Marc, you might have adult men sitting on the steps of the stoop in their shorts and flip flops but certainly not in their tuxedo and patent leather shoes! In the most solemn for of the EF Mass, to see clerics sitting on the steps to the stoop of the bishop’s throne is like men in tuxedos sitting on the steps of a shack!
Adults (or younger people) can sit and wait and hold things in seats, chairs, benches, or a variety of other appropriate pieces of furniture.
Sitting on the floor in a cluster around a bishop is, to many, demeaning. Is it necessary that they sit on the floor, or is this some traditional arrangement that should be maintained simply because it is traditional?
"Paul" I doubt if anyone understands this pic like you do.... why do you assume anyone would understand 'what is wrong with the pic' when there is no context?
What I find so very peculiar about this custom and it is precisely that, a custom, is that it is in the context of the Church's most formal form of the Solemn Mass. Maybe not in Europe, I don't know, but in the USA sitting on the floor or the steps of a building be it a home or a church or some other institution is quite informal not formal and one normally does not do this wearing one's formal clothes.
There's a disconnect here. If I had the altar boys at an EF Mass or the altar servers at an OF Mass sit on the floor around me, I think people would wonder about that in the formal setting of the Mass.
Servers kneel on the floor during basically the entire low mass. Often, the priest kneels as well, along with the other ministers. Clerics even lay on the floor at times. On Good Friday, they remove their shoes to venerate the Cross.
These are all part of the Roman Rite as it’s been handed down to us.
In response to Anonymous at December 13, 2019 at 1:21 PM:
Picture of a priest offering snark instead of a kind response... I don't understand what's wrong with this. And to quote Anonymous, "No, of course you don't. Sadly, it is unlikely that you ever will."
Also, the custom in some places — France, I assume, since this happens at Institute masses — is for the servers to sit on the altar steps of the Epistle side during the sermon.
At any rate, there’s nothing demeaning about sitting on the floor or steps.
And Marc, dont forget that there was no reason, other than spite, for 'Paul' to try to demean you just for your comment. He may has issues with the blog owner, or me, but I dont think you have ever made mean spirited comments.
I am not really discussing this as "demeaning" although I think a case could be made for that. I am saying there is a disconnect taking place in the most formal liturgy of the Church with the optics of the most informal way people will sit on the floor or steps.
And the photo I have posted has adults doing sitting on the floor around the bishop which in fact from the optics point of view looks quite peculiar as though they are informally waiting for something to begin. They're chilling out until the start of the something.
I can't decide whose comments are the sillier - Fr Allan's attempts to make the liturgy conform with modern American tastes, or Anonymous's Kavanaugh-esque list of hilariously inapt analogies. I am grateful to the latter for informing me that children were working in Pennsylvania coalmines as late as 1906; the practice was outlawed in the UK in 1842. But then, the British Empire abolished slavery in 1833 without a bloody civil war.
Also, it takes a large amount of prudishness and identification with the more barmy feminists to object to a beauty contest, although such things belong to a saner and perhaps more innocent age.
The servers sitting on the steps of the episcopal throne in Clear Creek monastery are not lounging on the floor. Their posture is formal and dignified. Socrates's pupils sat at his feet; the disciples sat at the feet of Our Lord. Indeed the expression 'sitting at the feet of' has passed into the English language.
Fr Allan should realize he is the servant of the liturgy and not its master. I would not attend a Tridentine Mass if there was a risk that the celebrant might, at his own whim, put part or all of it into the vernacular. I have met no-one who hankered after a vernacular EF. If Fr McDonald is to be believed, things are different in the US. That's not my problem.
There's nothing prudish or feminist - in the way you use the term - in objecting to beauty contests. Only a priggish male chauvinist maintains that they are desirable in a society that values women not only for their looks, but for their humanity.
What you don't know - among many, many thing, is that in the US the Miss America Pageant was established to lengthen the summer vacation season at Atlantic City, NJ. Women were being valued because they could be used to make money. Nice.
While we may congratulate our Mother Country for outlawing child labor in cola mines in 1842, we will remind her that her moral travesties, many associated with her colonial imperialism, came about later. Kenyan concentration camps in the 1950's, Iraq murders in the 1920's, Internment camps in Cyprus in the late 1950's, Amritsar 1919, among other sub-par examples of the "superiority" of the British Empire... Sniff...
Sitting on the floor or steps is neither formal nor dignified, unless one has been raised on seeing the value of walking backwards in front of a monarch, kissing hands as a sign of subservience, or bowing/curtsying as a sign of deference to the "high born."
'Male chauvinist'. A tired 1970s epithet which shows that the writer has not changed his prejudices in forty years. And it's 'pig', not 'prig'. I used to have a tie with pigs and MCP on it, which was good for winding up priggish feminists.
Beauty contests are not 'desirable' but they are essentally harmless, and not to be compared with child labour or slavery, unless you have lost all sense of proportion. However, in your case I doubt whether you ever had a sense of proportion.
'Cola mines'! Brilliant! I realize you think coke is a drink, but I might remind you that the fuel has to be mined as coal before it can be processed into coke.
John, Prig and Pig are two different words. I chose priggish intentionally.
Beauty contests are now harmless as they are venues of objectification of women. And I nowhere compared them to child labor - that came from your imagination.
And, of course, you ignore the examples of the less-than-superior moral standing of the Empire...
Yes, Anonymous, you chose 'priggish' intentionally, but misapplied it.
Prig: 'A person of precise morals but without a sense of proportion' (Chambers).
Ring any bells? Of course not; your sense of irony is as lacking as is your sense of proportion. What was the point of your list of analogies (13 December) if not to invite comparison? It doesn't make sense otherwise.
'Venues of objectification of women' is a good example of a priggish comment. At least you admit (correctly) that they are 'now harmless'. If not, you would have had to come up with evidence that beauty contests caused harm to those who participated in them.
Arguing the merits and demerits of the British Empire does not obscure the fact that it has shaped the modern world. It explains, for example, why you're not a Red Indian.
Here we have a person who thinks that sharecropping, beauty pageants, and child labor are all equivalent with each other and with people serving a Pontifical Mass.
It's amazing that anyone could think that, really. We certainly live in the stupidest of all possible timelines.
Once again, John, I must remind you that you don't get to be the definer of words.
You have Chambers, I have the Cambridge Dictionary - "disapproving" - and Collins Thesaurus which gives as a synonym "self-righteous," and Dictionary.com which gives us "Priggish: self-righteously moralistic and superior."
Priggish was aptly chosen - they fit you well.
If you had any interest in the harm caused by beauty pageants you would have looked into it yourself. You don't, but some sources are https://www.ultius.com/ultius-blog/entry/the-negative-effects-of-beauty-pageants.html.
My typing error led you to believe that beauty pageants are "now" harmless. I intended to type "not" harmless.
You presented the abolition of child labor in Britain before the same was done in the US as an example of the moral superiority of your nation. The facts show that, despite such claims, Britain has engaged in morally reprehensible behavior across its former Empire and done so well into the 20th century.
Hitler had great influence on the modern world too, you know.
Yes, Marc, only the stupidest would conclude that I had suggested equivalence among the items you mentioned. Yes, it is amazing.
So the guy saying that child labor, sharecropping, and beauty pageants are equally as bad as serving a Pontifical Mass is telling someone else they are "self-righteously moralistic and superior."
This is the same guy now saying that the British Empire and Hitler share some commonality in their moral failings.
Gosh, Anonymous, two days to compose a reply and you come up with a pathetic damp squib.
I'm not suggesting that any country has an innate moral superiority. But let me take you back to mid-1941. Self-interest would have suggested that the only sane course for Britain to have taken would have been to negotiate a peace with Nazi Germany. The country was no longer threatened with invasion, and was in a stronger position than she had been a year earlier. But without allies she could not win the war, and the USA was still sitting on its hands. No-one knew that before the end of the year the Japs would force the issue, and that Germany would declare war on America.
Yet Churchill would not countenance it. He was certainly morally right to do so, even though the eventual victory was a Pyrrhic one.
However, you have the impertinence to suggest that I need to maintain my comfort by holding to positions which I don't hold in the first place. What an absolute tosser you are.
25 comments:
I don't understand what is wrong with this.
Marc, you might have adult men sitting on the steps of the stoop in their shorts and flip flops but certainly not in their tuxedo and patent leather shoes! In the most solemn for of the EF Mass, to see clerics sitting on the steps to the stoop of the bishop’s throne is like men in tuxedos sitting on the steps of a shack!
"Picture of 'Darkies' picking cotton in 1860 rural Georgia"
I don't understand what is wrong with this.
"Picture of women in revealing Catalina swimsuits and high heels in the Miss America Pageant"
I don't understand what is wrong with this.
"Picture of children working in coal mines in Wilkes-Barre in 1906"
I don't understand what is wrong with this.
"Picture of grown men in liturgical vesture sitting on the floor around a vested bishop.
I don't understand what wrong with this. All these pictures are scenes from tradition.
No, of course you don't. Sadly, it is unlikely that you ever will.
Those are servers sitting beside the bishop’s throne serving their liturgical function.
"Those are servers sitting beside the bishop’s throne serving their liturgical function."
And sitting on the floor fulfills what "liturgical function?"
Their function at that moment is sitting and waiting. They’re holding things for the bishop...
Adults (or younger people) can sit and wait and hold things in seats, chairs, benches, or a variety of other appropriate pieces of furniture.
Sitting on the floor in a cluster around a bishop is, to many, demeaning. Is it necessary that they sit on the floor, or is this some traditional arrangement that should be maintained simply because it is traditional?
It also gets your vestments dirty.
"Paul" I doubt if anyone understands this pic like you do.... why do you assume anyone would understand 'what is wrong with the pic' when there is no context?
Picky, picky 'Paul'
What I find so very peculiar about this custom and it is precisely that, a custom, is that it is in the context of the Church's most formal form of the Solemn Mass. Maybe not in Europe, I don't know, but in the USA sitting on the floor or the steps of a building be it a home or a church or some other institution is quite informal not formal and one normally does not do this wearing one's formal clothes.
There's a disconnect here. If I had the altar boys at an EF Mass or the altar servers at an OF Mass sit on the floor around me, I think people would wonder about that in the formal setting of the Mass.
Servers kneel on the floor during basically the entire low mass. Often, the priest kneels as well, along with the other ministers. Clerics even lay on the floor at times. On Good Friday, they remove their shoes to venerate the Cross.
These are all part of the Roman Rite as it’s been handed down to us.
Bee here:
In response to Anonymous at December 13, 2019 at 1:21 PM:
Picture of a priest offering snark instead of a kind response...
I don't understand what's wrong with this.
And to quote Anonymous, "No, of course you don't. Sadly, it is unlikely that you ever will."
God bless,
Bee
Also, the custom in some places — France, I assume, since this happens at Institute masses — is for the servers to sit on the altar steps of the Epistle side during the sermon.
At any rate, there’s nothing demeaning about sitting on the floor or steps.
And Marc, dont forget that there was no reason, other than spite, for 'Paul' to try to demean you just for your comment. He may has issues with the blog owner, or me, but I dont think you have ever made mean spirited comments.
'Paul' should apologize to you.
I am not really discussing this as "demeaning" although I think a case could be made for that. I am saying there is a disconnect taking place in the most formal liturgy of the Church with the optics of the most informal way people will sit on the floor or steps.
And the photo I have posted has adults doing sitting on the floor around the bishop which in fact from the optics point of view looks quite peculiar as though they are informally waiting for something to begin. They're chilling out until the start of the something.
I can't decide whose comments are the sillier - Fr Allan's attempts to make the liturgy conform with modern American tastes, or Anonymous's Kavanaugh-esque list of hilariously inapt analogies. I am grateful to the latter for informing me that children were working in Pennsylvania coalmines as late as 1906; the practice was outlawed in the UK in 1842. But then, the British Empire abolished slavery in 1833 without a bloody civil war.
Also, it takes a large amount of prudishness and identification with the more barmy feminists to object to a beauty contest, although such things belong to a saner and perhaps more innocent age.
The servers sitting on the steps of the episcopal throne in Clear Creek monastery are not lounging on the floor. Their posture is formal and dignified. Socrates's pupils sat at his feet; the disciples sat at the feet of Our Lord. Indeed the expression 'sitting at the feet of' has passed into the English language.
Fr Allan should realize he is the servant of the liturgy and not its master. I would not attend a Tridentine Mass if there was a risk that the celebrant might, at his own whim, put part or all of it into the vernacular. I have met no-one who hankered after a vernacular EF. If Fr McDonald is to be believed, things are different in the US. That's not my problem.
There's nothing prudish or feminist - in the way you use the term - in objecting to beauty contests. Only a priggish male chauvinist maintains that they are desirable in a society that values women not only for their looks, but for their humanity.
What you don't know - among many, many thing, is that in the US the Miss America Pageant was established to lengthen the summer vacation season at Atlantic City, NJ. Women were being valued because they could be used to make money. Nice.
While we may congratulate our Mother Country for outlawing child labor in cola mines in 1842, we will remind her that her moral travesties, many associated with her colonial imperialism, came about later. Kenyan concentration camps in the 1950's, Iraq murders in the 1920's, Internment camps in Cyprus in the late 1950's, Amritsar 1919, among other sub-par examples of the "superiority" of the British Empire... Sniff...
Sitting on the floor or steps is neither formal nor dignified, unless one has been raised on seeing the value of walking backwards in front of a monarch, kissing hands as a sign of subservience, or bowing/curtsying as a sign of deference to the "high born."
Cheers, Mate!
'Male chauvinist'. A tired 1970s epithet which shows that the writer has not changed his prejudices in forty years. And it's 'pig', not 'prig'. I used to have a tie with pigs and MCP on it, which was good for winding up priggish feminists.
Beauty contests are not 'desirable' but they are essentally harmless, and not to be compared with child labour or slavery, unless you have lost all sense of proportion. However, in your case I doubt whether you ever had a sense of proportion.
'Cola mines'! Brilliant! I realize you think coke is a drink, but I might remind you that the fuel has to be mined as coal before it can be processed into coke.
Zum Wohle, Arschloch!
John, Prig and Pig are two different words. I chose priggish intentionally.
Beauty contests are now harmless as they are venues of objectification of women. And I nowhere compared them to child labor - that came from your imagination.
And, of course, you ignore the examples of the less-than-superior moral standing of the Empire...
Yes, Anonymous, you chose 'priggish' intentionally, but misapplied it.
Prig: 'A person of precise morals but without a sense of proportion' (Chambers).
Ring any bells? Of course not; your sense of irony is as lacking as is your sense of proportion. What was the point of your list of analogies (13 December) if not to invite comparison? It doesn't make sense otherwise.
'Venues of objectification of women' is a good example of a priggish comment. At least you admit (correctly) that they are 'now harmless'. If not, you would have had to come up with evidence that beauty contests caused harm to those who participated in them.
Arguing the merits and demerits of the British Empire does not obscure the fact that it has shaped the modern world. It explains, for example, why you're not a Red Indian.
Here we have a person who thinks that sharecropping, beauty pageants, and child labor are all equivalent with each other and with people serving a Pontifical Mass.
It's amazing that anyone could think that, really. We certainly live in the stupidest of all possible timelines.
Once again, John, I must remind you that you don't get to be the definer of words.
You have Chambers, I have the Cambridge Dictionary - "disapproving" - and Collins Thesaurus which gives as a synonym "self-righteous," and Dictionary.com which gives us "Priggish: self-righteously moralistic and superior."
Priggish was aptly chosen - they fit you well.
If you had any interest in the harm caused by beauty pageants you would have looked into it yourself. You don't, but some sources are https://www.ultius.com/ultius-blog/entry/the-negative-effects-of-beauty-pageants.html.
https://prezi.com/flvmxwp3nofz/the-negative-effect-of-beauty-pageants/
https://promethean.siena.edu/2018/11/16/beauty-pageants-detrimental-to-womens-minds/
Among many others.
My typing error led you to believe that beauty pageants are "now" harmless. I intended to type "not" harmless.
You presented the abolition of child labor in Britain before the same was done in the US as an example of the moral superiority of your nation. The facts show that, despite such claims, Britain has engaged in morally reprehensible behavior across its former Empire and done so well into the 20th century.
Hitler had great influence on the modern world too, you know.
Yes, Marc, only the stupidest would conclude that I had suggested equivalence among the items you mentioned. Yes, it is amazing.
Anonymous
You're in a hole.
Stop digging.
So the guy saying that child labor, sharecropping, and beauty pageants are equally as bad as serving a Pontifical Mass is telling someone else they are "self-righteously moralistic and superior."
This is the same guy now saying that the British Empire and Hitler share some commonality in their moral failings.
The internet truly is an amazing place.
John,
The only hole is the extra one in your head, along with the ones God put there.
You can keep pretending that Britain has some moral superiority because, to maintain your comfort, you must.
The facts indicate otherwise.
Cheers!
Gosh, Anonymous, two days to compose a reply and you come up with a pathetic damp squib.
I'm not suggesting that any country has an innate moral superiority. But let me take you back to mid-1941. Self-interest would have suggested that the only sane course for Britain to have taken would have been to negotiate a peace with Nazi Germany. The country was no longer threatened with invasion, and was in a stronger position than she had been a year earlier. But without allies she could not win the war, and the USA was still sitting on its hands. No-one knew that before the end of the year the Japs would force the issue, and that Germany would declare war on America.
Yet Churchill would not countenance it. He was certainly morally right to do so, even though the eventual victory was a Pyrrhic one.
However, you have the impertinence to suggest that I need to maintain my comfort by holding to positions which I don't hold in the first place. What an absolute tosser you are.
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