This is, like, every thread.

Marajoy - how true.

I had a choir member tell me just yesterday that he used to be AFRAID to kneel for Communion. In the last 10 or so years, he has really deepened his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and truly wanted to start kneeling to receive... but was afraid of people and priests criticizing or even refusing him Communion. One day he got up the courage to do it anyways. How beautiful! And how sad that he had to feel that way.

I think the overall loss of the sense of the sacred is the biggest problem. I am sure there are many causes, but I agree that a loss of reverence for the Eucharist is probably the most important...since they say, you know, "it's just a meal" and we just keep calling "IT" bread and wine... Yikes! Also, there is the popular notion that we're here to "get" something ("we get to hear the Word and get the Eucharist"), without having to put anything into it ourselves. It has become an attitude of passive entertainment. No wonder people want to go somewhere that is more fun, flashy, etc if they think that it is for their entertainment. They are seeking something MORE, even (or especially) the youth, they just don't know what it is they are looking for. But, what do I know, I'm only 27 :)

It was a surprise to see adults distributing communion. And even more shocking to see high school students at the high school, in a town where there were enough under-worked deacons available to do this.

I have a friend, a very holy person, who thinks it's entirely appropriate. I just can't agree.

It's become communion with a small c. This, to me, is the key to the entire mess. Good thread, thanks.

Versus populum.

Hello! What a great question to launch a maiden post - thank you!

Communion-in-the-hand is indeed a vehicle for much abuse. As a front-row-sitter and observer of people in general, I see many disturbing things, ranging from palm-licking to couples standing side-by-side to receive in the hand from the priest, but then moving off to the side to feed the other their Host. Very few actually observe "making a throne by cupping the left hand with the right..."

I live in a tiny parish - maybe 80 families registered with attendance of about 60 people per our one and only Mass on Sunday. We've had puppet homilies for children, monthly Healing of the Sick en masse, really lousy music (and I have to admit being a part of that - but I've changed! Really!:} ), and over-use of EMHC's.

Beyond those things? Hands down, the most disruptive and uncomfortable innovation, for me anyway, is hand-holding during the Lord's Prayer. (Does that even count as an innovation?) Thanks again!

"I think row-by-row communion is a big issue."

What did they do before the council?

Giant paper-mache ethnically diverse puppets, concelebrating.

(EAF- actually, this thread is quite different than any thread I've ever seen on here before. Most every thread ends up bemoaning a wide variety of liturgical abuses, large and small, but for the purposes of this thread, I'm asking people to consider what was the worst. Which of all those many abuses has had the longest reaching unfortunate effects?)

melofluent:

I like your point, but your example of the "innovation" of free-standing Altar in a war zone for example is/was nothing new. We have always had free-standing Altars, but I take your point to mean the austerity, simplicity and adaptations demanded of the circumstance not just the Altar itself.

Thanks for the welcome! Let me clarify, but where to start? First, I have the great honor of being an EMHC to the sick (hospitalized and homebound). The particles that remain in my pyx are almost nonexistent, and that is after being jostled around in the course of my work. Having received in-the-hand myself in the past, I haven't noted any particles.

I don't know the best way for those receiving in the hand to deal with particles. It does seem to me that if it is that important to consume all the particles (Yes! It is!), then dispense with anything that might cause there to be particles, rather than continuing the obstinate insistence on the "right" to receive in the hand. If not, well the indult allowing for Communion in the hand, while cautioning all to assure that no particles are left, doesn't address how the faithful are to handle them in the hand. At least not that I can find. Please correct me if I am mistaken about that.

That said, most people don't look if there are particles left. The few that do look make a great show out of inspecting their palms, raising the whole thing to their mouths, or licking their fingers repeatedly and dabbing at their palms. It just doesn't seem to give due reverence to receiving the Body of Christ. I read something recently online about what size of particles constitute the Body of Christ. I'll have to see if I can find it again.

Considering I initially came here to learn about music, I hope I haven't made myself persona non grata :)

I'm referring specifically to the BS documents published by the US and Canadian Bishops just after Humanae Vitae was published and the precedent that set.

I don't think all the mentioned externals are the problem. Turning the altar around didn't cause a wholesale loss of faith. The culture of dissent and disbelief did that. One who believes will still believe even if the altar is tipped on its side. The problems are internal.

OTOH, CW, the maxim reads in this order, "Lex orandi, lex credendi." If you gut and trash the very real corpus of universal worship rites and sacral language, for whatever theoretically noble purpose (purpose seems insidious prima facie) then you've opened the door for heteropraxis, then heterodoxy, it seems to me. YMMV.

Addendum to my proposed answer- the change of universal Latin is also not a recent innovation, or post-concilior, obviously via the overused citation of the singmesse. And how did that work out for the counter-reformers. Mozart even had the sense to only to insert vernacular in his operas.

Maybe if you put all the above together, it might reveal a great part of the answer. I still don't think it all comes down to externals. The eastern churches have had freestanding altars for a couple of millenia, and it didn't cause any loss of faith. Of course, the priests face true east, not the congregation. I also heard from orthodox priests after the council that the seminaries were hotbeds of dissent. One even said the errors condemned by Pius X survived in seminaries. Who knows. Whatever the causes, we have problems.

Alius cantus aptus.

I attended a diocesan catechism course a couple of years ago. A sister of an order I will not name, talked on various subjects, including theology of the body. One of my fellow teachers turned to me during the presentation and said, "That's the third heresy she's taught this morning." This sister, by-the-way, teaches religion in a school nearby. False teaching is systemic, not a rare occurrence, and ignorance is widespread and unchecked.

TOB is actually a pretty good course of study if it's taught well...the whole spousal relationship of the first man and woman and of each person's spousal relationship with God. About the "sister" thing(CharlesW) - this is not meant to be snarky or change topic, but at the conferences for religious ed and music that I've attended (and not many at that) there seems to be a correlation between habit/plain clothes and what they teach.

I'm going to go with versus populum. I say that, because it's the thing people of the Vatican II generation most associate with the Council (even moreso than the change to the vernacular, since you can turn on the television and see the pope celebrating Mass in Latin). A priest could not simply walk into a parish and celebrate ad orientem, but singing the propers in English would absolutely have been doable at any point since the Council, with minimal complaints from the congregation, had they been available. I think even at the most "progressive" parish, you could compose settings of the propers in contemporary style and the people would not mind, by and large. Further, people even expect the use of Latin, or at least of music with heightened solemnity, at least occasionally in most parishes.

But versus populum has led to the most other issues, AND it's among the most difficult to reverse.

Worst imposition on the Church of the past 60 years? My sins.

>>bauhaus architecture

You mean you don't like church buildings to look like dystopian conex boxes?
I thought EVERYBODY liked buildings that immediately plunge the visitor into existential despair...

Mass "facing the people." A pure and simple innovation with absolutely no historical basis, as many studies have proved. Completely changes the "phenomenology" of worship. As a friend said to me, when she was a child she always thought the priest was speaking all the time to the people, and was quite surprised to discover later that he was addressing God. The moment you turn the priest to face eastwards, WITH the people, the entire feel of the liturgy changes from horizontal to vertical, from meal to sacrifice (not that these are opposed, but they need to come together in the right order). And with Mass ad orientem, other practices begin to feel either right or wrong, such as lay people sauntering into the sanctuary to distribute communion. This can happen only because there is an utterly horizontal and casual feel to the Mass. Bring back the "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" and you will see how long these post-conciliar innovations survive.

Growing up, I thought all those institutional buildings from the middle of the century were like that because it was cheaper or easier to build or something. I was shocked when my wife was studying at the Boston Architectural College and I found out there were people who thought buildings like that were a good idea. T

Really? They didn't build them this way because it's cheaper/faster to build? They thought it was a good idea? Seriously? Wow. :(

Also, there is the popular notion that we're here to "get" something ("we get to hear the Word and get the Eucharist"), without having to put anything into it ourselves.

This.

But, what do I know, I'm only 27 :)

Don't sell yourself short: your first statement that I quoted was quite insightful.

[What? You're digging up a thread that's been idle for three years? Oy.--admin]

Another suggestion or two for worst thing(s) -

1. The First is -The decision was made to permit vernacular. While I do not believe that this was objectively or inherently bad, the greatest error (which was catastrophic in its effects) contingent upon that was not merely to translate what we now call the EF into fine English before actually permitting it. In other words, vernacular should not have been permitted until a masterpiece of English liturgical language had been prepared.

2. And the Second is 'like unto it' - that the propers were not translated and were not retained as, shall we say, 'compulsory', essential, 'organic' elements of the mass.

3. Third is that, having given us the mass of Paul VI, 'they' opted for rubrics permitting various options, and that the door was opened to (strictly speaking, 'illicit') non ritual commentary and ad libitum behaviourisms.

4. The failure to apply every possible negative social, behavioural, attitudinal affect and response to the first people who shoved their way into church with guitar and spiral bound book of 'aonointed' songs in hand. (I at that time knew quite a few priests who thought that this development was totally out of place, unholy, and disrespectful - none of them had the backbone to tell these people to ply their musical arts elsewhere.)

5. Finally - the failure to carry out the council's dictum that 'choirs shall be assiduously cultivated', to requre the only instrument mentioned by the council (being the organ) to be placed in all churches, and that the church's repertory of sacred choral music be found in all music programmes, and that new, high quality, music for both choirs and congregations, be composed to stand along side of it. & cet.........

Oh, and one more -

6. The abject, deliberate, and proudful failure to learn about vernacular liturgy from certain folk (you know who I mean) who had been at it for five hundred years.

SO - in answer to the single most damaging thing: it was unpreparedness intelligently to carry out the council's real goals... which resulted in 60 years of chaos and liturgical slap-dashery.

The law of prayer supplies the law of faith. If the liturgical house falls, then no one will believe...Sure, Modernists were deeply embedded at the council and I would say more likely than not within the Consilium as well, but people didn’t violently rebel until the changes were being made. I think Communion in the hand is the most pernicious error but cannot come without Mass facing the people.