[MarMema]

The priest facing the congregation "encourages improvisation," said Professor Phillips, relating an anecdote about a priest who interrupted a Mass to inform the congregation that it was his birthday. The New Mass, he said, encourages such ad-libbing because it is celebrated in English, and also because the priest is "looking at the people, and wants to tell them something."

WOW. Now I am really getting excited. Is it true that your priests used to face the altar, as ours still do?

[BlackElk]

At every traditional (Tridentine) Roman Catholic Mass, the priest faces the altar with his back to the congregation or main body of it. It is only the new Mass or Novus Ordo that allows for the celebrity style (Hi, my name is Bob and I'll be your presider today) of priest who seems all too often to imagine that he, not Christ, is the focus of the Mass.

BTW, the late Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say that he would never belong to the Catholic Church either if it was what its critics claimed it was.