Catholic World News News Feature
The Liturgical Counterattack January 02, 2002
By Donna Steichen
No one denies that the Eucharistic liturgy is in crisis today, the rate of Mass attendance having declined more than 65 per cent since 1963. Both "progressive" Catholics and those oriented toward traditional orthodoxy talk constantly about liturgical revision--although rarely to each other. Now, alarmed that recent movements for liturgical restoration are gaining support even within the Vatican, bishops committed to post-conciliar innovation have launched an undemocratic counter-attack.
In America magazine, on June 7, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee blamed Pope John Paul II for derailing liturgical renewal by granting the 1984 indult that restored use of the Tridentine rite in very limited circumstances.
On June 19, at the University of Notre Dame, Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, immediate past chairman of the NCCB liturgy committee, warned the 25th annual Pastoral Liturgy Conference to beware of those who want to "reform the reform" through exclusive use of the Roman Canon, in Latin, with priest and people facing East, and only males in the sanctuary. Among the guilty, the bishop named the late Msgr. Klaus Gamber, Father Joseph Fessio (the publisher of this magazine), Father Brian Harrison, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Father Aidan Nichols, and the organizations CREDO and Adoremus .
"We do not need to reform the reform," Bishop Trautman declared. "We need to revitalize the reform!" To do so, he said, liturgists must at last, and aggressively, explain it to the people in the pews: "Teach! Teach! Teach!"
Bishop Trautman is prominent among worriers who hear at their backs--and steadily drawing closer--not only Adoremus, CREDO, and Msgr. Francis Mannion's carefully moderate Society for Catholic Liturgy, but also such vehicles of traditional worship as Una Voce, the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, and the prolific young families crowded into pews at indult Masses. Increasingly nervous, some bishops have issued independent pastoral letters mandating still more liturgical changes in their own dioceses.
Among the writers are Bishop Sylvester Ryan of Monterey, Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester and, most recently, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. All three letters emphasize "cultural diversity" and the baptismal priesthood of the faithful, while downplaying the ordained priesthood. Cardinal Mahony's letter has attracted the most national attention--in part because of the immensity of his see, in part because an early, more abrasive draft, leaked to the press in June, antagonized many readers.
CHIEF TASK OF THE ARCHDIOCESE
On October 10, at the Long Beach Convention Center, Cardinal Mahony told some 2000 priests, liturgists, and other ecclesial careerists that implementing his new pastoral letter, "Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass," will be the chief task of the archdiocese for the next three years.
After the opening prayer service where he spoke, Spanish speakers were directed to a downstairs conference room to hear a Spanish keynote presentation by Father Domingo Rodriguez of Puerto Rico, superior general of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. The English-language keynote speaker was Bishop Trautman, who sounded some familiar notes. "We do not need a nostalgic retrenchment," he said. "We need to revitalize the reform." To try to transform the "youth culture," for example, we must use in Church "some of the sounds and instrumentation and beats that catch young people's ears." Bishop Trautman referred to "Gather Faithfully" as "one of the finest pastoral letters I have ever read."
After lunch, participants were divided by region and parish, for workshops led by middle-management facilitators, where they reviewed the pastoral letter section by section evaluated their parishes' liturgical strengths and weaknesses, discussed possible means for implementing proposed changes, and finally made posters to "take the message back home."
"Father Gabriel Marquez," a young member of a religious order, on staff at a central urban parish, said the entire workshop "made me feel patronized--or should I say 'matronized?" Working on the "summarizing posters" struck him as particularly "juvenile and unnecessary, a great waste of time." Like all the priests quoted here, he declined to have his name used because, he said, "I'm not ready for martyrdom yet."
FUZZY AMBIGUITY
Cardinal Mahony wants future citizens of Los Angeles to remember him not only for the monumental new cathedral he has commissioned but also for the updated liturgy he has designed for use there. Yet in contrast to the stark,hard-edged architectural plan for the cathedral, his liturgical proposals seem fuzzy and ambiguous. Beyond a few specifics--altar breads that "appear to the senses as bread;" a ban on normal use of hosts consecrated at previous Masses; much deliberate "eye contact" among members of the assembly and between "presider" and people; assumption of an "orans posture" during the Our Father--it is hard to guess just what the cardinal's "passionate" new liturgy might look like.
The sometimes inflated rhetoric of his letter remains much as it was in the draft version which had leaked into circulation this summer, but some of the particular passages which had provoked vehement criticism have been eliminated.
o Still present in the text is the order for "horizontal inclusive language, at least to the extent encouraged by the US bishops," but the statement that, "God is not male. But our exclusive use of male imagery risks a kind of idolatry" has been deleted.
o Gone is the statement that the "presider" can be thoroughly engaged in the ritual "only when we have left behind all magical notions of liturgy and priesthood."
o Gone too is the bewildering claim that "for centuries before the council, the 'right' of the baptized Catholic was to have an ordained person there to offer (or it was even customary to say, to 'read') the Mass. Vatican II freed us all from this misunderstanding."
o Where the draft explicitly urged worshippers to leave their pews and come up to stand around the altar during the Canon, the final version says vaguely, "the assembly is to be gathered round, if possible right around the altar"--which could merely mean choosing a front row seat.
o There is no mention of kneeling, and frequent mention of standing, but no direct order that all must stand, preferably in the sanctuary.
o Mercifully, there is no reference to liturgical dance, either. Nevertheless, those familiar with the liturgical tastes of chancery planners suspect such ideas form the letter's hidden skeleton. Its emphasis on "true" processions through the assembly at entrance, gospel, communion, and dismissal, will be taken at progressive parishes as demands for the kind of inculturating liturgical dance for which the annual Archdiocesan Religious Education Congress has long been notorious. Even at the Long Beach meeting, opening and closing prayer services featured half a dozen dancers, in pale tights under silky saffron draperies, swaying rhythmically through the assembly.
o Finally, in a bow toward orthodoxy, a footnote declares full compliance with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That footnote is a clearer statement of doctrine than anything in the text itself.
Last winter Cardinal Mahony made a similar doctrinal disclaimer in his diocesan newspaper, the Tidings, and successfully deflected criticism of the archdiocese for consistently inviting heterodox speakers to the annual religious education congress. At the time (February 21, 1997), the National Catholic Reporter praised the cardinal's gesture as a clever ploy and a model for other bishops. HARD WORK
In the cardinal's pastoral letter, some of the many references to liturgy as "hard work" come in passages addressing the need to make it clear the Eucharistic prayer is "the central moment of this Lord's Day gathering." He writes, for example: "It should be clear to all by the intense participation of the assembly that this is the central moment of the Sunday Liturgy." Later, he adds: "Great mystery is conveyed in the faces and postures, singing and silence, gesture and word. Everyone is attentive, bodies engaged as much as hearts."
What might this mean in concrete practice? The cardinal is referring to some condition which is left unstated, but is apparently too intense to maintain for longer than four minutes, the time prescribed for the Canon in the the pastoral. "No wonder," says the letter, "that when the great 'Amen' is concluded, one can sense a collective sigh."
Even if chanted, as the letter suggests, a four-minute Canon will almost inevitably be diminished by the uproar of multiple processions "around and through the assembly," a friendly all-around Greeting of Peace, or even a lively 15-minute homily.
"The way to help people see that the Eucharistic Prayer really is the 'central moment of the Sunday Liturgy' would be to use the Roman Canon, very solemnly, with all the saint's names, and have the worshippers on their knees where they belong, and ring the bells at the Consecration, and let it last maybe ten whole minutes," said grey, grandmotherly Barbara Lynch of Ventura, California, who said she came to the meeting to learn what changes may be coming to her parish.
The cardinal's letter continually identifies his directives for liturgical renewal as long-overdue compliance with the edicts of the Second Vatican Council, yet in the pastoral itself, the sole citation from Sacrosanctum Concilium is the reference (14) to "full, conscious, active participation." Before the council, Cardinal Mahony writes, "liturgical practice in the church had in many ways ceased to be a source for such rich formation." He even hints that today's choice is between his new style of worship and no worship at all.
The cardinal does not address the question of why Mass attendance fell so precipitously when liturgical revisionists took power. Certainly one reason it happened was the intellectual arrogance that dismissed all hesitancy as a sign of pathological rigidity and a rejection of the spirit of the Council. The same closed mindset was still in evidence at Long Beach.
"There's an implication that those who question or oppose the cardinal's plan for liturgical revitalization are somehow opposed to Vatican II. There's a climate of fear in the diocese," said "Father Jim Franklin," pastor of a vital, crowded parish in a minority neighborhood. "I thank God for Vatican II. But let's look at what it really said about the liturgy, not someone else's version of it." "In our small group discussions, I heard comments like 'Shhh! Here comes the cardinal.' It was said like a joke, but we really were not free to say what we really thought," Father Marquez observed. THE TIMETABLE
Under the heading of "responsibility, evaluation and a plan," the pastoral letter gives pastors a timetable for implementation:
1) By Pentecost 1998, every parish is to have a liturgy committee working under a director "trained through the Certification Program of the Office for Worship."
2) By August 1998, the liturgy committee will: - plan whatever renovation is needed to its present "worship space....so that neither the presider, ministers nor assembly thinks of the assembly as an audience." - assure that liturgy is sung, in music that bears repetition "by revealing in word and sound ever deeper levels of participation." Acoustics and sound systems must permit the assembly to hear not only "presider, lector and cantor," but also itself. - evaluate and improve supporting ministries--from lectors to "writers of intercessions"--by recruitment, training, or "retirement." - evaluate and improve "presiding and preaching" by involving "presiders and preachers" in "setting local priorities." Homilists are to meet regularly with a lay committee to review past performances and discuss homily ideas suggested by the Sunday Scriptures. Help will be available at all times from the "Office for Worship and the Office of Continuing Formation for Clergy."
3) By the First Sunday of Advent 1999, the Eucharistic Prayer and Communion Rite at every Sunday Mass are to be celebrated as described in the pastoral letter.
THE SACERDOTAL PRIESTHOOD
In calling for continuing "active renewal" of Sunday Mass in the parish, the letter stresses teaching the faithful to see themselves in corporate terms, as the "assembly" that "does" the liturgy, "celebrating and being transformed," offering the Eucharistic Prayer that is indeed "the prayer of the assembly," but still prayed (however liturgists might wish it otherwise) "by the presider." This truth is emphasized so disproportionately that the real role of the ordained priesthood is virtually overlooked.
America's most progressive bishops tend to refer to themselves as if they were heads of autonomous churches, yet ironically, they often demand obsequious obedience from diocesan priests. In Cardinal Mahony's letter, for example, ordained priesthood is diminished as much as the idealized "assembly" is exalted. Indeed, the priest "presider" is described only as a stand-in for the bishop. But the priest is neither one more member of the congregation (a term never used in the pastoral) nor merely a link with the bishop. Unless he is present, acting in persona Christi, there can be no Eucharistic Prayer.
"Father José Ramirez" said many priests were insulted, too, by the authoritarian way in which the pastoral was issued. "The first time they got to read it was in the Tidings," he complained. "They resent it that when we're supposedly using a 'collaborative model' of Church, they're expected to implement this but they were never consulted about it. It's like something sent down from on high."
INCULTURATION
Does the cardinal's letter address authentic problems in the archdio- cese? Its second theme, after the priesthood of the laity, is the need to build inclusive community in a diocese comprising many cultures and language groups. The acknowledgement of the Hispanic community at the opening prayer service was "the usual token," Father Franklin said:
One reading in Spanish and abilingual Prayer of the Faithful--then the Spanish-speaking were sent downstairs to another conference room to hear the Spanish keynote speaker. This is so typical. "Multicultural" is a word the ruling elite likes to use, but in actual fact they are patronizing. They are completely out of touch with that part of the Church which makes up the vast majority of Catholics in the Los Angeles archdiocese: Latinos.
On the other hand, "Father Michael Krutch," a pastor of a small-town parish at the northern end of the archdiocese who is now thinking about retirement, believes that the cardinal's letter addresses a problem vital to his community. "Our chief need is parish unity between the Spanish and Anglo parishioners," he said. "Currently, it's like having two separate parishes using the same church building."
But how should the Church respond to the Hispanic presence? Guadalupe Rojas was one of three Latina women who pointed out that in Mexico the liturgy is very traditional. Eduardo Navarro Ornelas is "environment chairman" on the liturgy committee at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, the oldest parish in Los Angelese. Today the parish serves three Hispanic cultures, each with its own style of music: the lively mariachi and marimba music of Mexico, the "sad, quiet music" of Guatemala, and rhythmic African-influenced Peruvian music. Navarro Ornelas concedes that the liturgy of renewal is not that of his people's national traditions. "Its true, the mariachi is not Church music in Mexico," he admits. Moreover, "In Mexico there are no women on the altars; here 95 percent of our Eucharistic ministers and servers and lectors are women." Nevertheless Navarro Ornelas believes the Hispanic parishioners are "open for change, ready for the best of both cultures."
But if the genuine cultures of Mexican, Peruvian, Guatemalan, and Korean Catholicism are far more traditional, and their liturgies more quietly reverent than those of the American Catholicism, what does "inculturation" mean in practice? Is the Archdiocese of Los Angelese prepared to show respect for the traditions of those people whose cultures are steeped in traditional Catholicism?
IMPLEMENTATION
How much will parishes be affected by the cardinal's liturgical agenda? "Parishes attracted to those liturgical fads are already doing them," said Father Ramirez. "We do not expect to implement the letter at all in our parish. It is DOA: Dead On Arrival. I predict it will be dead everywhere in a year." Others saw more value in the letter. "I think it will become a fairly major part of the liturgy committee's agenda," said Father Krutch. "As a first step, everyone involved in the committee should read the letter. Then they can evaluate where we stand now, and consider what changes may be needed. Decisions about changes should be made on the parish level."
Outside the Long Beach conference center, throughout the day, a band of four or five traditionalist men and women from "Concerned Roman Catholics of America" displayed banners and distributed leaflets protesting what they see as Protestantization of the Mass. Spokesman Ken Fisher of Anaheim said their "multi-faceted" objections to liturgical changes include opposition to liturgical dance, compulsory standing for Communion, the use of "inclusive" language, churches built "in the round", and the "needless" construction of a costly new cathedral. They are the tip of an unmeltable iceberg of resistance.
[AUTHOR ID] Donna Steichen, the author of Ungodly Rage, writes from California.
