline which was introduced afterwards and I think was part of the false liturgical reforms,” he stated. “There’s the great temptation when the priest is facing the people to see him as some kind of a performer,” the former St. Louis archbishop said, “and now instead of the priest together with the people relating to God, somehow it becomes an interaction between the priest and the people.” “The priest is the protagonist, it’s no longer our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “and this is a very fundamental gross error that has to be addressed.” “And so Cardinal Sarah, I couldn’t agree more with him,” Cardinal Burke continued. “And I trust that with time people will recognize that the criticism which was lodged against him is completely unjustified.” The criticism toward Cardinal Sarah is also not very sincere, Cardinal Burke went on to say, because Cardinal Sarah wrote the same thing about a return to ad orientemliturgy in June 2015 in L’Osservatore Romano, and there was no such backlash. “He expressed the same strong convictions and nobody reacted then, and this is the official newspaper of the Holy See,” Cardinal Burke said. “And now suddenly in this context there’s this reaction, I don’t understand it.” The sacred liturgy is the highest and most perfect expression of the Catholic faith, Cardinal Burke told the press conference, and when it’s celebrated correctly, with great dignity, we approach God himself. He objects to the contention that ad orientem liturgy means a priest is turning his back on the people, rather, it is a more God-centered expression of Holy Mass. “No, it’s a greatest act of love for the people to be at their head, and to offer for themthe Holy Mass,” Cardinal Burke said. “Because the Eucharist can only be offered by Christ himself, and it’s the priest who sacramentally is Christ offering the Holy Mass. So let’s all just face the Lord, as we should.” https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/c...ehind-cardinal-sarahs-call-for-priests-to-fac
I am with you on the priest facing ad orientem at Mass. My understanding of the sacredness of the Holy Mass is that Jesus Christ is both Priest and Victim. It is there in the lyrics of the hymn "Alleluia Sing to Jesus." last verse, Our great High Priest, both Priest and Victim, in the Eucharistic Feast. It is very true that when the priest faces the congregation we lose some, most, or all of that. In the Tridentine rite, it was emphasized that the Mass was an unbloody immolation of Jesus, offering Himself to the Eternal Father as a sacrifice for sin. The priest acts in persona Christi, in place of Christ. And another thing, I hate clapping in church. Oh, how I hate that. It is done after the Mass is almost over, yes, but it is still not right, in my mind. UGH
And another thing, after Communion, I hate when the priest finally turns in the right direction away from the people, hands folded and stands there while a Eucharistic minister (most times, a lady) places the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle! Thank Heaven, not all Novus Ordo priests do this.
And another thing, after Communion, I hate when the priest finally turns in the right direction away from the people, hands folded and stands there while a Eucharistic minister (most times, a lady) places the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle! Thank Heaven, not all Novus Ordo priests do this.
Although some have labelled me as an extreme liberal I am far from that and in fact on almost all the liturgy issues that 'traditionalists' feel strongly about, I agree with them! But I differ from them in accepting that the Church now allows different practices from those I grew up with. When I first saw Cardinal Sarah's proposal regarding celebrating Mass ad orientem, I was very surprised. Not because of him expressing his own preference (which of course he shares with Pope Benedict) but because he seemed to be indicating the there should be a specific change back to earlier practice. And yet he was actually only encouraging a change in practice, not issuing a ruling. I thought that if he had made a ruling then he would have encountered tremendous opposition from various parties. But in the absence of a ruling, I thought who would take any notice? I think the subsequent 'clarification' from Fr Lombardi was to make it clear that the Church was not making a new ruling. The Church has to recognize practicalities and should not get involved in any action that provokes discord in its members.
