Posted on 01/08/2008 1:33:05 PM PST by NYer
Could it be that NYer was referring to the Orthodox practice of giving the Body and Blood together from the chalice (on a spoon to a standing communicant) as intinction? In other words, the Body and Blood are not given separately (as they are at the Latin cocktail party mass).
I believe the point was that the entire Communion procedure is different, and that kneeling or standing is not the crucial differential.
That said, in the Latin rites, kneeling is more reverential. Heck, even the Orthodox in many traditions do a prostration before standing up to receive Communion.
What I really hate in a Latin rite church is when everybody kneels during the Consecration - except a few progressive types, usually short-haired women and long-haired men, who insist on standing right in front of you so you can observe their backsides instead of what’s going on at the altar. Incidentally, I’ve seen this in many countries, and I do think it’s not an innocent choice, but an intentional expression of their contemptuous opinion of both the Eucharist and their fellow congregants.
Go for it, our KC’s just rebuilt a New Hall
Or a good parish council.
“Could it be that NYer was referring to the Orthodox practice of giving the Body and Blood together from the chalice (on a spoon to a standing communicant) as intinction? In other words, the Body and Blood are not given separately (as they are at the Latin cocktail party mass).”
Now see, I was under the impression that “intinction” is the dipping of an azyme into the blood in the chalice and then giving the wine coated azyme to the communicant.
“I believe the point was that the entire Communion procedure is different, and that kneeling or standing is not the crucial differential...Heck, even the Orthodox in many traditions do a prostration before standing up to receive Communion.”
Indeed, the procedures for communion in the Divine Liturgy and the TLM are different and both are quite wonderful and quite reverent. But it is not the standing or the kneeling which makes the one or the other more or less reverent. It is a fact, however, that kneeling on Sundays is forbidden. And yes, there are Orthodow who do prostrations before communion, but a prostration is not kneeling.
“What I really hate in a Latin rite church is when everybody kneels during the Consecration - except a few progressive types, usually short-haired women and long-haired men, who insist on standing right in front of you so you can observe their backsides instead of what’s going on at the altar.”
We get this too here in the States. Most all Greek Orthodox will kneel at the consecration on Sundays (except between Pascha and Pentecost). Others stand but its a pretty safe bet that they are either from a Slavic Church or converted in one. No disrespect is meant at all. In fact, they may have a bit of contempt for us Greeks because, frankly, they are right and we are wrong.
Or in parishes that are in the downtown of a city, standing is often down once the creed/prayers of the faithful/prayer over the gifts gets going.
Excellent idea. It is my theory that the changes brought by Vatican II are responsible for most of the moral decay in our country for the last 45 years. Catholics left the Church in droves. Moral relativism crept in. But simply discarding the changes will not reverse the damage. Two generations of Catholics grew up with the post-Vatican II Church. Priests and congregation alike are too lazy to learn Latin, too brainwashed by the banality. It's not too late, but I don't think it's going to happen.
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Latin is an entirely foreign language to most Americans but completely incomprehensible babble to the hundreds of millions of Catholics outside Indo-European linguistic traditions—primarily in the interior of Africa and in East Asia (Vietnam, China, and Korea). Offering the Mass in the local vernacular language enables the peoples of these nations to understand the Mass as it happens and encourages them to convert and to join the Church. (Imagine that the Church suddenly decided that all services hereafter will be in Korean only; how many would understand it?) I don’t have anything against the Latin/Tridentine Mass, but it isn’t for everyone.
Actually, I used to go to a Russian church and the Russians all knelt during the Consecration too. This has probably changed over time as other practices have come in, however.
There are obviously lots of options, but what matters is whether people respect the form of their church. When Latin rite Catholics, all of whom who used to kneel, are in a church where everybody is still kneeling, and some idiot makes a point of standing through it all (and it’s usually a couple, I’ve noticed, so we’re not talking about some poor soul with knee problems), I think they’re making a point. They always receive in the hand, of course. Most of them are probably Unnecessary Eucharistic Ministers in their home parishes...
I’d like to see the unchanging parts in Latin and the propers, or the changing parts, in the vernacular.
When I was a child, prior to VatII, you could go to Mass anywhere in the world and you felt right at home because you knew what was going on and it was in a “neutral” language. They always read the Gospel and Epistle in the native language afterwards, and of course, preached in that language.
But the all-vernacular mass has been a very divisive factor. We now have Spanish masses, English masses, Vietnamese masses, etc., and these people never see each other or go to mass together. We have created ghettos.
What’s worse, in countries where language has become a political statement (such as Spain, where Basque has become the banner of the radical separatist left), the mass in that language also becomes a political statement, and excludes anybody who does not subscribe to it.
I say, put it all in Latin, or put it mostly in Latin - and see Catholicism shed the lefty nonsense it has been swamped in for lo these 50 years.
Downtown parishes can have all sorts of things! I used to go to St. Agnes in New York, right near Grand Central Station, and you never knew what was going to happen! They were quite orthodox, but the congregation was sometimes a little unpredictable.
What happens if people try and leave with the wafer?
Plus there is a generation, mine that either was too young, or not even born when Latin was around. Since I am a child of Vatican II, Latin is still an exotic language. Even tonight at the end of the evening prayers for the monthly meeting of the local 3rd order Carmelites, and I am almost finished with formation studies, 1st year, to be recieved in the spring, the closing song was in Latin, Salve Regina. Since I did not have any paper, but was givin one, I simply hummed the chant.
When Latin was replaced by the vernacular, it wasn’t just the language that changed. The meaning changed as well, and it wasn’t just because of poor translation. Restoring the Tridentine Mass would return the liturgy to where it was before the ravages of Vatican II. So what if Africans and Americans and Asians have to learn Latin. People are intelligent enough to follow the Mass with Latin on one page and their own language on the opposite page. And to answer your question, yes, I could and would learn Korean, if that had been the original language of the Mass.
No, a clown mass with people kneeling to receive communion.
You won't find them.
Frankly, C, I'm surprised that you and other posters here believe that kneeling on Sundays was always the practice in the West and that you apparently didn't know that there is a canon positively forbidding it.
Of course I know of that canon.
Kneeling on Sundays and every other day of the year has been the practice in the West for centuries. We've never held that a disciplinary canon of a council cannot be abrogated. (Unlike the Orthodox, we also don't pretend that they can't be abrogated and then proceed to disobey them!. :-0 ... Overlapping episcopal jurisdictions were also prohibited by Nicaea, recall.) At least some Latin theologians are of the opinion that that canon was never understood to apply to the liturgy, but only to private devotions, at least in the West.
Eastern Rite Christian in Communion with Rome, all of whom (well at least those who have been allowed by Rome to retain their ancient rites)obey the 20th Canon of Nicea
Every Easter Rite Catholic church I've been in knelt on Sundays. Not for very long, but they knelt.
However, the issue that this post was discussing was the reception of communion kneeling, which is the longstanding tradition in the Latin Rite prior to VC II. The Eastern rites, and practically all NO Latin Rite churches (even the clown mass ones) receive communion standing today.
I prefer the older discipline. My wife, who converted from Anglicanism, was positively scandalized by the reception of communion standing in the Catholic Church. Virtually all traditional Anglican churches receive kneeling, at the rail, which I guess is presumptive evidence that, at least in England, the communion rail predates the Reformation by a year or two!
In our Anglican Catholic Church, everyone but the elderly kneel, and those who receive the Host dipped in the chalice receive by tongue, while those who take Wine directly from the Chalice first take the Host in the palm of our crossed hands.
v2 never allowed it. ever.
i’ve seen a nun take after a guy who went with the Eucharist.
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