Bishop Vasa on participation
Rorate Caeli has published a good article by Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker, Oregon on Interior participation and devotions during Mass.
He comments on the idea of full and active participation in the Liturgy and how this was interpreted superficially in terms of physical activity.
Thus there was a great increase in “participation” through recitation of the Mass parts in English, reading the scriptures, leading the prayers of the faithful, and singing, but whether this actually led to a deepened “full and active participation” in the Holy Sacrifice on the part of the congregation as envisioned by the Council is certainly questionable. It is legitimate to wonder whether my grandparents were not just as fully and actively participating in the Eucharistic Sacrifice even though their participation would have had all of the external appearances of great passivity.His comments on devotions are also important, especially during the month of the Precious Blood. In his Apostolic Letter Inde a Primis (1960), Blessed Pope John XXIII wrote about how the more individualistic and secondary devotions should give way to those that more effectively draw us to the fullness of salvation. Among those primary devotions, he highly praised devotion to the Precious Blood. Many people today would probably regard devotion to the Precious Blood as one of those things downplayed by Vatican II.
4 comments:
It would be interesting to see the increasing practice of receiving Holy Communion under both kinds related more strongly to devotion to the Precious Blood. I feel there is a rich field to be mined, both theologically and liturgically, here. The catechesis suggested in the GIRM, for example, is rarely heard in parishes where Communion under both kinds is common.
It is interestingh that St Piux X was concerned so much with laity participation that he introduced the Dialogue Mass, which was left to Bishops and disappeared. The laity did the altar servers part as they had done apparently until the end of the 16th century.
So the people who do all the responses in the vernacular and all the singing and the readings at the Eastern Rite liturgies are similarly clueless?
Tell it to the Marines. I find the Latin Mass fine for a daily Mass -- but frankly, some of the traddies don't seem to think things all the way through when they seem to want to claim how much better it is when the people shut up. There are different ways of achieving the same goal. I find the traddies irritating on this point.
Karen
It would be interesting to see the increasing practice of receiving Holy Communion under both kinds related more strongly to devotion to the Precious Blood.
Which is why, as Fr has pointed out, the feast of the Precious Blood was abolished after Vatican II. In fact, just about gesture of reverence and devotion to the Body and Blood of Christ is slowly disappearing. The moving of Holy Days by the bishops was only just the icing on the cake.
Communion under both kinds has not lead to any deepening of devotion to the Precious Blood but far from it.
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