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I took a class in song as worship a couple years ago ..one of the points made was the early Catholic church did not have pews or kneelers.. they were more in the style of the orthodox that stand during the service.. also quite was not demanded, people walked around and often greeted each other during the service.. the only song at that time came from the priest.. not there was no priesthood at the time of Justin Martyr he called the one reading scripture, teaching and then officiation at the Lords supper "the president ".

We have to be careful when we equate the early services with the mass.. there was no prescribed responses and the communal prayers were not in Latin, but the native tongue. There were no vestments or relics on the altar or many of the other Jewish practices that the church later incorporated.

You are right about the kneelers & pews, but

1) there actually were prescribed responses to the liturgy back then. I’ll have to look up the exact reference.

2) there were relics on the altar—the Eucharist in the catacombs was offered right on the tombs of the martyrs for exactly that purpose. That’s where our modern custom of relics in the altar comes from.

3) the liturgy in Rome was, as far as we know, offered in Greek for the first 200 years or so. Which was not, obviously, the language of your typical Roman. So even back then, if you were an uneducated Roman, you were very likely going to a liturgy in a foreign tongue and not your native one.

Someone at that class lied to you.

1) There was a priesthood since AD 33.

2) It’s true there were no kneelers of pews - one of the reasons being there were very few church buildings so there were few permanent things built in worship spaces. Don’t forget, the Romans were still actively persecuting the Church at this point.

3) People still amble about and even great each other at Latin Masses today but they do so out of necessity and with decorum.

4) We still refer to the “presiding” priest today, but he is a priest and was in Justin Martyr’s time too. Most people forget that Martyr was writing for a non-Christian audience of one - the emperor - and so he used words the emperor could understand. If anyone says that Martyr’s use of “president” means there was no priesthood, then he is a moron and forgetting who Martyr was writing to.

5) There were prescribed responses - this we know from Martyr himself. Martyr, for instance, wrote, “The president offers prayers and gives thanks to the best of his ability, and the people give assent by saying, “Amen”.”
Obviously “Amen” was the expected, nay, the prescribed response. To say otherwise would be an expression of ignorance.

6)You wrote, “...communal prayers were not in Latin, but the native tongue.”

And what was the native tongue of several million people in the Roman Empire? R-O-M-A-N Empire. Latin, was it not? Not everyone spoke Latin, but many people did. I am sure that Koine Greek was used first - and that’s why we still have Koine Greek prayers in the Latin Mass (it’s called the Kyrie).

7)You wrote, “There were no vestments or relics on the altar or many of the other Jewish practices that the church later incorporated.”

Uh, the vestments that the Church uses to this day are largely from Roman dress - i.e. they were the clothes worn then and became vestments. They were not foisted on the Church. Fashions changed and what the piests wore didn’t. Also, the vestments are a great deal like what Jewish priests wore. Also, relics were present there whenever possible. Look at the catacombs. Mass was siad right there with the relics of the saints because that’s where they were buried!!!

I hope you can get your money back. You were robbed by your teacher.

the early Catholic church did not have pews or kneelers

True. Pews are a Protestant invention, necessitated by the long sermons you guys are into. No pews in St. Peters to this day, for example.

not there was no priesthood at the time of Justin Martyr

Sure there was. J.M. came 50 years after Ignatius of Antioch, and Ignatius mentions the threefold division of the clergy: episcopoi ("overseers", bishops), presbyteroi ("elders", priests), and diakonoi (deacons).

there was no prescribed responses

Read Hyppolytus of Rome. There most certainly were some prescribed responses.

the communal prayers were not in Latin, but the native tongue

No, they were in Greek, which wasn't the "native tongue" in the West. Later on, they were translated into the "native tongue," which was of course Latin.

There were no vestments

Again, this is wrong. Clerical dress as we know it today developed from the common dress of the upper-class Roman at that time. It's secular dress that has changed since then. If you could be transported back to a Christian service of the 2nd or 3rd Century, you would discover that the "president" was dressed something like this:

He wears a linen tunic (compare to the priest's alb of today) and over it a toga (compare to the chasuble of today). The men in the congregation dressed much the same. Over time, secular dress for men has changed greatly. Priestly dress has changed, too, but much less.

relics on the altar

Again, quite commonly Mass was celebrated in the catacombs, on the tombs of the martyrs, which is where the practice of incorporating a relic in the altar originated.