Option Offered by USCCB for Sprinkling Rite
  • JT_Fields
    Posts: 8
    What does everybody think of the following option offered by the USCCB for the Sprinkling Rite from #74 of The Introduction to the Order of the Mass

    If the greeting and blessing takes place at the door, the priest may sprinkle the people during the entrance procession.


    To me, it's a bit of a compromise, but it definitely is better than the practice of doing the Sprinkling Rite during the Gloria.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,950
    That document was prepared in 1997 to go with the 1998 Sacramentary, but unlike the latter, it emerged with approval and some further changes - yet as best I can tell it's not been the subject of much praxis on the ground. Perhaps it may be likened to the initial built part of a highway off-ramp that was never completed and ultimately went nowhere?

    With regard to the Sprinkling Rite, the 2011 USA edition of the Roman Missal proceeds without taking the 1997 document into consideration: Appendix II sets forth the ritual, and prescribes: "If this rite is celebrated during Mass, it takes the place of the usual penitential act at the beginning of Mass" (in accord with the second paragraph of #51 of the GIRM) with no mention of the option of it accompanying the entrance procession (and not mentioned in ## 47-50 of the GIRM that cover the entrance rite).
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,372
    the practice of doing the Sprinkling Rite during the Gloria.
    What! Sez who?
  • JT_Fields
    Posts: 8
    The Gloria thing seemed nuts to me when I first encountered it, but I think it's done a lot.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,950
    Oh, yes, it's been done a lot, and has no basis whatsoever except in pragmatism. The Gloria is not and has never been a soundtrack for the sprinking rite, which has its own dedicated texts to set to music. It's a practice that merits euthanization without mercy.
  • DL
    Posts: 72
    If done in Lent, is it then carried out during the […]?
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,768
    We got wet during the Credo last week. Not sure if that's slightly better.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,950
    As opposed to the renewal of baptismal promises of which responses to the Apostles' Creed are a constituent part?
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