Q: I very much appreciate reading your blog. Thank you for all of your guidance.
I have a followup question regarding the Q&A pair in https://paulturner.org/confiteor-3:
Q. “…should the deacon still do the Kyrie at the end [of the Confiteor], or should the priest?”
A. “As to the Kyrie, anyone may lead it—priest, deacon, cantor, reader, usher, visitor.”
I have been told that if a deacon is present, then the choir or cantor should *not* lead the Kyrie after the Confiteor.
I understand that a deacon preferably should lead Form C of the Penitential Act even when a cantor or choir is present, since those instructions say: “The Priest, or a Deacon, or another minister, then sings the following or other invocations with Kyrie, eleison (Lord, have mercy).”
However, I don’t understand the reason for the deacon to lead the Kyrie after Form A or B of the Penitential Act when a cantor or choir is present, because:
• GIRM 52 states that the Kyrie is executed with the “people and the choir or cantor taking part in it,” and
• GIRM 107 indicates that certain liturgical functions are not proper to the priest and the deacon (i.e. that the choir and the cantor exercise their own liturgical function per GIRM 103 and 104)
I know that it is a common practice for a deacon to lead the Kyrie after the Confiteor, but is that the intention of GIRM 52?
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A: Thanks for your comments on my blog.
You are quoting Order of Mass 6, where it lists the priest, deacon or another minister as the leader for the third form of the penitential act. I argue from subsidiarity that the preference here is for another minister (cantor, for example) to lead it even if a deacon is present. If that’s not so, then a priest should lead it, even when a deacon is present, and the rubric would make no sense.
GIRM 52 is as you cite it: the people and choir or cantor take part in the Kyrie.
Consequently, I do not agree with what you have been told, that, if a deacon is present, the choir or cantor should not lead the Kyrie after the Confiteor. As I read it, their leadership is preferred over that of the deacon.