There has been a trend since Vatican II's revision of the ancient Mass to return to it some things that should not be returned, such as the Leonine Prayers after the Mass is ended. In recent years, some have added the Prayer to St. Michael.
Some priests add the "Hail Mary" to the end of the Universal Prayers. Fund raisers insist that the prayer for the Capital Campaign be included somewhere in the Mass, usually as a prelude or at the Universal Prayer or after Holy Communion as a kind of meditation.
Our diocese recommends, which as a former vocation director, I obediently offer, our diocesan prayer for vocations which is prayed by the entire congregation, now by heart, as the last petition of the Universal Prayer:
"O God, hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto You. Bless our diocese of Savannah with many vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and religious life. Give the men and women You call the light to understand Your call and the love to follow always in the footsteps of Your priestly Son. Amen."
The other thing I don't think priests or bishops should do is to say out loud the private prayers of the priest prior to concluding the Holy Sacrifice by the priest's reception of the Sacrificial Victim. This includes not saying out loud, "May the Body (Blood) of Christ keep me safe unto life everlasting."
What do you think since liturgy today all hinges on our personal likes and dislikes in order to make the determination about what is good liturgy?
5 comments:
I would like to know what the secrets are in the missalette. The Latin Order of the Mass has all that so we can read along. Also I wish the priest would tell us which Eucharistic Prayer he is doing so we can follow along instead of trying to search while he's doing it. Or have just have one so I don't have to search.
Saying the Hail Mary at the end of the Bidding Prayers has been done almost universally in England and Wales for as long as I can remember. I think permission was given for this at some point, or at least there was tacit acceptance from Vatican. In any case, it is a lovely tradition and its spread would do no harm at all.
" some things that should not be returned, such as the Leonine Prayers after the Mass is ended. In recent years, some have added the Prayer to St. Michael."
What on earth do you mean? There are no norms or rubrics specifying what prayers if any can or cannot be said after Mass is ended--when people can do any darn thing they please.
I'm not against the discussed points however, for the sake of consitency, perhaps they should be aggregated into a static list, similar to the Great Litany of petitions chanted during Divine Liturgy.
The adding of the Hail Mary to the Bidding Prayers (let's stop calling them 'universal' since their orientation is usually local) was the initiative of Cardinal Heenan after their introduction in 1964. He pointed out that before the Reformation the inclusion of this prayer was normative, and the suppression of the Leonine prayers with their three Hail Marys made its inclusion desirable. The Holy See concurred.
At the same time the prayer for the Queen was included. Previously the Domine Salvam Fac would have been sung after the principal Sunday Mass, as it still is in the older Rite. Nowadays it is rarely heard.
Prayers for the Church, Pope and bishops were included since the Canon was still in Latin and inaudible. They are no longer needed.
The Bidding Prayers are problematic. We have just sung 'et vitam venturi saeculi' and are brought down to earth with a bump by being asked to reflect on last night's TV news.
The Bishop of Arundel and Brighton (Kieran Conry) tried to get the Hail Mary dropped in his diocese. Not long afterwards he resigned after his affairs with two married women were made public. The late Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (whose secretary he was) had advanced him to the episcopate despite being well aware of his ongoing sexual shenanigans.
And they wonder why ordinary Catholics have little confidence in their bishops, that of Rome included?
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