The usual Open Thread rules apply: be concise, be charitable and, above all, be amusing.
Sign of Peace?
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Jesus had to be born in a stable thanks to the census. Without discipline people cannot meditate.
I agree with you, Don.
The Sign of Peace disturbs the rhythm of the Mass. Save the social for coffee and donuts after Mass.
During influenza season it is ridiculous to force people but some priests will not give up the ritual. We have been told we are “Too Anglo Saxon being uptight”.
In a church like Old St Mary’s in San Francisco with many tourists attending I dont mind BEFORE Mass starts to greet visitors. It is rather interesting to learn where they are from.
My wife complained on our way home Sunday from Mass that too many parishioners at our parish take the Sign of Peace as a social opportunity.
Of course, having a largely older congregation, there are lots of “peace signs” flashed during that time too, which to me is more maddening than the social outburst, so take that for what you will.
If the Church were to firebomb the Sign of Peace from the Mass (ironic, I know), I wouldn’t opposed at all.
At the Sign of Peace, the priest turns his back to Jesus Christ on the altar when all humankind are in Jesus Christ’s Sacred Heart. Pope Benedict XVI tried to move the Sign of Peace to before Consecration so that Jesus would not be ignored on the altar, but the powers that be at the Vatican forbid the change.
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When Superman first appeared in our culture young children were jumping off of very high buildings with bath towels wrapped around their shoulders believing that they would fly.
The police department went to every school and taught the youngsters that Superman was a fantasy, a made up story.
In Ben Hur Masala tells his chief, speaking about the Jews who believe in One God: “How do you fight an idea? With another idea.”
Another idea is still the One God, Faith in the One God and the practice of religion, that is, worship of the One God.
Worship of the One God stabilizes our life, gives us purpose and an avenue to live our life for God and for the common good.
Suicide, assisted suicide, abortion, genocide are sins, crimes and failures. Assisted suicides are people who are being denied the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. (Father Hung Lo of the Missionaries of the Poor was called out of teaching at the Catholic University of America and went to Jamaica to serve the poor, providing food, shelter, and medical care to the destitute, abandoned elderly, and disabled children.)
Our Constitutional guarantee of equal Justice for all, not only for the assistant at suicide, and/or the abortionist and/or the propagators of these crimes against humankind; the Constitution guarantees equal Justice for all members of humankind.
AI is another idea, this idea is not an individual’s idea but an electronic idea without wisdom, grace or compassion. AI is a random generation of numbers. And for the mathematician AI is great fun, but so is having Park Place and Boardwalk on the Monopoly board game.
And winning at Solitaire.
a NO parish near me does offer a reverent Mass.. but it’s overly feminized often with female lectors and altar girls (army of “extraordinary“ too of course..) .. a group of young men in the back have taken to high fives and back slapping.. masculine expressions for the sign of peace.. it’s really a cry for help..
Latin Mass would cure all this nonsense, promote vocations to the priesthood and fill the pews, but that’s of course unacceptable.
A number of years ago, the USCCB issued a statement regarding the proper and reverent behavior for the sign of peace … No “peace signs”, no kissing the spouse … I think they’ve relegated those instructions to the circular file now.
In the Easters churches, the sign of peace occurs before the Liturgy of the Eucharist … That would be better, I think.
We have a priest at our parish who says “… With a smile on our faces offer one another a sign of peace”. I’m not a fan of that particular embellishment. I wonder who else at the foot of the Cross was smiling.
I have come to hate the Novus Ordo Liturgy, and not just its sign of peace. This last Sunday (post 9/11) when the Scripture readings were about forgiveness in Sirach 27:30-28:7 and Matthew 18:21-35. the priest went on about being forgiving in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and the prayer for the Faithful included a verse about praying to the God of Abraham shared by Jews and Muslims for peace and forgiveness. There is no recognition that Judaism is incomplete without Christ (however, I do love the Jews and support the secular state of Israel 100%), and Islam is a completely false and diabolical religion founded by a murderous pedophile prophet. If it weren’t for the fact that I must set a good example for the grandchildren, I would never darken the door of a Novus Ordo parish again.
Now that all said, as we were leaving the Church parking lot after Mass, we saw a small recreational vehicle used for groundskeeping that was flying a Trump flag. I took the opportunity to explain to the grandchildren that the priest would likely ask for removal of the flag (albeit for his own Democrat partisan reasons), and that while I am a Trump supporter, I would agree with such a removal because the Church’s mission is the salvation of souls from hell – period – not political grandstanding. I told them that just as I would be aghast at flying a Kamala Harris flag on Church property (something that that priest would likely favor or at least be silent about), equally, I am opposed to flying a Donald Trump flag on Church property.
You see, this is the whole thing. Vatican II turned the Church into an I, Self, and Me proposition instead of worship of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Now there isn’t anything uniquely more special about Holy Mass in Latin than there would be in Aramaic, Koine Greek, or Old Church Slavonic. Indeed, I have visited an Anglican Ordinariate Parish once when I was on a work assignment to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the Mass was in Elizabethan English and it was magnificient (and there was no sign of peace like at Novus Ordo). So it isn’t that Mass being in the vernacular is wrong, but that the whole Novus Ordo liturgy should be $h1t canned and replaced because it intrinsically leads to heterodoxy.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2026/09/mitch-is-back-hes-alive-and-hes-sitting.html
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He is not ambulatory and he cannot be bothered even to wave. The smart money says that if his wife did not have an eight-figure sum of money behind her, he’d be in a nursing home.
“welcome back Senator..”
🤦
The timing of the thing is all wrong.
At a time when we have the newly consecrated species before us, when our focus has been Jesus and the miraculous – we are told to turn to our companions with a “Howya doing Bob!”
We are jarred out of a reminder of our provisional citizenship in Heaven, which we hope to make permanent, by a reminder that we are stuck in the complications and mess of this broken world.
We may well offer the sign of peace to the priest at the altar – he is acting as Christ and offering His peace, which we ought to offer back in return.
The best bandaid that I can put on the sign of peace is to act as Peter and John did at the Transfiguration. In awe and wonder of what we have just beheld, I say to my neighbor “Peace.” but really say in my heart “It is good that we are here!” In this way, I keep my heart focused on the miracle we are experiencing together.
Well said, LCQ: “ Vatican II turned the Church into an I, Self, and Me.”
Equally well said, David WS: “ [The Mass is] overly feminized often with female lectors and altar girls (army of “extraordinary“ too of course).
Unbearable as the sound of scratching one’s finger nails on an old fashioned blackboard.
Having technical difficulties logging in to the site. My posts tomorrow, September 16, 2026 may be late as a result.
When I was 5, because my mother was in the hospital with my newborn sister, we children spent Saturday night at our Aunt’s house. On Christmas morning, we went to Mass with her family including our older cousins.
I could not see the altar so I read ahead in the missalette. I was horrified to read that we would soon have a Kiss of Peace. Horrified at the thought that my GIRL cousin was going to kiss me, I spent a great deal of time worrying.
Although I was relieved when we shook hands, I have carried my distaste for this act some 60 years!
Fr Krupp is going loopy. He’s now glazing that racist hate monger Gloria Purvis.
It’s a silly Woodstock feel good thing.
Another unnecessary bit of V2 theater.
Still can’t get into the dashboard of the blog which allows me to post. I will keep working on it.
I don’t know how it would work logistically, but I say make the pax-brede great again.
I give a “sign” of peace: kneel down head bowed, in silence. Guy, Texas
LQC, You see why I call it, correctly, the Novus Disordo. Guy, texas