A bishop experiences a layman's pain

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 08, 2011

How often have you heard a faithful Catholic complain about liturgical abuses he encountered at Mass in an unfamiliar parish? More than you can count?

Okay, then, let me ask a different question. How often have you heard a faithful Catholic bishop complain about liturgical abuses he encountered at Mass in an unfamiliar parish? Never, I suspect. Until now.

Bishop Christopher Coyne, an auxiliary of the Indianapolis archdiocese, reveals that during a vacation trip he dropped in unannounced at a parish somewhere (he doesn’t reveal the location) for Mass, hoping also to get to confession. He didn’t have time to meet the local priest and arrange to concelebrate, so he experienced what ordinary lay Catholics there experience: a series of gross violations of liturgical norms.

Appalled by what he saw the priest doing, Bishop Coyne decided that he didn’t want to go to confession after all:

If he changed the words of the Institution Narrative, there's no telling what he might do with the words of Absolution.

What Bishop Coyne experienced, again, is what lay Catholics experience routinely—what the Catholics of this particular parish experience week after week. Bishops frequently hear complaints about liturgical abuses, but they rarely have the opportunity to see those abuses—to suffer through them—at first hand. As one prelate once remarked to me, when I mentioned the outrages at a parish within his jurisdiction: “When I’m there, they do everything right!”

For bishops—and for pastors, and for priests in general—it is usually easy to avoid liturgical abuse. A priest who wants to celebrate Mass with reverence can do so, and if his colleagues in the neighboring parish are violating all the liturgical norms, he might never know about it. But for lay Catholics it isn’t always so easy. For some faithful Catholics it is a hardship to travel past one parish church (where liturgical abuse is prevalent) to a distant church where the Mass is celebrated properly. For many more, vacation travel brings a new set of worries; we have no idea what to expect when we drop into the closest Catholic church on Sunday morning. Often we have few choices; often we suffer.

Thanks to Bishop Coyne for recognizing, and writing about, the problems that Catholics face when they travel. It’s good to know that even if bishops can usually escape the problems we lay Catholic routinely face, they know the problems are there.

[Hat tip to Father Z.]