September 04, 2007
Throwing The Liturgical Flag
It's the Liturgical Referee:
The recently created position of Liturgical Referee has been instituted to help to bring uniformity to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Liturgical Referees will travel around the world randomly attending Masses. Liturgical Referees will stand, mostly quietly, to the side of the sanctuary during Mass and call out signals if he observes any liturgical penalties according to the GIRM and other liturgical documents. Only in the case of penalties that would make the Mass itself invalid will the Liturgical Referee blow his whistle and when necessary call for any replays to correct any mistake made. Penalty markers may be thrown during the Mass to alert the celebrant to any problems that might need immediate correction.
Go on over to the Curt Jester to see a pic of a ref in action plus a handy-dandy guide to fouls and signals (among which are included "No Crucifix in the Sanctuary," "Liturgical Dance Detected" and "Un-Christianlike Conduct").
Yips! to Gail at Scribal Terror.
Comments
Have seen most of these myself . . . thankfully, no clowns in the sanctuary, though.
Posted by: The Colossus at September 4, 2007 09:29 PMAnd when the refs find themselves making a lot of the same calls throughout a diocese they need to be able to throw a flag that means, "the bishop is ejected from the diocese." *coughmahoneycough*
Posted by: mike at September 5, 2007 10:49 AM
Image courtesy of the lovely and talented 