Ditto.

Add to this the not uncommon practice in retirement locales in Florida (and perhaps elsewhere) of having the Vigil at the usual hour of the Saturday afternoon Mass. (I recall I've even heard of ditching the Vigil entirely and instead just celebrating an anticipated Easter Sunday Mass. This was such a stunning possibility I don't think it's a figment of my faulty memory. Which leads to the false choice: which is worse, skipping the Vigil or butchering it?)

It's stupid, infantile and idiotic. You can and perhaps should write the bishop, as per your rights in Redemptionis Sacramentum (just plainly explain what will happen, don't cite the law at him). But chances are, unless the bishop has a real spine matters liturgical (and let's be honest, many...I almost would say most don't), it'll probably go on anyways exactly as planned.

Holy Week question marks in my parish:
1. Live donkey for Palm Sunday procession (a "tradition" dating back to the '80s or possibly before that; being resurrected this year),
2. Easter Sunday procession at our "children's Mass" during Alleluia when children are led down the center aisle by balloons. After Mass, balloons are given out to children in attendance. This is a long-standing active custom that goes back for years (my guess is that it originated in the '70s).
I may be leaving the parish in a few weeks.

OK, here's the picture: Gorgeous, large 1917 church building with a polychrome baldacchino and marble high altar. Ornate marble sanctuary floor. Windows rivaling
anything from Europe. For the reformed liturgy, a massive marble table from a bank was brought in as the new freestanding altar. (New freestanding because the old high altar under the baldacchino is also freestanding.) This was one of those carved marble monstrosities that banks used to install in order to command the respect of us peons.

Anyway, the scene is Easter Vigil 1977 or so. The word came down from the high (perhaps in more than one sense) that, during the Abraham reading, the sacrifice of Isaac would be reenacted in the sanctuary. Accordingly, scantily clad dancers wafted to and fro as Isaac was laid out on the bank table where he was menaced by Abraham. Toga clad undergraduates played the parts. Luckily for salvation history, timely divine intervention saved Isaac once again.

Unluckily for this church, many congregants were seen leaving the premises during this
debacle. The legend is that they never returned.

I did not see this myself as I was hired as DM there a few years later after a purely musical debacle. However, I heard it from eyewitnesses and you can trust them!

Godspeed!!!

The weirdest I’ve seen is liturgical dance and reading the readings multiple times in various languages on Pentecost at a Minneapolis parish that Scott Turkington will tell you he thought was cool as a kid but, well...he directs chant now!! Simultaneous reading would drive me crazy, and nothing tops MBW's story. That actually is not only infantile, but really, really messed up. They did it on the altar of the Mass, and they failed to realize there is no need to act it out, since the Mass is the sacrifice of Christ which is the antitype of Abraham’s sacrifice.

My favorite liturgical horror:

I taught a class on the Holy Week rituals in a better left unnamed diocese. I discussed the symbolism of the candle being put into the baptismal waters. The imagery being noted by those in attendance

A wonderful but a little crazy old priest stood up to say that," Whenever I did that I did not want the candle to get wet so I always put a plastic bag over the end of the candle when I dipped it into the water."

Needless to say, most people quickly figured out the imagery. Yep...liturgical condoms. :)

Not Class A "horrors," but noteworthy--the "church musician" who entertains with hotel-bar arrangements of "Danny Boy" and "Au Claire de Lune" as warm-up music before Mass.

And the priest/celebrant who does the 'Sprinkling Ritual' while the choir sings the Glory to God (I mean, who has TIME for all that extra ceremonial??)

Most memorable Holy Week liturgical horror: Our new priest, when asked at the beginning of Lent if he would be chanting the Vigil's Exsultet, or would he rather the cantor do it (as cantor was prepared, experienced, & always chanted it as it is written) replied, "Yes, I will do it."

"Okay, Father, how about a run-through next week, just to make sure we're on the same page?" Whereupon he starts chanting the first three lines, every word correct, every note on pitch, tempo perfecto.

The MD is pleasantly surprised."Well, that was great, Father, bravo! But it would be good to rehearse it fully at least once before the Vigil. I'll be in touch." During Lent the MD attempted several times to meet with him, but his six-parish schedule was continually over-booked & so the rehearsal never took place.

Fast fwd: The Easter Vigil begins. At the appointed time Father proceeds to the ambo & begins chanting. All is a beautiful repeat...at least for those first three lines (remember those?). Then everything goes to you-know-where in a hand basket. MD nearly falls off the organ bench, fights the urge to scream, "No, no, a thousand times, NO!"

With the exception of the responses he was all over the map. After Mass the MD was heard to say, "Well, Father, I must say that was quite a surprise. Guess we should've practiced, eh?" wink, wink.

He solemnly replied, "Chester can do it from now on." (Thank you, Jesus!!)

the NO is an abberation and I pray for the day it is abrogated. IMHO it will always be the culprit of liturgical abuse no matter how much training or education is attempted

If tomorrow the OF were abrogated, the EF would be subject to as much mischief.

Saturday evening Masses: Holy Grandmother Church at prayer.

(Full disclosure: for many years, my late elderly mother could only get to Mass late in the afternoon because it took her 6 hours to get herself ready - many dozens of things to be done - and her medication schedule was such that she couldn't attend in the morning. A reminded that many people have no idea what other people do in order to get to church in the first place. Being able allows people such blessed ignorance.)

the symbolism of the candle being put into the baptismal waters.

For a not-yet-converted Wiccan seeing this for the first time, no discussion was necessary.

Here's a good one:

One parish I worked for, part-time while finishing my DMA, did a very strange thing at the conclusion of the Holy Thursday liturgy. After the altar was stripped, the deacon came forward from the rear of the church and hurled a handful of silver coins at the altar and walked out.
Since the altar and sanctuary were all hard surfaces, the noise was quite startling, and the coins rolled and spun away in all directions.

I later asked what this was supposed to mean and was told that it represented Judas returning his blood money to the Temple priests.

Back in the days when sheep were brought up in the offertory procession along with whatever else the enlightened staff thought relevant, I remember a classic:

A family brought up a TV Guide. When I asked why, I was told that the TV Guide was a symbol of family togetherness. I suppose in their minds sitting surrounded by the great wasteland (especially since this was in about 1977) constituted quality family time. Sheesh!

No, give the money to the musicians who probably need it much more than the temple priests. ;-)

Bringing to mind the notorious incident in the early 1980s, when Peter Sellars was semi-staging a performance of Handel’s "Saul" by the Cantata Singers of Boston: he asked the members of the Chorus of Israelites to writhe on the floor chasing loose change, and the singers refused . . . .

oops, from the previous comment i thought they were the same person. And was thinking what did you expect asking a comic actor to stage a performance of Handel?

The inventor of the Moka espresso pot died recently, and his ashes were brought to church:

http://www.lastampa.it/2016/02/16/edizioni/verbania/cronaca/le-ceneri-di-renato-bialetti-nella-sua-moka-coi-baffi-qw2ZXnd0hrqoW1HHDGx3oM/pagina.html

Go to an average Suburban parish and have some nice old lady choir sing the Gregorian Alleluia and then you'll hear a true liturgical horror.

But let's all write to Rome and tell them to remove the Graduale Simplex from all future liturgical documents because it is a liturgical horror.

...because it is a liturgical horror.

Well, (do I or do I not perceive sarcasm here?) in this respect at least, it may well be a liturgical horror, so let us indeed complain of it to Rome. But why? Rome has proven to be no bastion against liturgical horrors - it even sometimes (as would be exampled here) is complicit in them.

There are many kinds of horrors other than priests dressing up like clowns or rising up from a casket before the altar as from the dead on Easter Day. Such idiocy will run its course and, ultimately, receive its due shame. Other horrors may be less glaring, less offensive, less sick. They may be, actually, pleasant. These are the worse ones, for they worm their way into common practice until they are seen as legitimate and 'traditional', and, after all, Rome didn't stamp them out; why, Rome even put out a little book that features them. Rome is of a feather with the worst of Anglicanism in publishing stuff and making pronouncements that say one thing and mean another, or leave everyone guessing what they mean, have been cleverly couched so that they mean different things to different interpreters, or don't mean anything at all that Rome actually cares about - really and seriously cares about. But the horror is a horror just the same. And, we are all the losers; we have lost riches of tradition, meaning, symbolism, spirituality, literature, music, art, paths to holiness, theological awareness, intellectual perception and grasp, and more else than one could list here, and this matter of the alleluya at mass is one of them. And every time we lose something we just forget about it and resent anyone bringing it up. (After all, maybe the nasty old Vatican II council didn't actually 'get rid of it', we our very selves just abandoned it and couldn't care less.) Simplex! That says it all.

.

Also known as: getting in one's own way.

I am trying to figure what hand twirling thing goes with Ah-ha-lay-hey-loo-(hoo-)hoo-yah! thrice.....

eft, I would have cried.