Every Knee Shall Bend?
Not by a damn sight
Obviously, Jesus hasn't been in many of the alleged "Catholic" parishes (communities?) lately. And I mean that at every level.
From Josef Cardinal Ratzinger's book The Spirit of the Liturgy;
It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture — insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the one before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture.
The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself. In all fairness, this bit of an article from Adoremus is from 1996, but things haven't changed all that much;
Adoremus has been receiving reports from around the country about pastors encouraging parishioners to remain standing during the Eucharistic Prayer. In some parishes, standing has been a "tradition" for some years. In other parishes, it is being introduced as the latest liturgical innovation. Standing during the Eucharistic Prayer has been a common practice in seminaries throughout the United States for a decade or more.
But it is a practice that clearly violates the liturgical norms approved by the bishops of the United States and confirmed by the Vatican. Many bishops have apparently turned a blind eye to this innovation in individual parishes and seminaries. Many young priests have been trained in the practice and perhaps are not aware that this "tradition" is contrary to liturgical norms. This may explain the widespread confusion among faithful Catholics. Is that what Creeping Protestantism is called nowadays... "confusion among faithful Catholics"?
Not by a damn sight
Obviously, Jesus hasn't been in many of the alleged "Catholic" parishes (communities?) lately. And I mean that at every level.
From Josef Cardinal Ratzinger's book The Spirit of the Liturgy;
The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself.
But it is a practice that clearly violates the liturgical norms approved by the bishops of the United States and confirmed by the Vatican. Many bishops have apparently turned a blind eye to this innovation in individual parishes and seminaries. Many young priests have been trained in the practice and perhaps are not aware that this "tradition" is contrary to liturgical norms. This may explain the widespread confusion among faithful Catholics.
posted by Kevin Whiteman at
5:58 AM
2 Comments:
The Archbishop of Indianapolis ordered his churches to install kneelers if they didn't have them, and to use them.
The Archbishop of Louisville directed all parishes to kneel for the Eucharistic Prayer, and noted that those who didn't have kneelers didn't need to kneel until they had kneelers--but they are not allowed to spend money on anything else until they get kneelers.
This is precisely the technique that was used to
mandate standing to receive Communion. At first
it was merely an absurd innovation that some
permissive bishops ignored. When it finally became entrenched in areas the bishops declared
(in the name of being "pastoral") that it was now
a legitimate option. Eventually, it was noticed that
we now had folks doing two different things at
Mass -- can't have that! -- so the venerable and
formerly universal custom of kneeling was kicked to the curb and the former abuse enshrined as
the norm for the USA. In a sense, kneeling to
receive has become a liturgical abuse.
There are those who would like to see the same
protocol applied to the former abuse of receiving
Communion in the hand, and the current abuse
of standing through the Eucharistic Prayer. It is
a tactic that undermines the bishop's authority
and the authority of the authentic norms. Just
keep doing your liturgical fad long enough,
despite the clear laws, and you may not only
see it become an "option", but it may become
mandated for the entire USA.
When the USCCB declared that from now on we
must all stand to receive Communion, they
argued that it was a scandalous sign of disunity
to have multiple norms for reception. Oddly, it
was the venerable and formerly universal custom
of kneeling that was shown the door. If we were
to apply their same logic and conclusions to
the hand/tongue options for reception of
Communion, it is the venerable and formerly
universal custom of reception on the tongue
that would become the abuse.
One thing that I particularly dislike about this
asinine and underhanded way of legitimizing
and then mandating liturgical abuses in the
name of unity is that it undercuts our unity as
a universal Church. Sure, folks at St. What's
Happenin' Now may all be on board, and the
USCCB might declare that the Church in the
US must get on board, but what about the
unity we have with the world-wide Church?
What does that say about our unity with the
entire Church Militant that here we stand,
over there they kneel?
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