Why is Ad Orientem worship so controversial?

[Michie]

Until the 1960s, Catholics worshipped ad orientem, with priest and congregation facing the East during Mass. Originally Christians celebrated Mass before daybreak Sunday morning with the rising sun serving as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection (testified by Pliny the Younger’s letter to the Emperor Trajan in 112 A.D.). The common liturgical direction toward the East honored the resurrection and anticipated the Lord’s coming in glory. The oldest Christian church discovered in the world (without a later structure built over it), the house church at Dura-Europos in Syria, dating from the early 200s, was found with its altar touching the wall, facing East. Churches were constructed throughout history in this same fashion, with the altar (whether against the wall or not) oriented toward the East.

Even though there were more exceptions to a strict interpretation of this geographical direction in recent times, priest and people still worshipped facing the Lord together throughout the entire history of Catholic worship. Services facing the people arose during the Reformation, because ministers were focused on speaking to and leading the congregation. The priest during Catholic worship, however, acts in the person of Christ and leads the members of the Body in a common approach to the Father. The Mass does not focus on the people but seeks to give glory to the Father through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. The Mass is not about us ultimately but about coming into communion with God, worshipping him and being drawn into his life.

Why, then, did we change the direction of Catholic worship to face the people, called ad populum, in contrast to ad orientem? The Second Vatican Council did not mention this change and there is no official liturgical document from the 1960s that directed it. The thought following Vatican II’s constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, was that the Mass, which had been celebrated in an oft-inaudible Latin, should be more accessible to the people. In the experimental period between the constitution in 1963 and the promulgation of the reformed Mass of Pope Paul VI in 1969, the posture of facing the people had already become standard as a kind of spontaneous reaction to the liturgical mood of greater transparency and accessibility.

Continued below.

Why is Ad Orientem worship so controversial?

Until the 1960s, Catholics worshipped ad orientem, with priest and congregation facing the East during Mass. Originally Christians celebrated Mass before daybreak Sunday morning with the rising sun

denvercatholic.org

 

[jas3]

Good article. It doesn't help that the English translation of the GIRM says that versus populum is "desirable wherever possible," which is a mistranslation of the Latin (the phrase "desirable wherever possible" is not but its application to versus populum is). Here is a good article that discusses the proper translation:

Disambiguating the “quod” clause in GIRM section 299 - PrayTellBlog

The Latin of a controversial rubric in the Roman Missal is inherently ambiguous. Neither a Vatican clarification nor strong comments from participants on both sides of the liturgical spectrum have made it less so.

www.praytellblog.com

 

[chevyontheriver]

Until the 1960s, Catholics worshipped ad orientem, with priest and congregation facing the East during Mass. Originally Christians celebrated Mass before daybreak Sunday morning with the rising sun serving as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection (testified by Pliny the Younger’s letter to the Emperor Trajan in 112 A.D.). The common liturgical direction toward the East honored the resurrection and anticipated the Lord’s coming in glory. The oldest Christian church discovered in the world (without a later structure built over it), the house church at Dura-Europos in Syria, dating from the early 200s, was found with its altar touching the wall, facing East. Churches were constructed throughout history in this same fashion, with the altar (whether against the wall or not) oriented toward the East.

It's one of the few things liturgical that I care about. I don't particularly care to hear the Latin language at mass. I could take it or leave it. But seeing smiley Fr. Friendly winking and ad libbing his way through mass, playing the audience is too much. Have the priest face ad orientem and not have the whole thing about him. Most of the time an ad orientem novus ordo mass has the priest looking at the people anyhow. It's just a few minutes looking away towards God. And the priest almost always has a microphone so we can hear every word anyhow.

The other thing I care about is translation. When the 1970 mass came out some of the translated texts were abysmal. We should have hired an atheist Latin professor rather than whoever translated the texts. We would have been better off. Some of these texts have been corrected bit by bit but lots of them miss what the Latin had. It needs fixing. We lost a lot of richness in translation.

Oh, and clown masses. Just say the black and do the red please. We are hungry for God, and weak enough that we need every liturgical help we can get. Please give it to us.