The View from the Laity: A Response to Fr Gill

"No matter how reverently the priest celebrates a NO mass, the fact that his body is toward me logically indicates that what is happening is about us."

From Crisis

By Robert B. Greving

While it is a laudable desire for priests to try and celebrate the Novus Ordo reverently, it still contains temptations that work against that desire.

Fr Joseph Gill’s recent column “The Novus Ordo and the Interior Life” is an excellent reflection on the needs of the priest celebrating the Novus Ordo. I should, though, like to offer a bit of a rebuttal from the other side—that is, the laity. I say this because the reasons given for the NO were and are that the changes would enhance the Mass for the laity. So, in one sense, while I appreciate the thoughts of the priest celebrating either rite, I think the main consideration needs to be about the laity. 

Fr. Gill unconsciously tips his hand for both the priest and the laity when he states that “the temptations of the NO are much stronger” when it comes to celebrating the Mass irreverently. Why should we want a liturgy in which the temptations to irreverence are much stronger? The sine qua non of any liturgy should be reverence. To design or celebrate a Mass in which we admit we are more greatly tempted to irreverence makes no sense to me. Whatever the intentions were for the changes, to admit that they may lead either the priest or the laity into any greater irreverence should eliminate them from the start. 

While I attend the TLM on Sunday, I can only go to a NO mass during the week and, because of my schedule, will go to different parishes depending upon the day. All the priests celebrating the Mass seem good men, and, from what I can tell, all seem to have a deep interior life. They all celebrate the NO reverently, yet all do so differently; and this is because of the inherent nature of the NO. With this in mind, let me take Fr. Gill’s points one by one and try to demonstrate the uphill battle the laity (at least this lay person) faces with the NO.       

The laity, too, must “understand the Mass as the eternal sacrifice to the Father.” But from the very beginning of the Mass, with the priest facing the people, the whole tenor of the Mass is set up as being something between the priest and the people. If I face you and you face me, and words are exchanged, our entire body language indicates that what we are saying is between you and me. I don’t speak to one person while facing a third person. We know that most of our communication is “nonverbal.” Words can say one thing—but if the body language says another, there is a “disconnect,” if only subconscious.

No matter how reverently the priest celebrates a NO mass, the fact that his body is toward me logically indicates that what is happening is about us. As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, “The turning of the priest towards the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself.” Thus, from the outset, the NO forms the laity into thinking that the Mass is not the sacrifice of Christ to the Father but “our communal celebration.” 

The laity, too, “must cultivate humility and obedience.” Yet this is difficult when, because of the versus populum of the NO, our attention is drawn naturally to the personality of the priest and not his office. You can’t face a person without being affected by his personality. Is he smiling? Is he solemn? Is he weeping? You naturally respond to his cues.

And so the Mass, for the laity, starts to evolve around the personality of the priest rather than his office. We have a sense of relief—or apprehension—as Fr. X comes out. We feel we must follow his lead in our attitude of response. We are, in a way, held captive to who he is rather than what he is. It is no longer the Mass of the Church but the Mass of Fr. X. And, as a point of passing, I have found that it is almost impossible for a priest celebrating the NO not to interject something that is not in the liturgy, whether it is allowed by the phrase “in these or similar words” or just as the all-too-human and modern desire to “break the ice” of formality.  

And, yes, the laity must remain focused on the liturgy and the Lord and not the people. The NO, though, has us turning our attention this way and that. Our attention follows our eyes. With the TLM, if our eyes are not closed in prayer or on the missal, they are directed to the altar because the only person doing anything is there. 

With the NO, we have lectors and Eucharistic ministers coming up from the pews, dressed in everything from suits to T-shirts; cantors and choir directors holding up their arms to say, “Now follow my lead”; and the “sign of peace,” which has us twisting around, shaking hands or kissing or waving to make sure no one is left out. The repeated calls for response by the laity have us “on our toes” rather than drawing us deeper into that silence which is the essence of the interior life. At times, I think the NO was specifically designed to have us shift our attention every few moments from what is happening at the altar to somewhere or someone else. 

To be “filled with awe and fear of the Lord” is something the laity needs as well. What fills us with awe and fear—the everyday or the mysterious? A liturgy conducted in the same language we use for everything else, by nature, draws us into thinking it is like other things we do every day; that we can hold the same attitude toward it as other things; that we can give—or withhold—our attention and devotion to it as we do to other things. The etymology of the word sacred means “set apart.” A vernacular language is the opposite. It is ordinary and can easily lead us into thinking that what we are saying is also such. 

All this brings me to Fr. Gill’s final point: faith in the Real Presence. If it is difficult for the priest to have this when he is the one “in charge,” it is even more so for the laity in the NO when our minds during it have been continually diverted. The entire form of the TLM leads us to that awesome moment when the priest raises the host from in front of himself for us to see. It is the culmination of all that has come before: the decorum, the silence, the repeated signs of the cross, the rigorous attention to detail. “Look!” we say, “there He is!”

The NO, by contrast, with its back-and-forth responses and changes in focus has us struggling to recollect ourselves as we line up when the ushers tell us to. Is it no wonder that faith in the Real Presence has declined so precipitously?   

I don’t mean to be harsh on Fr. Gill. What he set forth is laudable, and I pray many will read it and follow his counsel. My contention is that for the laity in the NO it requires an almost Herculean effort to do so. This, for me, is the frustration.

While it seems obvious to many that the TLM is more reverent and better able to lead both the priest and the laity to those attitudes which are befitting the worship of God, we keep hoping that somehow the NO will “catch up.” It hasn’t, and it can’t. By all means, celebrate the NO with as much reverence as possible. But if the Church wants us to have an interior life, let us have a liturgy that does everything it can to lead us to it.