Robotica?

Dr dear Dr: I shall be honest and say I was watching my local Zoom Mass in a certain Northern Diocese, when the usual priest was away on pilgrimage, and a new priest emerged from the sacristy and conducted the holy Mass in what can only be described as “robotic” fashion, is this all the rage among the newly ordained?

Both sides, the Novus ordo gameshow hosts and the Tridentine Vetus ordo celebrants have at one stage or another been described as “Dalek” celebrants, conducting the sacred mysteries in a tone of disengagement from the people gathered before them and yet if truth be told, the substance underlying that complaint from the people of a certain vintage about both sides, lies in the dimly perceived and largely hidden insight that the celebrant is going “through the motions without his emotions”, that he is conducting an orchestra maybe but not engaged with his own deeper inner lively sentiments and loving faith, something that both sides of the modern liturgical law divide are asked to evade by saying extra prayers beforehand in the vestry.

Most laity now have books in abundance from the internet and most know of the sentiments of Vianney that “if the priest really believed and really knew what he was conducting he would crawl onto the sanctuary rather than arbitrarily saunter there”, like some Proserpina leaving footprints on a restaurant bill, so to speak, to quote the German Goethe loving poet in Rome.

So there is a sense that history has turned full circle, that the first ground-breaking early Instruction in the new era, “Inaestimabile Donum” 1981, has come to maturation and now signals that it is time to set aside the robotics of both before and after the Council and instead to celebrate with lively faith and sincere devotion. Some, felt faith is required for this most august of all the Sacraments. To conduct the sacred liturgy in a word with the “mind” of Jesus, and this should not mean more Dalek style liturgy. Ratzinger was good at this.

It is not an external and empty ritual of no dramatic personal meaning that is being envisaged to be carried out, it is a Passover Cosmic Theodrammatik which must involve some emotion and sentiment and real feeling, even if those Reverendi at the premiere national Grande seminaire do say there should be some avoidance of injecting too much personal devotion and personal faith into the public acts of the “cultus verus publicus” of holy mother Church. Testimonials though are still popular in Texas. Paris Texas is an indicator that the people do expect some devotion rather than the old-style robotics of both sides before and after that Council that gave us a whole new brand of theologising, called Liturgics.