Ecclesiastical pet peeve « A Thinking Reed

Ecclesiastical pet peeve

February 11, 2008 by Lee

When the “prayers of the people” sound more like political hectoring.

Posted in Church matters | 4 Comments

on February 11, 2008 at 3:39 am | Reply Fr Chris

Not to make light of a very real concern, but I’ve come to believe that sometimes it’s in the delivery. The TEC parish near me is fantastic — steers far clear of politicizing the liturgy — but they have an altar server who makes the prayers of the people, which I usually have mixed feeling about, sound like Prayer to Almighty God. It’s pretty cool.

I think — and I gather the Pope does, too — that a small cycle of fixed prayers would be much, much better than letting people make it up as they go along. If we have to have them, there probably needs to be a bit more quality control, as there is (should be) in the rest of the liturgy.
on February 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm | Reply Lee

The irony of it is that we often downplay the actual confession of sins, but then when the PotP roll around we spend a good deal of it … confessing our (and other people’s!) political sins.
on February 11, 2008 at 4:31 pm | Reply Fr Chris

There is a form for confession during Eucharist, I think from one of the Enriching Our Worship books, that bugs me every time I hear it. It’s used at the National Cathedral fairly regularly. It includes “forgive us the sins done on our behalf”. Really problematic theology.
on February 11, 2008 at 7:08 pm | Reply Drew

As my college chaplain once said, “Prayer is a subtle form of gossip in Christian communities”. It truly does happen perhaps more often than it should…

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