Chapter 3. What they are doing to the Mass. I have before me some photos published in Catholic

newspapers representing the Mass, as it is now often said. Looking at the first photo, I find it

difficult to understand at what moment of the holy sacrifice it has been taken.

Behind an ordinary wooden table, which does not appear very clean, and which has no cloth covering it,

two persons wearing suits and ties elevate or present, one a chalice, the other a suborium. The text informs me,

they are priests, one of them, the federal chaplain of Catholic action. On the same side of the

table, close to the first celebrant, are two girls wearing trousers, and near the second celebrant two boys

and sweaters. A guitar is placed against a stool. In another photo, the scene is the corner of a room,

which might be the main room of a youth club. The priest is standing, wearing a tase-like alb,

before a milking stool which serves as an altar.

There is a large earthenware bowl, and a small mug of the same sort,

together with two lighted candle ends. Five young people are sitting cross-legged on the floor,

one of them strumming a guitar. The third photo shows an event which occurred a few years ago,

the crews of some ecologists who were seeking to prevent the French atomic experiments on the Isle of

Mururoa. Amongst them was a priest who celebrated Mass on the deck of the sailing ship,

in the company of two other men. All three were wearing shorts. One is even stripped to the waist.

The priest is raising the host, no doubt for the elevation.

He is neither standing nor kneeling, but sitting or rather slumped against the boat's superstructure.

One common feature emerges from these scandalous pictures.

The Eucharist is reduced to an everyday act,

in commonplace surroundings with commonplace utensils, attitudes, and clothing.

Now the so-called Catholic magazines which are sold on church bookstalls

...