news: ‘the case for ad orientem worship’

In Waugh’s masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, when the Catholic aristocratic Marchmain family is visited by Father Mackay, their parish priest, Ker explains that in performing the sacraments, Father Mackay “doesn’t use any special kind of religious voice; indeed, he does things rather than utters words; he is businesslike, matter-of-fact, and practical…. [And yet] the simple things he does—with his hands—are supernatural, for he is a divine craftsman: he knows his trade and does what he has to do in accordance with its rules, simply and without fuss.”

Read more about The Case for Ad Orientem Worship at Crisis Magazine.

the liturgical experts

I was talking to a priest last week, and among other things I mentioned how the catechesis I’d received in RCIA was very, very firm on the point that there should be absolutely no private prayer during mass. Instead, all attention should be immediately focussed ‘on the action’ being carried out. I’d been very perturbed by this, because what is prayer? Just putting myself in God’s presence and meditating on that feels like prayer, and if I get some kind of spiritual thought that’s just my own, that’s wrong? So I had asked one of the sponsors in my group if she didn’t also think that this prohibition was fairly tyrannical, and she’d said, “Don’t question Father. You know he’s a liturgical expert.”

When I retold this story, the priest laughed–as the tyranny of the ‘Vatican II liturgical expert’ is a phenomenon the whole world over–and quipped, “Well, I’m a Christian, and I wanna pray. How ’bout that?”

Really, critiques of this don’t get much better than that.