From a reader:
The GIRM instructs that during mass no genuflections are to be made toward the tabernacle for the priest, the deacon and the ministers.
Are the ministers the altar boys, or just the instituted lector and the acolyte? Is it possible, or permissible to genuflect during mass when crossing the tabernacle for the altar boys like in the Vetus Ordo (this particular tabernacle was not moved, it still is on the main altar in the middle of the apse)? The parish priest is very supportive, and is in favor of this change. We both think this would be a good starting point for the “mutual enrichment” of the to forms of the Latin Rite.
I have written about this HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and etc.
Yes, I think we have to consider the altar boys to be included in the “ministers” at the altar.
That said, and I’ll go out on a limb now, even though I am a Say The Black and Do The Red sort of guy, I’m all for starting up a contrary custom in accord with canons 25 and 26. After 30 years, we’ll have a legal custom in force.
When I was in my U.S seminary hell-hole, we were instructed on how to establish contra legem custom. We weren’t instructed in this for the sake of detail or mere knowledge. The instruction was for the sake of providing a canonical basis for abuses (e.g., altar girls – this was before the disastrously bad interpretation of canon 230 of the 1983 Code).
Progressivists consistently broke the law concerning, for example, Communion in the hand and females serving in the sanctuary. They did so long-enough that Rome fecklessly confirmed their abuses. Those were bad years.
Now we must work to bring ourselves back into continuity.
It is absurd that ministers should entirely ignore the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle in the sanctuary during Mass. Ab-SURD!
Yes, we know the arguments: In our Eucharistic celebration the assembly should be mindful of the altar and then the Host which will be on the altar after the consecration. Yes, I know that Easterners bow with just as much reverence as Latins.
I say genuflect. The Blessed Sacrament is RIGHT THERE! People see that the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament, with presence lamp and/or veil, is RIGHT THERE. If we obviously diminish our gestures of adoration in front of the eyes of a congregation, the message they will imbibe over time is that we don’t pay attention to the presence of Christ in the tabernacle, that perhaps the Eucharist isn’t all that important after all, that a sanctuary, indeed even the whole church, isn’t a sacred space, that we don’t have to bend the knee to God….
Moreover, we have now, side by side, both the Novus Ordo and the Usus Antiquior. The Holy Father, in establishing juridically that the Roman Rite has two forms, also spoke of a “mutual enrichment” of the one and the other. I usually speak and write in terms of a “gravitational pull”. This is an instance in which the traditional practice of the Usus Antiquior, the older form of Holy Mass with its genuflections, must have all the gravity pulling on the Novus Ordo.
So… ubi maior, minor cessat.
