Papa Francis is keen to have prayers after Mass for the persecuted Church: the St Michael Prayer (of which he is particularly fond) and the "Hail Holy Queen". This seems a good idea. For some years there were "Prayers for Russia", but they were often said in a great rush with a let's-get-this-over feel. A revival would benefit from the gap: there would be a sense of freshness, and of urgency - the prayers would feel intimately connected with the tragic news that we hear almost daily of the savage persecution of Christians.
The Bidding Prayers enable us to have public prayers for specific issues. When they were first introduced they were structured, and worked well: they almost invariably included one for the Queen (which we'd not had as part of normal parish Masses in Britain before) and for those in public office, and for the poor, and for various other needs at home and abroad. Then things went through a very messy stage when some priests would say "Does anyone have anything they'd like to pray about?" which invariably produced awkward silence or some mumbled and incoherent plea, or some statement about a fashionable cause.. Dreary. Now the trend is towards formal Bidding Prayers again. Of course the persecuted are often - in recent months always - mentioned. But something specific after Mass would be very much in Papa Fr's style. If it happens, you heard it here first.
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You appear to have only attended low masses in the old days! I recall singing the "Domine Salvum Fac" at the end of the sung mass each Sunday: Domine salvum fac reginam nostram Elisabeth et exaudi nos in die qua invocaverimus te.
If, perhaps on your strolls around the capital, you care to raise your eyes towards the clock face of Big Ben you will see the inscription of the first part of this antiphon- referring, in this case however, to Queen Victoria- just underneath each face.
I have sung the Domine Salvum fac frequently after Mass - routinely every Sunday in fact at one parish - but this is with the newer form of the Mass...not with the older form.
Let's have HM and the govt mentioned in the Bidding Prayers each Sunday, along with the prayers for the protection of human life, and for the poor and so on.
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