Need For Sacred Space V

In my previous teaching position I was asked to give an annual workshop to members of a religious community of men on liturgical preparation.  I have an extensive knowledge of the history of the Roman Rite both from a textual and an archeological perspective.  In addition to my doctorate in History, I have a graduate degree (Master’s) in Theology.  And—and this was probably the most significant reason I was asked to do this—I have long personal experience (50 years+) of involvement in preparing liturgical celebrations.

You will notice that I say “preparation” of the Liturgy and not “planning” the liturgy. The Church has already “planned” the Liturgy.  The basic elements are there already in the liturgical books.  There is a somewhat restricted freedom, sometimes way too restricted, on choosing readings.  The prayers are already, for the most part, composed.  Back in the wild and wooly seventies things were different but those days are gone—for better and for worse—and the basic format of our communal worship is set.  What remains are choices of appropriate music, environment, exercising certain options contained in the ritual books, choosing the various ministers to serve, integrating other rites (baptism, matrimony, unction, the scrutinies, installation of ministries, etc.) into the Liturgy, and other choices that are left to particular congregations and particular occasions.

I always told the participants in these workshops that there were four principles for which we should strive and these are the four in order of importance:

1.   Theological integrity: does the choice you are making adequately reflect the faith of the Church (as opposed to private devotion or personal taste).  This principle is absolutely non-negotiable: we must not symbolize something that is foreign to the faith of the Church.

2.   Historical precedent: does the choice we are making have a historical precedent—is there a historical justification for what we are doing and the way in which we are doing it?  This principle is strong, but there is some “wiggle room”—it is not our faith to be locked into the past.

3.   Pastoral usefulness: does the choice we are making serve the pastoral needs of those who will be in the worshipping assembly.  The Liturgy is a ministry and should be celebrated in such a way as to minister Word and Sacrament in the fashion most useful to serve the needs of the faithful. 

4.   Aesthetically pleasing.  Our worship should reflect “the beauty of Holiness.”  There should be a natural beauty and gracefulness to our communal worship.

The biggest problem that I have encountered with liturgical preparation—whether from the neo-trads all across the spectrum to the loony lefties is that they jump to (what they consider to be) the aesthetically pleasing or emotionally satisfying with little or no appreciation for the other three, and especially the first, principle.  (Of course those on the extreme left and those on the extreme right have very different ideas of what constitutes “beauty.”)  Whether it is festooning lace all over the altar (or the priest at the altar) or hanging immense felt banners from the rafters could we just back off from our anxiety to create a liturgical celebration that enshrines our particular fantasies and focus on the faith of the Church?

Of course one problem there is is that we don’t all have the same understanding of the Church’s faith when it comes to the Mass and Sacraments.  This troubles me immensely.  This is precisely the fight over the Novus Ordo vs the Tridentine Liturgy.  There are two distinct theologies of the Eucharist, each legitimized by the approved rite itself, and they are not always compatible.  I think the various permissions given over the years for the continuation of the pre-Conciliar Liturgy is a disastrous mistake as it legitimizes two distinct and sometimes contradictory theologies, but as long as the Extraordinary Form continues to enjoy a legitimacy I think we need to acknowledge the existence of two “official” theologies of the Mass.  At the same time I think we need to be careful to understand each but not to mix them.    Any sort of hybrid Liturgy or theology of the Eucharist would turn out to be a bastardization of both.  But I am heading off on a tangent here and want to return to my main point that we need to make sure that our Liturgies—and the churches in which we celebrate them—adequately reflect the faith of the Church.  In those churches where the Novus Ordo is celebrated, we must take care to make sure that the building itself reflects the ecclesiology contained in the 1970 rites. 

1.   By Baptism we are a priestly, prophetic, and royal people and we all (and each) have a distinctive role in the Liturgical Celebration

2.   That the Liturgy is an ecclesial action and thus a communal action

3.   That we are called to take a full, active, and conscious participation in the Liturgy.

4.   That in the Eucharist we become present to and actively participate in Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross.

5.   That in the Eucharist we are called to offer ourselves in union with Christ whose Body we are in the sacrifice of obedience to the Will of God

6.   there is a distinction in roles between the ordained and the community of the faithful but all are essential to the celebration of the sacrificial banquet of the Eucharist. 

7.   That the faithful rightfully exercise both “full, active, and conscious participation in the liturgy” as well as their  particular ministries in the Liturgy by the authority of their baptism 

8.   That Christ is truly present, albeit in different modes, in both Word and Sacrament as well as in the assembly gathered and sacramentally in the priest. 

9.   That the Word of God is an essential element of our worship

10.        That the Liturgy is the solemn action of the Church  and not the possession of any individual, priest or lay, or any group or faction.

Popes Can't Afford To Be Tone-Deaf

According to news sources, the Holy See is instructing bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that ultimately victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police.  The document, produced by the Pontifical Council for the Family, advises bishops that while they must be aware of local laws that require allegations to be reported to civil authorities, as far as the Holy See is concerned the only duty of the bishop is to deal with the matter internally. 

Now, despite the impression the news agencies are giving, the Vatican isn’t telling the bishops that they can break the civil law in those places where it is required for social workers, teachers, and other authorities to report abuse cases. And I can understand the dilemma of a bishop who becomes aware of an allegation against a member of the clergy or a Church employee but also is confronted with a victim or a victim’s family that is reluctant for the matter to be made public.  But the directive obviously shows that some people in Rome are still tone-deaf to the crisis of credibility that is facing the institutional Church. 

And, of course, this story follows up on the the suspension of clerical sex-abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.  Saunders was “voted off the island” by an all but unanimous vote of his fellow commission members.  (There were sixteen votes against, one abstention, none for Saunders.)  Now, again, this was not an executive decision from above but a decision by peers.  And we have all served on committees where one member keeps gluing up the works with his or her own agenda.  But again, however justified the commission members might be, it is a matter of tone-deafness that brings considerable scandal on the Church and undermines our credibility. 

And now we have the president of a Catholic University, fortunately in this instance a layman and not a priest, comparing under-performing students to “bunnies” who “should be drowned.”  Boy, where in the Gospel do you get that????    I realize that good academic management requires weeding out those who will not succeed so that more viable candidates can take their space—but again, how does the murdered bunnies image play in Peoria?

Why is the Catholic Church on a suicide mission?  If there is a failure in regard to implementing the mandate of the Second Vatican Council for the Church to take its place on the modern world, it is this: the presupposition that we, as Church, are not accountable to the larger human community among whom live and work.  How can we be that “light of revelation to the nations” if we maintain that we are somehow exempt from the standards of behavior we ourselves set with our Christian ideals? 

And I must admit that as much as I admire Pope Francis he too seems at times to have become bogged down in protecting the institution rather than witnessing to the integrity of the Gospel.    The Pope’s appointment and defense of Juan Barros Madrid as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite Barros’ ties to notorious priest-abuser Fernando Karadima, is another case of Rome being tone-deaf.  Barros’ installation in his cathedral church turned into a huge fracas as the vast majority of the faithful made their rejection of their bishop public.  Moreover, the vast majority of his brother bishops in Chile, including the two Chilean Cardinals, refused to attend the installation, signifying that few, if any, supported the Pope’s appointee.  Francis allegedly referred to those who opposed Bishop Barros Madrid’s appointment as “lefties” and “dumb.”  Holy Father, we know you can’t carry a tune in a basket, but get to a hearing-specialist and get your ear canals cleaned out.  We can’t afford to have a tone-deaf Pontiff sitting on the chair of Peter. 

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that hearing confessions desensitizes the clergy to the evil of certain sins.  This isn’t just a Catholic problem.  I suspect that many Protestant clergy  and rabbis after years of pastoral counseling ministry, also become somewhat immune to the impact of evil.  The problem is that most of the evil encountered in confession or counseling is done by basically good people. Bad people—and there some—generally don’t come to see the priest or rabbi.   Most people sin to, in some way or other, escape the pain they feel in life.  (Pardon the split infinitive in the above sentence; I too am a sinner.)  The husband who finds himself continually rejected by his wife (or the wife, by her husband), turns to an illicit relationship. This is not right but the sin is most often the result of the pain and anger of rejection.  Beneath the abuse of alcohol or drugs is often a huge amount of psychological pain.  And when it comes to physical or emotional or sexual abuse: how many abusers have themselves been the victims of abuse?  None of this justifies the evil we choose,  but the priest or minister, becoming aware of the complexity of people’s lives, puts sin in a context that not only involves judgment but compassion.  In pastoral care that is most probably a good thing.  But it can’t leave us, as a Church, in a world of moral ambiguity.  It is a difficult balance to achieve, especially without risking the sin of phariseeism ourselves, but we need to find it.   Our integrity as a Church demands that while we deal compassionately with sinners we keep true to the moral compass of the Gospels. 

Perhaps the problem is, at least in part, that the bishops and clergy have no idea that they are in any way accountable to us, the People of God.  We are still an overly hierarchic Church rather than a true community of the faithful.  There are still too many working on the pyramid model of Church where the Pope is over the bishops, the bishops over the clergy, and the clergy over the people.  In this model, communication is one way—top down and the role of the laity is still perceived to be “to pay, pray, and obey.”  And need I say that for many of us, those days are over. 

We need to develop an ecclesiology in which we—and I mean all of us, not just the laity—see ourselves  not in a hierarchic pyramid but in a communal model of concentric circles with the bishop at the center, the clergy around the bishop, the faithful around the clergy.  In the same way the larger perspective is viewed with the Bishop and Church of Rome at the center surrounded by the communion of local Churches with their bishops at their center.  This model of Church is far from new and was the predominant ecclesiology in the patristic period from the second century through the thirteenth. 

To a certain extent we have already begun to move towards this model of Church.  The decrees of the Second Vatican Council, particularly Lumen Gentium (the dogmatic Constitution on the Church) and Christus Dominus (the Decree on the Bishops), and to a lesser extent in Apostolicam Actuositatem (On the Apostolate of the Laity), actually lay out this theology.  Unfortunately, as we all know, John Paul II didn’t much care for this model and pretty much smothered it in its post-Paul VI cradle.  Francis has given us hope of reviving it, but the above-mentioned actions on the part of the Holy See show not only some back-pedaling but even the Pope’s failure to see the implications of his actions.  Hopefully his remarks about “lefties” and “dumb” is only another case of a live-mike picking up an indiscreet comment from a world leader, but it is still troubling that the Pope doesn’t see the profound theological issue when not only the faithful but the regional episcopate reject a candidate for bishop. 

Today’s adults are not going to continue to belong to an organization—even a Church—that doesn’t take them seriously.  I am not advocating a democratic Church but one in which there is genuine communication so that those whose ministry it is to speak the faith of the Church know what is in the mind and the hearts of the Church’s members.  The consensus fidelium needs to be restored as an essential part of the dynamic of the Church’s teaching and governing mission. 

A Tea Party in the Catholic Church

Pope Francis celebrates Mass 

in Philadelphia 

Interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the power of Tea Party Republicans and how through the gerrymandering of districts and the rise of a right-wing sophisticated media network they have been able not only to have achieved a powerful political machine disproportionate to their actual numbers but now actually be in a position to restructure the rules of the House of Representatives to crush opposition from both the moderate wing of their own party as well as from the Democrats.  In other words, a movement which represents the views of only between ten and fifteen percent of the American People will be able to set the course of Government for the entire nation.  History as seen this sort of thing before whether it was the coup that put the Jacobins in power during the French Revolution, the Leninist establishment of the Soviet Republic in 1917, or the rise of National Socialism in 1933 Germany.  It does not bode well for democracy when small factions can dis-integrate the balance of power.  

But this blog is not about political power struggles.  I only use this example to point out some disturbing glances behind the scenes of the visit of Pope Francis to the United States last month.  It was, in most respects, a great visit but there were some disturbing glimpses in the shadow Catholic world behind the official church.  The Liturgies, at least in New York and Philadelphia (I wasn’t able to see the Washington one) were more the sort of the liturgies with which Pope Benedict would have been comfortable.  They were beautifully done but there was a sense of pomp, even triumphalism, that seemed out of step with Francis’s style and a return to the semi-Tridentine preferences of Pope Benedict.  The music, though magnificent, was somewhat consistently “old school” without integrating so much of the contemporary music, and good contemporary music,  the Catholic Church in America is producing.  Dr. Jennifer Pascual who is the director of music at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and Father Matthew Ernest who is Director of Liturgy for the New York Archdiocese are both deep into the Reform of the Reform model of liturgy that briefly flourished during Benedict’s reign but to which some still cling in hopes of a overturn of the more pastoral liturgical style that has emerged in most parishes in the years since Vatican II.  John Romeri, former Director of Music for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia actually resigned his post last summer because he and Archbishop Chaput simply could not come to a meeting of the minds about the public liturgies of the Archdiocese.  Archbishop Chaput, while a doctrinal conservative, prefers a more simple style of liturgical celebration over Romeri’s insistence on a very “high Church” approach to liturgy.  Dr. Romeri stayed on the planning committee for the Philadelphia Papal Mass and it showed.  It was beautiful but it didn’t speak Pope Francis and it didn’t speak the Catholic Church in the United States. 

There are many places where Reform of the Reform Directors of Music and/or Liturgy have installed themselves to create an opposition, and even an obstruction, to the simpler liturgical styles favored by the Vatican II and post-Conciliar generation of Catholic clergy and laity.  Now, I think a certain spectrum of High-Church/Broad-Church/Low-Church varieties in style is a good idea as it gives Catholics a choice of worship to fit their own spiritualities, but we have to be careful of tying legitimate variations to some sort of self-established orthodoxy or “authentic” Catholicism that sees other expressions as somehow less Catholic. 

I was happy to see the seminarians at Saint Charles give the pope such a welcome.  They sang a song of welcome that seemed to have been composed for the occasion as it mentioned Francis by name (Lord, grant health to our Holy Father, Francis…  I translate salvum fac as “grant health” though it could also be translated as “grant safety” or “grant salvation.”).  Now since the Pope is not particularly comfortable in English, maybe Latin makes some sense here, but again, I wonder.  I like Latin.  I like using some Latin music in the liturgy on occasion.  I particularly like the In Paradisium, the (Lloyd Weber)Pie Jesu, the Mozart Ave Verum Corpus.  I like the Missa de Angelis.  But if the Pope isn’t at home in English, why Latin?  Why not Spanish?  Small point, maybe I am attaching too much significance to it, but it just seemed a bit 1950’s.  And the cassocks.  The cassock, a bit like the biretta, is really a party-badge these days.  I am certainly not opposed to religious wearing their habits—in fact I would rather see religious in their habits than in clerical dress, but where secular priests used to wear cassocks nowadays, they wear black suits with a clerical collar.  Most priests I know don’t even own a cassock.  But I understand that in a variety of seminaries these days students are required to wear the cassock, at least for certain functions or on certain days.  And of course the inestimable Father Z was so generous as hit up his public to purchase birettas for the seminarians of his new diocese of Madison Wisconsin.  Talk about a loony bin of clericalism.  And far more serious, as I have mentioned in previous postings, large number of seminarians in such seminaries as Immaculate Conception at Seton Hall, Mount Saint Mary’s in Emmitsburg and even the North America College are openly contemptuous of Pope Francis and where he is leading the Church.  Feedback from Theological College at Catholic University, Saint Patrick’s Menlo Park, and the Dominican House of Studies in DC suggests an undercurrent of dissent in those seminaries as well.

All of this is just an indication that as in the Republican party, so also in the Catholic Church in the United States, there is a small faction preparing to steer the Church in a different direction than the majority of Catholics would choose.   There is no doubt that a restorationist vision is shared by a majority of younger priests and certainly of seminarians.  The clergy of 2030 will be significantly different in their ecclesiology and liturgical styles than the clergy of the past forty years.  This will only accelerate the number of America Catholics either falling away from the practice of the faith entirely or adding to the already swelling numbers going to other Christian denominations.  Groups such as the Latin Mass Society that favor a restoration of the preconciliar rites as the norm, or we might say making the extraordinary form the ordinary form, will be content as we slide away from the heady enthusiasms of the Second Vatican Council, but it bodes for a much smaller Church and not necessarily a “more faithful Church” but a Church that is closed in on itself and without mission except for self-preservation. 

While I think that overall the “Francis effect” is revitalizing the Church in the Southern hemisphere and even, to an extent, in Europe, unless there is some drastic changes in leadership now, the American Church of 2030 will find itself very idiosyncratic and isolated, a bit like some of the Orthodox Churches like the Church of Greece, that have closed in on themselves and pretty much even shoved the remainder of the Orthodox world away.  

The Problem With Francis; The Problem For Francis A Matter of Perspective

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.

Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today.

Thus opens Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World issued by the Council Fathers of Vatican II and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.  The Church addresses itself not only to its own members, or even to all Christians, but to the entre human family and it does so in a dialogic manner.  The Church has picked up not only on our spiritual needs but on “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted.” The Church here approaches the world with a very different tone and a revised set of priorities than had been used at Vatican I or Trent or even in much of the papal magisterium of the previous centuries.  I say “much” because the amazing encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891) and Quadrigesimo Anno of Pius XI (1931) had made brave sallies into the practical world of everyday concerns regarding the rights of Labor and a just ordering of society, putting aside for the moment the more ethereal concerns of the what some might call the “purely spiritual.”  Even these encyclicals, however, were delivered in a magisterial tone where the respective popes intended to “set things right” by decree.  Gaudium et Spes took an entirely different approach, inviting the world beyond the Church to enter into a dialogue by which both the world and the Church can be enriched by a common exploration for the Truth.  Actually both tone and matter of Gaudium et Spes was to some degree anticipated in the Encyclicals of John XIII, namely Pacem in Terris and Mater et Magistra.

The entire tone of the Second Vatican Council was one of dialogue.  Nostra Aetate calls us into dialogue with non-Christian Religions. Unitatis Reintegratio establishes dialogue among the various branches of the Christian family.  Sacrocanctum Concilium calls for the various differing cultures of our human family to be integrated into our Roman Rite as a way of expanding our awareness of the broad diversity of cultures within our Catholic faith.  Christus Dominus calls for the Pope to act collegially and dialogically with his brother bishops in leading the Church.  Often our vision is so locked on the “trees”—the individual changes of Vatican II—that we fail to see the “forest”—the fundamentally different ecology of the Post-Vatican II Church. 

Unfortunately there was an attempt during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to soothe the nerves of those for whom this fundamental shift in the Church’s self-understanding was overwhelmingly threatening.  This shift led to what was called “the hermeneutic of continuity,” an attempt to blunt the Council Father’s vision but reinterpreting it in a more narrow context.  Certainly there is great continuity in the Church throughout its history and it has not been broken by the Second Vatican Council.  The immutable and eternal Truths of the Creed remain intact.  The basic nature of the Mass as a Sacrificial Banquet in which we are made present to and participant in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord remains.   The Pope is still infallible—in fact, under John Paul and with the articulation of Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) there was even an extension of infallibility into the ordinary magisterium.  John Paul and Benedict often “talked the talk” of collegiality and dialogue, they fairly rarely “walked the walk.” There was a strong recentralization of authority in the Roman Curia with the consequent demission of the authority of the bishops, both collegially and individually.  The Ecumenical and Inter-religious dialogues have all but imploded.  The Liturgy, especially under Benedict, was returned to a European expression of faith.

All this is a bit of a background to Pope Francis and in particular to his visit to the United States.  It is becoming undeniably clear that there are two Churches in the United States. There is a majority Church which not only accepts the Council but is enthusiastic about the dialogical approach.  They want discussion about the issues of the day: climate change, immigration, income inequality, the death penalty.  They want a Church is that more inclusive and where there is honest dialogue between those of differing opinions.  They understand the moral underpinnings of the great social and economic challenges that face our nation and our world.  On the other hand there are those who want to go back to the Church of Gregory XVI (reigned 1831-1846) whose monastic background left him frightened, defensive, and condemnatory of the world around him.  (This was the Pope who condemned gas lighting and railways which he saw as dangerous innovations that threatened the existing social order by promoting the bourgeois class.)  These Catholics want the Church to retain its authoritative tone and to limit is voice to those issues which they perceive to belong to the “spiritual realm.”  Needless to say, they perceive Pope Francis’ speeches and actions during his American visit to threaten their entire understanding of the Church and its mission. 

Ultimately what is at stake from a theological perspective is our understanding of the Incarnation.  What does it mean for God to have become human in Christ Jesus?  An orthodox perspective sees that the Divine has entered directly into our human experience.  As such God has taken on himself the concerns of the human family as one of us.  There is nothing that does not fall under his reign or his benevolence—economics, politics, education, health, displacement of peoples from their homes, the protection of life at every stage—discipleship demands a response from us in this world and the Kingdom of God is seen as something that not only finds its realization in the eschaton but involves the transformation of this world by the grace of God. 

On the other hand, the attempts to limit the Church’s mission to the “purely spiritual” represent theologically a Nestorian position where God comes among us in human appearance but never truly embraces our humanity and makes it his own.  This scheme verges on Gnosticism in which the world is divided into the “sacred” and the “profane” and the Church’s only interest is with the “sacred.”  In such a scheme “salvation” is about the eternal reward of the soul in a post-apocalyptic heaven.   (The body gets to go along as a free ride in the Resurrection of the Dead, but the concern is the soul.)   This world and those who belong to it meet only judgment and destruction.  This scheme separates charity from justice, content that the poor and those on the margins of society receive the crumbs that fall from the tables of their betters.  The orthodox scheme realizes that without a determination for justice there is no true charity only condescension. 

The split between the two Churches in the United States grows stronger and stronger.  It isn’t a result of Vatican II, though I think Vatican II has to some extent crystalized it.   Years ago I approached the same issue from the perspective of the English Colonial Catholic Church and the Maryland Recusant Tradition as opposed to the European immigrant Church Tradition which challenged Colonial Catholicism in the early 19^th century and afterwards.  The conflict for the Church found its way into Vatican II.  There were many influences for reform and change, but there is no doubt that the universal Catholic Church was highly influenced at Vatican II by the distinctly American tradition as represented in the Decree on Religious Freedom and by a more communal and less hierarchical self-understanding.  To a notable extent the Universal Church was “Americanized” at the Council and the conflict continues today between those who want a monarchial and authoritarian Church and those whose vision is a more communal and dialogical Church.  In the end the Vatican II model will prevail both because its foundation was well laid at the Council and because the vast majority of Catholics worldwide have embraced it.  The question will be, how long can the two Churches co-exist in mutual recognition?