I noticed the Zenit interview with Father Uwe Michael Lang, an advocate of the Catholic priest facing east to lead the people in prayer. He criticizes the over-simplification of the priest “turning his back to the people.” And he does make respectable arguments to support his view.

Yet I found his attempt at conducting a two-way debate more shallow. He described two contrary points to his arguments. But I have to say if you want to conduct a discussion, it’s really more helpful to have a real person rather than yourself. Here’s his summation of “turning around the altars”:

First, it is often said that this was the practice of the early Church, which should be the norm for our age; however, a close study of the sources shows that this claim does not hold.

I’m afraid the liturgical scholar is off on a few presumptions here. The Christian Eucharist may well have been inspired by aspects of Jewish worship. But at its root, it is modeled on the Jewish Pesach, a home ritual in which people gather around a table. We have no historical visual depictions of the Last Supper, but practically every Christian artist shows Jesus and his disciples at table.

I’m also not sure that liturgical scholars insist that early Church practices must be modern norms. It would seem that as accretions of the Roman Missal were pruned away in the 60’s, we would look closely at early practices. The presumptions would be many: being closer to apostolic practices, searching these practices for the essentials, an attempt to recover the verve of the early believers in a time of great trial.


Second, it is maintained that the “active participation” of the faithful, a principle that was introduced by Pope Pius X and is central to “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” demanded celebration toward the people.

I’m less convinced the priest was as important in this development as the consideration of visibility. When ritual actions are hidden from people, they want to know what’s going on. There’s a natural curiosity in play: what is the priest doing?

Fr Lang also misses the scope and boundary between the council and the bishops of the Church. Sacrosanctum Concilium didn’t give a blueprint for liturgical reform. It offered some specifics. Pointed in a direction for others. It left much up to the bishops, in conferences and locally.

Was the desire for visibility too fast to be an organic change? It has been largely embraced by Catholics: clergy and laity alike. One might argue that the Holy Spirit doesn’t wait for organic (read: slow) development.

As evidence that the post-conciliar movement is more about the priest getting out of the way than facing the people, I’d offer the architectural trend to half-circle seating. The point is not to imitate secular performance venues, as the less-informed critics suggest, but to maximize visibility for the greatest number of people to approach as closely as possible.

If anything, I would contend that the traditional Mass reinforces certain elements more akin to modern entertainment than traditional worship. Without the Eucharistic elements to view, people watch what moves: and that would be the clergy and their assistants. Especially the ones with the nice clothes.

I appreciate the image of a pilgrim people facing East in respect to the coming of Christ’s reign. However, the East is purely a theoretical construct. Not every church is built toward an authentic East. And very few churches provide what has been an engineering possibility: an open window to the East. What clergy and people think they face is the tabernacle-plus-reredos construction.

The post-conciliar realization for Roman Catholics was as much about a focus on the prayer and action at the Mass being celebrated as it was a promotion of more visualization.

In other words, it’s less about facing the people and more about the recognition for and reverence of Christ’s Real Presence in the midst of the celebration of the faithful. The geometry of post-conciliar worship is the same as it was fifty years ago: we still orient toward Christ. But it’s more about a radial geometry of worship than a linear one.