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Things That You Might Not Know if You are Younger Than Me #3: Strange Masses

When I was growing up, Sunday Mass was different. Not necessarily wrong (except in some instances), but definitely not what you are used to.


I'm not talking about pre-conciliar Latin Mass (I'm not that old). I grew up in the 80s and 90s. During that time, the church in the US was still experimenting with new forms of liturgy.


Architecture

I went to St. William growing up. It's not the St. William that you know. For one thing, it was about a half mile further down McNeil Road. For another, it didn't look like a Catholic Church.

It was built in 1981, if I remember correctly


Inside, it was also weird. Here's a series of pictures from Christmas/Easter over several years. See if you can spot what's missing.



Nice hat, mom!



Did you (not) see it? There's no crucifix! I guess that was "too depressing"? (There was usually a cross, off to the side, but no corpus)


Life Teen Mass

These days, a Life Teen mass usually just means a Sunday evening Mass with rock music. When I was a kid (and maybe still in some other places) it meant something very different. I never understood why my mom didn't let us go to the 5 PM Mass, but now I do. Here are a few things that they did that are troublesome:

  • During the offertory, teens would dress the altar while singing "We Place Upon Your Table". 
  • During the consecration, all the teens would gather around the altar. It wasn't called concelebration, but it sure looked like it.
  • Instead of saying "The Mass has ended. Go in peace.", the closing was changed to "The Mass never ends. It must be lived!" shouted by the entire congregation.
There was also something called Liturgy with Children (not just Children's Liturgy of the Word). I think it is still technically allowed, but it's not done much anymore. Here's me at my 1st Communion:

Yes, it's a little more casual since it's in the church hall, but the children are all on the floor!

No crucifix here, either.


If you want to read more about the rules for Mass, the GIRM is fascinating reading.


Music

Songs during Mass (can't quite call them all hymns), were mostly accompanied by guitar.

That's my sister on the left.

These were songs written in the 1970s, mainly by a group called the St. Louis Jesuits. I must admit, I still love these songs, although most of them are not sung at Mass anymore. Still, it's not everyone's cup of tea and they weren't all what you'd call reverent. Anyone could join the choir, even untrained children like us. My dad could wear his rainbow suspenders and jeans while he played electric bass and used a butterfly capo.

For a while, the Our Father was sung. Not chanted, sung in a jazzed up way. I can't find the tune anywhere online, but come see me if you want to hear what it sounded like. Oh, and during the Our Father everyone would hold hands. I mean everyone. You would reach across the aisle and behind you so that everyone in the church was connected in a long snake.

Related to that, the Sign of Peace would go on for a long time and the choir would keep singing Lamb of God as many times as necessary. Part of what took longer was that the priest would come down from the altar and shake hands with everyone in the first pews.

Anyway, Mass was much more casual, but much less reverent back in the day.

 


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