INTENTIONALLY Funny Line of the Day

From Father Z:

As an avid reader of your blog please first be assured of my prayers. I recently attended an Engaged Encounter weekend in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the priest who said Mass had the couples surround him at the altar during the entirety of the Eucharistic Prayer. 

 In weakness my fiance and I did so during the first Mass but we remained kneeling in our pews during the second, I had hoped it was a one off thing.
  
I approached the priest about it, after we had received our certificate of completion, and he gave me some unfortunate explanations including: historical accuracy, and it not being ruled out in the GIRM.
  

I contacted the Archdiocese and received an unsatisfactory response. Namely a paragraph from the GIRM and Redemptionis Sacramentum which says nothing about the issue at hand. I would be happy to provide you with the full email if you wish. I am looking for something to reply back with but all I can find is a dubium from the 1980’s that has a dubious web address, seemingly unofficial. Do you have anything I could respond with? I am frustrated and saddened.

The response is from Father Tim Ferguson:


The General Institution of the Roman Missal does not explicitly ban the faithful from gathering in the sanctuary during the Canon.
Nor does it forbid the faithful from being fitted with wires and hovering above the altar, or laying on the floor underneath the table-altar, or standing amongst the statuary in the reredos. The rubric do not cover every absurdity.
A presumption (perhaps a naïve one) is that the Church’s liturgy will be carried out by reasonable men.

Read the whole thing.