"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Thursday, February 27, 2003 The Question of Liturgical 'Presidency'
An extract from an essay by the Rev. Bruce Harbert (shown here with JPII), executive secretary of the International Comission for English in the Liturgy, and a member of the council of the Association for Latin Liturgy:
One of the most startling paradoxes of the re-ordering of sanctuaries spawned by the universal promulgation of the idea of the priest's presidency at Mass (taking the literal meaning of praesideo 'I sit in front') has been the control over the execution and tone of the liturgy that it has given to the clergy. This after a Council which sought to reduce clerical domination and to bring the laity into a more complementary and pro-active rôle.
What is crucial is that nowhere in any Christian writer can anyone point to the word praesidere describing what the priest does at Mass - until 1970, that is.
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