I'll play.

>Irreverence for the Blessed Sacrament is a good place to start the conversation, no?
Constant, loud, joking, shouting across the nave, chatty conversations even during exposition, servers who come and go during Mass; kids playing while their parents socialize after Mass, wedding photographers and musicians - traipsing around the sanctuary, (where the tabernacle is centrally located,) as if it were their family room.

>Music for the emotions rather than the intellect. "On Eagles Wings"
Nearly ubiquitous

>Lay people distributing the Blessed Sacrament when a priest and deacon are present.
Yes, we too often have... unemployed concelebrants, because they "don't know OUR communion pattern!"

>Youth ministers...
?

>Lay people with little or no education in the liturgy planning liturgies.
From the brides and grooms and mourners who are given to think that weddings and funerals are the time for their favorite songs and poems, (and I as the musician am the only line of defense,) up to diocesan "liturgical commission" members...

>Women and men dancing during the liturgy.
Not our parish, but regularly at a number of parishes and school Mass throughout the diocese and at virtually every major diocesan liturgical celebration.

>Clowns saying Mass.
Never saw.

>Puppets in the Mass.
Not the giant ones, thank goodness, but a hand puppet delivering the sermon (NOT at a children Mass)

>A cantor queen or knight hogging the microphone crooning the responsorial psalm.
Curing young people of pop styling is very difficult. Getting cantors to back off the mic' is a constant struggle, but that's not as difficult as getting MONSIGNOR Caruso to do so....

>A reader "interpreting" the readings with raised eyebrows and long pauses for emphasis.
Yes.

>Eulogies at Requiem Masses.
Frequent. Most recent one, the guy made himself at home, leaning on the ambo and telling jokes.

>Lay people conferring blessings....
Constant.
Besides the EMHCs conferring blessings in the communion line as a congregation we are asked to do our impression of the crowds in Triumph of the Will at least every other weekend.

>"The geographical parish I live in features the 'assembly' praying to 'Our Father and Mother in heaven'."
A visiting priest frequently does this, but not during Mass, so far as I know, only at meetings, prayer services, etc.

>"Celebrating Mother Earth at the Newman Center"
I have no problem with Sister Moon, Mother Earth, etc...
................
The fact is some places, perhaps, (hopefully?) MANY places are getting better but others are sinking further into careless abuse.
........................

And what Catholic Mass mentions Mary aside from Marian Feastdays?

"And I ask blessed Mary, ever Virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. Amen."

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

Too bad y'all don't have a Theotokion to sing, and that y'all write your own litany of the faithful instead of using the ones St. John Chrysostom wrote (which always end with: "Commemorating our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-Virgin Mary with all the saints, let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God." R. "To Thee, O Lord.")

I was afraid that we were getting off topic here, but since the thread is about "recollection" and the proper attitude of Mass (and how to achieve that attitude), I think we're quite on topic, actually. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I will add my comments to this list.

Irreverence for the Blessed Sacrament...

This is unfortunately common in Catholic churches. Most people do genuflect when seating themselves, but I noticed that they do this even when the entire altar, tabernacle, everything has been removed and the chapel has been converted to something else for an event. Do they know what they are genuflecting toward? Once I asked a friend of mine, a cradle Catholic, why he did this before sitting down (he just returned from communion) and he said, "I don't know, I've just always done it that way."

I often see people walking in and out of Catholic sanctuaries like it's no big deal. (Often you can't even tell where the nave ends and the sanctuary begins.) One church I went to people would exit the church through the sanctuary and out the sacristy, because there was a door to the outside back there. I see choirs in the sanctuary--women in the sanctuary, all the time! lay women, serving at the altar, touching the altar... I am a woman, and still appalled by this (and at the concept of altar girls--can't even comprehend the church sanction of it). And there are these awful pictures of my friends' Texan church of the consecration of their new, beautiful altar... and sitting in the background--BEHIND THE ALTAR--is a djembe player. He sat there because the choir on the side of the sanctuary was so big, he didn't fit. So he sat behind the altar, right next to the tabernacle, and was in all the pictures of the priests and bishop consecrating the altar.

Also, I think communion in the hand is irreverent by default, and don't understand how Catholic hierarchy could possibly let that go on! It certainly turns communion into a very irreverent act into lots of churches. Most people take the host, grab it with two fingers and put it in their mouths like a chip or a cookie or something. I've only ever seen one man take communion on his hand and eat it straight off the hand, careful to make no crumbs whatsoever. Maybe communion on the hand isn't intrinsically irreverent (although that is my opinion)--but you must agree that it makes irreverence much, much easier.

Music for the emotions rather than the intellect...

Jesus rock. I've heard so much rock-n-roll Jesus at Mass... and the Spanish Mass was worse, they had a mariachi band, no kidding. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the feast, I think... I actually burst out laughing during Mass! I couldn't take Mass seriously. Just had to stifle my laughter best I could and try to pray.

Lay people distributing the Blessed Sacrament when a priest and deacon are present...

What could be good about fleets of laypeople distributing communion (especially lay women) -- even if the priests and deacons are distributing too, I often see way more extraordinary ministers than necessary (and they're usually SCHEDULED to work on a weekly basis; what is extraordinary about that?). Seeing them line up behind the altar to stand behind the priest for the Eucharistic prayer... it's hard to watch.

I understand that there are special situations with infirm priests, etc. But every Catholic church I've ever been to has had fleets of EMCs, if they had EMCs at all. I'm so glad Latin Masses don't use them. At Franciscan the best they got was having all priests distributing the host, but twice as many EMCs were needed for the chalices. honestly, I'm glad VII encouraged receiving under both species, what what is so hard about intinction? The east has been doing it for thousands of years! Why couldn't VII just mandate intinction and get rid of the need for EMCs altogether?

How could... lay people can't touch the sacrament with their hands! they just--can't! what an awesome and terrifying thing to think about... taking communion with all reverence and fear in your mouth from the spoon is hard enough, but with your hands? This kind of emasculates priests, doesn't it? I thought the point of ordination was mainly the ministry of the Eucharist... and not just consecrating it but presenting it to the people as well. There is something wonderfully symbolic about the priest, in persona Christi as you say, putting the Body and Blood in your mouth. I don't understand when people only worry about sacramental "validity" and not symbolism also.

Youth ministers...

Did you mean by this bad catechises or something? the RCIA I took was actually pretty good, so no complaints there.

Lay people with little or no education in the liturgy planning liturgies.

Every time my Texan Catholic friends tried to talk to the liturgical coordinator about things the church wanted, he wouldn't listen. He hadn't even HEARD of the documents the church put out about music, much less read them. He loved the djembe and wanted to rearrange everything in the sanctuary to fit a bigger choir. When I tried to talk to the liturgical coordinators at a church in Alaska about singing Gregorian chant for them for a musicless Mass they had in the evening, I was denied, because that was the Confirmation class Mass and they wanted guitars and contemporary music. My voice passed the bar, but my idea did not. When I tried to talk about the pope, saying he says Gregorian chant is the only music perfectly suited to the liturgy, they literally said that he was too old and too far away for them to care about him. I was trying to be nice to them so they could hear out my idea, but man if I could go back I'd tear into them. I'm not even in communion with Rome and I have more respect and care for the Pope than they do.

Women and men dancing during the liturgy.
Clowns saying Mass.
Puppets in the Mass.

Can't say I've seen any of this, but I do think priests cracking tons of jokes during liturgy counts as "clowns saying Mass."

A cantor queen or knight hogging the microphone crooning the responsorial psalm.

I hate microphones as a rule.

And the last things on the list I haven't seen... I've only ever been told "God bless you" by an EMC, which isn't the same as conferring a blessing, right?

I don't understand how it's possible not to be upset over these things and so much more that is wrong with the OF Mass (or should I say, the way many parishes do the OF Mass)... remember what I wrote in the beginning of this thread, about how the Orthodox Divine Liturgy is? I really shouldn't be up on this high horse--it's probably bad for my soul--but think about it. Noel was just saying that he understands how us Orthodox on these boards get so upset sometimes. "It's not THAT bad" is the best defense of things? The point isn't how bad it's not, the point is how good it's not! You Catholics have such a wonderful, unique, Western liturgical heritage--where has it gone? I love EF Masses very much. What a shame it is that average American Catholics rarely see any of this! All they know, and all they probably ever will know, is mediocrity.

How can the Mass be about recollection when it is mediocre and entertainment-oriented? When it is irreverent? Or--no, let's say it's reverent, but it's less reverent than it could be. God deserves as much reverence as we can muster, doesn't He? I think that's what musica sacra is all about here--about getting the Mass to the point where it couldn't be about anything else but recollection. Getting it to where every sight, smell, sound, is directed toward God, and directs the mind and heart toward God.

Please don't confuse my remarks as an exercise in semantics, but:

Liturgical dance? -- Oxymoron?

The breaking - the abridgment of sacred tradition, the annulment or abrogation of the very idea of "organic development" of the liturgy, this is in and of itself "anti-Catholic" and not just for the "New" replacemant so instituted, but by virtue of the very fact that this wholecloth rewrite of the Sacred Liturgy is now deemed acceptable. This is nothing if not anti-Catholic, anti her traditions. Luther was a Catholic priest. The idea that something, just by the mere fact that it is originating from within the Church, avoids the tag "Protestant" - and again, we're mindful of semantics here - is not correct by my reading. The Protestant "mind" or "spirit" or "tone" is there, in the deemphasis of the "Holy Sacrifice" of the Mass vs. the "table" service or meal emphasis, the lack of emphasis in the Real Presence which has allowed Catholics to slip terribly from this important belief - that is Protestant, I would say, perhaps not in edict but certainly now by custom. The "World Council of Churches" mentality, the "protest" and ad hoc rewriting of our own prayers (and this happens ALL the time, and can be quite egregious) by those who are offended by some of the concepts thus conveyed. And so then this appropriation of the text of the Mass for their own purposes and the claim of "revelatory" or higher or more pastoral of culturally sensitive (read: PC) knowledge by "liturgists" with agendas is not much different than a slew of Martin Luther's -- and so for these reasons and for many of the reasons already mentioned by others, I would say the label of "Protestant-ization" (sorry about the coined term itelf) applies.

I also recall visiting a church in the last 6 weeks, a downtown city church.

1. Priests asks if there are any visitors. "Where are you from?"

2. Who has a birthday today? "Let's sing Happy Birthday for __________."

3. Mass stops for the priest to lead a little song while the children leave before the homily.

4. Children come back in, RCIA class is called forward, there is prayer for them then....priest leads another cute little song while they leave prior to the Creed.

This church until recently had a very fine music program, varied, but also including chant and polyphony. Parish now has a protestant music director making it possible to cut the salary....as the pastor announced that since he was not Catholic volunteers would take over planning the liturgies.

What is the center of the Mass here?

Gavin's right.

I just want to say that when I was adding to Noel's list, I wasn't blaming those things on Protestant influence, but just saying... those things exist in Catholicism, and in most parishes I've ever seen, too.

I ask of Kathy to elaborate on just how she perceives the Protestant and Catholic worlds to be two sides of the same coin. I continue to maintain that they are for the most part irreconcilably different. There is unimaginably more common ground between Catholicism and Orthodoxy (with Anglo-Catholics somewhere in between) than between either of them and Protestantism, which repudiates both.

I think it was me who said that, actually. Yes, Catholicism and Protestantism are irreconcilably different--just like the heads and tails on a coin are irreconcilably different. I tend to agree that there is more common ground between Catholicism and Orthodoxy theologically (sacramentality, communion of the saints, shared history, etc.) ... nevertheless, there was never a Protestant Reformation in the Orthodox East. Protestantism came directly out of Catholicism, as a reaction against her abuses and human imperfections, at first, and then later on evolved to a more thorough rejection of all things Catholic (especially the Puritans and Anabaptists). So while Catholics and Protestants answer the same questions differently, the thing is, they're asking the same questions. They have the same Western world-view, the same scholastic and rationalist heritage. Protestants and Catholics often use the same terminology, set about to define things in certain ways, and understand the world and their relationship to God in scholastic ways or even in binary kind of ways, an either-or -- either you're Catholic or you're Protestant when you come at this or that question.

Orthodoxy asks different questions to begin with. She sees the world through a completely different set of eyes and comes from a completely different spiritual heritage. Even though we share 1000 years of church history with Roman Catholics, at the same time even when we were together there were completely different things going on in the Latin West and in the Greek East...

Does what I said make a little more sense now?

I agree that some of the stuff on the list (clowns, microphone hogs) is not a matter of Protestant influence per se. It's from importing entertainment into worship.

By the way, since we're thinking of can-you-top-this outrages: a weekend assistant (retired priest) at my geographical parish tells a Reader's Digest style joke every week, *during the time for meditation post-communion.* I sent the pastor a letter a few days ago.

I would still like for Jam to be more specific as to the differences in theological approach and spirituality between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Yes, their respective Recollections differ, but are they truly substantial? And, as for the Reformation: its happening is due to a number of factors, some of them not at all spiritual. Which is to say it would never have gotten off the ground had it not been perceived as a way of increasing the power and indepencence of quite a number of princes. Also, it is not often noted that a great number of those kings and princes who remained Catholic exacted their own heavy price in gaining more or less thorough state control of various aspects of Church governance. That is to say, others might very well have gone the way of England (and said as much) had they not gotten the concessions they desired. Also, there was the humanism of the age, which was a tremendous influence on the polity of the 'reformers'. This humanistic movement never made itself felt in the East, nor was there there the degree of friction between church and state which came to pass in the West. This owing to the fact that the churches of the East long had (and continue to have) a very cozy relationship with the Basileus, the Czar, or, even, the Sultan. Corruption in the East was no more a stranger than in the West. And, to close on that note, one might well assert that the Reformation would never have ocurred if the Church's house had been in order.

I agree with Mr Z. I don't believe anyone here is rekindling the 30 Years War (where, btw Protestant fought Protestant and Catholic France fought Catholic Austria, so what's your point?). Rather American Catholics have been raised to view the Mass the same way that Protestants view the Sunday service (i.e., a gathering to hear a preacher preach and to somewhat informally offer prayers to God). It's the informality that many priests and laity seem to be craving. I really get the sense that some priests wish we could dispense with all the rubrics and let them preach for 40 minutes before a quick Eucharistic Rite. That's just my perception.

Jam - You have asserted that there is a greater likeness between Protestantism (P) and Catholicism (C) than between the later and Orthodoxy (O). Whether in the mode of Recollection or other more abstract matters, I do not believe this to be a tenable argument. It seems to me that where O and C differ, they do so more in certain theological emphases than in matters of substance. And, certainly, C has inherited the Roman gift for codification and law in matters which, in O, are treated as pious tradition or simply regarded as un-knowable. Both are intensely incarnational in ways that find no parallels in P. Likewise, their sacramentalism is an outright affront to the P mindset. Both have their roots in the land and culture which gave birth to the Christian Faith, whereas P is to a high degree the product of XVI. century social and humanistic intellectual movements. Yet, in saying this, one is aware that there have come to be literally hundreds of 'Protestant' denominations, none of which has a theology that is but in the vaguest imaginable way related to the breadth of truth to which both C and O give witness.

In response to Jam's statement, although I do not agree with it, I have run into it from my own researches into Orthodoxy. Particularly Fr. Greggory Hogg, an Orthodox priest and convert from Lutheranism, has written extensively about this on his blog: http://frgregory.blogspot.com/ You could search his archives, but here's a couple articles I've seen:

http://frgregory.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-west-it-seems.html
http://frgregory.blogspot.com/2008/06/khomiakov-on-difference-between-east.html

(NOTE: I'm not saying I agree with Jam that C and P are closer together than O and C, but rather adding some other arguments to the discussion for consideration and understanding.)

I've also heard a radio interview somewhere (shouldn't be too hard to find) where Fr. Hogg explains his rationale for conversion in eloquent terms and lofty rhetoric. Then the interviewer says "If you were dissatisfied with Lutheranism, why not become Catholic?" "Well... umm.... you see...." After hemming and hawing for a bit, he does bluntly say that it was always clear to him that the Reformation was still necessary, only that they didn't go far enough back in fixing the problems with Rome. Fr. Hogg and other converts can be interesting resources for understanding the differences between East and West.

I wanted to try once again to ask this question about recollection. The following is from an essay by Jordan Aumann, OP, about one of St. Teresa of Avila's great allegories on prayer, the four waters.

It seems to me that sacred music can help those who are able to pray in the second way--a better way, the way of recollection--quite a bit of help.

"In her first work St. Teresa explains the grades of prayer by using the symbol of the "four waters," or more precisely, the four methods of watering a garden. The first method is by drawing water from a well by means of a bucket attached to a rope. This is the first stage of prayer and it includes vocal prayer and discursive meditation. The individual is active, exercising the faculties and reaping what benefit it can through one's own efforts. But lest the beginners think too much and turn their discursive meditation into an intellectual exercise, St. Teresa advises them "not to spend all their time in doing so. Their method of prayer is most meritorious, but since they enjoy it so much, they sometimes fail to realize that they should have some kind of a sabbath, that is, a period of rest from their labors. . . . Let them imagine themselves, as I have suggested, in the presence of Christ, and let them continue conversing with him and delighting in him, without wearying their minds or exhausting themselves by composing speeches to him" (The Life, chap. 13).

The second method of watering a garden is by means of a waterwheel to which dippers are attached. As the wheel is turned, the water is poured into a trough that carries the water to the garden. St. Teresa explains that this stage, in which "the soul begins to recollect itself, borders on the supernatural. . . . This state is a recollecting of the faculties within the soul, so that its enjoyment of that contentment may provide greater delight" (The Life, chap. 13)."

There are four ways total. 3 and 4 are up to God. 1 and 2 pave the way. Recollection is a bridge to contemplation, and we can help.