On Pentecost Sunday this year I attended services at St. Mary the Virgin church in Oxford, England. This is the ancient church where John Henry Newman was canon in the 1830s and from whose pulpit he gave his famous sermons as an Anglican priest. There's a plaque now at the bottom of that high, dark pulpit to remember its once-famous occupant.
A churchwarden (sacristan) said: "You're a visitor, aren't you?" With that kind question, he proceeded to tell me about today's St. Mary's parish community: high church, diverse (he is himself a Quaker), mellow, liturgically rich in music and the Anglican rites.
He was right. The music by a mixed choir was lovely. A portable altar had been placed in the center of the long, narrow center aisle. The associate pastor who presided wore the bright red vestments of that Pentecost day. Her long dark hair was tied back; concelebrating with her were female and male associate pastors, one of whom gave the sermon; the readings and prayers for Pentecost were almost identical with those going on in Roman Catholic parishes around the world; one knelt at the altar rail to receive from a priest first the bread than the wine, which was not red but white.
Next day I returned for noon services. A different woman pastor, wearing the green vestments of Ordinary time, was the celebrant. This time we were just four women attending in a narrow side chapel where the long benches lining the walls were worn from all the rumps that had sat there over so many centuries. Pastor Rachel Greene (originally from Brooklyn) presided with her back to us. She pronounced the readings of the day forthrightly and the simple, straightforward words of the Anglican liturgy with conviction. She did not preach. Again, we received Eucharist from her, bread and cup, kneeling at an altar rail.
So here was the mix of rubrics, rails, procedures, presiders, words, all the elements roiling our Catholic church now. And here they just seemed ordinary ritual doings left over from all those mightly struggles of Newman's age and Thomas More's age before that. I wondered many times since what either of those fine gentlemen would write about it all now.
I absolutely agree although I do support the new missal. I like the new translation of the creed particularly the "I believe" and the "consubstantial with the Father." However, I am so excited about the direction the Church is going. I didn't care that some people like the Tridentine Mass. I thought, "Well, as long as they go to mass and find meaning in it then that's ok." But like Fr. Nonomen wrote, the Tridentine Mass promotes more than the Latin language. The Vatican said recently that female alter servers are prohibited in the Tridentine Mass. This is not the Catholic Church I believe that I belong to. The traditionalists promote backward thinking. I am eternally thankful for the Second Vatican Council. It is very easy to be the pharisee and I sure don't want to be one. No thank you!!
Some excellent observations. Although it is wrong to try and judge the hearts of anyone, no matter how they worship, my ob servation has been that a number of people who favor not only the Latin Mass, but the whole culture that the author talks about, use the "traditions" of the Catholic Church to reinforce an already held right-wing social and economic agenda. Try asking them what they know about the Church'
s teaching on the preferential option for the poor, the rights of workers and immigrants, etc. Trying asking Mr. Justces Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Kennedy what they know about the Church's teaching on capital punishment. I wonder whether you will find that they are as conversant with our moral traditions as they claim to be conversant with our liturgical traditions.
Not judging anyone's heart; just asking some questions.
To me, elevating the Latin Mass above all other modes of worship and ideas of the past concerning women and participation of the layity is akin to saying that Jesus came to reinforce the supremacy of the kosher laws and rules concerning ritual cleansing. Absolutely preposterous!
Mr. Kuczynski is in powerful company in his assessment of the hidden agenda of traditionalists. Over 60 years ago Yves Congar wrote an essay about the persistence of "integrism" (traditionalist, ultramontane thinking) whose primary objective was to show that this particular heresy is driven not so much by theology as by politics. Or a kind of political nostalgia. If we could only get back to the land of Leave it to Beaver, then we'd be fine, so it goes. Communion on your knees, on the tongue, back of the priest on view confecting "his" sacred mysteries. Then we'd be back to the Catholic Church of the early 20th century, compliant in the integrist conviction that Catholic doctrine is a template for a healthy American society. So after we get up off our knees we go campaign for conservative causes. Or perhaps, as the editor of First Things suggested a month or so ago, we should embrace traditional values as a panacea: if you want to help the poor, he wrote, eat dinner with your family every night and "wear a tie." But, to be theological for a moment, the Holy Spirit is always calling us forwards, never back. The Gospel is there to be embraced, not rescued. The Church is a community of pilgrims, not troglodytes.
It is the writings of people like you and Rita Ferrone that fill me with hope in the Catholic Church when there's so much now to be discouraged about. I converted from Mo. Synod Lutheranism 25 years ago, after marrying a Catholic. I converted freely and joyfully. My faith outlasted the marriage in fact. Now I fear that this Church that I love no longer exists. I experience it in some parishes that I visit, but personally, in my very own, a new, traditionalistic priest changed so many open and warm aspects of our masses and church community, (he speaks of bringing our parish back to being a "real" Catholic Church), that it's no longer recognizable to me as a place of worship...as my parish. Please keep writing.
Paul (7/2 12:56 pm):
<blockquote>But, to be theological for a moment, the Holy Spirit is always calling us forwards, never back. The Gospel is there to be embraced, not rescued. The Church is a community of pilgrims, not troglodytes.</blockquote>
Rather than calling names and urging right-thinking people to join the parade moving toward an ever-better understanding of God in the progressively improved future, why not consider for a moment that that whole constant-movement attitude may be responsible in part for the reaction you deplore? I'm not a member of that, but I think I can see a bit of what they want.
When you say "the Holy Spirit is always calling us forwards, never back", you're saying, in essence, that the present is always flawed and that things will get better only if we keep changing them - that the future is always a better place and that change is absolutely necessary for salvation - that to stand still is to stagnate and to fail.
I don't think everyone is constitutionally built to find continual motion agreeable. Presumably, God doesn't keep changing, improving as time goes on. <i>Homo sapiens</i> changes a bit in time - the various <i>homo</i> creatures that preceded <i>sapiens</i> did move out of the way - but not from minute to minute, day to day, year by year. What's the rush?
For many years I have been 'grouping" (Cursillo-speak for weekly faith-sharing) with two dear friends. One of them travels from the far suburbs into the central city for liturgy in Latin -- if not the full-blown Tridentine rite then the Novus Ordo. I'm an ex-seminarian and surprise myself from time to time with how much Latin I remember, but I don't share (or even get) this urge to worship in a dead language. I am ambivalent about the impending language changes: I'm slowly coming around to "I believe" and "consubstantial" but remain the prospect of abandoning the rich Scriptural nuances of "cup" in favor of "chalice" breaks my heart.
I would be hard pressed to revert to the old days when priests muttered the Roman Canon in an undertone against an altar that was placed against the wall at an elevation. The visual image was Moses communing with the Almighty on Mount Sinai while the throngs below got into mischief. To support "full, conscious, and active participation" on the part of the principal minister, namely, the assembly, the altar had to be brought forward. Did, however, the priest have to be placed "versus populum"? Didn't we thereby create the image of praying TO the priest? Wouldn't it rather be fitting that the priest come around to the other side of the altar to pray the Eucharistic Prayer on behalf of the assembly? The point is not to turn his back on the people but to have him praying as presider WITH the people as members (priest, deacon, and lay faithful all together) of the assembly?
On Pentecost Sunday this year I attended services at St. Mary the Virgin church in Oxford, England. This is the ancient church where John Henry Newman was canon in the 1830s and from whose pulpit he gave his famous sermons as an Anglican priest. There's a plaque now at the bottom of that high, dark pulpit to remember its once-famous occupant.
A churchwarden (sacristan) said: "You're a visitor, aren't you?" With that kind question, he proceeded to tell me about today's St. Mary's parish community: high church, diverse (he is himself a Quaker), mellow, liturgically rich in music and the Anglican rites.
He was right. The music by a mixed choir was lovely. A portable altar had been placed in the center of the long, narrow center aisle. The associate pastor who presided wore the bright red vestments of that Pentecost day. Her long dark hair was tied back; concelebrating with her were female and male associate pastors, one of whom gave the sermon; the readings and prayers for Pentecost were almost identical with those going on in Roman Catholic parishes around the world; one knelt at the altar rail to receive from a priest first the bread than the wine, which was not red but white.
Next day I returned for noon services. A different woman pastor, wearing the green vestments of Ordinary time, was the celebrant. This time we were just four women attending in a narrow side chapel where the long benches lining the walls were worn from all the rumps that had sat there over so many centuries. Pastor Rachel Greene (originally from Brooklyn) presided with her back to us. She pronounced the readings of the day forthrightly and the simple, straightforward words of the Anglican liturgy with conviction. She did not preach. Again, we received Eucharist from her, bread and cup, kneeling at an altar rail.
So here was the mix of rubrics, rails, procedures, presiders, words, all the elements roiling our Catholic church now. And here they just seemed ordinary ritual doings left over from all those mightly struggles of Newman's age and Thomas More's age before that. I wondered many times since what either of those fine gentlemen would write about it all now.
It has been forty years and counting since my ordination. My ordination occurred in November of 1968. The trip through the seminary for religious during and after Vatican II has been a wild ride. The tumult has been so great that it has been painful at times to just reflect briefly on this tortured and turbulent history. The one consolation in the midst of it all is that despite the efforts to turn back the clock in the Church, it has not happened nor will it. History clearly indicates that the future does become the present and the past . . . Quickly! For example, where is Arianism today? During the fourth century one day the "entire Church awoke to an Arian Church." There are few monophysite churches in existence at the present time. What has happened to the puritan churches of the early days of American colonization, e.g., Massachusetts Bay Colony? "This too will pass", is a wise and sobering reminder that all is finite, except for God. Whether we like it or not, most of what happens today will eventually be deposited into the "dust bin of history." My suggestion to those who are alarmed at the actions of a few others is the following: "Just be grateful that you have health and are able to serve in the great ministry of the RC Priesthood in this new and 'turbulent" (?) twenty-first century. "For those who love God, all things work for the good."