Back to the future?

Calls by the Vatican’s liturgy chief for priests to celebrate Mass facing East from the first Sunday of Advent have met with mixed reactions.

Speaking in London at the annual Sacra Liturgia conference, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments, said: “It is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction – eastwards or at least towards the apse – to the Lord who comes.”

The cardinal urged priests to celebrate Mass in this way “wherever possible”, in accord with their own pastoral judgment, suggesting that the traditional practice be resumed on November 27.

Westminster’s Cardinal Vincent Nichols, however, in whose archdiocese the liturgical conference was held, has since directed clergy that it is better for communication if clergy face the people directly.

In Rome, meanwhile, Pope Francis has since spoken with Cardinal Sarah, and Fr Federico Lombardi has emphasised that the cardinal’s proposal should not be misinterpreted as an instruction.

Reverence

London-based Fr Hugh Kennedy of the Diocese of Down and Connor told The Irish Catholic that while he believed the cardinal might have legitimate concerns about a loss of reverence and a tendency to forget that the priest’s role is to lead the people in prayer as servants of the liturgy, there could be a danger in an orchestrated revival of a practice long abandoned in most Irish parishes.

Explaining that the cardinal had sought to emphasise that a priest celebrating Mass ad orientem, is “not turning his back to the people” but is joining them in facing God, Fr Kennedy warned that “the practical application of that – after some 50 years where we have been used in Ireland and so many countries to the priests facing the people – could become a distraction”.

Latin Mass Society president Michael O’Donovan told this newspaper that while he had been “greatly encouraged” by the cardinal’s words, he felt it was “most unlikely that the cardinal’s wishes will be widely followed in practice”.

Despite this, he said: “It’s sort of happening organically anyway, I think. The younger generation of priests tend to be more conscious of tradition and of the Church’s heritage.”

“I think it will happen organically over the years,” he continued. “It won’t happen overnight.”