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Were our Hearts Not Burning? (Lk 24:32)
Reply to a question, and editorial
Q: Should we hold hands at the Our Father during Mass?
A: By the force of the evidence, I must say no, and these are the reasons why.
1. When it comes to the liturgical norms, the way to determine what the Church asks us to do is to refer to her concrete laws, with particular exactitude regarding her language, which she promulgates only after long deliberation, reflection, teamwork and prayer. Her laws are basically twofold: canon law and liturgical law. A. Canon Law tells us, "The liturgical books, approved by the competent authority, are to be faithfully followed in the celebration of the sacraments. Accordingly, no one may on a personal initiative add to or omit or alter anything in those books." (Can 846 §1). The other elements in Canon Law regarding the celebration of the Eucharist don't specify details of liturgical practice, by and large, but rather they declare things such as valid matter, time and place of the celebration, and so forth. B. Liturgical Law is expressed principally by the "Instructions" that the approved liturgical books included before the rite, with its words and gestures, is described. The approval is given by Rome after the Bishops of any given Bishops’ Conference propose them to Rome. The Instruction that concerns us here is therefore the "General Instruction of the Roman Missal," (GIRM) the latest edition of which was promulgated on June 1,2003. The missal consists of the Sacramentary (the rites) and the Lectionary (the readings). The GIRM is normally printed in the beginning of the Sacramentary, not the Lectionary. There are, furthermore, plentiful other subsidiary documents. For example, Rome recently published a document on liturgical abuse, by the Pope’s express command(Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction "Redemptionis Sacramentum: On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist," Marcy 24, 2004). There are letters from Rome clarifying liturgical norms for Bishops who submit “dubia” (doubts or questions which require Rome’s clarification), and other such things. Unfortunately you will find many immature priests who, being called to serve the Liturgy, make themselves Lord of it instead of servant of it; they reject and criticize Rome’s norms and introduce every form of foolishness which their imagination offers them, instead of stepping up to the plate and obeying with virility. The result is that vast sectors of the laity in the Church today have been subject to liturgical abuses so regularly and for so long a time, that most don’t even recognize what the Mass really should look and sound like. Such good intentioned, yet misled, souls will even see an obedient priest and call his observance of the liturgy wrong, anomalous, or “unenlightened.” 2. So when I look for the question of holding hands, it is written no where in Canon Law or Liturgical law. And if Canon Law forbids us from adding anything to the Liturgy, to add in a normative way would constitute an abuse. But the Liturgical Norms, honestly, don’t say a lot about how the laity are to be, in contrast with what it says about priests (for example, the norms tell us how our hands are to be most of the time during Mass). Regrettably, in the new legislation, there are even contradictions when one tries to apply all the norms faithfully. A bishop, the Ordinary of one of the Dioceses of Michigan, told me, when I complained about this to him, that, yes, there were contradictions and deficiencies, and that he and his brother bishops would have to “fix this.” So can holding hands be admitted as a pious practice of those who would, privately among themselves, wish to adopt it? Nothing would prohibit it in this sense, as many pious practices during mass are allowed, even encouraged: the use of the small hand missal or misalette, the occasional signing oneself with the cross at some points of the Mass, the folding of ones hands and the manner in which this is done, etc. If we admit it as a pious practice, the only norm applying would be right reason. Therefore we need to ask whether holding hands during the our father is according to right reason. I would see it like this, again in my opinion which has no pretension of being infallible: In a gesture of expression, right reason dictates that the gesture should express its meaning, and not have a meaning not proper to the gesture. Therefore a handshake expresses friendship and honesty, not hatred or rejection. It would be against right reason to use a handshake to express rejection, given its use in today’s culture. The holding of hands expresses unity and affection. Yet the Our Father contains seven petitions to the Father. It isn’t a prayer of unity with our neighbor, nor is it even remotely directed to our neighbor. So holding our neighbor’s hand detracts from the meaning of the prayer. Right reason would, as it seems to me, not ask us to hold hands during the Our Father, because the gesture would not correspond or be proportionate to the words being said. 3. In summary, I conclude that holding hands is not to be done during the Our Father at Mass, because it is not in ANY approved liturgical book in the world and we cannot add things arbitrarily. Second, it is a gesture that doesn’t express the content of the prayer. 4. When you state, “I have to express why holding hands at the Our Father should be permitted,” it seems that you are starting out as a given a conclusion which you should be drawing at the END and not the BEGINNING of your investigation. Proceeding in the correct order: first the Church’s norms, and then their application, will bring you to the proper conclusion. I regret that my conclusion is the opposite of what you may have been looking for, and I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable in any way; it is not my intention to make you uncomfortable. If there are norms of the Catholic Church out there that you discover, and not just private opinions of people (like me...), please correct me; your correction would be most warmly accepted, in the Christian spirit of love for the Truth.
In Christ, Fr. Paul Ward
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