The Reform of
the Roman Liturgy by Monsignor Klaus Gamber
Note the
conclusion of extreme Modernism.
“In the final
analysis, celebration versus populum is a turning towards man, and away from
God.”
The
conclusion at the end of the book about the “meal table” and the “priest and
altar facing the people” and the “communal meal as opposed to sacrifice.”
Twelfth
Question
Why is the nature of the Mass as a sacrifice
less evident when the priest is facing the people?
A counter-question: Since experts concede that
today’s use of the altar facing the people cannot be legitimized by any
reference to ancient custom (i.e., that such an altar had actually been used by
the early Christians), why can we not accept the inevitable conclusion drawn
from this insight and remove all the “meal table” altars that have been set up
with surprising uniformity all around the world?
The answer to this latter question is very
obvious: it is the newly created understanding of the nature of the Mass
and the Eucharist, which differs markedly from the traditional one.
The deliberate purpose is to avoid giving the
impression that the “Holy Table,” as the altar is called in the Eastern
Churches, is, in fact, a sacrificial altar, an altar on which to offer the Holy
Sacrifice. This is the most likely reason why the contemporary altar is usually
prepared in a manner reminiscent of a table set for a formal family dinner:
there is the (single) vase with flowers and two or three candles. The candles are
mostly grouped at the table’s “left side,” while the bouquet of flowers are
placed at the opposite end.
This asymmetrical arrangement is deliberate:
what is to be avoided here is the creation of a focal point that in the past
was created by the altar cross at the center of the altar and
The Reform of the
Roman Liturgy
the candlesticks placed on its right and left side. After
all, the current aim is to make the altar into a meal table.
You stand before an altar on which a sacrifice is to be
offered. You do not stand behind it. This simple concept was even apparent to
the priest offering a sacrifice in pagan times. The priest faced the image of
the god in the temple’s inner sanctuary, the god to whom the sacrifice was
being offered. This basic approach was quite similar to what occurred in the Temple of Jerusalem
A meal takes place with the head of the family sitting among
the members of his family, or to use a different term, within the family
circle. A sacrifice, however, is offered using a liturgy specifically created
for that purpose; and it is offered inside or in front of a sacred place (which
could be a sacred tree). Again, this basic concept applies to all religions.
The liturgy is raised above the people; its proper place is in front of the
people, in front of the altar, before God’s countenance.
Throughout history, people have turned in the direction of
the one for whom the sacrifice was intended. They did not turn in the direction
of their fellow men. How the early Church thought about this matter is
described by Origen, in his explanations of the Book of Numbers (10:2): “The
person standing before the altar indicates through his position that he is
engaged in priestly functions. It is the priest’s office to pray for the
forgiveness of the people’s sins.” Unfortunately, this is a perception that is
of little consequence in today’s world, where our awareness of sin and of our
sinful state seems to have been largely lost.
It is commonly known that Luther rejected the nature of the
Mass as a sacrifice. He thought Mass to serve the primary
The Altar Facing the
People
purpose of preaching the Word of God, with the ‘Abendmahl,’
the commemorative meal, to follow—which serves to explain why he called for the
already cited turning of the liturgist to face the congregation.
While it is true that Catholic theologians generally do not
directly deny the nature of the Mass as the offering of a sacrifice, a number
of them do insist that the sacrifice should not be its central purpose; and
that instead, the concept of the communal meal be emphasized during the
celebration of the Mass.
This they do primarily for ecumenical reasons, so as not to offend the
Protestants; apparently, they don’t mind offending the sensibilities of the
Eastern Orthodox Churches, which believe that the nature of the Divine Liturgy
can never be anything else but the offering of the Sacrifice.
A real change in the contemporary perception of the purpose
of the Mass and the Eucharist will occur only when the table altars are removed
and Mass is again celebrated at the high altar; when the purpose of the Mass is
again seen as an act of adoration and glorification of God and of offering
thanks for His blessings, for our salvation and for the promise of the heavenly
life to come, and as the mystical reenactment of the Lord’s sacrifice on the
cross.
We have already pointed out that this does not mean that the
Liturgy of the Word cannot or should not be conducted away from the altar, at
the sedilia or the lectionary, just as has been done during pontifical Masses.
But all prayers should be said facing East, that is, in the direction of the
image of Christ in the apse and of the cross on the altar.
Since, during our pilgrimage here on earth, we are unable to
understand the true magnificence of the mystery being celebrated, let alone to
see Christ Himself and the “community of heaven,” it is not enough to simply
talk about the solemn character of the Sacrifice of the Mass; rather, we must
do everything we can to demonstrate the magnificence of the event to the
people—through the celebration itself, and
The Reform of the Roman
Liturgy
through the artistic decoration of the church, above all of
its altar.
We can apply what Dionysius the Areopagite has said in his
book, About the Holy Names (1, 4), about the “holy veils” and how they apply to
both the event of the cult itself and to the images. The “holy veils,” he says,
conceal from us that which is spiritual and what from the
next world is present in this world. They give image and form to that which has
neither form nor image. ..but later, when we have become perpetual and immortal
and have found our rest in Christ, we shall forever be, as Scripture says, with
the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17), totally consumed by beholding His real image.
Our discussion should have established that the practice of
the priest facing the people during the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice
cannot be documented anywhere, from any source—until Martin Luther, that is—and
that there is no archaeological evidence to support it, either.
The actual expression versus populum (facing the people)
first appears in an official text in the “The Rite to be Used When Celebrating
the Mass,” which is part of the Missale Romanum revised by order of the Council
of Trent under
Pope St. Pius V, published in 1570. Section V, 3 of this text addresses the
situation of “the altar facing East [not towards the apse of the church but]
towards the people” (altare sit ad orientem, versus populum), a situation
which, as we have already mentioned, applies to a number of old churches in Rome .
The emphasis of this passage is on the term ad orientem, a
fact that is today conveniently ignored. In the text, the phrase versus populum
is but an attribute relating to the immediately following instruction, which
says that in this particular case
The Altar Facing the
People
the celebrant, when offering his Dominus vobiscum, need not
turn around (non vertit humeros ad altare), because he is already facing the
people he is addressing. The priest’s position of standing “behind the altar,”
which occurred in some Roman basilicas, led, as we have already mentioned, the
priests of the German Catholic youth movement of the 1920s to the erroneous
conclusion that this was a practice observed by the early Christians, a
practice that had somehow survived in Rome.
Just as in the Western
Church
However, we must not hide the fact that even in the Eastern
Churches there have been movements, some of them continuing, that would have
the liturgy celebrated facing the people or at least to place the altar in
front of the iconostasis. The perils associated with such changes and their
effect on the proper conduct of worship were clearly recognized by the
Patriarch Tichon of Moscow in 1921. Responding to the reforms advocated and
practiced by some priests after the Russian Revolution, he wrote in a pastoral
letter addressed to all bishops in his country:
All this is done under the pretext that the liturgy has to
be adjusted to meet the demands of our time, to revitalize our worship, and
thus to attract the faithful and bring them back into our churches. We withhold
our blessing for violations of this kind, from the self-styled activities of a
few individuals conducting their own form of litur-
The Reform of the
Roman Liturgy
gical worship services. We do not give our blessing, because
we cannot do this in good conscience. The divine beauty of our liturgy, as it
has been set down by the Church in her ritual manuals, her rubrics and her
instructions, must remain intact and inviolate in the Russian Orthodox Church,
because they are our greatest and most holy possession.
Time has proven the Patriarch right. The fact that the
Russian Orthodox Church still exists, that she is, indeed, flourishing, is due
primarily to her faithfully maintaining and cultivating her traditional
liturgy.
The deciding issue concerning the position of the priest at
the altar is, as we have said, the nature of the Mass as a sacrificial
offering. The person who is doing the offering is facing the one who is
receiving the offering; thus, he stands before the altar, positioned ad Dominum,
facing the Lord.
If, nowadays, the aim is to emphasize the aspect of the
communal meal during the “Eucharistic Feast” by celebrating versus populum,
this aim is not being met, at least not in the way some might have hoped. The
new arrangement has the “meal leader” positioned at the table, by himself. The
other “meal participants” are situated in the nave, or in the “auditorium,” not
directly connected to the “meal table.”
In small groups, it has become increasingly popular to have
all participants stand around the altar in a circle, a practice that serves to
completely destroy the meaning of the Mass as a sacrificial offering. The best
way to correct this is to do what has been done since time immemorial: to join
the priest as he “faces the Lord,” that is, to face in the same direction.
Our Faith holds that holy Mass is more than just a communal
meal celebrated in memory of Jesus of Nazareth. The central factor is not that
a community is brought together and that we experience a sense of
community—although the
The Altar Facing the
People
importance of such an experience should not be
underestimated (1 Cor. l0:17)—but the liturgical worship of God.
The focus must forever be on God, not man. This has always
meant that everyone turn towards Him in prayer, rather than that the priest
face the people. From this insight, we must draw the necessary conclusion and
admit that the celebration versus populum is, in fact, an error. In the final
analysis, celebration versus populum is a turning towards man, and away from
God.
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