No. We had this discussion a few days ago dear lady.
There wasn’t anything like today’s serious modernist errors in those early days. The modernists hadn’t been encouraged by Satan at that time.
Some rather good things happened during those first 300 years as the tenets and rubrics were growing. The Douay Bible was collated during that time. Of course many Catholics today don’t know what a Douay Bible is.
I don’t believe in the early days the priest was praying towards the congregants instead of to God Almighty. Thanks to that Bible many of the prayers of that early Church were lifted verbatim from scripture and are still found today in the Tridentine Mass.
Anything not contrary to quiet respectability was what was going on in the early days.
I agree with Biggirl in this instance and don’t see how anyone couldn’t.
In the early years of the Church, her members were persecuted. Thus, they likely celebrated Mass in secret at various houses. Not in church buildings.
The natural inclination at a home is to gather around a table for such a function. Indeed, in Scripture we read how they “broke bread” together and this was not done at synagogues. It was at homes.
So it’s most likely the priest was “facing the congregation” at such times as the “congregation” were his friends with him as they celebrated the remembrance of the Last Supper together.
To suggest otherwise is just moralistic obstinacy in my opinion. The Church is as has always been comprised of human beings. The earliest Saints were human beings exactly like us. It’s stifling moralism that would suggest they were somehow different than us. So it’s perfectly reasonable to conclude they would behave like we would if (or dare I say when) we are under persecution.
Can anyone honestly say in a state where one’s life is at risk for celebrating the Eucharist, that we would (or even should) be concerned about which way the priest is facing? For fear of repeating myself, I’ll simply say that’s lunacy.
Is this all to say the TLM has no place? No. It’s only to support Biggirl’s contention that early historical Mass probably resembled the “novus ordo” than any other Mass today.
Again, it’s just a human fact.