The altar was prepared according to the liturgical prescriptions of His Holiness with a conspicuous crucifix and seven candles on it. Everything was done REVERENTLY and PROPERLY according to the rubrics. The Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal was celebrated with full solemnity. Hopefully, bishops and priests across the USA will duplicate Pope Benedict's attention to lex orandi, lex credendi. No liturgical abuses, no aberrations and no nonsense. Imagine, if this took place in EVERY cathedral and every parish in the world? We would have to build new seminaries and noviates. And this is precisely B16's plan. The more people SEE and EXPERIENCE the proper reverence demanded by the Ordinary and the Extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite, the more they will mutually reinforce in each expression the organic and intrinsic need to identify the SACRED. The HOLY and Sacred mysteries of our faith deserve nothing less than our full, complete, active and conscious participation. This can only be done REVERENTLY and of course PROPERLY (in accord with the rubrics). Off-the-cuff, spontantaneous and innovative machinations have no place in divine worship.
Father Nuehaus watched it from EWTN's studio. (And I've got problems with Father Nuehaus talking over the pope and complaining during Mass, you know.)
In the response to our EWTN coverage, we received hundreds of complaints about the over-the-top stretch to be multicultural, along with some complaints by those were offended by our mentioning it. It’s hard to win on this score. And I have to remind myself that even mild criticisms of the way the Holy Father’s visit is being handled are taken amiss by people for whom even the chance to see the pope from a distance is one of the great moments of their lives. When over the years one has been present at papal events beyond numbering, one inevitably develops a measure of critical distance in which even mildly critical comments can clash with the intense piety of many of the Catholic faithful. Anything short of all-Wow!-all-the-time is taken as a sign of insufficient enthusiasm. Raymond Arroyo and I have multiple opportunities to remind one another of this dynamic.
Please take the time to read both, though. It's important that, when discussing the Mass, we don't all jump on the music as if that was the entirety of the Mass. Whether or not you liked (or could bear) the music, the rest of Mass was reverent. The faithful were, by and large, doing what they were supposed to. Let's not be like the mainstream media, St. Blog Parishioners, and nitpick and pull out the ten minutes of stuff we don't like in order to ignore the rest of the happenings.
Don't ignore the plank, folks.
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