Q: Father Paul. Love the blog. Came to it via searching about you after reading your commentary on Adrien Nocent’s volumes on the liturgy. Love/Hate relationship with those volumes which I greatly struggle with at times. But that’s for another time.
I have a question, more of a comment, about a trend I’ve noticed developing over the past decade and now see it across many churches in many different parts of the US (well at least in four different dioceses where I regularly attend Sunday mass). This is the reading of parish announcements already appearing in the bulletin by the priest after the prayer after communion but before the concluding rites. Why is this done and more pertinently why does it seem to be occurring now more than in the past? It feels like a 2:00 minute warning time out. Everything stops and then announcements are read, many literally from the printed bulletin, for many minutes. That reading concludes, the Blessing is given as is the dismissal. In at least two of the churches I regularly attend, the priest then steps down in front of the altar and we are led in additional prayers—the prayer to St. Michael nearly always and you’ve addressed this in the your previous posts.
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A: Thanks for your comments on my blog.
The making of announcements between the Prayer after Communion and the greeting that introduces the blessing is absolutely correct. That is what the Order of Mass and GIRM envision. I’ve treated this in my book Let Us Pray.
The length of the announcements is something else. In the four places where announcements are described, the missal always uses the same two adjectives: “brief” and “if necessary”. See OM 140 and GIRM 90a, 166 and 184.
I like making announcements because not everyone checks the bulletin or website, but I try to keep them brief. (Some of my parishioners probably think I fail.)