Since When is The Sign of Peace Protected?
Some things I really don’t understand. I’m glad I’m just a lay person that doesn’t have responsibility to safeguard and preserve the traditions of Mother Church in her public worship of God (i.e. the liturgy), like the salt in last Friday’s gospel. I read stories like this about the sign of peace and it blows my mind.
Fair notice: I’ve never liked the sign of peace and have had a variety of opinions on and of it throughout my life. A variety of harsh, uncharitable, mean spirited, and judgmental (as our progressive friends would label it) opinions come to mind when some fake saccharin call from a busybody tells me to turn to “my neighbor” and greet them.
I’m citing an article below, and adding commentary along the way.
Nine Years
After nine years of study and consultation, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments has told Latin-rite bishops around the world that the sign of peace will stay where it is in the Mass.
Nine years? Really? The so-called Sign of Peace is only 40 years old. So 25% of the time it has been there, it has been studied for removal? What took so long? And after taking so long, they had to see what I’ve seen on a regular basis: free for all, people walking all around the church as if it was a raffle swap. I’ve never seen a useful relevant “symbol” of any kind related to the purpose of the Mass in the sign of peace. I like to shake hands in the parish hall, not while Jesus is in Person on the altar waiting for me to approach for Holy Communion.
Am I supposed to be impressed that somebody stared at their navel over this practice for nearly a decade? Somehow, I don’t believe it was really studied.
“may be omitted”
However, the congregation said, “if it is foreseen that it will not take place properly,” it can be omitted.
I got news for them — I’ve been omitting it for decades.
But when it is used, it must be done with dignity and awareness that it is not a liturgical form of “good morning,” but a witness to the Christian belief that true peace is a gift of Christ’s death and resurrection.
But what of those parishes that tell you to “Greet each other” before the “celebration”? Then, they tell you to do it again when Jesus is waiting on the altar… But they don’t do it in the parking lot. They run you over as they speed away.
People who should know better
Why do older people who grew up with nuns teaching them to fold their hands, and respect for Our Lord go along with this mess, though? It blows my mind that the biggest proponents of messes like the sign of peace and abusive practices of so-called extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist (a practice that the Vatican said should stop on the feast of the Dormition (Assumption) in 1997) are people who were taught to know better.
It’s not young people clamoring for it (unless they are brainwashed into pentecostal charismania, that is), but it is the old people!
“After further reflection,” the letter said, “it was considered appropriate to retain the rite of peace in its traditional place in the Roman liturgy and not to introduce structural changes in the Roman Missal.”
blockquotes above come via The Catholic Review > Home > Sign of peace at Mass: Vatican says it stays put, but urges education.
I don’t understand it.
Do you like the sign of peace? Should it be a protected part of Mass?
I don’t think so. Get rid of it, pronto.
This article, Since When is The Sign of Peace Protected? is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/since-when-is-the-sign-of-peace-protected/
Do not repost the entire article without written permission. Reasonable excerpts may be reposted so long as it is linked to this page.
It’s not the peace sign so much as the blurring of the Catholic notion of being in the state of grace, being part of an elite which is free of mortal sin. There are people who come to church in a state of public sin who do not dare to approach the communion rail but who avidly seek a substitute feeling through the handshake. In Mexico I first observed and questioned it about the large number of men sitting near the back of the church, never kneeling, not observing mass at all, but very active when it was time for the peace sign. I asked Father about it–it was quite distasteful–and he said most likely they were living in irregular arrangements. But they’re getting their “I’m-okay” fix.
If the peace sign were promoted the same way communion is, or should be, that one should not participate if one has not confessed one’s sins, perhaps it would be okay, fine, even good. But as it is, it’s dishonest, so deeply false that it’s sickening. I don’t want to shake hands with men living out of wedlock. I don’t. I don’t want to touch them. And I have a right. It’s abuse of me to make me touch them, and it was never required of persons but especially women in the past (I am using Trollope/Thackeray/ et al’s novels of manners as reference). This is just another reason to hate Vatican II, because let’s not get off base, the peace sign is part and parcel of the teaching that oozed from the Council that all are saved as long as they are sincere. That hasn’t changed and it’s all about the peace sign.
We can agree on that being a total mess, Janet, but I think our reasons are different. For one thing, apart from the Pope and bishops, or bishops and patriarchs, and prelates in general doing so at the right occasions (such as The feast of Sts. Peter and Paul), it is not appropriate at any point in the Mass. The liturgy is oriented as a common public worship of God, not each other. There’s no real way to make it an OK gesture during Mass per se.
Secondly, I don’t see the sign of peace or anything like it in the Vatican II docs. Maybe I am reading different ones than you. I do know that post-Vatican II was a watershed of useless idiots bumrushing the altar in the name of progress. They weren’t authorized by the council, but rather are more like officious squatters. For whatever reason, they are persistent squatters. You figure they’d go where they are welcome, like a Unitarian church, but they don’t. They instead drive everyone else out to the evangelical or the nondenominational or the church of self.
The part of the documents you may have missed in the constitutions, John, the little part embedded in all the traditional stuff, the part where it says all religions are right. If all religions are pathways to heaven, we must shake hands with the whole murderous world. And we are doing so, Francis is doing so now, and the peace sign at mass is part of this extremely foundational message, the more powerful because it’s wordless.
Your reasons are valid, but peripheral, to me. Christ said, I am the Way. This is about that. The fight is about this. Is or is not the Church necessary to salvation?