I suspect for many priests it’s shame and inadequacy. For some, working long hours and covering multiple parishes, they resent that their efforts aren’t good enough. As a great Fraternity priest said, “it’s not their fault they don’t know what they don’t know.” They went to seminary at the worst possible time, when everything traditional was scorned. Most lack any appreciable knowledge of Scholastic theology as well as Latin, of course.

At our tiny parish at the far away corner of our diocese, my pastor has been doing the Ordinary Form according to the actual Mass rubrics (which provides for an ad orientem posture for the Offertory up to the distribution of Communion) for about 18 months now. He said it is because he wants us to experience the full range of options available in the Missal, so he uses a full range of opening rites, penitential rites, Eucharistic prayers, etc. as well He uses the ad orientem option for all weekday Masses and probably more than half of the Sundays.

In that time, as far as I can tell as an ordinary parishioner, most people like the ad orientem, or (at the very worst) are indifferent. Really, it is still the Ordinary Form of the Mass! It’s really not all *that* different! Which makes it strange to read so much wild push-back about Cdl. Sarah’s mild suggestion.

But then, there is usually wild push-back whenever anyone promotes anything that increases reverence: like using incense, wearing chasubles rather than just stoles, avoiding guitar-hymns from the 1980s, receiving on the tongue (or worse, kneeling!) As always, the freak-out is way out of proportion to the modest change.

I think the article is correct: pride is at the root of a lot of that. After all, entire ecclesiastical careers were built around implementing the “spirit of Vatican II” and it takes quite a bit of humility to step back and say “well, that didn’t work out quite the way we had planned.”

But I think there is something else, too: Modernism. Modernists are all atheists when you scratch the surface; they see religion as, at best, a sort of window dressing on social-justice. So they actually WANT the focus of worship to be on Man, not God — all horizontal, no vertical — in order to support their Man-focused worldview. To their minds, it is a superstitious *distraction* to focus on the Lord and His redeeming sacrifice. They see anything that increases devotion as practices as, in a way, immoral, because they take the focus off the “worshipping community.”

Thank you for this.

For some it’s pride, but for others it’s because they are really wolves in sheep’s clothing and they know that proper worship will bring greater grace & fruits, which, of course, they do not want. They don’t want all their decades of protestantization of the mass to be undone.

Mass facing the people was, I have read, advocated by Luther and other reformers as a way of promoting “understanding” and a way of demystifying the Liturgy. Communication and teaching –thus the emphasis on preaching– was basic to Luther. The efficacy of the Mass (Communion) depended on an individual’s Faith, alone. There was no real presence except by way of Faith. Understanding (by way of vocal and visual) teaching led to “I believe”. Ritual became for Luther a means of teaching.

Luther, of course, rejected the Roman Church’s emphasis on the Mass as a sacrifice offered in expiation of sins committed against a vengeful God. To Luther, again as I have read, understood the altar itself to be more like a table to which Christ invites all people with open hands and heart so that they can take and receive grace and mercy. We need only recall Luther’s conversion experience to explain his understanding. Much of Catholic preaching today is about grace and mercy, far less about sin and judgement.

Naturally, then, the Last Supper became a prominent scene of Lutheran art. Prior to the Reformation, the Last Supper scene was rarely used in retables at high altars. Luther recommended it, as useful to understanding, for the main art panels on the altar.

Crucifixion scenes, of course, continued to be central to Lutheran art but were depicted as something from the past, something the meaning of which had to be taught. Thus the visual emblem of Lutheranism is a scene of the crucifix in a plain church surrounded by Luther (or other some other preacher) on one side preaching –while pointing to the crucifix with one hand and the other hand resting on the scriptures– to a congregation on the other side.

Further, Lutheran Last Supper scenes depicted Christ and his apostles dressed in the contemporary clothing of Luther’s time. Even further, the people seated “around” the table were often prominent members of the congregation. This seems to make the Last Supper “present” unlike the crucifixion. In the main panels of Lutheran retables, crucifixion scenes usually include John the Baptist pointing to Christ on the Cross but also Luther or other prominent preachers included also pointing but with one hand on the scriptures.

I am of the opinion that the strong reaction against ad orientum is simply a matter of the reemergence of Luther’s theology and his desacralization of Christianity. it fits perfectly with our contemporary cultural experience with its emphasis on science and understanding.

I don’t think it is so much about pride as it the triumph of Lutheran theology in the Catholic Church.

Whom we worship…. not ‘who’.