Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Sunday 23 August 2009

Who decides? (Not me, I'm submissive.... or is it "subordinate"?)

If you have multiple Masses of a weekend, and multiple priests, and multiple deacons, and multiple lay readers (our parishes has all,) and a Sunday such as this with a "long form" and a "short form" of one of the scripture readings comes 'round, whose call is it?

I just assumed one of the several Shes-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed made the decision in the case of a variable Prophecy or Lesson, (funny aside, the broadcast of the EF Mass for the Immaculate Heart of Mary from EWTN informed us via caption that the "Epistle" was from Ecclesiastes,) and the celebrant made the call for the deacon or himself if it were a Gospel that offered options.

But this weekend, one of the more famous -- notorious? let us just say, contentious Epistle pericopes made its appearance and the male lay readers chose the longer, more controversial version, and the female the shorter, less likely to raise hackles one.

I didn't find the particulars as interesting as the simple fact that there was no consistency, that it wasn't a LitCom decision, nor one from the pastor -- and those are people who like to try to involve themselves in my choice of psalm settings, organ registration, cantor assignments, and the wording of the script for saying "Good morning..., the Offertory Hymn is number..., our psalm response is on page...."

1 comment:

Carleigh said...

Yep. Been there, done that, have a drawer full of "involvement" memos to show for it.

It is interesting, huh?