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As Manfred Hauke has pointed out in a recent article,* 1 the question of whether the priest should face the people or not during Mass is more than a matter of personal taste or liturgical prejudice. If the Mass is a meal, then the participants should in some way surround what is (in this view) a table; if it is a (eucharistic) sacrifice, then the priest should lead the people in prayer, facing the east across what is (in this view) an altar. This is a choice that has been strongly stressed by Klaus Gamber,2 and supported (to some extent, as we shall see) by Joseph Ratzinger, in opposition to the increasing tendency to see the Mass as a meal.3
Hauke remarks that the issue has until recently been largely confined to German scholarship;4 hence the technical use of German words in the discussion, where the content (Gehalt) of the Eucharist is seen to be a sacrifice, whereas its shape or form (Gestalt) is taken to be a meal. What disturbs Ratzinger is that, ideally, the Gestalt should reflect or express the Gehalt; and Guardini (to whom many attribute the idea of meal as Gestalt), it seems, has not sufficiently taken into account a proper definition of Gestalt as a 'structured totality of sensible realities .... that can be articulated in space ... or in time in a rhythmic way'; that is, the Mass can be seen as a meal, only if we rely on nothing more than what we see; not, however, if we also attend to what we hear, especially in the Eucharistic Prayer.5
The most accessible statement of Ratzinger's thought on the subject is his 'Gestalt und Gehalt der eucharistischen Feier', translated as 'Form and Content in the Eucharistic Celebration'.6 There he emphasises the significance of the introduction of this distinction into theological discourse: it is 'clearly recognizable as a power for refonn' ; indeed, the category of Gestalt 'gave birth to liturgical scholarship in the modern sense'.7 It inspired a renewed understanding and appreciation of the Mass, without going against the eucharistic doctrine of Trent: 'What was presented liturgically in the structure of the meal could without difficulty mediate what, dogmatically speaking, was a sacrifice'.8 Therein, however, Ratzinger perceives...