A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the questions ‘What on earth is he up to now?’ will intrude. It lays one’s devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, ‘I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.’
CS Lewis
It couldn’t be much worse..but I must ask. Is that a citronella candle on the altar? Those pesky miskito’s. Paper plates and plastic cups are fitting as well…I know it’s a picnic!
What in the wide world of sports are they accomplishing with Jr’s blankie?
How soon before the rent out ad space on one of those sixties banners?
“How long Lord?”
One of the contributors to The Latin Mass has offered that the 1965 missal was destructive in ways few recall (given what happened later) because it was in response to the missal’s issuance that some priests took to offering Mass versus populum (“turning the priest into a performer”). IIRC, the Congregation for Divine Worship did issue an instruction in the last dozen years indicating it was perfectly regular for a priest to offer Mass ad orientem, but you very seldom see it done in a Novus Ordo service.
Just to be a bore, I’ll point out that however negligent bishops are regarding disciplinary matters, this mess happens because parish clergy want to do this.