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

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Whose Reckoning?

I love the Second Reading for this the 4^th Sunday Throughout the Year (Cycle A):

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

“Take yourselves for instance, brothers, at the time when you were called: how many of you were wise in the ordinary sense of the word, how many were influential people, or came from noble families? No, it was to shame the wise that God chose what is foolish by human reckoning, and to shame what is strong that he chose what is weak by human reckoning; those whom the world thinks common and contemptible are the ones that God has chosen – those who are nothing at all to show up those who are everything. The human race has nothing to boast about to God, but you, God has made members of Christ Jesus and by God’s doing he has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom. As scripture says: if anyone wants to boast, let him boast about the Lord.”

These words of St. Paul can (as they have for me) give perspective to a person’s vocational journey, reminding us that both celibate priesthood lived to the full and a truly blessed marital union, as vocations to which we are called by God, are gift and grace revealing the handiwork of the Most High for His greater glory and our joy always, but always, in Him Who has not only begun the good work in us but Who brings it to fulfillment with our cooperation.

It is another aspect of this reading, however, that I would like to reflect upon briefly. The penultimate sentence of this passage is the one which strikes me above all today: “The human race has nothing to boast about to God, but you, God has made members of Christ Jesus and by God’s doing he has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom.” It is another way of saying Christ is everything in all of us. That is a notion which has consequences for the way we lead our lives and for the sorts of causes we may choose or attempt to champion. Should everything else pass away, libraries, monuments or whatever, and we as a race or generation fail, we, God’s little ones, the common and contemptible can still boast about God’s handiwork as revealed in us through Christ. That accomplishment is reflected in lives lived so as to radiate the presence of the gentle Savior Who dwells in our hearts.

“…Members of Christ Jesus…”   Too often, I am afraid, we gloss over the wonder of our, by God’s doing, being incorporated into the Son of God made Man. By reason of our dullness or distraction, perhaps, we rarely pick up on more than the flutter of the emotions of those scholars and mystics who wax eloquent or gushing over the implications or import of words like “sanctification” or “divinization” for our lives. Maybe, in point of fact, the problem is less with our dullness or distraction and more with that of the bravado of some of those who try to limbo under the bar of human comprehension placed on what for casual party-goers, at least, is the impossibly low notch of these “–tion” words! It might be better to leave the low, low bar to the stage performers and professionals and dwell both simply and profoundly upon the consequences of our baptism, of our having put on Christ, but in a fashion more intimate and earth-shaking that can be rendered by just a perfunctory glance at the great images of the white garment and our candle catching fire from the Easter candle.

“…Christ Jesus … by God’s doing … our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom.”  Ours must be the mind of Christ. Jesus condemns hypocrisy and commands those among His listeners for whom the shoe fits to first pull the plank from their own eye before attempting to pull the splinter from their neighbor’s eye. In that regard, I have to say (at the risk of condemning myself by my own judgment) that I have been particularly troubled of late by encounters (both through the media and directly) with the intolerance of any number of prelates within the Church: intolerance not directed toward wicked people, but intolerance toward those who are attempting as best they can to be faithful, especially in matters concerning Divine Worship and the education of children and youth. 

Why, even three years after the issuance of Summorum Pontificum (just to name one example), are well-meaning lay folk still treated with such great disdain by no less than bishops, bishops in communion (of heart, soul, mind and strength?) with the Successor of St. Peter when they ask for Mass in Latin? Is this anything other than blind hypocrisy (the plank!)? You tolerate no small amount of bad taste, bad music and caprice, while begrudging some few a port in the storm of liturgical abuse which seems not to want to subside? Can we be after His own Heart and not just claim to be members of Christ’s Body while still acting so at odds with the example set by the Holy One of God, meek and humble of heart? Such prelates are at counter or cross purposes to the sense in which the Church wants to go; they are ignoring what the Spirit is saying to the Churches and doing so with a backhand to some who are branded common and contemptible, but certainly not in the eyes of Christ... Let me say it more clearly! My issue is with the contempt shown for an outstretched hand, contempt such as would not be shown toward someone asking for some other benefit. 

When the Holy Father speaks of his will to see these two forms of the Roman Rite (ordinary and extraordinary) enrich each other, when he and others express eagerness for a recovery of the sense of the sacred in our churches and in how we worship, I am convinced that he has indicated the true nature of the rupture which has indeed occurred and needs to be mended or healed. You would think that those in communion with the Pope would seek to understand him and embrace his point of view. There is too much room for caprice and hence the need to reform contemporary Catholic worship. This is evidenced time and again, by way of one example, in the sense of helplessness many priests experience when confronted by musical groups moving into church with inappropriate repertoires, not to mention the dance and puppet troupes which should have been banished long ago. If a bishop does not want to discipline at least he can respect and foster those seeking good order.

St. Charles Borromeo advised his priests to fight distractions and foster devotion the same way that you keep a stove lit with only a flicker of flame inside, and that is, by keeping that stove closed up tight until you get the fire going strong. I think that has to be the aim of the reform of the reformed liturgy. That was the genius over centuries of the old Latin Low Mass, tamper-proof and self-contained throughout the vicissitudes of time. The pendulum swing to the other extreme, which has swept away everything that was popular devotion and religious expression, while at the same time opening up that stove to nearly anything and everything, has had little more effect than to have diminished the liturgy’s capacity for providing heat and light. Contemporary worship is too often held hostage by caprice (tasteful or tasteless is not the point), by creativity, if you will, but still something not foreseen by legitimate authority. 

Among the things which contribute to the crisis of faith among our youth, among those things which contribute to their dismissal of the Sunday obligation to assist at Mass (see the statistics for Mass attendance by young Catholics!) is the absence in what they experience in their parishes and Catholic school settings of an approach to Divine Worship marked by the healthy fear and trembling which time and again brought His disciples to their knees before the Son of Man. Just the other day in an airport waiting lounge I caught a conversation, in the row of seats back to back with me, between two elderly Catholic couples who were miffed at Father for having admonished them to go to confession for having failed to fulfill their Sunday obligation on the day after Christmas! The grounds for their dismissal of Father’s well-meant admonition were that such rules are man-made anyway. This is to my mind a logical conclusion to be drawn from a Sunday service as free-flowing and de-sacralized as they probably experience, as anything on cable TV or to be found in a passing revival tent meeting.

“The human race has nothing to boast about to God, but you, God has made members of Christ Jesus and by God’s doing he has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom.”

Apart from this intolerance, I’ve been confronted again and again recently with the reality of how oblivious many priests, religious and laity are to the de-sacralized character of their liturgizing. Jeff Tucker at “The Chant Café” is swarming about all he sees as progress toward the reform of the reform. I wish I could see what he sees. The promotion of the extraordinary form is an encouragement to reforming vernacular liturgy. The hunger of many of the laity for a reformed vernacular liturgy marked by noble simplicity has been and continues to be fostered by encounters with the extraordinary form. My guess is that a more positive attitude by more bishops toward the extraordinary form would go a long way to moving some of the priests toward an examination of conscience concerning their approach to celebration.

Why do some successors to the Apostles seem so unaware of the injustice of the double standard they apply in reacting negatively to requests for Mass in the extraordinary form? If they are unwilling to restore decorum to vernacular worship “cold turkey” for lack of courage or whatever, then the least they could do is recognize and support those among them who seek better.

            Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Communicating the Sacred

There are countless signs that progress is being made in recovering a sense of the sacred in worship. Needless to say, much is left to be done as still too much abuse occurs and begs the question that ends up not getting asked: "Is nothing sacred anymore?"

After being exposed to a wretched little YouTube video of a Christmas Mass in the north of France, where a youngish looking priest (fully garbed) seemed to be leading what looked like an aerobics class in church, I've been feeling a bit like the man who has had the proverbial rug pulled out from under his feet. One of my hopes was never again to see a youngish face so compromised on the altar and yet there he was, swinging, dipping and twirling as if he had no good sense at what was touted as Catholic liturgy. Sad and discouraging! "Is nothing sacred anymore?"

Fr. Z came to the rescue this morning by drawing my attention to a Michael Vorris video on RealCatholicTV entitle: 1 Peter 3:15. Michael basically invites the laity to make a New Year's Resolution to dedicate 30 minutes each day to formation, to learning your faith, to becoming strong in your faith. I think the resolution was presented as doable and giving priority to sanctifying one's own soul, lighting that little candle rather than cursing the darkness is a right approach. Meantime, some of us have to do something to take a stand and counter such sacrilegious behavior as took place in the north of France at the hands of someone (a priest) who ought not to be classed a barbarian or an infidel.

How can self-education in the faith counter my French aerobic priest? Obviously it can't and that is the point. Education of the laity in the faith can only and rightly be aimed at giving ballast to the barque of Peter. It won't close the seminary in France that produced our whirling dirvish or rid parishes of all those willing to splice into a sound system so as to blast the sound needed to thump-thump accompany such poorly choreographed folly. It is unlikely to nudge older priests straddling the fence or the less than courageous "Hamlets" among God's anointed to opt for decorum and strict adherence to the rubrics for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. It won't keep buildings in the round from being built or inspire criteria at diocesan level for rennovating churches which are once again oriented and focused on the Dawn from on High Who has come to visit us.

The pictures from this morning's celebration of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord in the Sistine Chapel are beautiful, but even there I still haven't seen an image of the Holy Father at the Altar for the Eucharistic Prayer, all together turned toward the Lord. I have to admit I was looking for something sacred and beautiful to wash the images and droning of that Frenchy from my mind's eye and ear. Honestly, that is not so important as the fact that despite the Holy Father's writings and example, at least one young priest in northern France seems totally oblivious of what is expected of him when he leads God's people in worship.  "Is nothing sacred anymore?"

Let me renew my appeal especially to learned canonists to start writing for a renewal of the practice of issuing diocesal or better provincial synodal norms which apply the existing law of the Church in a manner which would put e.g. rubrics in the hands of priests who seem incapable of gleaning them from the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. I can remember going through and finding such small handbooks in the libraries bequeathed to the seminary by deceased priests. Such books seemed superflouous to me back then as they only applied the universal norms everyone was supposed to know. The older I get the more I see the wisdom of stating the obvious even for those who are supposed to be wise.

Good example and reasoned discourse, just like self-education by a laity deprived of basic knowledge of the faith, are terribly right and wholesome. But with a manual bound and in hand it's easier to say that playing a recording of Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way" after Communion at Grandpa's fineral just doesn't go, nor does a danced Ave Maria by Grandma's budding ballerina.

"Is nothing sacred anymore?" It can be through reasoned discourse, good example and applied norm.

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.

Pick up the Ball and Run!

Taking a Stance on the increasing Sentiment in favor of a
Reform of the Liturgical Reform

Recently I happened across what I presume was a sports shoe commercial for television but of a very surreal sort built around a rugby theme. In the video the ball comes crashing through the front window of a restaurant and the next thing you know the men from the restaurant in business suits are joining in the game on the streets of the busy city outside. The video resembles as much urban warfare as it does a sport. I know rugby has become a genuine “thing” for boys and young men, replacing for our day and time the quest for the “red badge of courage” once to be gained in a forgotten type of warfare that was far from all-out for the civilian population but oftentimes mortal for the flower of a nation’s youth. In watching the video, the thought came to me that much of what goes on in the area of vernacular liturgy, its planning and celebration is not without parallels to the sport of rugby and its ethos. The incongruity of this thought is as shocking to me as watching the video “rugby” chase over cars, down alleys and onward through a bustling business district of town. The ethos of Divine Worship should be another.

Since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum the calls for a genuine reform of that liturgical reform which we have netted over the past forty years have become more insistent but likewise more eloquent and credible as proponents clarify their positions and line up behind the Holy Father. The contrast to the at times rugby-like status quo presented by the Pope’s gentle hand and his balanced words, notably during his recent visit to France, has led me to draw my little parallel between what has been touted as a reform according to the mind of the Second Vatican Council but which many times over the years and even yet today rather seems to resemble rugby rules for picking up the ball and running with it, that is, if you dare. The liturgical renewal which many of us have experienced in many parts of the Western World is unfortunately tinged with an inclination on the part of the priest celebrants to protagonism and no small amount of bravado being shown by others (let’s point our fingers at some of the pop choirs, musicians and dancers, leaving aside people with feminist and other agendas who also occasionally attempt to highjack what we were taught was the work of all God’s people).

I do not believe I am alone in having witnessed attempts by individuals or groups to steal center stage or at least run as far as they can with the “ball” without being tackled. Today’s Catholic youth and a goodly number of folk on the brink of or even immersed in middle age have known only this situation where what was cautiously and wisely decreed by Sacrosanctum Concilium has been bowled over by the “cavalry charge” initiated by enthusiasts who saw their chance to take the high ground. The fundamental appreciation which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council had for the need to set forth the liturgical reforms begun by Pope St. Pius X and Pope Pius XII seems to have been lost in the shuffle or huddle.

The recent announcement of the intention of the Bishop of Tulsa, Oklahoma to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in English but ad Orientem on the First Sunday of Advent and on Christmas is clearly motivated by a commendable desire on the part of the bishop to reestablish the continuity of the reform within the tradition, one of the hallmarks of the reform as intended and decreed by the Second Vatican Council. The publication in an Italian liturgical “blog” recently of a very eloquent page taken from a publication penned in 2001 by our present Holy Father dealing with being Christian in the new millennium has given new urgency to my own sense of obligation to take a stand in this “game”. For some strange reason, not wishing to challenge anyone’s good will, it seems evident that vernacular liturgy as celebrated today is not only too open to abuse, but is seemingly distant from what the Council Fathers intended and what could have been accomplished since then if everyone had held to their words of instruction and direction.

Were we (priests and people) ill-advised by the liturgical experts to stop praying in the same direction and start facing each other across the table? We know now that the nearly absolute banishment of Latin from our musical repertoire was an impoverishment, a form of iconoclasm, not dissimilar to that which whitewashed and stripped once pretty little churches of their countless votive offerings: sometimes leaving behind barren places where formerly one had felt at home with God, the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints. Could we not then also have been ill-advised in accepting something without precedent in our history (remember that the advice came from the same people and who evidently didn’t sufficiently understand the history of divine worship or care enough about what the Council Fathers had prescribed)? The negative consequences of this personalizing of worship (face to face) are patent. They place unreal expectations on the priest celebrant who as often as not instead of leading us in prayer seems obliged to seek engagement or even eye contact with the people before or around him.

Sacrosanctum Concilium N. 23 laid down the following principle among others for renewal: “Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them, and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” Even in the best celebrations of the reformed liturgy today, one would be hard pressed to show any urgency for celebrating across the altar table as “genuinely and certainly” being required for the good of the Church. Organic growth too is hard to plot in what so many people have experienced as rupture.

When N. 33 of the same conciliar decree urges that the sacred liturgy be instructive it does so reminding us that “… the sacred liturgy is principally the worship of the divine majesty…” The above cited page from Cardinal Ratzinger from 2001 rightly emphasizes that it is of the utmost importance that we reacquire respect for the liturgy and once again recognize that it is not open to manipulation; it is not placed at our discretion to be planned and presented as our talents allow. The present Holy Father called in this article for the reestablishment in a clear and organic way of the connections with past history.

I cannot help but think that the multiplication of celebrations according to the usus antiquior since Summorum Pontificum will be of aid in helping us back to the tradition. A full restoration of things as they were before Sacrosanctum Concilium, however, denies the wholesome analysis and the longing of saintly past Popes and an historic ecumenical council. Pope St. Pius X was right to come to the defense of Gregorian Chant and Pope Pius XII gifted us with a renewal of the Sacred Triduum to reflect the sublime mysteries celebrated therein. Both Popes’ interventions brought genuine change to the liturgy in an atmosphere of profound respect for the sacredness of the words and gestures they were modifying. It was undoubtedly the intention of the Second Vatican Council to set forth this same sort of cautious and organic reform. But, as I say, one has the impression that rugby rules were often applied and more than one stalwart decided to pick up the ball and run for it.

The article I read on the decision of the Bishop of Tulsa contains two great quotes from Bishop Slattery: “I hope that this common posture of the Church at prayer will help you to experience the transcendent truth of the Mass in a new and timeless way… “I pray that this restored practice will help us understand that at Mass we participate in the authentic worship which Christ offers to His Father by being ‘obedient unto death’ (Philippians 2:8)”. A modest wish on my part would be that many more chief shepherds would soon be setting a similar example.

The attraction held by the usus antiquior for young people in particular ought to give pause for thought. The explanation for this phenomenon could be as simple as recalling the God experience of the Prophet Elijah on Mount Sinai: he went to the opening of the cave and covered his face with his cloak at the tiny whispering sound of God passing by. God was not to be found in the storm or tempest. Much of what is propagated as youth liturgy today must certainly be judged at odds with Sacrosanctum Concilium N. 34: “The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity. They should be short, clear, and free from useless repetitions.” Though my life as a child was much quieter and free of external stimulation than is that of my nieces and nephews, I still found respite even as a preschooler in the big, quiet church of Sunday morning, where if it wasn’t High Mass, the silence might be broken only by an organ prelude, by another subdued organ piece during Communion and by the antiphons sung by a single voice from the choir loft on high. The genius of the past and its attraction for people of today comes from being able to perceive the Mass as gift, as withdrawn from the ambit of my discretion or caprice, as something of God, something sacred. Pope Benedict XVI speaks with urgency of our need to reawaken an interior sense of the sacred.

We have something altogether priceless in the renewed liturgical calendar and in the bounty of the lectionary with its three year cycle for Sundays and Solemnities. The introduction of the vernacular to worship certainly responded to an almost desperate hunger outside of the Latin world at least, if not universally within the Church. I would like to believe that the Bishop of Tulsa is on to something when he very simply and humbly moves to reestablish a single orientation for prayer in his cathedral this Advent and Christmas. May his attempt succeed to rescue the Mass from those who would beat it down with personal inventions or change the rules of the game to those of aggression! There’s a time and a place for rugby and not all of us are hearty enough to play such a game.