(RNS) — If you’re one of 60% of Catholics who go to church rarely — or maybe never — but find yourself at Christmas Mass this year for family reasons or simply as an excuse to dress up and hear carols, rest assured that the familiar Nativity scene, Advent wreath with candles ablaze and priests in snow-white vestments will all be there, just as you remember them.
But if it’s been a while since you’ve occupied a pew, stay alert, as some of what’s happening in the pews may be unexpected.
Some Catholics have adopted a posture known as the Orans while saying the Our Father, raising their hands like the priest at the altar. A half-century after the U.S. bishops allowed Catholics to receive the Eucharist from the priest in their hand, some parishes have reinstalled Communion rails so the congregants can kneel together and take Communion directly on the tongue. You might also see your neighbor briefly bowing at every mention of Jesus’ name.
“I would say it’s right to be a little confused,” said the Rev. Boniface Endorf, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in New York’s Greenwich Village, “because we live in confusing times in the church.”
The worship habits reflect ongoing debates in the church about tradition and what expressions constitute proper reverence in religious precincts, from new customs or regression to old ones: More women, for instance, have begun veiling their heads in church, a practice rooted in Scripture but which went out of fashion in most parishes along with pillbox hats.
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“It’s kind of hard to say what lay Catholics are supposed to do at Mass, because they can actually do almost anything,” said Timothy O’Malley, academic director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Liturgy. “The rubrics very directly say what the priest should do. They don’t exactly say what lay people should do.”
The church’s official instructions on how Mass is celebrated emerged from the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. In 1963, the Vatican issued “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” designed to involve the people in the pews more in worship. The most obvious change was the language: instead of Latin, the Mass was translated into local tongues, so everyone could understand the service. Priests turned to face the congregation for the Eucharistic liturgy, and the music leaned more toward hymns than chant.
“I’d have to say it was exciting,” said the Rev. John Baldovin, 78, a Jesuit priest and a scholar of history and liturgy at Boston College. Baldovin was in his last year of high school during the Second Vatican Council. “The language of the council was full, conscious and active participation.”
But in recent years, many Catholics have pushed for a return to more evident piety, which reads as more traditional. “Now, I do see a growing desire for traditional practices,” said Endrof, who mentioned kneeling at Communion, receiving the host on the tongue and wearing veils.
Sofija Valancius, a 20-year-old junior at Notre Dame who grew up in Fort Myers, Florida, said she uses the Orans pose during the recitation of the Lord’s prayer when she attends Mass with friends or family. “It feels like I’m uniting with someone, and it multiplies our message to the Lord,” Valancius said. “That may sound silly, but it feels like it’s conveying the message, our prayers and hopes in a more strong way,” Valancius said.
“When I first converted, the Orans posture was the norm for everyone, and I never saw anyone kneel to receive Communion, only in the hand,” said Nicole Wallin, 53, a Catholic living in Nebraska who converted to Catholicism in her 20s. “That’s how I learned, too!”
Though the Orans posture, from the Latin “orare,” meaning “to pray,” has roots in early Christian worship, it’s not a pre-Vatican II tradition. Before the changes of the 1960s, the priest celebrating Mass said the Our Father alone, with his hands raised in prayer; only after the congregation was encouraged to pray along did Catholics begin to emulate the priest’s pose. It’s still controversial, O’Malley said.
While there is no hard-and-fast rule governing how things like Communion must be received, many Catholics have opinions. “Communion on the tongue or in the hand is one of those things, people have the perfect freedom to do one or the other in the Catholic liturgy,” Baldovin said. “I would prefer to see everyone receive Communion standing and receive it in the hand, but I have to respect people’s decision because certainly the church does.” He added, “You have to pick your battles.”
Some dioceses, however, are pushing back against the new customs. Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Michael Martin wrote in a recent pastoral letter that parishioners will be required to receive Communion standing, rather than kneeling, beginning in January. “Doing so is a visible contradiction to the normative posture of Holy Communion established by our episcopal conference,” he wrote.
The debate echoes the recent dustups over the traditional Latin Mass, which follows the Order of the Mass as it existed in 1962 and has been gaining in popularity. Wallin’s church, which once celebrated the TLM, as it’s known, monthly now offers it every week. The TLM has encouraged the revival of other older practices. “After attending my first TLM I started receiving Communion kneeling and on the tongue,” said Wallin. “The first time I received it this way it just felt ‘right.’ I don’t know how to explain it.”
The TLM has become a point of contention since Pope John Paul II lifted the Vatican II ban in 1984 and allowed bishops to approve its use. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI widened the dispensation by declaring it an “extraordinary form.” But after conservative Catholics fastened onto the TLM as a cause under Pope Francis, the pope curbed its use again, saying it promoted disunity, without banning it outright.
Matthew Davis, a 28-year-old writer living in New York City, is considering seeking out a traditional Latin Mass on Christmas. “What has drawn me to Latin Masses in the past is not so much the language of Latin or the externals like the fancier incense or whatever, but concern over preserving the liturgy of Pope Pius V and doubts over the validity of the 1960s church reforms.”
For Endorf, who will celebrate three Masses at his parish on Christmas, he said he interprets seeing a diversity of practices as a sign of healthy spiritual expression, even if the choices aren’t always consistent. “You’ll sometimes see people who wear a veil but then receive Communion in the hand,” Endorf said. “I think people are seeing different practices and picking out ones that appeal to them in particular, and I like that because it means it’s not coming from an ideology.”
Endorf said he simply hopes worshippers, regardless of how they express reverence, approach one another with patience and charity. “I think that the biggest thing is giving people the benefit of the doubt,” Endorf said, “to look with charity on other people and say, I hope they’re doing well, even if I don’t really understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Most all clergy who spoke to RNS encouraged Catholics to feel comfortable coming to Mass on Christmas, no matter how long it has been since they last attended. (More than one offered that, whatever you do in the pews or at the altar rail, a visit to a confessional beforehand is kindly encouraged.)
“Just go there and be easy; people are not looking at you,” said the Rev. Jonah of The Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass band whose members are all Dominican friars. “It’s okay just to even just sit there in the back and to participate as much as you feel comfortable. The important thing is that they are engaging the heart and letting God love them sacramentally.”
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