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Paradise and the Liturgy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bruce Harbert
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Soon after the Second Vatican Council it became customary in our churches for celebrant and people to face one another during the Eucharist, whereas previously it had been more usual for everybody to face in the same direction. Considerable sums of money were spent in facilitating this arrangement, which was widely thought to be among the chief requirements of the ‘new liturgy’. For many, ‘mass facing the people’ has become, together with the use of the vernacular, the sine qua non of contemporary liturgy. Many priests will refuse to celebrate otherwise, many laity would not attend a mass celebrated otherwise. The reasons are surely ecclesiological: the reorientation of priest and people at the liturgy is seen as symbolic of the move from a pyramidal to a collegial model of church that the Second Vatican Council effected.

Before the Council, for celebrant and people to face each other was a clear sign of affiliation to the liturgical movement. The pattern was rare in this country, especially among Catholics. An early example was the chapel of Queen’s College in Birmingham, built in 1938 but only opened for worship after the Second World War. At Queens the celebrant of the eucharist has always stood in the apse, facing the body of the church, and in doing so has faced west I have been told that Queen’s College chapel was the first built in England for the ‘westward position’, under the influence of the liturgical movement.

The change was represented as a return to primitive practice, but this justification was based on a misunderstanding.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 83 , Issue 971 , January 2002 , pp. 30 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Two MSS of the mid‐eighth century copied in Frankish territory contain this change: see Vogel, Cyrille, “Versus ad orientem La Maison-Dieu 70 (1962) pp. 78–79Google Scholar.

2 2,57.

3 Apologeticus 16.

4 On Prayer 32.

5 Several of the translations of liturgical texts in this article are from Adrian Fortescue, The Roman Missal (London, 1912).

6 sublime altare tuum

7 in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae

8 International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Third Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal (Washington, D.C., 1992) pp 68–75.

9 terrena despicere

10 terrena sapienter perpendere

11 caelestium bonorum facias esse consortes

12 Many of the texts of the proposed revision discussed in this article are published in Sunday Celebration of the Word and Hows, by the National Liturgical Office of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (Ottawa, 1995) p.28.

13 eius socii passionum effecti, consolationis etiam ac gloriae mereamur esse participes

14 nostra provectio

15 This remains virtually unchanged in the proposed revision; see International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Third Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal (Washington, D.C., 1992) p.48.

16 STh 3a,83,1c

17 Sacrosanctum Concilium 2

18 International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal (Washington, D.C, 1988) p.57.

19 Garrigou‐Lagrange, Reginald, Life Everlasting (E.T. Herder, St Louis 1952) p. 205Google Scholar.

20 Ratzinger, Joseph, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (E.T. Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C., 1988 (1977)) p. 234Google Scholar.