St. Margaret of Scotland, and 10 Most Common Liturgical Abuses – Optional Memorial, Monday

Optional memorial, 1969 Calendar, celebration November 16.

St. Margaret of Scotland was probably born about 1045 in Hungary in a royal family. Her father was the English prince Edward the Exile. Margaret came with her father to England but on his death and the conquest of England by the Normans, her family decided to return to the Continent. The legend tells us that a storm drove their ship to Scotland where King Malcolm III took them under his protection.

Margaret married Malcolm some time between 1067 and 1070, this event being delayed by her desire to devote herself entirely to the faith. After her marriage, she used her influence as queen in the name of the Catholic faith. She built several churches including the Abbey of Dunfermline, she cared for pilgrims and the poor, and she dedicated the rest of her life to the cause of religion and piety.

Her most treasured jewelry was a Gospel Book that legend says was dropped in a river and recovered much later undamaged. This Gospel book is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

Margaret had eight children and she trained them in the ways of God. She worked zealously to get Scottish religious practices into line with disciplines of Rome, to stop abuses, to reestablish the proper ritual of the Mass and the rules for Lenten fasting and Easter Communion.

St. Margaret of Scotland died on November of 1093, three days after her son and husband were killed in a battle. She is the patron saint of death of children, learning, second patron of Scotland, widow.

Margaret’s confessor, Turgot, wrote:

Image source: Stained glass, St. Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh

***

St. Margaret was a queen who devoted her life to the Church and the poor, by using her might. to the service of the poor and maintaining the proper practices of the churches according to Rome.  Clearly, royalties of today are too far from her godly life.  Some royal families’ true identity are covered (like the ones in Anglicanism, being disciples of falsehood) by their glamor and fame.

When she was a queen, she built several Catholic churches and maintained their “… religious practices into line with disciples of Rome, to stop abuses, to reestablish the proper ritual of the Mass and the rules for Lenten fasting and Easter Communion.”.

Simply said in our present, modern time, she was stopping the “liturgical abuses” in the Church.

I remember when I was a child, the liturgical abuses in my diocese were viral like a plague.  They were everywhere whichever Parish we’re attending.  Every Mass, girls dressed in white were in a “song interpretation for the mute” during Our Father (when there was no mute at all during the Mass and even if there was, surely the mute knew and had memorized the whole Our Father and wouldn’t need the ‘song interpretation to know the words).  During Christmas, and the whole Holy Week (it interrupts the Mass and all ceremonies) with plays and skits, either performing the Passion of Christ or dramas with ‘lessons’.  Worst, believe it or not, event the priests themselves were part of the skits!  If I had known then that there would be blogs in the future, I took pics of them…  You sometimes noticed that some of the performers only enjoyed the ‘popularity’ in performing, and they didn’t even attend the Mass and was ‘backstage’.  I vividly remember saying to my parents that I didn’t enjoy these things and wouldn’t want to go to the Mass anymore.  Only when I saw this blog years ago http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com that I’ve finally found out that I wasn’t alone with my feelings and opinion that this was irreverence and wrong, and it wasn’t me who was ‘abnormal’ or ‘antisocial’, that the term for these is ‘Liturgical Abuse’.  I was actually blessed to know the difference in giving the appropriate respect due for Jesus.  If damage was done to me, definitely to others too.

Here are the 10 Most Common Liturgical Abuses that are still happening around (gathered from The Pinoy Catholic):

1. Dances and Performances

Like I’ve said, they look anything but holy to me.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2015/04/gulp-alert-what-to-watch-out-for-this.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2015/02/cebu-what-has-happened-to-you.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/06/dancing-at-mass.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/06/gulp-alert-acrobatics-for-mass.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2013/08/gulp-alert-t-shirt-says-keep-calm.html

2. Inappropriate liturgical vestments

Priests must wear proper liturgical vestments while celebrating the Mass.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2015/08/st-josemaria-escriva-celebrated-only.html

3. Communion by the hand

We must all receive Him while kneeling and by Communion of the tongue.  Because there are no altar rails anymore, at least we kneel before our turn.  Please, never receive the Communion by the hand.  Even the priests washes his hands before holding His Body and Blood.  God knows where and what some of the people have touched before receiving the Eucharist.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2012/07/gulp-alert-confusingreally.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2012/06/communion-in-hand-is-extreme-failure.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2009/07/communion-in-hand-has-no-traditional.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-blessed-sacrament-if-we-only-knew.html

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2009/06/which-is-more-respectful.html

4. Improper altar arrangement

With this one:

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2013/12/gulp-alert-altar-arrangement-101.html

The Benedictine altar arrangement:

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2011/07/reform-of-reform-sightings-in.html

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/12/thoughts-about-the-benedictine-arrangment/ (Fr. Z’s blog)

5.  Hand-clapping

Our Mass is not an entertainment.  The Mass is not a performance that we’d rate by clapping our hands.  After the Mass is over, people in most of the parishes clap their hands as if saying ‘Yeah! Finally!  We can go home already!’.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2015/10/two-popes-speaking-out-against-clapping.html

6.  Self-serve Communion

Just as what how they help themselves on street or finger food.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/10/gulp-alert-self-serve-buffet-communion.html

7. Anyone as Extraordinary Ministers

Only nuns and lay ministers are the Extraordinary Ministers.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2009/07/postcript-about-manila-liturgical.html

8. Tabernacle placed not in the the center and front, and anywhere instead

Such as this:

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/04/inculturation-at-its-finest.html

9. Laity extends their hands and blesses

This liturgical action of extending the hand or making the sign of the cross over a person or thing is reserved for the ordained, as their hands have been consecrated to bless.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/11/mga-feeling-pari.html

10. Mass celebrated anywhere

Really a form of severe irreverence.

http://thepinoycatholic.blogspot.com/2014/12/kawawa-naman-si-cristo.html

The Novus Ordo Mass of Vatican II is prone to these abuses.  People are more ‘free’ to to these on the Novus Ordo Mass.  I understand both the points of the Traditional Latin Mass or Tridentine Mass / Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and the Novus Ordo Mass, that’s why I love both forms.

We know now to whom we pray for these liturgical abuses in the parishes, that people who were discouraged to attend the Mass would be present again and get back.