Grace or Infection: Making the New Mass Look Old

The New Liturgical Movement and
the New Old New Mass 

Not all of the Katholique Krazies (I know, the spelling keeps evolving—English is, after all, a living language unlike Old Church Slavonic or its Western equivalent) are careless in their appropriation of catholicitatis antiquae.  One of the better sites—an often serious academic investigation of liturgical history though directed towards a bat****crazy agenda—is “New Liturgical Movement.”  An intriguing assortment of scholars, professional and amateur, covering a wide range of topics from the Ambrosian Rite to Sacred Architecture regularly post meticulously researched articles aimed at stemming the tide of the Novus Ordo and restoring credibility to the usus antiquior.  I regularly read their postings—not because I agree with their agenda of Instaurare Omnia in Vanitate, but because, well because they are worth reading from a historical point of view.  The interpretation of historical data can be skewed towards their particular agenda, but the data itself is fascinating.  But I was a bit taken aback by a recent posting that implied that the “Ordinary Form” of the Liturgy is somehow in need of a strong infusion of spirituality as was found in the golden days of yore when the 1570 Rite was the ordinary rite and before we surrendered to all this vulgar tongue and even more vulgar guitars and more vulgar yet, women on the altar, and all the other abominations brought about by that detestable crypto-Freemason, Annibale Bugnini.  (By the way, I notice that New Liturgical Movement not only keeps women off the sanctuary but off their editorial board.  Hmmm,  that’s the problem you know: first the editorial board and then altar girls and who knows where it ends up.  The Church of England began its steady decline into post-modern Witchery when they started to let women serve on vestries.) 

In any event, I can’t quite figure out what the folks over at New Liturgical Movement mean by “spirituality” in this context. I used to teach courses in spirituality back in the day.  Admittedly it was the classic Catholic approach—monastic spirituality, John of the Cross, the devotio moderna,  17^th century French Spirituality—you know, the usual diet.  I think what they are speaking about is not spirituality proper, but piety.  There is a difference, one that unfortunately is not often covered in seminary classes leaving many priests to confuse the two.  Now, piety is not a bad thing; to the contrary.  But it is not spirituality.

I always over-simplified it to my students until they could get a sense of it for themselves from reading the texts, as: Spirituality marks the relationship of God with the person in which God takes the initiative and invites the person into relationship and sustains the person in that relationship by God’s grace.  Piety, which comes from the Latin pietas, meaning our duty towards our deities, our parents, our mentors and others who have guided us through our formative years or who otherwise have a claim over us, piety marks the relationship of the person to God in which the person, inspired by grace, takes the initiative and seeks a deeper relationship to God.   Though I never used this image in class, it is somewhat like who does the leading when we dance.  Now piety is often the foundation on which God builds the relationship we call spirituality, though piety can easily become short-circuited and engender religious feelings without the genuine sort of conversion God works in us through spirituality. 

So back to the New Liturgical Movement and its suggestions how to infuse the New Liturgy with Old Time “Spirituality.”  Some of my favorite suggestions are:

1.   Wear the maniple and biretta, and the cope for processions or the Asperges/Vidi Aquam. 

2.   be sure to lower your gaze so not as to make eye contact with the people when greeting them with “the Lord be with you” and other liturgical greetings.

3.   Stand at the altar with your back towards the congregation, the ad absidem position. 

4.   Add all the old offertory prayers silently alongside the current rite (also to be done silently) as a “private devotion.” 

5.   Recite the Canon (Roman of course) is a “more subdued voice.”  A footnote suggests that it might even be said inaudibly 

6.   Bend noticeably over the host and chalice when reciting the Words of Consecration and recite them slowly and deliberately so as to give them “due metaphysical weight.”

7.   Omit the sign of peace which is, after all, optional (again, we don’t want too much intimacy with the folk—nothing destroys spirituality like other people)

8.   Hold one’s thumbs and forefingers together from the consecration to the ablutions

9.   Omit the prayer of the faithful whenever possible. 

10.                 Use only the Roman Canon, mentioning all of the saints and using the “through Christ our Lord conclusions. 

11.                 Say the prayer “Placeat tibi” or the Prologue of John’s Gospel (the “last gospel” of the TLM) as a “community devotion” at the end of Mass. 

While such practices may increase a certain piety in the liturgical celebrations, I am not sure, given the difference between piety and spirituality, how all this relates to “spirituality.” The article’s author, Professor Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College, claims

Since the usus antiquior preserves in a specially intense way the theology and piety of many centuries of faith, a judicious emulation or adoption from it of elements of holiness and “good form” will make a real difference in the devotion of the celebrant and the ensuing fruitfulness of the Mass.

I can’t disagree that the usus antiquior preserves the theology and piety of many centuries of faith, but that is no guarantee that it will bring about an increase of holiness for either the priest-celebrant or the faithful attending.  I have no doubt that the faithful attending a devoutly celebrated TLM can benefit from the graces thereof, but I have seen no convincing evidence that there is either a quantitative or qualitative superiority of the graces bestowed in one rite over the other. 

Certainly Professor Kwasniewski’s suggestions go back to the Liturgy as theatrical performance model as his suggestions push the faithful to the edge of irrelevance to the Rite, something that might inspire a certain sense of awe but which would not normally be taken to result in a deepening of spirituality.   That sense of awe or mystery, taken for itself alone, remains a subjective experience which is not to say it could not be a channel of grace but it remains only piety.  I think this is the problem when people have not studied Christian spirituality sufficiently well and they confuse feelings of aesthetic pleasure of spiritual experience.  As I have often said before, go and see the last scene of Act 1 of Tosca and you will be transported to the seventh heaven with incense and chierichetti and copes and ombralline galore.  I confess that the “New Mass” is too often poorly celebrated with ugly churches, overly chatty priests, servers that show little attention to their duties, music that is banal at best, and people who come late, leave early, and show precious little interest in what is going on at the altar.  I don’t go to those churches and I don’t know why other people do.  But I am old enough to remember fly-specked altar clothes, albs with ripped lace, altar-servers who kept nudging one another to make each other laugh, a old lady with a chipped larynx warbling the Missa de Angelis from the choir loft, and a priest with last night’s whiskey still on his breath.  I know now that the old rite is so rarely done, few priests are still quite so casual about it, but why does it now have to reduce the celebration of the Mysterium Fidei to something akin to Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo?  No, the Novus Ordo doesn’t need to look to the Usus Antiquior for guidance.  It just needs to be done with an incarnational mixture of human authenticity and divine gravitas.

Beyond Piety: More Reflections On An Evangelical Renewal of Religious Life

Today is the Feast of Saint John of the Cross.  Well, actually yesterday was his feast day but for Discalced Carmelites the Solemnity was transferred until today so as not to interfere with an Advent Sunday.  I say this because I spent a good chunk of the day with a community of Discalced Carmelite Nuns and it lets me pick up on the theme of the need for an evangelical renewal of Religious Life and in particular on where I left off: namely my observation that the pieties of the past are not enough to sustain Religious in a genuinely evangelical life and what is needed is a substantive spirituality.  I mentioned in the my previous posting that many Religious today are either spiritually and psychologically burned out for the lack of a proper formation in the past or, at the other end of the spectrum, are being formed in and for spiritually and psychologically unhealthy systems.  Both the dying communities of the pre-Conciliar Church and the unhealthy communities of what might be called the Conciliar Reaction have this in common: they feed their members spiritual pabulum that is sufficient for beginners in the spiritual life but they have not given them (the old groups) or do not give them (the new groups) the tools of an authentic spiritual life suited for self-realizing (that is to say self-realizing under grace) Christian discipleship. 

Some years ago I had in class a woman who had been a cloistered Dominican Nun for over twenty-five years.  In our conversation she told me that for those twenty-five years her spiritual life consisted in daily Mass, the Divine Office in choir, her participation in the monastery work of a perpetual rosary before the Blessed Sacrament (where she spent approximately 2 hours a day and said about ten rosaries.)  She was told that there was no need for mental prayer beyond that that could be accommodated by her obligatory rosaries and that there was no time for Lectio Divina.   In other words, her entire prayer life was active prayer, either liturgical or devotional.  She had matured more in the spiritual life, she told me, under a Cistercian Spiritual Director in the three years since leaving the monastery than she had in her 25 years inside the cloister.  And “if this is what happens to the green wood, what will happen to the dry?”

For many communities founded in the 19^th century a typical prayer life was Mass, the rosary, and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary along with assorted litanies and devotional prayers.  Sisters and Brothers and even priests were told that meditation or mental prayer was unnecessary and even that it was dangerous.  Many of the newer communities are little better.  The Little Office has been replaced by parts of the Divine Office but there is still either no training in mental prayer or inadequate time given to it.  People are encouraged in some communities to fill their meditation time with devotional prayers. 

Piety is a good thing but it is not spirituality. “Piety” comes from the Latin word pietas which means the duties that one has towards ones parents, mentors, elders, and God.  In the context of religion, piety is what we do, led by grace, for God. It is our taking responsibility (always by grace) for our relationship with God.  We initiate and sustain the relationship. Spirituality, on the other hand, is the relationship that God, in his grace, works in us.   God takes the initiative and sustains (with our response) the relationship.  In piety, we are the principal active agent; in spirituality God is the initiator.  It is the difference between active and receptive prayer.  For the heart that is bent on searching for God, whether a Religious or a priest or a lay person, piety, in and of itself, is a dead-end path.  Piety can lead one to genuine spirituality and indeed most great spiritual journeys begin in piety.  But they must mature and the soul must yield the reins of the spiritual life to God. 

Today watching the Carmelite nuns prayerfully sitting in their choir or going about their roles in the liturgy, or greeting their guests, or sharing their celebratory dinner with nuns from several other communities, I was struck by the grace—on both the natural and supernatural meanings of that word—with which they live.  There was nothing artificial about how they did things, nothing “nunny.”  A low note of celebration pervaded the prayer and a constant tone of prayer pervaded the celebration.  One could see a certain depth of meaning, an integration of all the diverse facets of life, that is too often missing in both the spiritual fuss-budgeting of some of the newer communities and the tired cynicism of the established groups.  

Making Moral Choices In A Mature Faith

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87) was a professor of developmental

Saint Maximilian Kolbe --

an example of the highest

level of moral decision

making. 

psychology at Harvard University who devised a scheme outlining six levels of moral development through which a human person can mature into ethical responsibility.  I was first exposed to his thought when as an undergraduate I was studying secondary education.  Even though I spent only one year as a High-School teacher (Latin, Religion, World History and Dean of Boys—a lot of experience crammed into three trimesters) getting a minor in secondary education was one of the best things I ever did as it has provided me with invaluable resources for all sorts of work I have done subsequently. 

Over the six decades or so since he first published his ideas on moral development, Kohlberg has come under a considerable amount of criticism.  Some of the criticism of his work is valid; some not.  I have found his basic outline of the stages of moral development to be extremely helpful, however, in understanding people and how they function in their particular ambience.  

To state this theory somewhat briefly, Kohlberg outlined three major levels of moral development—the “pre-conventional,” the “conventional,” and the “post-conventional.”  Each of these three is then broken down to two sub-levels.
Moral development, according to Kohlberg—who, incidentally, built his work on the educational psychological ideas of Jean Piaget—begins in the pre-conventional state with a fear of punishment.  A small child gets his first introduction to the idea of “wrong,” because he is punished for an act.  Perhaps the punishment is inherent in the act itself: he touches the stove and he gets burned.  Perhaps the punishment is inflicted by an authority figure: the says a “bad word” and he gets a slap on his hand or is scolded.  He learns that he should not touch the stove and he should not use that word again. 
The second level of the pre-conventional stage is that the child finds that acting in a certain way brings benefit to him.  This is a positive reinforcement.  As I am writing this, I am watching some friends with their puppy.  They just handed him a doggie treat because he behaved well.  (They also have a water-spray for when he behaves badly.)  In the same way, the child behaves quietly in Church and gets taken to breakfast.  The child says something sweet to the mother and gets a hug.  The child soon learns there is a “payoff” to good behavior.
This reward/punishment level of moral behavior is appropriate to children; there are adults in the Church who, at least in regards to our heavenly Father, still operate on this level.  If you do certain things God will punish you.  Your mother will become sick and die.  You will go to hell.   Or, on the other hand, certain behaviors will be rewarded.  I bring flowers to Our Lady’s Altar and Our Lady will present my prayer to her Son.  I say this prayer and I receive an indulgence.  There can be a component of this punishment/reward in our moral scheme as we mature, but it won’t override—if we mature—the higher levels of moral development. 
This pre-conventional level also corresponds to the lower levels of piety in the development of one’s spiritual life.  There are those for whom prayer and, in particular, penance, are “atonements” for their sins or the sins of others and meant to avoid punishment.  Their image of God is often of a Deity who has his arm raised in wrath against humankind and who is only being held back by the ever-powerful Virgin Mary.  Or, given that childish hope of reward perspective, they may have that sickeningly sweet Deity described by CS Lewis
We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see the young people enjoying themselves,” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all.”
This shallow theology is, I am afraid, too often the god of the post-Christian generation whose lack of spiritual and intellectual maturity have left them without any genuine moral compass.  Neither the person whose deity rules by fear nor one whose deity’s chief characteristic is blandness has much credibility except among those equally stunted in their moral and spiritual development.  
As we move into the conventional level of moral development we learn how to make our moral choices according to what is socially appropriate.  It is not socially appropriate to walk into church naked.  (I wish someone would point this out to many parishioners regarding how they come to Mass in the summer months, but maybe I am just too old fashioned.)  It is not appropriate to get drunk in public.  It is not appropriate to hit your sister.  It is appropriate to go to church weekly.  It is appropriate to do one’s homework.  It is appropriate to call your mother and let her know you will be out late and not to worry.   There are problems with this level as what is “appropriate” and what is “not appropriate” are often determined by cultural norms and not by moral principles.  In Papua New Guinea it is totally appropriate for women in traditional costume not to cover their breasts.  There are people who get upset when women thus costumed participate in the Mass during a Papal Visit. There are people who cannot distinguish the difference and whose ideas of “appropriate” and thus “moral” behavior are bound by their own cultural limitations. Bare breasts during Mass—except for feeding infants—would not be appropriate for a papal Mass in Saint Louis while at Port Moresby there is no rational objection.   It is not appropriate to go to Sunday Mass when it would require leaving a seriously ill person home unattended, but there are people who cannot make that moral distinction and thus become morally conflicted in situations that are really not that complex.  For a variety of reasons, this is not a satisfactory level at which to stay in one’s moral development. It is too dependent on “what others think” rather than an internal moral compass to guide us.   
The next stage of moral consciousness that Kohlberg presents, still in the “conventional level,” is the idea that moral choices reflect what is necessary for good social order.  The good is contained in the laws, and I must obey the law if this world in which we live is to work.  So if I don’t obey the stop-sign, what is to prevent others from not obeying the stop-sign and we will have traffic accidents all over the place.  Marriage is limited to having one partner at any one given time or there will be chaos.  (There are variations on this theme, such as marriage is between one man and one woman, but the social consensus on that question is rapidly breaking down.  There used to be social consensus that marriage is between one man and one women until one partner or the other dies, but that consensus disappeared in our culture about fifty years ago.)   I cannot steal your lawnmower because if it is ok that I do, then it would be ok for you to steal my snow-blower.  Laws are there to make sure that society runs smoothly. 
Now, this idea of obedience to the law as the fundamental principle of moral behavior is not necessarily limited to the civil law.  A religious Jew keeps all 613 commandments of the Law of Moses.  He (or she) does not mix dairy and red meat; does not eat shell-fish; does not plant two different crops in the same field or wear clothing made of two different fabrics.  Why?  Because it is the Law!  The priest washes the feet only of men on Holy Thursday, wears his clerical attire when in public, and says the Liturgy of the Hours every day.  Why? Because, it is the Law.  The Buddhist monk does not drink alcohol, eat after noon, or knowingly kill a spider.  Why?  Because it is the Law.  The Law is not bad, but neither does it necessarily have a connection to moral principles—even if it once did.  And there are those whose morality is based entirely on the Law.  I need to go to Mass on Sunday.  I can’t eat a cookie within an hour before receiving Holy Communion (and that really is not a tough law to keep).  I can’t use birth control.  I can’t masturbate.  I can’t commit adultery.  Why—because they against the Law (of God).  And it all becomes morally the same:  “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been two weeks since my last confession.  I committed adultery with a member of my own sex and I broke the communion fast.”   No, we cannot be satisfied with a morality that is based on adherence to the law.  This does not require moral reflection, simply a blind obedience.  Yet it is difficult for a person who doesn’t have a strong spiritual foundation—not just a theological or pietistic understanding—to advance beyond this stage.  That is why there are so many today frightened of a serious and critical re-examination of the great moral questions of today.  A serious re-examination of issues such as the remarriage of divorced people, same-sex relationships, in-vitro fertilization, gender identity, contraception, etc. threatens to take us beyond our current conceptions of the Law (of God) and for some the moral ice is simply too thin to venture out and use their reason to explore.  There are many also who,  to justify their political views or social constructs, reject developments in moral theology—and in the magisterium—that challenge the legitimacy of the Death Penalty, inequality of wealth, nuclear war, universal health care, and human rights.  The Law is something static in their understanding, or it is to the degree it supports their views of society and how it should work.  They cannot see the connection between Law and moral principles but they adhere to law for its own sake.   
As we move into the post-conventional state we first encounter the idea, similar enough to the previous level but somewhat more forward, that law is a social contract.  We all have varying values, understandings of our rights, opinions, theologies.  While tolerant of the variety of opinions, where can we find some moral consensus on which to base our ideas of right and wrong?   (This is such a wildly thoughtless liberal position, I love it: it can be caricatured so easily.)  So we get the golden rule, or at least the minimization of it: “do not do to another what you would not have them do to you.”   I won’t cheat with somebody else’s wife because I would not appreciate someone cheating with mine.  I will cut my lawn because I want my neighbors to do their share in keeping up property values.  There is a recognition here that we are dealing with something beyond “law,” but it still fails to find moral principles.  For the Christian, we must look for moral principles not simply social contract to guide us in our actions.
The final stage for Kohlberg is the realization that there are universal ethical principles to guide our choices and we can arrive at those principles through moral reasoning.  This is somewhat akin to the idea that there is a natural law that transcends Divine Revelation and which can be arrived at through rational analysis.  I make my moral choices based not on a fear of punishment or a hope of reward or social convenience or an appreciation of the law, but because I can perceive what is right or what is wrong.  Kohlberg thought that few people reached this stage of moral development—most were, at best, trapped back in the law-for-law’s-sake stage—and he thought that even fewer acted consistently on such principles.  Despite my natural attraction to Saint Augustine and his skeptical understanding of human nature, my natural cynicism even, I am somewhat more positive than Kohlberg, though I do not think that an appreciation for moral principles is the most common basis in the modern world for moral choice.  I too think most people, including most Christians, don’t get beyond the law stage. But I do think that a genuinely evangelical Catholicism is the guide to moral development that will lead us to the sort of moral integrity represented by Kohlberg’s sixth level of moral development. 

Jesus lays down the basis for a moral life in the gospels.  There is a fundamental need to forgive others.  There is a need not to be preoccupied with material wealth.   There is a need to respond to the suffering  of others.  There is a need to undertake a life of service to others.  There is a need not to judge others.  There is a need to feed those who are hungry.  There is a need to shelter those who are strangers in our midst.  There is a need to be peacemakers.  There is a need to perform our good works without a desire for attention.  There is a need to preserve the commitments made in marriage.  There is a need to recognize the goodness of others while we examine ourselves for sins and failings.  There is a need in our prayer to humbly confess our sinfulness.  There is a need to ask for a heart focused on God’s Will alone, a “pure heart.”  There is a need to seek to be set right with God, to have integrity.  This isn’t rocket science.  It is all there in the gospels.  We will certainly fail from time to time, even frequently, but with God’s grace we will stand up, ask forgiveness, and find success in God’s Will far more often than we fail.  And as long as we are humble about our failures—honest about them with God, with ourselves, and with others—they won’t make a difference.  What a different world it would be if we Christians stopped operating at the level of fear or law and started basing our lives in the teachings of Jesus? 

The Foundational Problem of the Contemporary Liturgy

Sorry for the break--an unexpected hiccup in schedule came along and i didn't have access to the internet to make the posting. 

I observed in my last posting that my experience is that the Liturgy, at least in the Western Church (this would include Anglican/Episcopalians and Lutherans who follow a “Mass Model” for the Eucharistic celebration as well as Catholics), leaves me somewhat spiritually unengaged.  In the better parishes the music might be quite good and the preaching well-prepared and delivered, but even there I am finding that the Liturgy is not much more than a ritual through which I and others must go (at best) out of a sense of responsibility to a particular community or (at worst) sheer duty imposed by Church Law.  I don’t think the vapidity of our worship is a fault of the Liturgy itself.  I have, as I pointed out, found it at times and in very particular circumstances, to be a deeply prayerful experience.  I am even finding that—by and large—I am liking the “new missal” with its rather elegantly idiosyncratic syntax.  (The vocabulary, however, can be over the top, even for a lexophile.)  Some people blame the insipid quality of the liturgy on the architectural setting found in most churches and while I do find much of the contemporary church architecture—both for new buildings and renovated ones—lifeless, even spiritless—I don’t think that is the problem but rather a symptom of a much deeper lack in our Catholic life. I think it comes down to that most of us—including (especially) our priests—just don’t know how to pray and so can’t lead public prayer.   I think we confuse prayer with bothering God by our incessant babbling and the offering of spiritual or material trinkets in bargain for hoped for and needed favors.  I go to some churches and all I can think of is the scene in 1 Kings where the priests of Baal are hopping around their altar chanting and screeching in a frenetic ritual.   While I think today’s priests, especially the younger ones, are much given to piety, I am not sure that know the difference between piety and spirituality.  They consider their devotional life, which is often quite elaborate, even intense, to be their “spirituality” but I don’t see in them the marks of a genuine spiritual depth.

I just finished correcting a Master’s thesis which speaks of this subject—not in terms of clerical piety but in terms of a mature and authentic spirituality as distinguished from a personal piety.  Of course, piety can serve as the introduction to the spiritual life—Teresa of Avila makes that very clear—but piety can also short-circuit and then it only reinforces our prejudices and confirms us in our spiritual and psychological immaturity.   The student thesis I am correcting measures spirituality by its ability to open us beyond our own universe and its ego-specific constructs and even beyond our group-consciousness and collective prejudices to an appreciation of how all creation stands in its relationship to the Creator—or rather, how God stands in relationship to all his creation.  Perhaps this inclusive vision is what I find satisfying in the Byzantine Liturgy—it bespeaks an earth in profound communion with heaven—a harmony of the cosmos in which all creation is brought into union with its Creator whereas in the West I find that we tend to divide the Creator and creation.  We divide the sacred and the secular instead of seeing the sacred as the flowering of the secular.  We distinguish clergy from laity instead of seeing the unity of the Body of Christ.  We include the righteous and exclude those whose lives don’t “measure up” to our standards instead of seeing that we all stand as sinners and we all stand beneath the shower of grace.  It’s curious that I find the Byzantine Liturgy more prayerful than the Roman because in general I am somewhat “Low Church.”  I don’t like incense and elaborate church buildings and a lot of what appears to be no more than a self-conscious fussiness.   I will not attend a Mass where the priest has his back to the people or determines to use Latin for the audible parts of the Mass.  (On the other hand, I do like much of the Latin Music and am happy enough when we sing it, but I also like good traditional (Protestant) hymnody and most of the contemporary Church music as well.)  Yet I found when I have lived in Rome, many Sundays I would head off to the Russicum for the Divine Liturgy in Old Slavonic  (of which I understand not a word), with the priest(s) not only facing away from me but hidden by the iconostasis, and with enough incense to put an asthmatic on a respirator.  What is it that makes me transcend all my principles about a Liturgy in which one can participate fully and with understanding (those old principles of Vatican II)?  I doubt that the average Byzantine or Orthodox priest is any more deeply spiritual than his Roman counterpart, it may just be that the western emphasis on the human person as an embodied intellect has deprived us in the west of a more integrated spiritual development and that consequently our Liturgy—our communal prayer—lacks the depth and richness that a holistic approach to spirituality might produce.  And it may be—which is to say I think that it is—time for us in the west to grow beyond the narrow visions of reality that religion and religious people permit us and let God open for us the vistas he enjoys.  To embrace the world as God knows it rather than as we have been taught to see it is a significant step towards the “Kingdom of God.”  The great mystics of our Catholic tradition show us that—that we are called to a transformation of our human natures to the Divine Nature; that we are to be so united to God as to see the world through his eyes and love the world with the love that fills his heart.  Unfortunately while this doctrine can be found from Iranaeus and Athanasius up through John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila to Merton and contemporary authors, we never hear it in Church.  Moreover, our Sunday morning experience concentrates on turning bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood whereas God’s purpose is that we ourselves should be transformed into the Image of the One who himself is the Image of the Divine Father.   It is you and I who are to be transformed in the Eucharist but the mediocrity of our celebrations makes that task all the more difficult even for an omnipotent God. 

Piety vs Spirituality

I want to follow up on yesterday’s posting and the subject of the lack of spirituality and direction for the spiritual journey in our parishes today.  Are people even aware of our rich Catholic tradition of prayer?  A priest friend of mine told me that a “super-Catholic” parishioner of his complained that he never spoke about spirituality in his homilies.  He claimed that all he spoke of was spirituality.  The problem was two very different understandings of spirituality.  “Agnes of God” (his pet nickname for this particular lady) meant that he should talk more about saying the rosary and doing holy hours.  She arrived at church every morning at 7 am (an hour and a half before the morning Mass) to say the Stations of the Cross (“In Agnes’ religion, Jesus always ends up in the tomb, even on Easter morning,” Father noted), say her rosary, and work her way through a pile of novena pamphlets.  After Mass she would remain to lead fellow parishioners in a second rosary.  All this is well and good, he pointed out, but it constitutes “piety” rather than “spirituality.”  When the parish priest spoke to her about various other forms of prayer that wefre being offered in the parish, forms such as Lectio Divina she was uninterested, or Christian Meditation, she dismissed it as “Christian Buddhism”.  This limited understanding of prayer is not only common among the laity.  I have a cousin who is an up and coming prelate and was on the Vatican appointed team that “investigated” American seminaries about eight years ago.  He told me that when they visited a Carmelite monastery where the young friars were studying for the priesthood he and other team members were surprised to find that there were no scheduled holy hours as in diocesan seminaries, that visits to the Blessed Sacrament were not actively encouraged by the formation team, and that the rosary was never said in common.  When these and other suggestions for change were made, the formation team was adamant that there would be no such additions to the community schedule.  The friars celebrated the Liturgy of the Hours in common every day, had daily Mass together, and were required to do two hours of meditation in their “cells.”  In addition they met once a week for “lectio divina” in common.   While individuals were free to pursue other forms of prayer and encouraged in private piety, there would be no change to the common schedule.  Within a month of the visit, the team received a letter from the Carmelite headquarters in Rome informing them that the Order stood behind the formation team.  Carmelite Spirituality is, they were informed., very “bare bones” and the Order resisted innovations that would dilute their tradition by adding “foreign” elements to the spirituality that had guided Carmelites for eight centuries.  The traditional spirituality which guided Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross, is “to meditate night and day on the Law of the Lord” and “to keep vigil in prayer” in their individual cells as the Rule of their Order has called them to do for eight centuries.
      A similar story comes from a friend of mine who is a priest of the Ukrainian Rite.  A century and more ago when Eastern Rite Catholics were immigrating to America, many “Latin” customs were introduced into the Rite such as Stations of the Cross, the rosary, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in order to make these Eastern Rite Christians look more “Catholic,” as if Catholic meant “Roman.” . But now there is a strong effort to purge the Eastern Rites of these Western practices and restore the traditional devotions and prayer-life of the East.  
      For those whose spiritual life is comprised only of pious exercises, the abandonment or absence of these devotions makes it appear that there is no spirituality when in fact various Churches or Monastic communities are returning to the more ancient forms of prayer that are properly theirs.       Does this mean that there should be no room for piety?  By no means.  We all begin the spiritual journey with pious prayers and most of us still revert to the pieties of our youth at times of stress or distraction and we still find not only comfort but grace in traditional devotions.  But we also know that “active” prayer or “vocal prayer” is the initial steps of a spiritual journey that takes us deeper and deeper into the heart of God.  For those who are willing to let go of their attachments to active prayer forms and trust God to lead them, there is a possibility of moving into the “Prayer of Quiet” and then beyond into the deeper forms of contemplative prayer.  One does not then abandon devotional or active prayer, but one does become less dependent on it.  
       As one matures in prayer one becomes more and more conformed to the will of God and the fruits of this spiritual maturing can be recognized.  These fruits are not visions and extraordinary gifts.  While grace may sometimes be manifested in such phenomena, extraordinary occurances are no sure assurance of spiritual maturity. Indeed, as John of the Cross warns us such “gifts” can offer greater peril to the soul than grace as these gifts are not necessarily from God.  In fact, according to Teresa of Avila, speaking of such things as visions or locutions, as Father Haley was inclined to do, is one of the signs that these visions are not from God but are manifestations of a lack of humility.   The only true sign of authentic spiritual maturity is the conversion of the human heart to God and in particular the increase of charity.  As the soul journeys further and further in God, it becomes more and more like God.  The soul learns to see the world through the eyes of God and the fruits of this are most clearly a depth of wisdom and of compassion that reflects the divine attributes.      I wonder how such a soul would have handled the dilemma that Marcel Guarnizo faced when Barbara Johnson stood before him for communion at her mother’s funeral.  Somehow, neither compassion nor wisdom come to mind. 

History in the Making: More Reasons Why Catholics Do (or Don't) Attend Mass

Mass is the center of a Catholic Community
but its Mission is what gives it authenticity

The next point to bring up in people attending mass regularly is that a sense of mission binds them to a particular worshipping community.  When I asked people in the parish where I attend mass why they come to mass they told me that the primary reason is that they experience a sense of community with this particular parish, but as the conversations unfolded I realized that it is not only a sense of belonging or an emotional sense of being “home” or “among family,” but that they are anchored into this parish because of their involvement in the parish’s sense of mission.  This particular community has over one hundred ministries ranging from providing luncheons after funerals to preparing parents of children who are to be baptized; from developing senior citizen housing and day care to signing for the hearing impaired during mass.  There are teams for adult education, bible study, faith formation as well as for caring for the vestments, organizing Religious Education, and serving pancake breakfasts between the masses once a month. There is a foodbank for those who need help feeding their families.  There is choir, altar servers, ministers of hospitality, wedding coordinators, the bereavement team, and countless other ways to be involved.  There is Little Rock Bible Study, Lay Spirituality groups, Just Faith, Cursillo and other groups.  Every year the parish has a huge festival with ethnic foods, music, entertainment, amusements for the children, garden shop, white elephant, and other activities.  The festival recruits hundreds of parishioners for all the organization, and revenues all go to parish outreach programs. In addition the parish tithes its income for various outreach programs in the area.   All this goes to build an incredible sense of community and that draws parishioners to Mass because they feel invested in the parish and its mission.  Frankly, I have been to places with better liturgy and better preaching, but I have not seen places with  a stronger sense of community-in-mission.  As a result the parish draws people from 72 different zip codes, some people driving over fifty miles on Sunday to come to Mass. 

This sense of Mission in this parish is something that was developed and is still maintained by the laity.  The pastor is free for celebrating Mass, preparing his homilies, hearing confessions, and being available for the pastoral needs of his parishioners because he trusts the laity to take responsibility for the mission of the parish.  While there is only the pastor and the parochial vicar for the Hispanic Community and no other priests, the parish staff includes over a dozen full-time lay ministers for youth, religious education, social concerns, liturgy/music, adult faith formation, etc.  In addition there is a full time administrator who looks after the finances and maintenance issues.  In many ways it is an ideal ecclesial community and a healthy parish draws healthy parishioners.   Granted its emphasis on social concerns and the “Social Gospel” has caused some people to go to more “traditional” parishes, those who choose this particular church make a choice and that  choice is precisely what gives people a sense of investment and belonging that draws them to fuller participation.  This is not an easy place to “just go to Mass;” go to Mass and you will want to become more and more invested in the community.  

My experience is that this is the sort of parish that was envisioned in the Reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  It is an active community whose mission finds its purpose in the Word of God and its strength in the Eucharist and whose Eucharistic Celebrations not only empower its members for service but are themselves enriched by the experience of the parishioners sharing in the mission of Jesus.  While many of the other parishes around have sufficient Masses for their needs, as well as Holy Hours, Benediction, Rosaries, and Novenas they lack the spiritual vitality of this parish because they limit the expression of their faith to devotional practices (and have reduced the Mass to the level of a “super-devotion”) instead of providing the opportunity for their members to lead lives of discipleship.  My only fear is that as the Second Vatican Council is stripped from the memory of today’s Catholics and replaced by a reconstruction of the preconciliar American Immigrant Catholicism the Catholic Church in our country will lose not only its energy but what credibility it still has as a harbinger of the Gospel.