James
Pope Francis offering Mass “ad orientem” on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, January 12, 2014 (photo courtesy of the Facebook page of Msgr. Guido Marini).
We can no longer deny that exaggerations and aberrations have crept in which are both annoying and unbecoming. Must every Mass, for instance, be celebrated facing the people? Is it so absolutely important to be able to look the priest in the face, or might it not be often very salutary to reflect that he also is a Christian and that he has every reason to turn to God with all his fellow-Christians of the congregation and to say together with them ‘Our Father’?
~Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Catholicism after the Council’, The Furrow, 1967