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To: wideawake
A better way to look at it is to ask: will the priest face the Lord present on the altar along with people?

He already faces the Lord present on the altar, as do the people.

14 posted on 05/02/2003 9:28:20 AM PDT by NYer (Laudate Dominum)
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To: NYer
He already faces the Lord present on the altar, as do the people.

During the consecration, yes. But only rarely during the rest of the Mass.

Sometimes he stands to the side of the Lord, relegated to a tabernacle pushed off to one side of the sanctuary.

And sometimes he turns his back to the Lord, when he says Mass where the tabernacle is placed, properly, on the high altar.

And sometimes he's in a different room, when he moves the tabernacle to a separate place outside the nave.

But at all times, he's performing in front of the faithful.

Now, I'm no Lefebvrite - I have never and will never attend a Mass that is unapproved by my bishop or the Holy Father and I acknowledge the legitimacy and the value of the Second Vatican Council - but it is a fact that Sacrosanctum Concilium of Vatican II never mentioned priests facing the people like a Protestant street preacher.

And the rubrics of the Novus Ordo Missae never instruct the priest to do so.

The practice of facing the people was made up, out of whole cloth, in the late 1960s with no magisterial or official sanction of any kind.

One of the contributing factors to the neglect of Christ present in the tabernacle was the decentering of the visual focus of the Mass from one of priest and people both facing the tabernacle and the consecration taking place directly in front of the tabernacle, to the new visual focus of the Mass on the priest as presider and MC with a short break for the consecration and the tabernacle pushed off to the side.

This practice of the priest facing the people was introduced at the same time and in the same places as communion in the hand, comnmunion while standing, the proliferation of unnecessary Eucharistic "ministers" etc.

17 posted on 05/02/2003 9:44:39 AM PDT by wideawake (Support our troops and their Commander-in-Chief)
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