by Nancy Linenkugel
Contributor
The opportunity of a lifetime occurred when I was selected for a pilgrimage to Rome and to Assisi. Once underway, we pilgrims happily and readily received the wisdom of our pilgrimage leaders who shared extensively about theological matters related to the holy sites we visited.
One of the special opportunities occurred in Rome inside St. Peter's Basilica. Our group was assigned an 8:45 a.m. slot at the altar over the tomb of St. Pope John XXIII. This altar, similar to the other side altars around the basilica, is positioned in the style of pre-Vatican II with the priest's back to the attendees, and there's also a Communion railing.
In addition, to set the stage for this blog, an altar missal in Italian was the only book provided for our priest, who primarily preferred English.
So this is what we had: a) the altar at the tomb of St. Pope John XXIII, the father of Vatican II, was in the style of pre-Vatican II, in which b) our contemporary priest turned around as much as he could so his back wouldn't be to us and c) he read the English Mass text from his iPhone that had an app for the Roman Missal. On that day we brought the church into the 21st century.
[Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati Ohio.]