When he celebrates Mass at Tulsa’s Holy Family Cathedral, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa now faces the crucifix on the altar with his back to the congregation. He has restored the liturgical practice, called “ad orientem,” because he said it reflects “a more authentic Catholic worship.”
The bishop, writing in the September issue of Tulsa’s monthly diocesan magazine, Eastern Oklahoma Catholic, said the liturgical practice, largely abandoned in the 1960s, demonstrates how the priest and the congregation share in the act of worship.
“In the past 40 years,” he wrote, “this shared orientation was lost; now the priest and the people have become accustomed to facing in opposite directions. The priest faces the people while the people face the priest, even though the eucharistic prayer is directed to the Father and not to the people.”
The bishop began using this restored liturgical practice during Masses last December.
An article in the January issue of the diocesan magazine explained the change and noted that cathedral parishioners might have “been confused, thinking that the bishop had turned his back on them.”
But many cathedral parishioners welcomed the restoration and said it gave them an increased understanding of the meaning of the liturgy, according to the article.
The bishop, who celebrates the Mass in English, said the “ad orientem” practice better represents what the Mass is all about, showing that the people and the priest are united in a single action. They offer one sacrifice, he explained, but in their proper roles: The people joined to Christ as his body and the priest configured to Christ as the head of the body.
“At Mass Christ joins us to himself as he offers himself in sacrifice to the Father for the world’s redemption. We can offer ourselves like this in him because we have become members of his body by baptism,” Bishop Slattery explained in his column.
“We also want to remember that all of the faithful offer the eucharistic sacrifice as members of Christ’s body. It’s incorrect to think that only the priest offers Mass,” he continued. “All the faithful share in the offering, even though the priest has a unique role.”
“Ad orientem” simply means “toward the east,” he said, noting that the church’s ancient liturgical practices had the priest and people facing in the same direction, usually toward the east, “in the expectation that when Christ returns, he will return ‘from the east.’”
There were “solid reasons for the church to have held on to this posture for so long,” he said.
“First of all, the Catholic liturgy has always maintained a marvelous adherence to the apostolic tradition,” Bishop Slattery said. “We see the Mass, indeed the whole liturgical expression of the church’s life, as something which we have received from the apostles and which we in turn are expected to hand on intact.
“Secondly, the church held on to this single eastward position because of the sublime way it reveals the nature of the Mass ... that the priest stands at the head of the people, sharing in one and the same action ... an act of worship,” he said.
Since the Second Vatican Council, the priest has faced the people, partly to help them “understand the liturgical action of the Mass by allowing them to see what was going on, and partly as an accommodation to contemporary culture where people who exercise authority are expected to face directly the people they serve, like a teacher sitting behind her desk.”
But the change had “a number of unforeseen and largely negative effects,” the bishop said.
“It was a serious rupture with the church’s ancient tradition. ... It can give the appearance that the priest and the people were engaged in a conversation about God, rather than the worship of God,” he said. And it also “places an inordinate importance on the personality of the celebrant by placing him on a kind of liturgical stage,” he said.
Even before he became pope, Pope Benedict XVI “has been urging us to draw upon the ancient liturgical practice of the church to recover a more authentic Catholic worship and, for that reason, I have restored the venerable ‘ad orientem position.’”
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