I can't imagine what it must be like to say Mass versus populum... I mean... I understand that many (most?) priests have never experienced anything else.. but I know when I'm presenting a lecture or speaking to a classroom, no matter how much I try to focus on delivering my material to the majority of people who are listening and not on what people are doing - I can't help but notice the one person who is yawning or texting. Even if a priest is trying to be 100% focused on what he's doing - if someone in the front row of the church is drinking from a thermos, it's going to be hard to miss that.

As an easterner, priests and people turn toward the Lord, and the east from which He will return. It's that simple. Clericalism has been with us from the beginning and I suspect will never go away as long as pride and ego exist. The emperor Justinian was battling the creeping clericalism of the silent canon in his day and the battle against clericalism continues to this day. Priests like to be special and perpetrate the mystique of their office in all religions, not just ours. Prestige is a seductress with a lengthy record of success.

It's a matter of perspective (recursive humor alert): for a contemplative person, the "distractions" are not necessarily distracting at all, but actually where one finds God.

The only reason I note this is that, I am an introvert but also a synaesthete: so incoming sensory "data" is multi-layered, and can be overwhelming. During my years of spiritual direction, I essentially confessed my difficulty in maintaining focus when confronted with so much sensory incoming (think M*A*S*H), as it were, and that my prayer suffered for it, et cet. I was gobsmacked to be told I was actually very contemplative - my attempts to remain focus were a form of resistance to contemplation, rather than attempts to be contemplative. I should clarify that with my sensory incoming I get a fair bit of spiritual info.

In all these things, it really depends. There are priests and congregants for whom ad orientem is more contemplative than the other way around, but it should not be elided that it's also true vice versa. And, very often, there are conflicting temperaments in that regard.

Chris

I am not persuaded by that one.

Pray Tell's response

Padraig McCarthy’s response is navelgazing at its finest and a perfect example of what Benedict talked about with the self–referential, enclosed circle at Mass. A liturgy which is entirely ad orientem is still open, at least until the Credo, is still open to that person who wants to run towards Christ but has not yet entered his church, which makes Mass facing the people inappropriate since McCarthy can only be describing the baptized. OK, so Cardinal Sarah is speaking in the context of the OF, but he thinks the Gloria, Credo, and orations can all be done facing east, per his comments last year.

Also, the rest of the thread: gosh, it makes me upset.

Good timing. I turn 21 in two and a half weeks.

Heh. My youngest (surviving) child is 23.

Pax ...

Is this a serious question?

Yes, I normally sit on the tabernacle side (because it's not in the center, but it is in the sanctuary, on a side altar), and look towards it or the crucifix right behind the altar (actually, it's on the original high altar that was never removed from the church). The only time I ever look at anyone else in the pews around me is during the sign of peace, and it normally consists only of my wife, who sits right next to me, and perhaps the people immediately in front of me.

So do I, and all those balding ones are not males.