What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

How about chiming in and telling is what you have planned to celebrate the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, now in force?

I am right now at Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen near London, the guest of the highly esteemed Fr. Finigan, of The Hermeneutic of Continuity.

Later today there will be a solemn Mass according to the 1962 Missale Romanum.  There will be a good gathering of clergy for the event and I will preach.

Today everything changes.

The worst thing you can do to a child about to make his first confession is not to force him to memorize a structure and the basic prayers he will need to know. 

When children don’t know what to do, they are afraid.  They want to do the right thing, of course, and so their fear is greater when they must go to confession without a clear sense of what to do.

Similarly, in the time after the Motu Proprio (AMP) we will have to be very careful to help newcomers to the usus antiquior feel welcome.  We must put basic tools in their hands to help them feel a little less disoriented… or rather reoriented.

One thing people express discomfort about when they don’t know well the older form of Mass is when to stand and sit and kneel.

The Knox Latin Mass Newsletter of 16 September has this very useful blurb: 

STANDING, SITTING, KNEELING
In answer to various questions …. Contrary to common assumption, there are no written norms or rubrics specifying posture of the people at a Tridentine high Mass (or Missa Cantata). But a common rule of thumb is to "stand or kneel when the altar boys do". More specifically, the following instructions for high Mass are printed in the red missalettes that we use and are followed throughout the country:
 
·       STAND for the Gloria and the Credo, but SIT when the priest does.
·       STAND for the Preface (and the dialogue preceding it)
·       KNEEL for the Canon.
·       STAND for the Pater Noster.