A Response to Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism

My previous post elicited the following comment and I want to respond to it, not in the comments section, but as a posting of its own because the questioner raises some important points that I had intended to expand on as a follow-up to the posting “Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism.”  The correspondent writes:

Weren't these people around pre-SP anyway? Is the objection that they are now able to have TLM more freely and openly rather than going to the SSPX or being hidden away in a side-chapel once a month at 4pm on a Sunday? If one was to substitute "Orthodox" for traditionalist, and "Byzantine rite" for TLM in this kind of analysis, wouldn't one be inclined to note that the "authority structures" in the Church were being used in a way inimical to ecumenism... that the tendency to see schism purely as the other side's lack of submission to a particular council betrayed an authoritarian totalitarianism? And that this attitude might be part of the problem?

Yes, right from the time that the liturgical changes began to be introduced in Lent of 1964 there were some priests who at first ignored them—keeping to the 1962 Missal—and then began a somewhat organized resistance to them.  Prominent among those who refused the changes was Father Gommar de Pauw, a Belgian born priest who was a professor and later Dean at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmetsburg Maryland.  Father De Pauw was named a Monsignor by Paul VI, but when the liturgical changes began, Monsignor DePauw founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement and in 1968 established a Catholic Chapel, the Ave Maria Chapel, independent of any Episcopal authority in Westbury Long Island.  While Father DePauw and his followers rejected the Liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council there efforts were directed beyond the liturgy; according to the website of the “Catholic Traditionalist Movement” they “worked to reverse the edicts of the 1962 - 1965 Vatican II.”   Father DePauw had made it very clear that he was opposed to the entire conciliar agenda despite the fact that he had served as one of the theological consultants to the Council.  In that role he was an aide to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the arch-opponent of any and all of the doctrinal developments that came out of the Council and in particular an opponent of ecumenism and religious freedom. 

In some ways, DePauw’s resistance to the liturgical changes that followed the Council “jumped the gun” as the 1962 Missal remained in force—albeit with various modifications permitted—until the issuance of the 1970 Missal and the Novus Ordo Missae. While DePauw resisted from the get-go, others—and most notably Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the former Archbishop of Dakar in Africa and former Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, (the Spiritans)—simply used the 1962 Rite without availing themselves of the proposed changes.  The 1970 promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae mandating of the New Missal as the exclusive manual for the liturgy made that clinging to the 1962 Missal impossible as, contrary to various stories to the contrary, the use of the old Rite was then proscribed.  In 1971 Archbishop Lefebvre opened a seminary for those who wished to follow more Traditional liturgy and theology.  He initially had permission of the local bishop-a requirement to run a seminary—but when this permission was withdrawn in 1975, he continued to run the seminary as an institution independent of Church authority. (Lefebvre was an Archbishop, but having no See—he was retired—he also had not authority.)  In 1976 Lefebvre ordained priests without the permission of the local bishop and was,  suspended a divinis, the usual punishment for this action.   He ignored the suspension and continued to function as a priest and as a bishop.  Certainly from this time, Archbishop Lefebvre can be seen to be in schism.  In 1988 he ordained four bishops without the required papal bulls, an act which brings an automatic excommunication.  The Congregation of Bishops in Rome declared this to be a formal act of schism.   Though the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre was posthumously lifted, as were the excommunications of the bishops whom he ordained, according to Rome’s decrees they remain in schism and to this day Catholics may not receive the Sacraments from priests of Lefebvre’s movement except in danger of death. 

Lefebvre’s schism has itself had several schisms and we have talked about them in previous postings.  Most notable among them are the movements led by Bishops Daniel Dolan, Donald Sanborn, and Clarence Kelly.  The various churches and chapels associated with these prelates offer only the pre-conciliar rites and are all in schism from the Catholic Church.  You will find in these chapels and churches that not only is the liturgy the pre-conciliar rite but the catechetical programs teach only what was held prior to the Council and do not incorporate any of the Conciliar decrees into their teaching.  Even in places where the TLM is celebrated in accordance with Church policy, one rarely finds the catechetical instruction to reflect the teachings of the Council. 

While the 1970 Missal was imposed on the entire Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Paul VI granted several indults to individual priests or parishes to celebrate the pre-conciliar liturgy.  The former Jesuit, the late Malachi Martin, claimed to have one such indult.  At the request of a group of English and Welsh intellectuals and writers, Paul VI gave the Bishops of England and Wales permission to permit an occasional celebration of the usus antiquior (the older rite) of the Mass.  This was not meant to permit the use of the rite on a regular basis and it is often called the “Agatha Christie Indult” because it was when he saw the name of the famous author of murder mysteries (which the Pope enjoyed tremendously) among the petitioners, that Pope Paul approved the petition.  Ironically Ms. Christie, like many others who signed the petition, was a Protestant and their interests were purely aesthetic and antiquarian.  Very few of these indults were granted, and none for regular celebration of the pre-Conciliar Rite.  The fact that an indult was required—and an indult to be granted by the Pope alone—belies the frequently-made claim that that priests had always been permitted to celebrate the rite at their own discretion.

The first step towards a more general use of the older liturgical books came in 1984 with Pope John Paul’s motu proprio, Ecclesia Dei.  Even here, however, the permission was quite restricted as the priest needed the permission of the local bishop, a permission granted rather selectively by most bishops.  It was only with Summorum Pontificum that the individual priest was granted the right to celebrate the usus antiquior at his own discretion.  Even that is somewhat debated as Pope Benedict wrote the bishops that their prerogative in assuring that the pastoral needs of the faithful were not compromised, that is that the bishop, to fulfill the pastoral need of the faithful, could instruct a priest as to which rite he may use.  There are still occasional conflicts between local ordinaries who want the clergy to celebrate the Novus Ordo in their parishes and individual priests who assert their personal ritght to celebrate according to the 1962 Missal.  One of the criticisms of Jorge Bergoglio when he was elected as Pope Francis is that during his tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aires there was no TLM in his Archdiocese.  Pope Francis has shown himself notably disinterested in the TLM but no priest from Buenos Aires has come forward with the claim that he was prohibited from celebrating in the old rite.  Archbishop Bergoglio certainly did not encourage the TLM but neither can it be shown—at least from any evidence that I have seen—that he blocked its use.  Colleagues of mine in Argentina and other South American Countries have said that there is not the same interest in reviving the pre-conciliar rites that we have in North America. 

So to respond to your first question, yes there were those who attended the TLM before Summorum Pontificum, but except in rare cases to attend the TLM before the 1984 Ecclesia Dei,  one would have had to resort to groups who were in formal schism.  Today Catholics can attend the TLM in Churches that are in full communion with the Holy See.  But the question remains: in those churches are they professing and practicing the same faith as in churches that follow the Novus Ordo?  Are the Church’s teachings and practices as set forth in the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican being faithful presented to the faithful and are those teachings being put into practice? Have Catholics who attend these churches and chapels been instructed in the decrees Nostra Aetate, Unitatis Reintegratio, Dignitas Humanae, Dei Verbum, etc.  and do they submit to these teachings?  Do Catholics who attend these chapels and churches recognize the validity of the Sacraments as administered in the contemporary Roman Rite?  Do they give assent to the ordinary magisterium as it has been presented in the Encyclicals of the last six Popes?  Very frankly, my contacts with many (not all) “traditionalist” Catholics show that they are for the greater part ignorant of the teachings of the Council and do not agree with them when those teachings are explained even by such moderate voices as Father Robert Barron. 

As for how “schism” is used polemically, I agree with you that this term is bandied about on both the right and the left as a threat by those who disagree with what those on the opposite end of the spectrum are proposing as authentic Catholicism.  But that is not how I am using it.  I am using the term schism as a rejection of the authority of the sitting Pope.  I would say that those who formally rejected the authority of Pope Benedict found themselves in schism.  Those individuals or groups, for example, who supported the various ordinations or episcopal ordinations of women priests or bishops or attended liturgies presided over by illicitly ordained (we will pass over the issued of validity at this point, illicit is sufficient for schism) priests or bishops are in the same sort of schismatic raft as those who participate in the liturgies of Archbishops Lefebvre’s SSPX.  In the same way those who participate in the liturgies of various independent Catholic chapels—even though their clergy are validly ordained—are in schism.  I would think that the Benedictine Women of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison WS, once a formal congregation of Roman Catholic religious, have crossed the line into schism.  I think the various independent groups that identify themselves as part of the “Old Catholic Church” are in formal schism.   

The shoe is on the other foot nowadays, however, with Pope Francis.   There are many among the neo-traditionalists who seriously question his teaching, his policies, and his decisions.  That alone doesn’t put them into schism but if he comes out with teachings in the ordinary magisterium (encyclicals) which they publicly reject, that would be a different issue.  If the 2015 Synod does not work out to their satisfaction and they refuse to accept the Pope’s ratification of the synod documents, that could be another issue.  If they start—and this is the more likely scenario—rejecting the authority of the local bishops who support Pope Francis, that too could be another issue.  I don’t think it is far fetched that individual groups, and not all necessarily followers of the TLM, with their priests will begin to turn against Pope Francis and publicly reject his leadership.  That would place them in schism.

Moreover, and a second reading of your question makes this further point pertinent, a refusal to accept the teachings of an Ecumenical Council also places one in schism.  One can certainly disagree with a Conciliar teaching just as one can disagree with a papal statement without finding oneself in schism, but any sort of public or formal rejection of a Council would place one outside the Communion of the Church.  The teachings of the Councils, just like papal teachings, are not optional.  Indeed the teachings of a Council would be even more obligatory that the ordinary papal magisterium as Conciliar decrees are historically considered, like infallible papal pronouncements, to be part of the extraordinary magisterium.  Of course one is only bound to a Conciliar teaching to the extent and in the sense that the Church teaches it but acceptance of the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council are not optional.  Pope Benedict made this very clear in his dealings with the SSPX and it continues to be the main block to their return to the Unity of the Church.  

Real Traditionalism

Our Lady of Victory Basilica, Lackawanna NY

Two or three entries back I posted a picture of “Father Baker”—a priest from Lackawanna New York with an interesting history—and I received several inquiries asking for more information about him.  I should have done an entry or two on him long before this as he is quite well known in Western New York but not much beyond and as his cause for sainthood has been introduced it might be good to know about him.   Besides which he was an interesting man. 

     Nelson Baker was a native of Buffalo, New York, where his German Lutheran Father and Irish Catholic Mother raised a family of four boys.  The Family name was Bekker or Bakker until it was Americanized as Baker.   Nelson was born in 1842 and was baptized Lutheran as an infant, but growing up decided to follow the religion of his mother.  His father was a grocer and seller of dry-goods and his son developed a keen business sense working with his father until enlisting as a solider in the Union Army during the War Between the States.  He fought at Gettysburg.  After the war he and a friend opened a feed and grain store but he was starting to think about the priesthood and studied Latin with the Jesuits at Saint Michael’s Church in downtown Buffalo.    In 1869 he entered Our Lady of the Angels Seminary run by the Vincentian Fathers outside Niagara Falls NY.  He made a pilgrimage to Rome with other seminarians in 1874 and on his way stopped in Paris.  There he visited the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires.  This church was a powerhouse of spiritual renewal in nineteenth century France—hmm, seems like we could use a few of these today and maybe one or two here in America.  Baker found his experience in that church profoundly moving and developed a devotion to Our Lady of Victories that would not only last him a lifetime but shape his life.

      Baker was ordained on the feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 1876 in Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo and assigned to the parish of Saint Patrick in Limestone Hill (now Lackawanna) just outside of Buffalo where he was to assist the pastor, Father Thomas Hines. Baker had known Hines before he (Baker) had gone to seminary and in fact Father Hines was a mentor to Baker’s priestly vocation.  Father Hines was responsible not only for the parish but for Saint Joseph’s orphanage and Saint John’s Protectory. (A Protectory is a sort of reform-school for children “at risk” or guilty of petty crimes.)  Five years later, in 1881 Nelson was given another assignment but returned to Saint Patrick’s in 1882 as superintendent of the orphanage and protectory.  The institutions were deeply in debt. Father Hines was a compassionate man but no man of affairs, whereas Father Baker had plenty of business experience and was well known in the commercial community.  Father Baker gathered what resources he could to repay the debts but they were insufficient.  He went to his creditors and offered them a deal.  If they would accept partial payment immediately and give him time to pay the balance, he would continue to do business with them in the future.  If they wanted full payment immediately, he would satisfy the debt but never more use their services.  The wise accepted his offer and his continued patronage would handsomely reward their business interests as the institutions grew and grew.  Father Baker then did something very innovative for the time and wrote postmasters across the United States asking for the addresses of devout Catholics.  (He was a smart businessman and knew not to ask pastors for the addresses of parishioners from whom he might solicit funds.  Even today it is the only the foolish or the saintly pastor who shares his benefactors with charities.)  Father Baker then wrote thousands of letters asking people to join “The Association of Our Lady of Victory” by contributing 25 cents a year for the support of these charitable institutions.  (In modern purchasing power this would be just over 5.00USD today.)  This was one of the first direct-mailing efforts at fundraising for charitable causes.  The newsletter for the Association morphed into a magazine called The Victorian which was published up until the 1970’s.   

      Meanwhile the needs of people in the Western New York grew.  In addition to the orphanage for boys and the protectory,  Baker started a vocational school.  And then a hospital.  And then a home for unwed mothers and their children.  Right there in the center of Lackawanna a village of charity was growing up with the red-brick and white-limestone trimmed buildings spread out eastwards down both sides of Ridge Road.  A diocesan community of Religious Brothers of the Holy Infancy had been serving at the orphanage and protectorate since the time of Father Hines and they were now joined by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  It was quite an empire of good works.

      The bills for such an operation were enormous and despite the generosity of so many members of the Association of Our Lady of Victory, Father Baker was always scrambling both to raise funds and to conserve expenses without making the poor he served feel the pinches of poverty.  One evening as he worried over the gas bill he decided to ask for a miracle.  With a bit of publicity and bravado, he announced a public novena to Our Lady of Victories was to be held.  In the opening ceremonies with cross and candles and incense he buried a miraculous medal.  At the end of the novena he called in experts to drill where he had buried the medal.  They assured him that the geological formation was all wrong—the limestone rich area precluded the presence of natural gas.  They drilled, no gas.  Baker told them to drill deeper.  600 feet, no gas.  Drill deeper. At almost 1200 feet they found gas.  The well was long a source of income for the institutions and it still supplies the various charitable institutions today.  

      Monsignor Baker (he was honored with the various degrees of Monsignor, culminating in the Protonotary Apostolic ad instar participantium—then the highest grade of Monsignor available outside the Roman Curia) would to anything he could to help the poor.  We always hear the criticism from bitter Catholics or cynical non-Catholics that if you give enough money you can get anything from the Catholic Church.  It is a nasty slur but it was pretty much true in Baker’s case—if you were giving the donations to one of the many works of charity.  Local stories abound of Monsignor performing weddings in hotel ballrooms or graveside services for Protestants in Catholic cemeteries when it meant help for his orphans, his unwed mothers, his at-risk kids.  Like the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath,  Father Baker had things in perspective and knew that there were higher values than man-made religious laws.  

       In 1921 having met the needs of the poor, Father Baker set out to honor his patroness by replacing the parish Church of Saint Patrick with a grand basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Victories.  He asked for donations and donations poured in.  The Basilica cost over 3 million dollars (almost 40 million in 2012 dollars and frankly I am surprised it could be built for under a hundred million today). Marbles were imported from all over the world.  Artists and stone carvers came from Europe and around the United States. No expense was spared and every penny paid by the time it was completed for Christmas Mass in 1925.

      Father Baker died on July 29^th 1936.  He was buried with his parents in Holy Cross cemetery, literally in the shadow of the dome of his basilica.  When his cause for sainthood was introduced in the 1990’s, his remains were removed to the basilica where they lay today in a sarcophagus in the chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes. 

       Father Nelson Baker was a priest in the days of the Latin Mass and nuns enveloped in serge and veils.  He never had a girl serve his mass.  He built a Basilica that would make a rococo santuario in Rome look tawdry.  He got along well with Protestants—his father had been Lutheran after all—but still he was an old-school Monsignor’s Monsignor of the old school.   I don’t know how he would have dealt with Vatican II and the changes.  But he was the best of the old guard—like John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great and Anselm of Canterbury, he had a passion for the poor.  He was not one who judged but only served. And he knew that the law was there to empower priests to service not to serve the power of the priest.  A professor from Dunwoodie (The New York Archdiocesan seminary) recently told me that all the students there talk about is wanting to be bishops and what they would do if they were the bishop and how a bishop should dress.  They should be like Father Baker.  He never was a bishop.  Despite the various papal honors, everyone called him “Father Baker.”  He was a priest and wanted to be a priest.  We need more priests who want to be priests and have the heart of a shepherd not a princeling.

A Traditionalist's Agenda for the Church

"Father Baker" 20th century
apostle of Charity who was
a symbol of what the Church
stood for in his day

Yesterday I posted regarding the negativity I find in so many sites in the blogosphere or on the web. I find our Church being dragged into negativity as well.  We need to go back to the past and recover our true heritage as Catholics.  There was a day when everyone knew what Catholicism stood for.  We built schools for the children of the immigrants who were coming to this country, and hospitals to care for the poor who could not afford the physicians’ private clinics.  We were on the side of labor against those “robber barons” who were forcing not only men but their wives and children to work for a pittance while they made outrageous fortunes with which to spoil themselves, their spouses, their children, and their mistresses.  We believed in an America that would be multi-cultural and we founded parishes and schools where Poles could worship and learn in Polish, Germans in German, Italians in Italian.  We established new religious communities to work among the Native Americans and to open schools and orphanages for the descendants of those Africans whom we Americans had held in slavery.  We opened homes for unwed mothers and clinics for the urban poor.  We opened sanitariums for the diseased and for the mentally ill.  We had vocational schools to train the sons and daughters of the poor for jobs that would enable them to climb the social ladder.   Some of the things we did were, by modern standards, coarse and even harsh, but by the standards of the day were among the most humane and enlightened.  Today, however, people only know what the Catholic Church is against.  That is a disaster from the perspective of what the world calls marketing and what we call evangelization. We need to wake up and change the menu.  God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the world but so that the world may be saved through him.  We need to step aside from the cancer of negativity that is eating out our society from within and recapture the mission Christ has given us to be Good News to the poor, Liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed and heralds of a time acceptable to God. 

A Commitment to the Future, Not the Past

Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in
El Salvador in 1980

Why do I write this blog—it takes a chunk of time out of my day and I am never caught up in my work as it is.  Well, for one thing, I do need the discipline to write.  Writing is difficult and this is not my best writing.  Most of the time the blog is just a quick sketch and I go over it no more than once while normally, when I write for publication, I labor over revision after revision, tweaking and puttering until I get the words just right but I have no time for that when doing the blog.  It takes me an hour or more as it is.  But at least it forces me to churn out some piece of writing most days; left to my own I would have a thousand reasons to avoid the task of sitting down and marshaling my thoughts and then forcing them out from within the convoluted channels of my brain onto paper—or actually into the circuitry of my computer.

     But I have another reason, and one more serious than just forcing myself to some discipline.  I have a strong vision for the Church, a vision I want to share.  At times I think it is a vision that I want to rescue.  You see I was brought up before all the Vatican II changes.  I learned that Ad Deum qui laetificat stuff.  To a fifth grader, of course, they were just nonsense syllables and damned hard nonsense syllables to memorize, but I did it. And I loved it.  I was one of those taller altar boys who MC’d Solemn Mass.  I knew the bows and rubrics and in those days before middle age spread and pattern baldness I looked quite distinguished in my violet cassock and stiffly starched white cotta.  In fact I loved the whole old Church thing—bevies of nuns in white wimples and mantles, bowing and scraping before tabernacles, tenors and basses in choirs that sing—these were a few of my favorite things.  I mean it was fun being Catholic.  They didn’t make Hollywood movies or Broadway shows about Presbyterians. 

      I have always been a trivia buff which explains why I ended up becoming a historian.  I have a mind that captures the kind of information from which you can never make money.  But I always knew that the Blessed Sacrament and the Bishop when in Miter (though not when in choir dress) got three double swings of the censer.  Speaking of choir dress I knew a mantelletta  from  a mozzetta and I even knew when the diocesan bishop wore the mozetta over the mantelletta which was a very rare occasion but looked quite majestic.  I knew that the humeral veil should match the color of the mass vestments unless the Blessed Sacrament was to be carried with it when it should be white or gold.   I knew the altars were to have their annual washing on the evening of Good Friday in imitation of Christ’s body being washed and anointed before it was put in the tomb and I knew that the cross was to be veiled in violet during Passiontide except on Holy Thursday when the veil was to be changed to white.  I knew all that stuff and I loved it.  Although you would never know if it you saw my office, I have a mad passion for order and “The Old Church” satisfied that.   But what happened?

     I am not sure.  I was excited about the changes in the liturgy as they gradually were introduced between 1964 and 1970.  (That doesn’t seem gradual in retrospect but it struck us so at the time.)  I have always loved music and I liked it when we began to sing more—when music was not just for the noon mass with Palestrina and choir but at each of the Masses, though, admittedly, Ray Rep was no Mozart.   I liked it when we could go to an Episcopal Church for Evensong without thinking we had to go to confession afterwards.  I thought the nuns looked pretty homely when they moved into their “modified” habits and absolutely ghastly when they started to wear ordinary clothes, usually of the cheapest make and poorest coordination, but hey—I didn’t have to sweat beneath yards of serge on a summer day.  I missed the communion rails at first, but gradually came to prefer the more spacious look of the sanctuary.  But more important, somewhere at this point in life—my late teens or early twenties—I began to pray. I mean I had always said prayers.  We were (sporadically at least) a family rosary family.   We would, especially in lent and advent, kneel leaning into the chairs and couches of the living room with our backs to one another and recite the repetitions of this favorite prayer.  Like my father (and his father before him) I began attending Mass each day.  But I slowly learned about mental prayer.  I am not sure how.  I would go out and sit in the back of our parish church at night.  I would just sit there.  I would begin a rosary or some other prayer, but end up just sitting there in the dark staring at the distant red flickering lamp.  Actually it probably began even earlier when at age eleven or twelve I would just go down to the river and sit by the bank among the day lilies and wild daisies and watch the stream roll by and follow my heart to some inner place I had not yet begun to understand.  But I suppose I was only about twenty when I began picking up some of the books of Thomas Merton and they made me think in ways that other books—even books by saints—had not.  Little by little as I went through my twenties, not Merton but the scriptures became my ordinary book for reflective thought.  I still read Merton—and other authors as well:  Henry Nouwen, John Main, Thomas Keating—but the scripture has long been my book.  I began to see connections between scriptures and the choices I was making—or failing to make—in life.  I started to read some of the Fathers, most notably Augustine but also Chrysostom and Basil.  At the time I was getting a Master’s Degree in Theology.  I came to understand from Chrysostom that one cannot separate the Christ one meets in the Eucharist from the Christ one meets in the beggar in the street.  I began to see in Augustine that to recognize Christ in the Eucharist is to know that you are already by baptism part of his body and so is the woman in front of you and the man beside you.  I came to see how doctrine and worship and ethics are all of a piece.  

      When the American Church women were killed in El Salvador with weapons supplied by my government it hit me that I share in responsibility for the crucifixion.  And when Archbishop Romero was gunned down at the consecration of the Mass by assassins trained in my country I realized that I could no longer live in the cocoon of pious claptrap but had to start weaving a consistency that would integrate my public and pious lives.  I came to realize that the Eucharist is the strongest bond of all and that to share in the Christ present on my altar was to stand in solidarity with all others who share in that one Christ at altars throughout the world.  I realized my faith was not simply the affirming of doctrines but the weaving of a seamless garment of faith and works.  There are a lot of dropped stiches in my seamless garment but my faith today is something far richer and far deeper than the doctrinaire piety of my youth.  And I for one am not willing to go back to that that superficial and supercilious smug Catholicism of “We have all the answers and nobody else does.”  The Church for me has long been a door to be pushed out of into the world with a Message rather than a door inside of which to hide behind from the troubles of the world.  

     I eventually went on to earn a Masters and a Doctorate in history and to take up a career as a teacher and research historian.  History for me acts as a brake against the retro-Catholoism of those who are trying to come back to the Leave It To Beaver Catholicism and Americanism of the Eisenhower years.  History is a medium in which we can see the Good News of God’s Kingdom unfolding.  As the reading said at Morning Prayer today: the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, (that is to say, it is not a matter of the Law and its regulations) but of justice, of peace, and of the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit.   I want to keep that word alive.             

History in the Making: More on Cardinal Burke and Mass Attendance.



A Mass at St Mary's College, Notre Dame
a community known for its vibrant liturgies
this mass was during summer break 2010

 About a month (April 4) ago I did an entry on why people are failing to attend mass in the numbers they did thirty to sixty years ago.  I mentioned that Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of Saint Louis and currently holding offices in the Vatican, claimed that the lack of reverence in the celebration of the mass is the reason for the decline in mass attendance.  I have received several communications since the original post that I would like to share with you.
I still go to mass every Sunday, but in all honesty I bring my ipod for during the sermon and use the time to listen to religious music or an inspirational podcast because the homilies are absolutely dreadful. 
Another writer made the same point—that they are being driven to distraction, if not away from the Church by the homilies.  They wrote: We used to attend mass at Creighton University and with the Jesuits you can count on a good homily.  My husband’s work has taken our family to the Washington DC area, and we now live in northern Virginia.  Fortunately we found a parish in Burke (a town in Fairfax County) where we are happy because in parish after parish that we had gone to the priests talked down to us as if we were not only uneducated but unintelligent people.  The priest in Burke is no Newman or Lacordaire, but at least he isn’t insulting us by his theo-bable.  My husband and I each have graduate degrees, we read, we keep our professional credentials up—we are not stupid people.  Why do these priests believe that we have to think as they tell us?   Don’t talk down to us.  Give us some credit for being able to make good decisions in life.  
A third person wrote from Northern Virginia:  We belonged to a wonderful parish and when our pastor was forced into retirement, the associate took over and changed everything. We were in the middle of a building campaign and had worked hard to design and raise money—almost four million dollars—for a beautiful church.  The new pastor didn’t like it.  It was “too modern.”  He put the building campaign on hold for eight years—eight years of being crowded into a parish center not half big enough for what we needed—until he thought we had forgotten about the church building we gave our money to build.  Then he—without consultation—met with an architect and designed something that looks like it is from 1942.  We told him that he might want to be Bing Crosby and the parish to be The Bells of Saint Mary’s, but we had survived the pre-Vatican II Church and we hadn’t given our money for a relic of it.  He told us that the Catholic Church is going back to the “traditional” liturgy and architecture.  So we told him, ok—go back but you’re going back without us.  We canceled our pledge and we cross the Potomac and drive a round trip of sixty-five miles to go to mass on Sundays at a parish that is committed to moving forward not backward.  But if he is right that the Catholic Church is going back to the pre-Vatican II days, we’re getting off the Catholic Bus.      
Finally, one more story.  A gentleman stopped me at a conference recently and told me that his wife is hearing impaired.  They are quite well-to-do and their parish is one of the wealthiest parishes in the Diocese.  He and his wife had offered to pay for hearing aids and earphones to be installed in the first two rows in a section of the Church immediately in front of the pulpit.  The combination of location and hearing aids would have facilitated ten “stations” at which hearing-impaired parishioners and guests could have maximized their participation in the liturgy.  The pastor wasn’t interested.  “Don’t see the need of it for two or three people who might need it.”  The family now attends a Bible “Mega-Church” that has an extensive ministry to the hearing impaired.  “What really got me,” the husband said, “was that he didn’t care that my wife couldn’t hear the Word of God.”  
So maybe the good Cardinal has a point.  I like reverence.  But maybe the problem is more systemic.