Q400 – Does the 1970 missal really envision the Mass to be Ad Orientem?

Interview Organization: Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima
Interviewer Name: Christopher P. Wendt
Date: September 13, 2025
Bishop Schneider criticizes the General Instruction of the Roman Missal as ambiguous. He explains that while it allows altars to enable celebration “towards the people,” the rubrics still presuppose the priest faces the Lord. Contradictory instructions, such as turning to the people for certain prayers while also toward the altar, create confusion.
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No, the problem is that the general instruction of the Roman Missal is again ambiguous. This is our problem with all these even good formulations, because it says the altar should be built separately from the wall, so that celebration towards the people would be possible. So they encouraged the priests to do this in the Missal itself. At the same time, the rubrics of the same Missal presuppose that the priest is celebrating towards the Lord.

When it says, when the priest says the offertory, pray brethren that mine and your sacrifice be acceptable, the rubric says that he is turning towards the people and then again towards the altar. Or when he says, This is the Lamb of God, Lord, I am not worthy, he is turning to the people, and so on. But in the same book, another place says it would be good to celebrate with the people.

So you see, this is a contradiction. One formulation is undermining the other.

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