Fr Z of the WDTPRS blog has posted a marvelous pair of before/after shots of masses in the Sistine Chapel.

To my (clearly far too young to understand) mind it is obvious that in one of these photos Christ is the focus and in the other he looks like a long forgotten ornament.

Meanwhile, Amy Welborn has posted a similar photo and asked for peoples views:

In a charitable, clear manner, explain what you see here. What gratifies you about the action in the photograph. What bothers you. Those who see it as beautiful, explain why and its deeper relation to your Catholic faith. Those who are bothered by it or mystified by it, explain why.

You can see the responses here. In her followup post Amy says:

As I've said before, my big ah-ha moment over the past couple of years has been the realization that most of us - myself included - have been formed to think of the Mass as a prayer meeting. A highly structured prayer meeting, but a prayer meeting nonetheless, one which emphasizes community and who we are in the here and now, a prayer meeting which should somehow be expressive of who we are as individuals and a community.

Prayer meetings are good. But that's not what the Mass is.

And that understanding is what I see reflected in the comments below. It seems fairly obvious to me - those who respond positively to the photo seem to emphasize the Sacrificial aspect of the Mass, and the necessity of the ritual and other externals reflecting that reality.

I also find Fr Rob Johansen's anlysis of this particularly interesting. You can read his full analysis here.

Less than a week ago I wrote about the book Pope Benedict wrote as Cardinal Ratzinger. In Spirit of the Liturgy there is left no doubt whatsoever that Pope Benedict considers a return to eastward facing masses to be essensial. He wrote: a common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance.. If you missed that blog entry you can catch it here.

At mass yesterday, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I tested the theory. I tried to look away from Fr Massie (the Pope says that looking at him has no importance) and instead at the Cross. Mass was different.

A few thousand miles away another mass was different yesterday morning. As reported in the New York Times (Try to ignore, for a moment, the horrendous impropriety of somebody writing publically about something that happened at a mass):

Pope Turns Back on Congregation In Old Mass Ritual

Pope Benedict celebrated parts of Sunday's Mass with his back turned on the congregation, re-introducing an old ritual that had not been used in decades.

The Pope used the Sistine Chapel's ancient altar set right against the wall under Michelangelo's dramatic depiction of the Last Judgment, instead of the altar placed on a mobile platform that allowed his predecessor John Paul II to face the faithful.

A statement by the Vatican's office for liturgical celebrations said it had been decided to use the old altar, where ballots are placed during papal elections, to respect "the beauty and the harmony of this architectonic jewel."

[source]

No negative bias there then. First of all, people need to remember that in Church terms "not used in decades" and "old" are not really synonymous. I've been alive for decades remember and I am not even old enough to understand why we can't say mass like the Pope! Besides which it has been used in decades, it's used regularly around the world by many priests when they celebrate mass in private. Can you imagine a priest stood away from the altar celebrating on his own to an empty room? Perhaps that's what the NYT think happens...

Also, they cut short the Vatican statement:

That placement of the altar, added the note, implied that in some moments the Pope "had his back to the faithful and his gaze upon the cross, orienting the attitude and disposition of the whole assembly in this way," though he did not use the 1962 missal.

[source]

Anyways... the long and the short of it is this:

The Pope celebrated the new mass in the ad orientem style yesterday. So it can be done. How about I repeat the question from last time...

Should we not be doing what the Pope does? If not, why not?

Are we not interested in the cosmos any more? Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? Is it not important, precisely today, to find room for the dimension of the future, for hope in the Lord who is to come again, to recognise again, indeed to live, the dynamism of the new creation as an essential form of the liturgy?

So why not?