Some of you may have followed the news of the release of a statement from Rome at loosens up the use of the former pre–Vatican II liturgy in the Church of Rome. Of the many reasons one was to try and stem the tide of liturgical abuse in the present form of the Roman Liturgy. There are many more, but I am going to focus on liturgical abuse for this entry. I have been ordained just over three years and I have tried to serve the Divine Liturgy with reverence and prayer. There are times when I rush through something but I usually try to be as prayerful as possible. But there are some rubrics I wonder if we all follow.
After the homily there is a litany called the Litany of Fervent Supplication followed by three prayers for the faithful before the great entrance. Do we say pray these or skip them? How many of us are concerned about how long liturgy is taking and get complaints from the faithful if we go over an hour? My point is as priests we do not have the authority to skip things in the liturgy. One problem is each jurisdiction has their own liturgical books we do not have a common English version. When all the bishops gathered in Detroit earlier this year they did not even have a common liturgy book to use. That’s the problem as I see it.
The point of this post was to call attention to liturgical abuse. I could list hundreds of examples from Liturgies that I have been to in my three years as priest and I am sure many of us could. I am sure I have made some big liturgical mistakes in my time but we all need to pay more attention to what we are doing I guess is the point. We should all “do” liturgy to the best of our ability. How much time do we spend reading the red words in the books in preparation for liturgy. And not just us new guys but you old guys too.
Okay that’s my rant for the day. It’s raining here and it is time to get working on something. Maybe I will read some red words…
