Tuesday 12 May 2009

Mass in the House

As Ant is on study leave, she decided to come to early morning Mass with me. We found that it was being said in the front room of the presbytery, as some works are due to be carried out in the narthex.

The works hadn't actually started, though a couple of things had been moved form the narthex into the body of the church. But for the three of us in the congregation that would not have been such a huge convenience. My theory is that our PP likes to say Mass in the house. After all he was ordained up at just the right time...

I dislike it, for many reasons. One is my fixation on the importance of sacred space (this blog and others, passim); another is that way it is used to break the laity of habits like kneeling etc. Another is the dreadful 70s folksiness of it... And of course, mass is said on a table rather than an altar: meal rather than sacrifice...

Still, Ant and I formed a majority and knelt at the right times. The third congregant would, I suspect, also liked to have kneeled, but without a kneeler or any aid to get her up again thought it too risky, I guess...

2 comments:

George Carmody said...

Hmm, given that army chaplains have celebrated Mass on battlefields, I don't accept the rather limp excuse from the PP that the church needed to be vacated because of a bit of building work!

My local church had some extended building work recently, but weekday Masses were simply moved to a side chapel. Mind you, the regular celebration there of the Traditional Rite has transformed the sense of a sacred space in the right direction.

If the PP were a "proper" priest, he'd have a private chapel set up in the presbytery. Where there's a will there's way!

Ben Trovato said...

I'm tempted to agree, but actually I see Fr. as more sinned against than sinning.

He was educated at just the wrong time: left seminary indoctrinated against everything traditional: and despite that is orthodox and traditionally inclined - but with strange manifestations of his indoctrination...