Even with all the controversies about how Bugnini stripped the Mass of its coherence, as well as of its solemnity and reverence, although it wasn’t truly all his fault what happened with his Mass after it went into effect, most Catholics, clergy and laity, knew what liturgical abuse was and named it as so.
Most of the most egregious liturgical abuses are not to be found in the Liturgical Order of the Mass of Bugnini, but rather heaped upon his Mass by the clergy after it was promulgated. Bugnini’s rubrics are weak and flimsy and may contribute to liturgical abuses, but I don’t think Bugnini desired liturgical abuses.
Not so today. Bishops and lower clergy along with the laity are so accustomed to liturgical abuses, they don’t realize that these are abuses.
For example, it is not foreseen in the Bugnini Mass, even in 1970, that there would be such wordiness and lunacy concerning these words at the “Introductory Rite for the Penitential Act” when in red it says: In these or similar words.
Today, we know that bishops and priests, using not similar words in the Missal, but a whole bunch of many unsimilar words instead, completely break the trajectory of Prayer begun with the Introit to launch into a barrage of words after the Greeting, not to introduce the Penitential Act, but to blab on, welcoming everyone, using secular greetings and giving a secular talk or a mini homily. This is a liturgical abuse, no? But no one, especially the bishops and priests doing it are even aware of it so common is this tripe today.
But here’s something I’ve gotten quite accustomed to doing and don’t realize how dumb and incoherent it is, although it may be a pastoral nicety. I thank Fr. Z for pointing this out.
It has to do with the blessings that bishops, priests and deacons give to those who approach to receive Holy Communion but aren’t able to do so, thus they seek a blessing instead. The Bugnini Mass does not encourage this as there is absolutely nothing in its missal to give directions on it or even suggesting it as a pastoral option! And certainly prior to the council, no one sought a blessing at Communion time, apart from receiving. It just wasn’t done. If you couldn’t go to Holy Communion you did not go to the altar railing. And even small children remained in the pew while their parents went to Holy Communion.
Fr. Z points out the incoherency of giving a blessing to non-communicants who approach the “minister of Holy Communion” at Communion time. The cleric is holding the ciborium in his left hand with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, in which the entire Most Holy Trinity is received, and then uses is free right hand to offer a blessing.
While it isn’t rubrical to bless anyone in the Communion line with the words, God bless you, and with no “Sign of the Cross” gesture from a lay EMHC, or an actual Sign of the Cross from the hand of a bishop, priest or deacons, it happens constantly in the Bugnini Mass and today even in the Ancient Ordo, but at least no lay people are doing it in the AO!
What is rubrical in the Ancient Ordo is for the bishop or priest to make the Sign of the Cross with the Host as he uses the formula said to the Communicant. This is kosher and it is the Lord’s blessing as in Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
While it is not rubrical in the AO Mass, It would be a coherent extension of the AO’s rubrics to bless non-communicants with the Host rather than the priestly hand at Communion time, no?
But liturgical abuses always bring incoherence to the Mass in whatever form, but it is far more prevelant in the Bugnini Mass, no?
1 comment:
Thank you for posting this. I imagine if Mass were in Latin, ad libbing would come to a screeching halt! There are very few Cardinal Bacci's!
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