Mass Facing The People

The following was made by an anonymous commenter in my last entry post: 

AnonymousOctober 27, 2015 at 10:50 AM

Tim is absolutely correct about those list of issues. None of them were endorsed by Vatican II, but most people think they were.

Parishes have been conditioned to accept a "banal" liturgy (as Pope Benedict put it). The NCW Eucharist is just the exaggeration (to the point of heresy) of these errors.

 

The anonymous commenter was referring to Tim Rohr's criticism of the Novus Ordo Mass.  According to Tim Rohr: 

 

For those who want to know more truth, here's a list of other documents to ask your pastor for:

• Mass facing the people.
• Communion in the hand.
• Saturday night Mass.
• Communion standing instead of kneeling.
• Regular use of Eucharistic Ministers.
• Removal of the high altar in favor of a "table".
• Pop music in the liturgy.
• Full use of the vernacular in the liturgy. 
• "Liturgical dance"(always forbidden)

There are actually documents for some of these things. BUT NONE OF THEM ARE IN VATICAN II. And in fact, when you actually read them, you will be amazed at how these things came about. As an example read Paul VI lament over permitting communion in the hand. He was horrified by the potential for abuse. 

 

http://www.junglewatch.info/2015/10/show-me-document.html

 

This is my response: 

 

As one can see, Tim Rohr is also against the regular parish Mass.  While it is true that many of those things mentioned are not found in the 16 documents of Vatican II, some of them were NOT invented AFTER Vatican II.  Let us look at the first item the jungle mentioned: Mass facing the people. 

 

According to the weblink I provided below (bold is mine): 

Though the priest celebrating Mass facing the people was not mentioned in the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy (SC), permission was included in the 1964 Instruction Inter oecumenici, in a section on “Designing Churches and Altars to Facilitate the Participation of the People”:............... 

Setting up a new, temporary altar in order to be able to celebrate Mass facing the people is never mentioned. 

Many Catholics think that Mass facing the people was an innovation of Vatican II. However, liturgists had been arguing for decades that it was permitted by the rubrics of the older Missal. 

For example, in 1937 Orate Fratres published a question about an earlier article that mentioned a Mass said by a priest facing the congregation, and asked about the justification for this practice. The response said that it was the current custom in St. Peter’s Basilica and other Roman churches for the priest to face the people because of the location of the altar, and that there were specific rubrics for the Mass instructing the priest what to do in such cases. It concluded: 

Not only, therefore, does no Church law or rubric forbid the construction of altars at which the celebrant faces the people as of old, but the present rubrics, as quoted above, still make provision for Mass celebrated at such an altar. (Orate Fratres, April 18, 1937, p. 280.) 

The Day The Mass Changed Part I

The Day The Mass Changed Part II
 

As you can see, before Vatican II, it was the current custom in St. Peter's Basilica and other Roman churches to face the congregation because of the location of the altar, and there were already specific rubrics for this particular Mass.  The instruction Inter oecumenici, which mentions a Mass facing the people was written in 1964 and also mentioned in a Vatican document Liturgiam authenticam, (the bold is mine):

 

 On 4 December 1963 the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.In order to facilitate the implementation of the liturgical renewal desired by the Council Fathers, the Holy See has subsequently published five documents of special importance, each successively numbered as an "Instruction for the Right Application of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council".  

The first of these, Inter Oecumenici, was issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the "Consilium" for the Implementation of the Liturgy Constitution on 26 September 1964, and contained initial general principles for the orderly carrying out of the liturgical renewal.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_comunicato-stampa_en.html

According to Inter Oecumenici (bold is mine): 

91. The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people. Its location in the place of worship should be truly central so that the attention of the whole congregation naturally focuses there.

Inter Oecumenici 

In conclusion, the Mass facing the people was a practice already taking place in some Roman churches and was spoken about in Vatican II despite that it is not in one of the sixteen documents.  It did not have to be in any of those 16 documents because it was implemented as one of the five "instructions for the Right Application of the Constitution on the Second Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council (See weblink below):

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_comunicato-stampa_en.html

It is clear that the jungle opposes the regular parish Mass by planting seeds of doubt into the Catholic faithful in order to promote the Latin rite Mass. Rohr feels that only the Latin rite Mass shows more reverence for God than any other Catholic Mass.