Cerebral Enough for You?

There is no small urgency to mounting a significant challenge to a wrongly and broadly held presumption that contemporary liturgy’s essential content is cerebral. It is when we are caught up in the faulty logic of presuming that contemporary worship is a catechetical content waiting to be embellished that we come up with all of the abuse and distortion of the last 40 years “in these or similar words” (substitutions for Psalms, use of all manner of puppets, pop music taped or otherwise, dance or aerobic gesturing, etc.). In a lot of ways we’ve painted ourselves into the proverbial corner and there is nowhere to go from here. The Mass as we find it on paper is not a basic premise for a catechetical event just waiting to be planned by a well-meaning committee. Lots of people are speaking will all kinds of enthusiasm about the rich treasure trove of the new Roman Missal for the English speaking world. Please, God, let it be so!

          The tragedy in all we experience to date, because of planning committees and the creativity imposed upon us, consists not only in the loss of any sense of good taste or reserve. Indeed it provokes a faith crisis at least among the young, who find the whole setup all too human and on the basis of the evidence presented begin to wonder what God really has to do with an operation which seems all too creative, a fabrication in a sense. One wonders at times whether Father isn’t suffering from the same crisis of faith as he too finds himself caught up in the charade. Maybe Father needs a “lifeline” to save him from the “logic” of the last forty years. Maybe he sees no way out; maybe he has despaired of anything better. I do not think what I am saying is farfetched. Take just the one example of a priest’s availability to those who seek the sacraments today!

Before all of the advances in technology, recourse to the telephone was rare and certainly prioritized such that if you needed Father for a sick call you phoned the rectory and he answered… and he came. If you didn’t have a phone, you sent the neighbor with a car to go and fetch Father for the person in need... and he came. Today Father hides from non-prioritized, spontaneous and unthinking use of the phone; he does so with answering machines and all sorts of other technology which perhaps restore priorities and the privacy which in the old days resulted from ordinary folks not daring to reach for the phone without a life and death reason. Today in lots of parishes we have a situation where the maze is so perfect that a loved one is no longer confessed, anointed and accompanied by the Lord of Life for that last journey. Does this trouble Father at all or is he having doubts about the operation as well? I had a bishop complain to me that he has never been able to reach one of his priests directly by telephone: the secretary or housekeeper takes the call and at Father’s convenience Father may or may not return the bishop’s call… Just think how much harder it must be for a lay person seeking him without the willingness to be subjected to the scrutiny of Mrs. So and So!

Without the habit of regular confession, all that remains for most Catholics is that weekly hour of power, which can be reshaped at will, it would seem, and used for all sorts of things, with “experts” taking to the pulpit in conformity with a logic inspired by truly entertaining shows on your friendly, not-so-local, devotional, cable channel. Mass becomes Sunday school, if I can simplify the expression a bit, and there is no doubt that the rupture with our liturgical past does indeed exist and is in fact complete.

          A film of a Low Mass celebrated at the high altar of St. Peter’s by Pope Pius XII in 1942 is making the rounds of the blogosphere these days. One is struck by the presence of what looks like an omni-directional radio microphone on the altar. The Basilica is packed and the Square is filled to overflowing with people as well. A sea of humanity, baptized humanity, stands or kneels before the Throne of God, not entertained by orchestra or choir, not even seeing anything on jumbo video screens, in touch (perhaps?) acoustically thanks to that microphone and minimal contact with the same Latin text they know so well from Sunday Mass in their parishes. What indeed is Mass really about? It would be most hard to attribute its intellectual or cerebral content to the words alone.

          A younger priest friend of mine, who has never celebrated Mass in Latin, shared with me his despair over the possibility of correcting or eliminating the liberties which priests take with the vernacular, rendering it discursive, casual and really a fabricated thing. Personally, I am not without hope because of my experience with the changes to my own mindset and ars celebrandi which oriented worship has brought me. Turning together to the Lord (ad Orientem) with those who gather in my chapel for Mass, from the Preparation of the Gifts until it is time for the Prayer after Communion, makes a positive difference in the way I preside and, I would dare say, it frees people to pray to the Lord together and directly, without the scrutiny of Father’s unwanted eye contact. I would urge priests to “turn to the Lord”; it might rekindle the faith or fan that spark into a blaze.

          The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass needs to be returned to its “pedestal” if you will. The “have-mass-kit-will-travel” mentality does not help matters. There are folks who have the stipend to command the baptism of a grandchild on their patio and make it easier to move right into the catered reception. Is this not a diminution of the sacrament? I know of folk who have managed by hook or by crook to get Father to come to their home to celebrate mass on their wedding anniversary each year. The mass becomes too little as Father bends to including all the special rights of holding hands or whatever which are dear to them as a couple from their college days. Do birthdays over a certain age need to get marked with a mass in the home before a supper with family and friends or as a prelude to some great holiday event? Can this be done just so without diminishing the Sacrifice itself?

          The Holy Father has infinite patience in these matters and I guess I should too. There are times, however, when I wonder if it isn’t time to call out the fire brigade…

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

A Hearty Recommendation

A friend directed me to a very austere Benedictine website with an exceptionally good article in favor of worship "ad Orientem": Facing East and Papal Fads  Fr. Hugh, OSB, articulates well the sense of what we should be doing at Mass.

One day soon, I would like to address the resistance on the part of older folk (my contemporaries) to the Holy Father's and others' invitation to Turn to the Lord for the Eucharistic Prayer  in terms of what I suspect is a sort of knee-jerk reaction we will glorify by giving it the designation "a pastoral option" inspired by (you choose) either resignation or desperation. Too many pastoral agents refuse to privilege Sunday Mass as an encounter with the Lord of Life. They must (I guess) see it as a "last stand" for instructional or motivational contact with people. By making liturgy discursive/didactic we have cut off our nose to spite our face. I promise more as soon as I can.

AD DOMINUM!!!!!

Continuity in Prayer and Praise

What is Liturgy?

All of the positive signs notwithstanding, that for the English speaking world we stand (thanks be to God) on the threshold of a rupture-healing liturgical reform, I am anxious about doing more to insure that we restore the continuity in our prayer to the Lord and our solemn praise of the Living God. Again and again I am confronted first off with the well-meaning of the laity, but also of priests and bishops, who don’t see as a break with the past, which needs to be healed, the didactic form of liturgy with all its discursive elements as it has commonly been executed over the last four decades. But it must be said: For weekdays we are too far from our roots in the essential liturgy of the Latin Low Mass; for Sundays we are leagues from the once common consciousness that worship by God’s People took place before His Throne.

Can I say to a popular and loving pastor that he should have said “no” to an Ash Wednesday flash crowd, carefully orchestrated for and enthusiastically executed by the children of his grade school? What about that YouTube video of a priest from down in these parts (he’s got a great singing voice for belting out those Gospel/charismatic hymns!), vested for Mass, with wireless microphone, who has the whole congregation singing and swaying? What is liturgy? At some point, we lost all measure making that weekly “hour of power” and those occasional conference gatherings and special events the communal supplement to somebody’s Bible reading and prayers punctuating their quilt making, needlepoint and rocking in that chair handed down from somebody purported to have made the crossing on the Mayflower.

Not in desperation but with a bit of puzzlement over this question, I picked up an English translation of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, in its skeletal form, set down for use in the U.S. today. It is worship (even without all of the pomp and splendor which attracted the Grand-Duke Vladimir of the Kievan Rus and encouraged him to turn his back on paganism and accept baptism) indeed in spirit and in truth. I was impressed as never before with Byzantine Liturgy as petition, intercession and supplication. The Word of God has its place, but significantly the whole from beginning to dismissal is yes an ongoing dialog between the priest and people but by way of an encouragement to a work (laos ergon, leitourgia) addressed to God Himself, while calling on all the angels and saints with Mary the Mother of God at their head. A profound sense of the sacred permeates it all in that it is truly addressed to the Triune God, Who is above all and in all, transcendent yet eminently present, to be worshipped and adored. Worship is not a pep fest and to class it as theater would be denigrating. Standing or kneeling at God’s footstool is not “let’s pretend”; it is Calvary renewed for us in an unbloody fashion; it is Sacrament and Sacrifice for the salvation of the world.

Don’t get me wrong! I am no more tempted to “go byzantine” than I am to investing in the stock market, but this quiet encounter of a Sunday with Chrysostom, with that Church’s unbroken tradition of prayer and praise has aided me in sorting out a few things as I seek to serve the cause of the reform of the liturgy reform within our Roman Catholic tradition of worship.  

"Sunday-go-to-meeting” is not our tradition 

and represents a clear rupture in need of healing. 

   The simple sung propers (entrance antiphon, responsorial psalm, communion antiphon) might be the agreeable “purge” which will enable us to look at a limited role for hymnody, let us say as an enhancement of certain moments of silence (a processional, a Eucharistic hymn of thanksgiving as a post-communion, perhaps? For pilgrimages and devotions?). With the ordinary parts of the Mass sung (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Great Amen, Pater Noster, Agnus Dei) we might find ourselves relishing a lot less all the syncopated stuff in the hymnals presently in usage.

Respect for rubrics and adherence to published texts 

is at no one’s discretion.

      We owe it to our children and to all who enter the Lord’s House to let them know, to assure them that what Joel Osteen does or Bennie Hinn does at a tent revival has nothing in common with what the Church in God’s Name has called the priest to do at the head of God’s People each Sunday. Father did not and cannot simply “make up” what we do in praise of God.

A return to worship “ad Orientem” is or will be our saving grace. 

    I hope no one misreads me. I would only formulate the wish that EWTN would simply exercise a legitimate option and start celebrating the daily TV Mass “ad Dominum”, so as to give folks from the comfort of their home an idea of what can be. The wood furnishings of that daily Mass chapel in Alabama could be rearranged in lovely fashion in the course of a single day. I am not advocating in parishes and religious houses of the more permanent sort another “barbarian invasion” of the temple to right wrongs with sledge hammer or pick ax. In church buildings, where possible, continuity with the past should be recovered, but some churches (even Santa Sabina in Rome, where the Holy Father celebrated on Ash Wednesday) cannot be changed. The great liturgists of all time, St. John Chrysostom for the East and St. Gregory the Great for the West, agree: we must physically focus together on the Lord when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer.

Just now I absent-mindedly touched my bishop’s ring and was reminded that with my titular see of Bomarzo I have a “Bride” who doesn’t talk back and who cannot not understand. For this I bow my head to all bishops with real “brides” and parish priests more familiar than I will ever be with “domestic” life. Be assured of my prayers that you might find ways, like our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, to open this loving dialog as Christ Himself would do, washing her clean and healing every spot and blemish.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Sursum Corda!

I finally was able to obtain a copy of the little tome Turning Towards the Lord, Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, by Uwe Michael Lang. I'd been looking for the book on and off for two years and finally was able to get hold of it on Kindle. I was not disappointed, though perhaps a bit surprised, by this scholarly and in the best sense of the term dispassionate treatment of the historical question of how we Catholics have directed our prayer over the centuries. It is anything but a polemical or pedantic work. It reasons and should put no one off, that is, if the person in question seeks the truth and wants the best for God's people as they worship in spirit and in truth.

I think the book should be on the reading list for every continuing education or renewal course for priests both because it is not a long book and because of its dispassionate treatment of a topic which tends to get priests and bishops on both sides of the argument rather hot under the collar. While the Eucharist can legitimately be celebrated with the priest looking at the people over the top of the altar, I think Fr. Lang makes a convincing case for preferring the Eucharistic Prayer to be prayed with all in the church turned in the same direction, that is regardless of the compass direction, toward the liturgical east, which is Christ, the Dawn from on High that comes to visit us.

Turning towards the Lord is not a comprehensive work on how the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass ought to be offered. It does one thing and does that quite well: it makes the case for oriented worship. It is not a must read, but rather a key work which challenges the belligerence of those unwilling to live in the open atmosphere of the Catholic Church of today, the Church of Summorum Pontificum and of the generous provisions for an Anglican ordinariate within the Church. 

Neither our Holy Father nor Uwe Michael Lang would condemn Mass facing the people, but I respectfully maintain that worship ad Orientem, in continuity with the tradition of the Mass of all time is the way to achieve the needed reform of the reformed liturgy. And as one of the blogosphere's cult figures would say, it is no more and no less than saying the black and doing the red.

Personally, one of the perhaps unintentional points made by the book for me was to underline in conjunction with the introductory dialogue to the Preface the additional sense or reasonableness in terms of orientation to be found in the Latin exchange: Sursum Corda! Habemus ad Dominum. While it certainly involves lifting our hearts "up to the Lord", since reading this book that ad Dominum is inextricably bound with ad Orientem, with turning towards the Lord.

A reflection on Liturgy celebrated "ad orientem"

A reflection on ad Orientem worship published by a very articulate parish priest stirred some thoughts about what I firmly believe to be the heart of the worship crisis in the Catholic Church  today, namely the confidence issue (the confidence of parishioners in the liturgical leadership of their parish priest) which stems from the more profound issue of a general disspiritedness or demoralization of the people in the pews brought on by the logic of caprice which has characterized the way we have worshiped for over 40 years. How do you convince people that Father is not making it up as he goes along even when he opts for ad Orientem worship or chant instead of hymns, given the "stuff" to which now grandparents, parents and children have been subjected over four decades. I can remember as a boy serving Mass when the first temporary altar suddenly appeared front and center in our cathedral, plywood finished in aquamarine (turquoise?) Formica right on top of the Persian rug upon which generations of men to be ordained had prostrated themselves during the litany of the saints. Was it not caprice when a priest, now long dead, opened a grave at the cemetery of his little country parish and smashed into that grave all the pretty plaster statues along with the decorative stucco of the high altar he tore out of a once pretty little church now stripped bare and white-washed? Who can you trust?

There are some descriptive elements in Father's reflection that deserve the largest possible diffusion. His outline of the basic rubrics to be followed by the priest celebrating Mass is particularly well done. Take a look at the article and the comments! Reverend Know-it-all: A reflection on Liturgy celebrated "ad orientem"

 Even so, Father is a captive of this logic of caprice. It seems from his post that he also has parishioners who bristle and hunch their backs at a change to ad Orientem worship suspecting that it comes by order of the Holy Father; if that be so well we really are in a mess! I don't necessarily think that Father was wrong to stop at the back of church after Mass and say, "Well, what do you think?", but he is bending to the same logic which has Californians processing in with dancers and giant puppets... caprice! It's all made up, isn't it? Where is God? What does He have to do with the dictates of a liturgy committee, or a willful little musical combo that likes to stand up front and direct or a most engaging priest who commands our attention and draws the focus toward himself.

How can a reform of the liturgical reform take place if people can't sort out the rightness of something from a simple predilection for lace and gold brocade? Were the burlap banners wrong?

At home last summer, I watched The Journey Home on EWTN one Monday evening, where the guest who described his journey to Catholicism had come from a Protestant church where he himself was pastor. When he entered the Catholic Church he brought most of his parish with him. During his own discernment process, he was moved at a certain point to share the faith experience he was preparing to embrace with his parishioners. He did it outside their Sunday worship time; he did it sincerely by making himself available to them. Not all appreciated his discovery of what he perceived to be the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church. It should come as no surprise that the same might occur when the parish priest discovers the sublimity of a liturgical experience in conformity with the rubrics which have always been there and in continuity with the worship experience of the past.

How do you take the caprice out of my choice of a worship experience not plinka-plinked along "on Eagle's wings" or without a "gather us in... all are welcome in this place"? If you have the credentials, there should be no worry; some may object, but those who walk away will be few and perhaps good riddance. Especially if they had been lording it over their fellow parishioners Sunday after Sunday.

St. Paul in his letter to Titus gives the criteria for the selection of elders to lead each community. He sums up by saying: "... and he must have a firm grasp of the unchanging message of the tradition, so that he can be counted on for both expounding the sound doctrine and refuting those who argue against it."

Father seems to me to be grandstanding a bit when he regrets the consoling experience of once having worshiped ad Orientem as the rubrics provide. Most men and women of good will would eagerly trade the caprice which has left them far from the sublimity of worship in spirit and in truth. They're just looking for that elder chosen according to the criteria Paul gave Titus for choosing the kind of leaders the Church needs to carry out its mission.

No More Sunday-go-to-Meeting?

After publishing my last post “Humility, Liturgy and the Faith Experience” I began to have scruples about my choice of words to describe today’s common form of liturgical expression, especially in the English speaking world, which has grown up almost exclusively under the influence of priests celebrating across the altar table from the congregation. I called this form of liturgy “discursive”. Be it stated at the outset, that despite all of the abuse generated by the simple dynamics of this furniture arrangement (no disrespect intended), which is only one step removed from the classical evangelical or mega-church arrangement with no altar and where the pulpit or podium is front and center, it is within the norm and has been most folk’s experience for forty years. The common arrangement in and of itself is not an abuse but is conducive to a liturgical style which is at odds with what the Catholic world has always and everywhere known to be the proper worship decorum. The word I used to describe the most common form of liturgical expression today and for the last 40 years, the word which troubles me, is the word “discursive”.

        My Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary gives as the first meaning for discursive: “moving or roving about from one topic to another; skimming over many apparently unconnected subjects; digressive; desultory.” What makes me hesitant about my choice of words is the implication that we’re dealing with something rambling, random or just plain loose. To say that a preacher is desultory would be to evaluate or criticize his style; to say that a liturgy is rambling or loose is to judge that same to be out of touch with the very nature of genuine worship in spirit and in truth.

        At this point I have no doubt lost many, who are muttering: “Look out! Here comes the rant! He’s going to break another lance for ad Orientem worship.” That is not my specific focus today. The arguments and the discussions are out there to favor restoring continuity with our worship tradition (see Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s post “Turning to the Lord” from yesterday).

My issue here is slightly different and moves away from the profound issue of physical focus toward Liturgical East to that of recognizing a principal drawback to worship “over or around the altar table”. This innovation of 40 years ago becomes almost irresistibly discursive in its form. Arguments about gathering around the altar as a means of recognizing it as a symbol of Christ present in the midst of the community hold no water whatsoever as the architectural tendency over these past 40 years has told a very different story at the expense really of the altar as a symbol of Christ. The tendency has been to lower these altars, put them on the level (handicap accessibility?), take them off their pedestal of 1 or 3 steps, such that visibly more often than not these altars disappear (the Los Angeles Cathedral is a case in point, where massive as it is the altar disappears in that space: I think people usually refer to either the big organ or the tapestries as the focal points in that space).

           “Over and around the altar” becomes not only talking and sharing space, but the whole thing becomes discursive both in tone and in content. Without highlighting egregious abuse, I would very simple like to ask why the Mass practicum in most seminaries since my own day and before has centered on urging us priests to eye contact with the congregation…

We take it for granted that eye contact is required of us, unless of course we have broken free by returning to the tradition of older and longer date of preparing the gifts and praying the Eucharistic prayer from the same side of the altar as the people, i.e. together with them and not over and against them. This came home to me last summer in the parish as I noted the parish priest concelebrating with me, as he came to take his part in the Eucharistic prayer and in conformity with the logic of over or around the altar sought to make eye contact with his people. I did too from June 1976 until my daily habit in my own chapel became ad Orientem worship (August 1, 2009!). I doubt very much if even what some call the Benedictine arrangement with the candles and prominent central Crucifix is sufficient to counteract the eye contact compulsion.

        Allow me to be discursive and field a question at this point: “What about St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome?” Have you ever noticed that the YouTube videos of Papal Liturgy from back when, of Blessed Pope John XXIII (50 years ago), are either filmed from behind the Pope celebrating at the altar or from a side angle which catches more of the back of his head than his profile? Even in St. Peter’s with the bulk of the nave on the other side, the earliest film cameras did not look the Holy Father in the face as he celebrated at the altar, but respected the proper orientation for worship.

        “Over and around the altar table”, our familiar form of parish celebration makes for digressions and interjections, catechetical moments if you wish, but nonetheless digressions from what should be a focused action before the Throne of God. Is that abuse? I think it is perhaps the principal component of what the Holy Father refers to as a rupture with our Catholic tradition of worship.

        The proposal of renouncing discursive models of worship is bound to meet resistance from a lot of quarters. The most tragic, perhaps, reason people would want to cling to it, is that the weekend “hour of power” has become our only contact with most Catholics. Why do people abusively interject talks or lectures at the obligation Mass? Is it because the head of the parish council or that woman or that man really can explain something better than Father? I doubt it. The reason is that in a discursive worship (?) or prayer and praise format, you can add all sorts of things that have nothing to do with associating ourselves with the Heavenly Court as they do unceasingly what we are called to do in union with the Sacrifice which has redeemed us in Christ. If there are no other moments outside of church to impart knowledge the tendency is to take advantage of people and cram as much as possible into that hour, in hopes of imparting what we think the people need to or ought to know. Is it any wonder that Adoration Chapels have become so popular? Sunday worship should be restored to its proper focus, enriched by an appropriate liturgical homily.

        Moving away from discursive worship models means going out to our world once again using all sorts of other means to give God’s People the intellectual and prayer-based nourishment they need to come to the “source and summit of Christian existence” in the proper frame of mind, formed and well-disposed, to join the angels and saints in their hymn of praise.

        Sunday-go-to-meeting needs to become again what St. Justin Martyr tried to explain to his judges as that without which we cannot live, that for which the precept exists and the only manner in which it makes any sense: To assist at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Humility, Liturgy and the Faith Experience

          What might be considered an interpretive key for this Sunday’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went up to the Temple to pray (30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C) could easily be found in the words of the First Reading from the book of Ecclesiasticus: “The humble man’s prayer pierces the clouds…” Even with his head bowed, the tax collector is praying vertically, his point of departure is the given of his own unworthiness, whereas the Pharisee is involved in a rather horizontal and discursive exercise, which includes God if you will, but really goes nowhere, least of all to God.

          These same words “The humble man’s prayer pierces the clouds…” enabled me finally today to sort through a whole series of articles I have read of late and of issues I have been facing concerning my duty (and I think I have a duty in this regard) to contribute to the cause of the Benedictine Liturgical Reform happily under way in the Church. Sometimes waiting and calm are the very best approach as, for instance, I am hopeful of an opportunity very soon of doing something to encourage chanting the Mass propers and rolling back the “joyful noise” of the too many songs which have made our worship hectic. My coming to perceive the urgency of doing something I gladly attribute to daily celebration ad Orientem for a year and almost three months. Thanks to ad Orientem worship, for example, I think I was finally able to articulate for myself what is wrong with all of the rushing to get those hymns going, two and maybe even three now at Communion time.

          The issue however is one of knowing the extent to which my experience obliges me to more than barking out “Try it you’ll like it!” Not long ago, I read a very scientific study rooting much of the liturgical abuse of the last decades, as well as that which we sadly encounter yet today, in a psychiatric condition referred to clinically as narcissism. My struggle however cannot be with the puppet masters and the impenitent perpetrators of clown masses. Such pathology needs to be banished without explanation. Even the wedge driven into worship by so-called liturgical dance is an intrusion which has no place and deserves no discussion or analysis. As innocuous as theY might be, children’s skits and plays should also be shown to the church doors. Don’t forget, Everyman and sundry mediaeval morality plays always took place on the front steps of the Salzburg Cathedral and not inside. Worship of the living God is not and cannot be “something for everyone…”

          My struggle in a sense is to move the discourse ahead with people of good will. Try as I might to convince myself that it is not a question of winning or losing, however, when I saw pictures of the newly renovated Cathedral in Orlando, Florida, which will be rededicated next month, all I could see was an opportunity lost as the bishop’s chair gets centered in the apse and lectern and altar are below and on the same level. The model may be classic Ravenna, but not really. It’s 20^th Century discursive. Nonetheless, I am not ready to go over to a militant stance and criticize what is clearly within the norm.

          The other day, I read a lecture entitled “The Old Roman Missal: Loss and Rediscovery” delivered recently at a conference in Sri Lanka by Martin Mosebach. Despite the issues I have with men like Mosebach, who get carried about on other people’s shoulders and pushed ahead of them into “battle”, simply because of the facility with which they wield the pen, he always has some things to say which are very right. In this lecture he incisively speaks of the “etiquette of devotion” which formerly existed, especially as regards touching sacred objects (I think of chalices in particular, which we as altar boys dared not touch). The loss of this etiquette was a great cause for scandal. Even yet today, I can picture a man who happily used to receive Communion on the tongue until he was lambasted by a priest over the contagion of swine flu and his irresponsibility in putting that priest at risk of contact with his tongue. He was genuinely scandalized by the inference made, changed his ways to hand reception, but does so with the awkwardness of an adolescent. How do you turn back the “scandal clock” by edict?

          Though the changes, especially those not foreseen either by the Second Vatican Council or by the rubrics in the published liturgical books, were imposed in doctrinaire fashion, I really believe that the Holy Father’s approach of opening discourse and not mandating them back is and will be salutary. Although I’d love to see some conversions to ad Orientem worship among my contemporaries, it may just be that we have to wait for a generation change, which will come soon enough. Mosebach is wrong about blaming liturgical abuse and discursive worship for the advance of secularization and all the defections from the Church. The one hour on Sunday morning would not have saved a world, which abandoned that hour for lack of catechism. Sunday morning does not offer an antidote to the lost silence within the home (read TV, computer and just plain sound) and a younger generation of parents who stopped kneeling down with their children by their beds to say good night to Jesus.

          As much as I admire him, I cannot identify with the strident though eloquent tones of Father George Rutler “The Liturgical Experts’ Long Tassels” (see First Things of 27 August 2010). My Catholic experience of near total ignorance of the King James Bible leaves me more amenable to the Jerusalem Bible or Revised Standard Catholic Edition. The new English translation of the Missal to come into effect a year from this Advent gives hope, that is, if it too is not betrayed by the discursive.

          “The humble man’s prayer pierces the clouds, until it arrives he is inconsolable, nor will he desist until the Most High takes notice of him, acquits the virtuous and delivers judgment. And the Lord will not be slow, nor will he be dilatory on their behalf.”

          My “tin ear” draws hope from such words as they challenge me, head down together with the tax collector, to put things in the Lord’s hands and dismiss the discursive approach as a Pharisee’s pitfall.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Zeal for Your House Consumes Me

A very good priest friend objected to my recent stance in favor of a reform of the liturgical reform. I hope I am not putting too much into his words when I say that he was more than skeptical about the benefits to be gained from a return to Divine Worship ad Orientem, priest and people together praying with their eyes and hearts lifted to Christ. He rightly pointed out that priests gave scandal and abused the liturgy back before the Council too. He is an earnest man and a truly good and zealous priest; he would be one of those priests of the older generation who suffer from the estrangement (lack of mutual understanding typical of our day) often found to exist between his contemporaries and a younger generation of priests, many of whom are drawn to the usus antiquior in their search for worship in Spirit and in Truth. Although the two of us disagree on the priority I give to reforming the reform through a return to Divine Worship ad Orientem, both of us agree that shepherding after the mind of Christ is first and foremost, seeking out the lost sheep, binding up wounds, and pasturing the flock entrusted to our care.

The debate is not a new one. If we look to the early Church Fathers we can find any number of impassioned pleas from these great saints for making the care of the poor and neglected Christ in our midst our first priority and not seeking to salve our consciences with memorial gifts to embellish His Altar and the Sacred Liturgy. After setting these priorities, however, the Fathers always go on to urge people and presbyters to do the one without neglecting the other (i.e. the gold chalice, yes, provided that the poor Christ in your midst is fed). What is new, however, and I appeal to the authority of the Holy Father, as well as to others more learned and insightful than me, is the wide-ranging concern shared by many today that we have indeed suffered a loss of the sense of the sacred generally in contemporary worship.

Needless to say, when confronted with this objection to the reformed liturgy as it is often celebrated in the Church today, a priest might experience no small sense of personal disarray. It is indeed a terrible thought that the order of worship given to me by the Church’s highest authority, taught to me in the seminary and (for most priests living today) the mode of worship might be wanting which has made up the better part in years of our lives, has nourished our spiritual life and been the focus of our efforts on behalf of the people. A priest might rightly be thoroughly confounded at the thought that this approach (face-to-face across the altar) might be less than the best or even flawed as a way of worship.

How do you even bring up such a topic? In terms of his leadership, I have unbounded admiration for the gentle hand demonstrated by our Holy Father in dealing with a situation which might confuse some and certainly provoke others to denial. By the same token, I do not doubt in the least that this critique of the liturgical reform, or better, the Holy Father’s challenge to us to find ways to restore the Liturgy to the realm of the sacred is entirely lost on most good priests. What to do?

The objection comes back: but these niceties are lost on the rank and file. Too much attention to the placement of candles and folding of hands can hardly compare with reaching out to youth and bringing them to the knowledge and love of our Lord and Savior. We do one without neglecting the other, as the Fathers have taught us. The point however is that we’re not in the realm of niceties, of things totally lost on our contemporaries. The way the liturgy is celebrated does teach; it is formative. A too informal or colloquial celebration is at counter purposes to our goal: in divine worship we’re seeking admission to the forecourt of heaven, if you will. We cannot “force the door”; it is the Lord Who grants us entrance; it is the Lord Who instituted the Eucharist and gave it to His Church.

Common “wisdom” simplifies the “then” of the Tridentine tradition of worship and the “now” of contemporary liturgy by saying that what has fallen away in our time are the social strictures which kept people back then coming to something they didn’t really get anything out of. In freedom today we need to make liturgy attractive, they would say… I beg to disagree. When the sense of the sacred is lost, all is lost. Entertaining liturgy, creative liturgy, relevant liturgy or however you want to describe an act which accommodates and is embellished with “sound and light”, with bouncy music, mime, dance and lots of hugging at the kiss of peace is unfettered only if that’s how you describe a ship without an anchor; it places itself on the same level as the “competition”, so to speak; it cannot be other than run-of-the-mill. Granted, there is no man or woman of good will and prayer who would not see in these allusions anything other than liturgical abuse.

The ad Orientem discussion however challenges even the best of renewed liturgy. Make no mistake about it, from my experience, there are some truly glorious renewed liturgies, caught up to the Throne and to the Lamb. As I shared my ideas with one young priest, he acknowledged spontaneously: “You know you’re right. How often it seems as thought young priests in particular don’t know what to do with their eyes after the Consecration.” Personally, I’ve sensed for years a real sense of awkwardness myself, that is, a problem with the priest’s focus during the Communion Rite. (When facing the people) where should the priest be looking when he prays the “Libera nos…”? The Sign of Peace opens with a prayer; where should the priest’s gaze be directed at that moment with the Lord Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, right there before him on the Altar?

I must confide that today is a landmark day for me as I received in consignment the central canvas of an altarpiece which will enable me to orient our new chapel here. The other pieces and its frame will be forthcoming in the New Year. Hopefully the Christmas holidays should provide time to write a first draft of my catechesis to be shared with the people who join us for daily Mass. No doubt this catechesis will eventually become a blog posting as well. While the “brick by brick” slogan I have heard repeated by some leaves me cold, I certainly would like to celebrate ad Orientem in a beautiful environment which even my successor might enjoy (as it is or soon will be) for Eucharistic Adoration and hopefully, if he finds my catechesis convincing, also for the celebration ad Orientem of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Law of Love

A Meditation on the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
26 October 2008, Port of Spain

“On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also” (Matt. 22:40).

The primacy of Love of God and Love of Neighbor in the Christian life and the victories won in this regard in the lives of countless saints and very ordinary Christians are a source of pride and encouragement for us as we look out upon the world. Nobody does it better than a faithful servant of Jesus Christ. These heights never cease to challenge and humble us as we strive to live up to this standard in our daily lives. Love is indeed everything; as the story goes, the elderly St. John the Evangelist never ceased speaking about the commandment to love and urging his followers to fulfill it in a perfect way; it was everything for him in his old age. Nothing could be righter when dealing with others on a personal or interpersonal basis.

A whole series of recent events experienced and anecdotes shared, however, lead me to pose a question regarding the duties of leadership above and beyond love. I’ll frame my question to deal with only one issue today, but it certainly has, to my mind, wider-ranging ramifications. Granted that integral or authentic leadership is 90% good example; if I love with all my heart, soul, mind and strength God and love my neighbor as myself, I truly am a beacon not only for some others but for everyone. Nonetheless, as the pilgrim people wanders about there comes a time when tent pegs have to be set for those some others, be they the Church Universal, my diocese, my parish or my worshipping community. Law and order have their place and must have even within the community of believers.

My question: Doesn’t authority and law have its part to play in assuring love’s triumph? (As a convinced canonist, I must answer this question in the affirmative) Taking this matter a step further, in matters of choice where there may be several good options, am I allowed to make public choices where my opting for the better implies commitments which condition the choices of those around me (given my leadership role or the office/authority entrusted to me) and in the case of brick and mortar decisions, by what right can I also condition the choices of those who will come after me by modifying a building?

My issue today is that of the organization of worship and worship space. It has become an issue for me as I look to the good example set by our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI and ask myself about my options for following him. Am I free to start celebrating Mass ad orientem just like that? Can I also make some small but permanent changes in the chapel to enhance the experience and in a sense commit the space for the future to worshipping in this way which the Holy Father and I following his lead find better?

Why has this matter come up in my life with such insistence just now? The discussion is not new. Perhaps because of the stir caused by the reporting on some thoughts shared by Pope Benedict in his forward to the first volume of the German edition of his assembled works by Vatican Radio and translated into English by ZENIT. Let me quote the Holy Father as he is quoted the other day in ZENIT:

"The concept by which the priest and the assembly should look one another in the eye during prayer has been developed only in modern times and is totally foreign to ancient Christianity," the Pontiff wrote. "The priest and the assembly didn't pray facing each other, but directed toward the one Lord.

"Because of this, during prayer, they look in the same direction: Either toward the east, a cosmic symbol of the Lord who is to come, or, where this was not possible, toward an image of Christ in the apse, toward a cross, or simply all together toward the heights, as the Lord did during his priestly prayer the night before his passion."

One commentator on the Pope’s words invites his readers to follow the Holy Father’s good example and underlines what he means by publishing in his article pictures of the Pope celebrating ad orientem in two different configurations: one, as in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome with himself on one side of the altar and the people on all sides looking with him to the Crucifix which is front and center on the altar of St. Peter’s Confession; the other, a picture from the Sistine Chapel at last year’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord, where the whole chapel with the Holy Father lift their eyes to the Crucifix and the wall fresco behind it of Michelangelo’s Final Judgment.

Parish priests generally in these days of priest shortage are alone in the parish. If the building was built after the Council or was extensively renovated, the lonely parish priest can easily take the first option with a prominent Cross and an arrangement of 6 candles straight across the front of the altar. Even the second option is possible if there is enough of a platform on the people side or if the altar of celebration is still temporary and can be moved away to enable celebration on the old high altar.

What do you do when more is required? And what do you do when there are other priests who share your life and don’t necessarily appreciate what you consider to be the better choice? In a parish setting, what happens when you’ve finished your catechesis and the folks in the pews object to your choice of the “better” for them? The primacy of love would certainly urge us not to provoke the situation, since we are not dealing with a clear case of right and wrong, good or bad. But don’t we have to strive to bring out the better or the best from the storehouse as good stewards?

What does it mean when we say that the Holy Father presides over the community of charity? Who has to “set the tent peg” when it comes to worship? I’m not saying that for peace and good order the supreme lawgiver must act today. Maybe wisdom and love demand time to build a consensus. At some point however rubrics must prevail. The Pillar of Cloud led Israel to the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Setting up camp, breaking camp and the movements of God’s Chosen People in the desert were ordered by God and Moses called the shots. Lesser judges helped keep the peace among the people. Maybe Moses’ father-in-law Jethro would advise that this is a clear case for subsidiarity. Part of liturgical renewal in our day would seem to be ruling out the ambiguity of the past few decades and coming to grips with the true nature of divine worship as it was and should be everywhere and always. Good example, certainly, but above all good order!