In some diocese in Brazil it's common to have various novenas at the end of Mass, either seasonal ones, ones relating to a patron saint, or ones pertaining to devotional groups (ie Thursday's it's Our lady of Schoenstatt, Tuesday's Saint Anthony, and so on).

If priests would adhere to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the celebration of Mass would be so much better:

22.3: Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

Also in the GIRM:

24: However, the Priest will remember that he is the servant of the Sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass.

So it seems clear that adding a St. Michael Prayer during Mass as a regular feature of the community's liturgical prayer is an unpermitted modification to the liturgy. Same with communally praying the Hail Mary during Mass after the Universal Prayer. People try to get around the liturgical norms by appending things to Mass immediately before or after, so they say "technically" we're not adding to the liturgy. Well, in a letter-of-the-law sense they aren't, but in a spirit-of-the-law sense they are.

When I sang in the choir at St. Mary's (1977-2010), the Legion of Mary always prayed the rosary before Sunday Mass but not for every Mass on Sunday. Now the rosary would finish about 5 or 7 minutes before the Mass would start. This gave the choir an opportunity on many occasions to sing a devotional hymn. If the choir was going to sing it was communicated with the priest saying Mass. This was the practice or tradition for many years. In my current parish of St. Paul's we have a prelude hymn before Mass and after the final blessing "go forth the Mass has ended" we pray a prayer to St. Paul, who is our patron saint especially during the month of January. However, to my knowledge be it St. Mary's or St. Paul's nothing was inserted during the Mass.

The Hail Mary appears in the 1967 volume The Prayer of the Faithful (which was completed in November 1966 and based on an earlier collection of prayers from 1965), imprimatured by George Dwyer. It was actually compiled by Bishop Gordon Wheeler* and Fr David Quinlan. On the Hail Mary, the preamble asserts: “The prayer to Our Lady inserted in the scheme authorized for England and Wales following a medieval precedent. It is constant
and always concludes the petitions.”


I don’t know whether this was one of the pies into which Derek Worlock’s fingers made their way.

*Wheeler was the first English diocesan bishop to have been trained at St Stephen’s House (an Anglican theological college), in either the Church of England or the Catholic Church.

And formally removed. Popes give and popes take away. It is used in my area because the bishop reinstated it.

We have broached this subject before.
There seem to be those who like to add their own saints and interests at the end of the Universal Prayers, and will do so regardless of whether such prayers are licit. They are not.
There should be no persons added and no persons addressed who are not Divine
(meaning Father, Son and Holy Ghost) . In other words, only God or Persons of the Holy Trinity are licitly addressed at mass. The entire mass is addressed to God, the Trinity, and no other.

As for the St Michael prayer, it is always said after mass at Walsingham - followed by a short 'litany' of various saints during the recession, after which the postlude is played.

I think that those who just can't resist adding intercessions to the BVM, etc. think that God will not hear us but through her or other saints - which is an affront to Him.

I presume MJO means the Sacrifice itself which is the purpose of the Mass. But point taken.

dad29, I agree that for the average layperson, there is no plot to circumvent liturgical norms. Most people don't even know that the GIRM exists, let alone what it is or what it says. That said, many people do have ideas about how they want their liturgy to be, and they are almost always uniformed since they are unaware of the aforementioned document and the rubrics contained therein. So, there are agendas, to be sure, but they run parallel to the theory of undermining liturgical norms. They simply are wanting things to be the way they want them to be.

This is why I once posed the following question to our parish via a bulletin column:

"How does God want to be worshipped?" Followed by the logical followup, "Can we know the answer to this question? Yes, we can, because Holy Mother Church has taught us and has millenias-old traditions which inform our understanding in this regard."

But I think very few people think in these terms. They don't realize that the Mass is about God the Son offering Himself to God the Father on our behalf; they think it's about us, and us receiving communion. It's a very anthropocentric understanding of things, and obvious a complete inversion of reality. But they were never taught, so the question of what does GOD want never crosses their minds because they aren't aware that there is anything wrong or deficient. "You don't know what you don't know," as it were.

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--a tactic with a rather disgusting history. Lay people do not "plot" to "get around" norms; rather, they are motivated to pray. The church is a fine place to pray.

But prove me wrong!! Prove to me that there are 'plots' and 'schemes' to 'violate liturgical norms'

“Uncle Tony loved Frank Sinatra singing ‘My Way.’ If you insist we can’t have that during communion, then we’ll play it before the Mass/at the end/Fr X at Y parish did that for Aunt Sue’s funeral, he said it was fine since it was after Mass……it’s HIS FUNERAL….”

The Litany of Saints directly addresses the BVM and other saints and asks for their intercession.

That's the only instance I know of.

But the Litany isn't part of the Mass; it's part of the liturgy of Baptism, which at the Easter Vigil is incorporated into the Mass.

Gamba, those examples (I've had to deal with those, too) are not relevant to the discussion about the SMP or a Rosary. As Thomas Aquinas reminds us: distinguish!!

One's funeral or wedding, for which one may 'plot' an inappropriate piece of music is NOT the same as a Sunday Mass before/after which is said a Rosary or the SMP. And that's not to mention the vast difference between pops/crooner hit songs and a Rosary or SMP in the first place.

I'm not a fan of the Rosary Gang, but I admire their resolve to pray ceaselessly, so long as it doesn't interfere with the Mass--which it cannot do when before or after the Mass. I'm favorably inclined to the SMP, after the Mass, so it does not interfere with it.

Those on this board who insist that a Rosary or SMP is--somehow--a derogation of the Mass, or arranged for by the Sinister Granny Prayer-Gang, are perhaps far too sensitive for the work of parish musician.

I don't think you have the necessary ..........

Sounds like a problem you should discuss with your pastor, or maybe threaten the grannies-with-rosaries. Come to think of it, they probably don't know that YOU own the church!

Gamba is right to suggest that those introits etc., which mention the BVM (or other saints) are ascription of praise, not petitions for one thing or another. They are all about what God has accomplished through them.