Reason 5 Why The "New Mass" Is Superior To The Old Rite

Doesn't it just say: I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer
I who live but Christ Jesus who
lives in me.

Well, by this time it is probably clear that I have some form of ADHD as I start various series and keep jumping around from one topic to another.  I need to focus.  And so I want to get back to my ten reasons why the Ordinary Form of the Mass in the Roman Rite (the Vatican II Rite or the 1970 Missal) is superior to the Extraordinary Form (The Tridentine Rite, or the various editions of the Roman Missal—and associated rites such as the Dominican or Carmelite or Carthusian—that were produced in 1570 or at other points between the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council).

This series was triggered by a set of articles in New Liturgical Movement by one Professor Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College making the opposite claim.  While New Liturgical Movement often has some well researched historical articles that are invaluable sources for the historical development of the Liturgy, Doctor Kwasniewski usually contents himself with more specious essays bordering on the inane.  Nevertheless, as poorly reasoned as his article was, it does give me the opportunity to point out why the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II are not only greatly beneficial to Christian life but were absolutely necessary to correct the faulty trajectory the Church was headed down ever since the Neo-Scholastic/Romantic revival of the 19^th century.  So lets look at reason 5 of why the New Liturgy is superior to the pre-conciliar rite: Because of its centrality in conforming us to Christ, the Liturgy must be a clear and unambiguous witness of our Trinitarian and Incarnational faith

Let’s begin with “What is the Mass?”  And let’s go back to the old Baltimore Catechism so beloved of the krazies who want to bring back the old Mass and everything with it.  the Catechism says

The Mass is the sacrifice of the New Law in which Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to God in an unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and wine. 

This actually isn’t a bad answer.  At least as a beginning.  The trouble with the Catechism, however—and the theological framework which produced it—is that it takes the sacraments in isolation and does not see the relationship between them.  The key sacrament of the Catholic Church is not the Eucharist but Baptism and the Eucharist can only be understood in the light of what happens at Baptism

Now for Baptism I am not going to go back to the Catechism because the Catechism reflects the problem created when Scholastic Theology—based on Aristotelian logic—replaced the ancient Patristic theological tradition in which the Fathers of the Church rooted themselves.  The Fathers of the Church drew on scriptures and interpreted them in the light of neo-Platonic thought which was not so much rational as mystical.  The Fathers saw our earthly rites as having spiritual or heavenly meanings.  They were big into symbolism while the Scholastics liked a certain literalism.  The Scholastics got a bit carried away with the idea that Baptism is about “washing away” original sin.  The Fathers of the Church, drawing on Saint Paul, had seen Baptism as entering into death with Christ and being raised with him to newness of life. 

Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.

The earthly rite of entering into the waters of baptism and emerging from them are symbolic of being buried with Christ and being raised with him.  It had nothing to do with original sin.

The idea of original sin is in the Fathers of the Church, Saint Augustine in particular, but it is found only in the Fathers of the Western Church and is rooted, in great part, in a misunderstanding by Saint Augustine of Saint Paul’s famous line

Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned

Augustine had mistranslated this passage to read

Therefore, just as through one man (Adam) sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death came to all because one man (Adam) had sinned.

As the Western Church began more and more to emphasize original sin in the central Middle Ages (800-1100) it also forgot the Patristic theology that Baptism is about dying and rising with Christ.  When the Scholastics came along in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, they saw the water being poured and thought: “Washing, we are purifying the person of original sin. Scrub! Scrub!  Scrub!  Out, out, damned Spot.” 

The Eastern Church kept the practice of immersion baptism and so the visual symbol of dying and rising in Christ was strong, while the sacramental minimalism of the Western Church permitted baptism to be reduced to a sprinkling or pouring and the sign became purification rather than dying and rising.  This is one reason why it is so important to restore immersion as the normal form of baptism.  But I don’t want to wander far away from the topic of the Mass, so let me refocus.

In the first centuries of the Church, the practice was that only the baptized faithful could be present for the Eucharist.  The unbaptized, including the catechumens, were dismissed at the end of the sermon.  Thus the first time Christians were present at the Eucharist was on the night of their baptism.  They had just been through this profound rite of being led down into a pool of water where they were submerged three times—in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  They had died in Christ and were then led up out of the pool and anointed with sweet oil as prayer invoking the Holy Spirit were said over them by the bishop, and finally dressed in a new white garment.  Carrying a lighted candle or small oil lamp they were then brought into the Church where they heard the Bishop invoke God to send that same Holy Spirit which had been called down upon them to now come down upon the gifts of bread and wine so that the bread and wine too could be transformed into Christ. 

They had died to selves and been raised in Christ; now they were to be fed with bread and wine that had been transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.  There is an intimate contact between Baptism and Eucharist.  Every Eucharist is a renewal of the Baptismal commitment:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ Jesus who lives in me!

And so too for us.  We are nourished by the Word of God in the Liturgy of the Word.  Then gifts that represent us—bread, “which human hands have made,” and wine, "the fruit of the vine and work of human hands”—are placed on the altar and the priest prays that the Holy Spirit will come upon these gifts to make them for us to be the Body and the Blood of Christ.  But the priest also prays that the Holy Spirit will come upon us and make us One in Christ, that is unite us in the Body of Christ which is the Church.  Thus the Eucharist renews our Baptismal Vocation to be transformed into Christ by being joined with him in his death and raised as a member of his resurrected Body the Church.   

Now, why didn’t Sister Mater Dolorosa teach us this back in the fifth grade at Saint Sophronia’s Academy for the Pour Souls?  In great part it was because over centuries of deformation the Roman Rite had obscured its own rich heritage.  Perhaps the greatest flaw in the so-called Extraordinary Form is the lack of a proper epiclesis in the Canon of the Mass.  The epiclesis is the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.  This is not a minor prayer.  In the Eastern tradition—including the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church—it is considered the consecration proper, the same role played by the Words of Institution in the Western Church.  It is essential for validity—or would be, if only we hadn’t lost it in the Western Church.  Thank heavens for economia which is the theological principle that permits the Church to jump the theological gaps between theory and practice.  The equivalent prayer in the “Roman Canon” used exclusively in the Extraordinary Form reads:

Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

See, no mention of the Holy Spirit though still the petition that the gifts will become the Body and Blood of Christ through God’s action (as differentiated from the “power” of the priest celebrant.)

The prayer invoking the Holy Spirit upon us to make us one in Christ’s Body is even more ambivalent with, again, no mention of the Holy Spirit and no explicit mention of us being united in the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, only that we may be filled with every grace and blessing. 

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son,may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

In the Mass, then we are intimately joined to the sacrifice of Christ where we renew our commitment to be crucified with Christ into death and be rasied no longer alive to self but alive in Christ Jesus as a member of his Risen Body.  While such grace is operative in the Liturgy regardless of the rite in which it is celebrated, in the so-called “Traditional Mass” it has been obscured by rituals that imply that the sacrifice is Christ being offered for us by the priest rather than directly involving ourselves—by grace, not our own efforts—in dying and rising with Christ.  Nor is it clear in the “Traditional Rite” that we ourselves are to be transformed into Christ.  We are passive recipients rather than active participants of grace. 

It is ironic that Luther was so opposed to this theology of the Sacrifice of the Mass because the Traditional Mass really reflects his anthropology.  For Luther, the human person was was sinful to the core—“a pile of shit” is how Luther described him.  Grace does not change that but rather like the snow that covers the “pile of shit” covers the flaw from God’s eye.   Man is still worthless, but Grace bridges the gap with God.  Our Catholic understanding begins in the same place.  We are—and this is for all your fans of original sin out there—that same pile of shit.  But grace transforms us—makes us, as it were, into manure: something good  and life-giving.  In fact, the Eucharist takes us sinful people and transforms us into something far greater than manure but into Christ himself.  

Let the Little Children Come to Me ...

The diocese of Madison Wisconsin—no bastion of liberal Catholicism with its very conservative bishop, Robert Morlino—recently announced a policy welcoming the children of same-sex unions for baptism.  Two months ago there was the baptism of the daughter of a lesbian couple baptized in Cordobá Argentina in which the local Archbishop claimed that baptism “was the right of every child.”  In fact, in most parishes in the United States same-sex couples are very welcome and there would be no questioning having their children baptized, but it has set off a firestorm among the neo-trads who see that baptizing the child is an unofficial sanction of the union of the parents.  

What should we do if a single parent were to bring his or her child for baptism?  What would we do if an unmarried heterosexual couple presented a child for baptism?  What would we do if the heterosexual couple married outside the Church came to have their child baptized?  In each of these cases I presume the priest or deacon would privately address the home situation and suggest solutions to the problematic relationships that would bring everyone into accord with Catholic doctrine and practice, but at the end of the day, I have no doubt that the child would be baptized and the parents treated with respect.  The suggestion that we should treat differently the child of a same-sex couple only demonstrates that the objection is not theological but gender-biased. 

I am writing this on Monday though it won’t be published until tomorrow.  The gospel this morning warned us not to judge lest we be judged and it reminded us that until we remove the wooden beam from our own eye, we cannot see clearly enough to remove the splinter from another’s eye.  This sort of self-righteous Catholicism that some neo-trads advocate is just so out of step with the words of Christ in the Gospel.  I have no doubt that we are called to challenge one another to ever greater holiness, but I have no desire to return to the Church of the super-holy, especially when it is spiritual pride that masquerades as true holiness.  

OK , So Is Mitt a Christian?

The Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of 

Later Day Saints in Salt Lake City

Is Mitt Romney a Christian?  This question seems to capture the attention of a lot of people right now.  First, let me say that as a Catholic who remembers John Kennedy’s presidential campaign when his Catholic faith was an issue, I support the United State’s Constitution that provides there shall be no religious test for office.  I am interested in a person’s values—very interested—but not their formal religious affiliation.  But that isn’t the point I want to deal with in today’s posting.  I want to look at the question of whether the Mormon faith is a genuine Christian denomination or not.  
     First of all the problem is the word “Christian.”  We use it in very ambiguous ways.  “She is such a Christian” generally means “She is such a good person.”  It particularly refers to people who are kind and generous, as if one had to be a disciple of Jesus to be kind and generous.  I wish all of Jesus’ disciples measured up to this standard.  I know more than a few, and even some who wear those funny black and white “dog collars” around their necks, that would fail the “Christian” litmus test if Christian genuinely meant nice and kind.  In fact, sometimes the more religious a person is the less Christian he or she seems to be.  As one old priest from Poland who is a friend of mine confided to me, his frequent prayer is “From the daily communicant, libera nos, Domine!”    
      A second sense in which one can use the word “Christian”—and this one with some legitimacy—is a person who embraces the ethical teachings of Jesus as outlined in the Gospels.  One may accept Jesus as a great moral teacher without espousing his Divinity or even the uniqueness of the Revelation he imparts to humankind in his teachings as the New Testament records them.  By this standard, Thomas Jefferson and many of our Founding Fathers (and I suppose Mothers) would qualify as Christian as would Quakers, most Unitarians, and many good souls who have no formal religious affiliation with a particular denomination that claims to be “Christian.”  Few of our the founders of our nation were Christians in the stricter use of the term.  Charles Carroll, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, was one of the few leaders of the new nation who actually was a practicing Christian. 
     A third sense of the word “Christian” would be a person who does have formal membership in a religious group that claims for itself to be a “Christian” Church or denomination.  Now claiming to be Christian doesn’t make a person or collective group of people Christian anymore than claiming that bag you’re selling on a street corner for 25 dollars is a genuine Versace makes that knockoff a genuine Versace.  But there is a social convention by which we generally don’t call each other out in public about such claims.  Nevertheless, while we may be polite and choose not to challenge the authentic Christian beliefs of one another, that doesn’t mean that we accept the authenticity of Christian faith in each other.   A particular point is the issue of valid baptism.  Some groups that claim to be Christian, groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, baptize “in the name of Jesus” as opposed to baptizing “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  The Catholic Church insists that the Trinitarian formula is necessary for valid baptism according to Matthew 28:19.  (There are scripture passages which would seem to validate baptism in the “Name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 2:38; 10:48;19:5, but the Catholic Church and most other Christian denominations reject this formula as insufficient based on historical usage and the centrality of the Doctrine of the Trinity to Christian Orthodoxy.)   While we might say that a particular Jehovah’s Witness is “such a fine Christian” in the sense that he or she is a very nice person, or we might even see how their reading the Gospels has endowed them with a set of good Christian values, we would not consider Jehovah Witnesses to be Christian in the sense of belonging to a community of baptized disciples. 
     A fourth sense of the word “Christian,” very close to the last mentioned definition but still different from it, is public affiliation to one of the Churches or religious communities that stands by Christian Faith and Doctrine  as taught by the Apostles and historically defined by the first seven Councils of an undivided Christian Church.  This faith is generally seen as that proclaimed in the three historic creeds: the Apostle’s Creed, the Creed of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople I, and the Athanasian Creed or Quicumque Vult.  A Christian in this sense accepts the doctrine that there is one God in three Divine Persons, each Person possessing the fullness of the Divine Nature yet being not three Divine Beings but only One.  Such a person, to be a Christian also must accept that Jesus Christ is truly God as is the Father (and the Holy Spirit) and is truly human as are we.  In the one Person of Jesus Christ there are two natures, one Divine and one Human, the natures are joined but not mixed and while each nature is and remains distinct, what can be attributed to each nature can also be said of the other.  All this sounds very complicated but that is because we always try to explain that which transcends our experience and thus is inexplicable.  Sometimes I think we should simply let Mystery be Mystery and not try to unpack Grace.  
      How do Mormons fit into this scheme?  Mormons use the Trinitarian formula for baptism (and until I had done research for this posting, I had thought they baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus), but most “mainline” Christian theologians and denominations—Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist—have looked at Mormon theology and decided that while Mormons talk about the Trinity they have a very different understanding of the Divine Nature, that is of “God,” than historic Christianity.  In other words, while they use the same words (God, Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) they mean something quite different by those words.  That would mean not only that their faith is substantially different from Christian faith but that their baptism, while using the same words and outward signs (immersion in water), means something very different than as understood by historic Christianity.  For this reason the Catholic Church as well as most other Christian denominations require that Mormons be baptized when joining the Church.  A Presbyterian or a Lutheran, for example, would be “received” into the Catholic Church without repeating baptism.  Baptism in the Catholic theology is an unrepeatable act.  If validly baptized once, you are never baptized again.  But a Mormon becoming a Catholic would have to be baptized as his Mormon “baptism” would be regarded as invalid as the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” in which he or she had been baptized as a Mormon is not the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” of our historic Christian faith which is shared by the Orthodox Churches of the East and the majority of Anglican and Protestant Churches (or ecclesial communities) of the West.   Also, because the Mormon understanding of the Divine Nature is, or at least appears to us to be, so radically different than that espoused by historic orthodox Christianity, their understanding of Jesus Christ—in whom the Divine and Human natures are united (though not mixed)—is radically different from that proclaimed historically by the Christian faith.  Thus Catholics would not recognize Mormons doctrinally as Christians. 
      So it all seems to boil down to Are Mormons Christians?  Yes, in the sense that as many (indeed most) Mormons are really fine people many (indeed most) Mormons  are Christians in that broad colloquial sense.  Yes, also, in the sense that most Mormons lead lives shaped by the moral teachings of Jesus.  In this they are as Christian as Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or most of our Founding Fathers who thought Jesus was this really wise and ethical teacher.  Actually even more so for while they understand the Divinity of Christ, and indeed divinity, differently than historic Christianity, Mormons do believe that in their sense of being Divine, Jesus fit the bill.  They do not think of him merely as some enlightened human teacher.  But No, from the Catholic understanding of Christian Faith and Sacraments, Mormons are not Christians in the sense of professing authentic Christian doctrine and no they are not Christian in the sense of being in the community of the baptized.  Frankly, when it comes to being President of the United States, I won’t hold anyone to a test of religious beliefs, but the only sense in which I would prefer a Christian over a non-Christian is that second sense—a man or woman whose life and values are shaped by the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel.  When it comes to Christians in public life, I am much more interested in orthopraxis than orthodoxis.   And in that sense, Mitt is the only fellow (or fellowette) currently  in the Republican field that I would vote for.