Ideas of God and the Mass
In two different posts for a different thread, Ann Olivier raised the question of the relationship between ideas of God and experiences of liturgy, and vice-versa. She wrote to me privately: “It would be interesting, I think, to have a thread sometime about how the bloggers think of God.”
Well, Ann first. Responding to a comment that the former Church/Mass lacked “bigness,” catholicity, Ann replied: “There was no lack of “bigness”–those people privately praying were directing their attention to an infinite God, whom we viewed as infinitely great and good, and ourselves as poor imitations. We worshipped Him in a way that, I think, the current form of the Mass does not lead us to do.
“No, I don’t want to return to the old Mass, but I do want to incorporate an awareness of the Infinite God of Love and Mercy as present to us in the Eucharist, and I want to worship Him even as I am grateful to my brother Jesus for saving me and for establishing a communion with my neighbors. True, the last was lacking in the old Mass. But a lot has been lost too.”
In her second post, Ann wrote: “My point was not that the people were wonderful. My point was that their experience of the Mass was quite different from the experience of the new Mass.. It seems to me that Cathy Keveny’s point about different cultures resulting in different liturgies has a parallel in the experience of the people who attend those different Masses. And I would add that it isn’t just the liturgy that causes those experiences. It is our understandings of what the Mass is that produces our experiences, and I don’t think you understand what the old Mass meant to many of us, both conservative and liberal..
“For the young people today, God does not seem to be experienced as someone who is essentially our infinite Creator to whom we owe worship and love because He is the Absolute Love who sent His son to redeem us. In other words, he is not understood as both immanent in the person of Christ in the Eucharist and as transcendent–a reality so immensely great that we can never comprehend Him entirely. And yet–miracle?–He loves us and is present to us in the Mass.
“Yes, you younger people are perhaps more aware of God in the poor, and that’s as it should be. And, yes, you are more aware that the Mass is a communal event that strengthens the ties among us. But I don’t see you worshiping the Transcendent Who is so intimately present to us in both the Word and in the Eucharist. And that is a tremendous loss.
“Can a mere liturgy bring us to understand and appreciate both dimensions? I doubt it. The liturgy isn’t that good a teacher, I think. I think that the experience of the Mass is dependent on what we bring to it — our understanding of what is going on, and that is dependent of our understanding, limited as it is, of God.”
I think Ann is bringing wishful thinking to her memories of the old Mass. The proof was in the pudding, as they say. James O’Toole’s wonderful book: “The Faithful: a History of Catholics in America” points out more than once that “too many Catholics went to church either out of obligation or simply to ‘feel good.’ These were essentially ‘childish motives, not of mature persons.’ “ (p. 210) To a great degree, this was because the laity of the immigrant generation and earlier had to rely passively on the church and its hierarchy, rather than any developed sense of that “he (Christ/God) is not understood as both immanent in the person of Christ in the Eucharist and as transcendent–a reality so immensely great that we can never comprehend Him entirely. And yet–miracle?–He loves us and is present to us in the Mass.” I’m sorry, but that idea is great in theory but I doubt that very many “pew potatoes” prior to Vatican II had the remotest sense of what Ann is claiming for a Mass experience.
Catholics in those days were attending the Mass, but attending in the sense of paying attention is another matter. Praying the rosary, “doing” the Stations of the Cross, going to confession during the Mass, and general day-dreaming were, in my experience and that of many who are my age-peers, more like the general experience. The layout of the parishchurches was such that the ability to actually participate and experience what was happening in an environment where the priest was praying sotto voce and in a foreign tongue was limited at best. Why else the ringing of bells at the Consecration? Why else did people “wake up” at the end of Mass when the last gospel as well as the Leonine prayers were read in English? Benediction was popular because (1) it was said in English, and the people actually could join in the hymns, particularly “Holy God We Praise They Name” … in English!
This remoteness was also enforced by the hierarchical clerical culture in which “the task of the lay people was simply to give their assent to the defined truths of faith and then to express that assent through regular religious practice. The true mediator between God and humanity was the priest and he was the only one authorized to act in that capacity. Attending Sunday Mass and saying some prayers – those of the liturgy itself or others, it almost did not matter which – defined one as a Catholic.” (page 137) The Mass was a “private prayer done in public, an individual exercise that just happened to be carried out in the presence of other people …. Parishioners were there, but they were passive, often absorbed in their own thoughts.” (page 119) As parishes were increasingly created in the early 1800s and Catholics became more regular attenders, they also became more passive than they were in the days were they were responsible for conducting religious service without benefit of priest or Mass. “The responsibility for worship …. shifted to the priest who said the official prayers to which the people may or may not be paying attention … Religious worship became something that Catholics attended rather than something they did.” (page 84)
As observers rather than participants, I believe that the average Catholic, prior to the advent of the dialog Mass concomitant with the changes of Vatican II, attended Mass out of habit, fear of mortal sin (the result of intentionally missing Mass), cultural and familial pressures, and some vague good feeling that came with special services (Christmas, Easter, etc.) Again, I think Ann’s “ ….awareness of the Infinite God of Love and Mercy as present to us in the Eucharist” was an exception rather than the rule.
I do agree with Ann when she says that it “is our understandings of what the Mass is that produces our experiences, …” Unfortunately that understanding was not commonly understood in the days for which she pines.
“But I don’t see you worshiping the Transcendent Who is so intimately present to us in both the Word and in the Eucharist.”
What would one have to see (or not see) to assess another person’s understanding of God as both immanent and transcendent?
Jimmy Mac:
“Pew potatoes.” That’s nice. How do you know? Especially when you go to a Mass that has more to do with a Protestant evangelical megachurch than anything that Catholicism should offer. All O’Toole offers are standard canards in lieu of any real insights. Why don’t you offer your own thoughts as opposed to quoting O’Toole at length?
It’s not wishful thinking to mourn the loss of transcendence or the infinite God that hobbles the Novus ordo. And it’s not inappropriate to see reductionism in the current approach to God.
O Lord, I hope this interesting topic will not devolve into our usual bickering about the merits of the liturgy then and now. Amen.
For me, God has always been rather enigmatic and remote.
Perhaps it’s hard to get away from a Unitarian upbringing which does not emphasize any kind of anthropomorphic diety. But, from the time I started attending Mass with friends at age 10, I saw that remote Unitarian God manifest in the liturgy–the priest is dressed in special garments that make him different and apart from others, he is not like us in that he has a family or close friends, he does not come down from the altar to share the peace of Christ with us. The priest of God s not to be interrupted by mortals except at carefully designated intervals.
The struggles of this world are ever before us in the image of the crucified Christ, which is front and center behind the altar and also carried by the crucifer in the procession. These symbols underscore that we are to endure what comes while striving to avoid sin–and that these are not pleasant tasks, especially as age and illness advance to weaken us in the face of the circumstances of the world.
I do not believe that prayers affect outcomes very much–God has his plans, and when our prayers are “answered,” it’s because that’s what God intended all along. Nonetheless, prayer is the only way we have of showing our hope and concern for others. And it’s that hope and concern–caritas–that connects us to God and each other.
The hope of Christ is doled out in small bits of flesh and blood at the Eucharist, always with the proviso that we are not worthy to receive them. I do not receive anymore, but seeing hope made tangible still moves me.
The Mass, in my view, reflects the cruelty of the world and the hardship of our lives. And, for me, that’s why the Church is credible–if reflects reality. Or, perhaps, I have twisted my understanding of the Mass to reflect my sense of reality. When I share these ideas with other Catholics, they tell me that if that’s what they got out of Mass, they’d go home and cut their throats.
In any case, Mass does not pretty up life for me, but it reminds us that others share those same hardships and need the same scraps of hope we do.
The Church also offers us the lives of the saints–a long, long line of sufferers like ourselves, who endured and made the purpose of that endurance manifest. I often wish that a litany of the saints was part of the liturgy, in that it brings that promise that our endurance is not pointless down the centuries to our own times.
I think that the current liturgy leaves no room for the transcendance of God. Every circle is neatly closed.
-Attention: the priest attends to the people and the people to the priest. Closed.
-Position: the people face one another “in the round” and the priest eye to eye. Closed.
-Prayer: didactic. Closed.
-Music: self-referential, self-congratulatory. Closed.
I should say: the current liturgy as often practiced.
Kathy’s right. It’s no wonder people perceive worship as a community celebration. Back in the day, whatever its deficiencies, the old Mass at least called people outside of themselves to recognize God’s sovereignty (at least when it wasn’t calling them to take up arms against heretics or deny women their rights or suppress the vernacular, to quote some of Miss Kaveny’s more unfortunate takes on the TLM).
Ann wrote:
“I don’t think you understand what the old Mass meant to many of us, both conservative and liberal..”
Sadly in Italy and especially in France don’t exist liberals interested in the old Mass. They are all conservative people, very often fascist and very often xenophobe.
I think the question of how what we bring in with us influences our experience of the Mass is very interesting. I don’t experience any of the circles Kathy mentioned as closed. But that’s probably because I walk in with an understanding of God and an understanding of the Eucharist that makes closed circles impossible.
I went to Mass at a different parish this past Sunday because my husband and I were juggling a sick child. The church’s interior is early fall-out shelter; just walking in sucks the energy out of me. The music was tepid, with few besides the choir singing. The homily was neither wonderful nor awful (although the priest did hit one of my pet peeves by casually referring to Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute). A casual observer might have seen a room of people just going through the motions.
And yet — that is not what I saw or experienced. I experienced the wonder and majesty of God, present both in the mystery of the Eucharist and teen next to me in his t-shirt and shorts. I had no doubt that Christ was there in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the Word. The experience of Mass both drew from and reinforced my understanding of God who is closer to me than I am to myself and yet so wondrously grand that I can only stand in awe.
I talked to a friend after Mass about a mutual friend whose 7th-grade son hasn’t regained consciousness after a head injury last week. (Please pray for Chris!) We talked about bringing all of our worry and our fear to God in the Mass. I wish I could remember my friend’s exact words — what came through was the sheer joy of knowing that we worship a God who is bigger than we can imagine and yet loves each of us intimately. Immanence and transcendence, united in the mystery of God.
I think it is perilous to generalize about what what people experienced when the went to mass in the old days. I think I can say that in my family we went to mass because we were Catholics and that was what Catholics did. We didn’t really talk about it. Beyond that I don’t know. Missals in the vernacular do not go back much before the beginning of the 20th century. The practice of frequent communion started, at least for most people, with Pius X. I suspect that those who recorded their impressions in diaries wre atypical.
What is conspicuously absent from Ann’s account of the virtues of the Mass, new or old, is what the Catholic Church itself has formally and officially identified as the heart of the matter: the celebration of the Paschal Mystery. Intimations of God’s immanence and transcendence are all very fine, but you can get these feelings about God in other religious exercises. The liturgy is not there to convince anybody that God exists, is awesome, or is near; it assumes these facts to be already in evidence. These are not the reasons why the first disciples gathered, nor are they what the liturgy is primarily about. The liturgy is about the dying and rising of Jesus, and our sharing in that paschal passage from death to life. If we lose our grip on this fact, we lose everything.
I do not think we have lost our grip, not yet. Gina Collata gets at it obliquely when she brings up the hard and fearsome life stories that the faithful bring with them to the altar of God, and Jean Raber reflects it when she brings up the mystery of the cross vivid in its presence before our eyes. I bridle when I read what “my brother Jesus did” mentioned as an afterthought — another thing for which to be grateful — and an individualistic afterthought at that (“saving me and establishing a communion with my neighbors”). What Jesus did is the axis on which the world turns. It’s the basis for the church. It’s the warrant for loving our enemies and changing the world.
I think Jean is right that I hope that this doesn’t decend into the usual bickering. I agree with Gina that Kathy’s post is dslanted and mainly I continue to agree with Jimmy Mac’s analysis, which is far better than what I offered.
Excuse me, that should have been Gina Cattalini. Sorry!
Rita,
Don’t you draw too sharp a line between participation in the paschal mystery and the worship of Almighty God? The Second Vatican Council unites them:
“Thus by baptism men are plunged into the paschal mystery of Christ: they die with Him, are buried with Him, and rise with Him; they receive the spirit of adoption as sons “in which we cry: Abba, Father” ( Rom. 8 :15), and thus become true adorers whom the Father seeks.” (SC 6)
Steven, how does Jimmy Mac “know?”
Because he witnessed the old liturgy firsthand. And so did I (I’m 60).
Why quote O’Toole “at length?”
Because the historian, in the passages quoted by Jimmy Mac, has done a very good job of describing what typically transpired at the Tridentine service back in the day.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history — (I hope you know the ending here).
Jimmy Mac and others of our generation have, indeed, learned the lessons of liturgical history, and we don’t want to return to what some folks purport is “the good ol’ days.” They weren’t so good, not at all!
As for the debate over “God up there” versus “God down here,” I’m reminded by my Christian faith that God deemed it worthwhile to give us his Son who walked among our religious ancestors “in the flesh,” no less. Jesus taught us how to live in the here and now. He experienced the joys and frustrations and all other manner of human feeling. He experienced temptation. He was like us in all things but sin.
God can take care of himself. Jesus did God’s will by teaching us how to care for one another! As the Lord said, as long as we reached out to others in need, we were taking care of Jesus himself!
Returning, if I may, to Cathleen’s earlier thread (which I came across too late in the process), there is much more at stake in the church than the debate over Tridentine versus Novus Ordo. Borrowing from Edgar Schein’s work on organizational culture, these liturgies might be seen as “artifacts” of culture, that is, the visible stuff that represents much deeper elements of an organization or institution’s values, etc. Fact is the liturgy over time became more and more removed from the laity — so much so, as Keith Pecklers has noted, that it eventually came to be seen as the province of the clergy alone. The priest “said” Mass; the laity “attended” (as in standing in place or sitting in a pew). But the laity in our experience did not “attend to” the Mass!
As the most important part of Catholic expression, the Tridentine liturgy helped cement the clerical culture, and recent events have more than demonstrated the sinful “fruits” of this culture. Everything must be seen as part and parcel of a larger and intact “system.” Everything is interdependent: belief, expression of belief, acts, etc.
Whatever faults one might find with the New Rite, I would never return to the Old Rite. It reinforced a sinful system. Again, those who don’t learn the lessons of history…..
No, Kathy, I do not think that I am drawing a line too sharp. I’m pointing out what is missing in this analysis. The crucial part. The allusion to the gospel of the woman at the well does not negate the point I am making.
Mr. Jaglowicz,
OK, you don’t like the TLM. De gustibus. But not really. What concerns me about this discussion (as well as the snarky one earlier) is that people are using the liturgy as an avatar for the issue they really want to talk about: and that’s the nature of the Church (or you can call it “authority” if you want). That’s what Kaveny didn’t get around to in her post, but criticized everyone else for not discussing. It’s the difference between a Mass that develops “organically,”(i.e., which can envelop us with its sureties no matter how times change as Orthodox worship does) and one that is always in step with the times and therefore means nothing.
Using Pecklers, et al., as evidence is itself a bit tendentious. Everyone knows where he is on the continuum.
I have rarely if ever encountered God in the Mass. There are times these days , because of the qualities of preaching, participation and music that exist in my parish, that I encounter something that might be an evidence of God, but, in general, I don’t. I am 68 and grew up with what there seems to be a pining for on the part of many wishful thinkers. I experienced it for almost 30 years. While reading O’Toole’s book I had more than one “aha!” moment because he described so succinctly (with copious supporting footnotes ….. NOT canards, Steven!) what I remember. I have discussed this matter with age peers and, with a few exceptions, our experiences were the same. Experiencing God in that Mass? Can you experience a sunset if you are blind? We were not given any reasons to expect to experience God. We learned a lot of rules and were subject regularly to threats of eternal damnation …. but to expect an encounter with God? The encounter was the provenance of the priest, not the observers.
That lack of conditioning carried forward in my life and I only learned otherwise by spending years in a nondenominational church that had a totally different approach to worship. For better or worse, the Catholicism of my early life was about memorizing, obeying, fearing and habituating …. not about conversion. By the time I did get exposed to a very different way of looking at things, I pretty much had settled into the realm of pious agnosticism, where, I guess, I exist today.
I read all of the rarified experiences that have been reported in this stream so far and, quite frankly, it is just so much mumbo jumbo to me. I continue to participate in the Sunday liturgy because it reinforces in me the sense of being on a journey with other sojourners to a hoped-for (but in no way absolutely guaranteed) ultimate encounter with the God of my dreams. The few experiences that I think may have been God-encounters have been in times and places where circumstances and other people have created an atmosphere where I was open to the expectation. In general, however, I don’t expect and therefore do not experience. Good Mass is good theatre and good theatre creates a good experience that, with a bit of luck, translates into a greater awareness of what is good and noble about the here and now. The rest is, at best, hopeful conjecture.
I highly recommend O’Toole’s book, particularly to those who think that the Holy Grail is to be found pre-1965.
As I said, I had hoped we wouldn’t(as Jean proposed) descend to the old bickering.
I don’t know what the phrase about the liturgy “being in step with the times and therefore meaning nothing” means, but it sounds both facile and arrogantly gratuitous.
In fact, in describing discussion earlier as “snarky”. the whole post seems a bit of projection!
Jimmy Mac,
The point of Mass is to “experience” God, but to worship God. It’s supposed to be the highest opportunity we have to direct praise to the living God.
Feelings and religious experiences are somewhat beside the point.
Rita,
Note that the woman at the well had already developed a serious question about how to worship correctly (on the mountain? or in Jerusalem?)
And how should/why should one worship the unexperienced? Why not a toadstool instead?
Toadstools didn’t make the world, for starters.
This would have been about twenty-five years ago: we were having an informal joint faculty-graduate student seminar. The conversation turned to prayer and encountering God (imagine that, among theologians!). One of my colleagues said that he had encountered God, the God to whom he was trying to devote his life, the God to whom he still went for comfort, by whom he was still challenged, the God in whom he still believed, in St. Raymond’s Church in the Bronx at 7:00 daily Mass, said in Latin by a priest in inaudible Latin with his back to the people. As he spoke I looked around the room and saw jaws dropping in disbelief. And I said to myself, “My God, they don’t seem to believe that it was possible to encounter God before Vatican II!”
And that was one of the things that led me to do a study of how pre-conciliar Roman Catholicism got the way it was, and why it was that the sub-culture in which it was embodied seemed to dissolve so quickly after the Council.
Could we stipulate, as the lawyers say, that it was possible to encounter God in the unreformed rite and that it is possible to encounter him in the reformed rite? And that to speak of the liturgy as an occasion for encountering God is not to say that it is the only place or even the most common place to encounter him?
Havers! One would think people on this thread truly WANT to misunderstand each other.
The question, as I see it, isn’t about whether to worship toadstools, but whether you can worship what you haven’t any knowledge of, i.e., experienced
Jean,
What does “havers” mean? Is that a Michigan expression?
I understand Jimmy Mac, but I disagree with him. For several hundred years (since Schleiermacher at least), knowing God and experiencing God have been equated. Experiencing, in turn, has been equated with feeling. I don’t think that’s a good model of spirituality.
While I agree with Fr. Komonchak that it is possible to have religious experiences in both forms of the Roman rite, and that it is not the only place in which God can be encountered, I think that religious experiences are beside the point.
“I have rarely if ever encountered God in the Mass. … I continue to participate in the Sunday liturgy because it reinforces in me the sense of being on a journey with other sojourners to a hoped-for (but in no way absolutely guaranteed) ultimate encounter with the God of my dreams. ”
Jimmy Mac, thank you for sharing so much of your spiritual dreams and doubts.
I wonder if the two snippets of your comment that I’ve juxtaposed above could suggest that, in some sense, that notion of journey with others is, in fact, a way that you encounter God. Just a (very modest) suggestion on my part.
Just speaking for myself: I think I encounter God frequently and fail to recognize Him. Yet I experience, sometimes, what the travellers to Emmaus encountered: “Were not our hearts burning within us?”
Maybe it’s a symptom of aging, but it becomes more and more clear to me as time goes by that so many of the things that I thought would be stable and solid – a job, a house, a friendship – are in fact rather ephemeral, while this wispy, intangible thing called Love has a tensile strength that outlasts everything else.
This thread is really interesting. Jimmy Mac, I would never dare write what you wrote (maybe in 25 years, when I am your age!) but I’m with you in much of what you say. I wish I wasn’t…
Kathy:
I didn’t speak of “religious experience” but of “encounter,” which I would not want to identy with religious experiences.
On the other hand, I would not say that “religious experiences are beside the point.” Among other things, this would be to discredit a broad and deep spiritul tradition that, for example, speaks of five spiritual senses, of spiritual delight, of depths of joy, etc., referring by these to conscious experiences. Perhaps you meant that the experiential is not the primary thing, and Augustine, who helped launch the theme of the inner spiritual senses and of the pleasures the heart can experience in God, woould agree as when he insisted “Gratis amandus est Deus”, God is to be loved for his own sake and not for what he can give us.
As for Jean Raber’s question, “whether you can worship what you haven’t any knowledge of, i.e., experienced?” I wouldn’t identify knowledge with experience, but if the question is whether we can worship a God we haven’t experienced, I think the biblical answer is that we not only can, we have to worship a God we haven’t experienced. E.g., summing up much in both Testaments, Jn 1:18: “No one has ever seen God.” But perhaps Jean meant something else?
Perhaps you meant that the experiential is not the primary thing, and Augustine, who helped launch the theme of the inner spiritual senses and of the pleasures the heart can experience in God, woould agree as when he insisted “Gratis amandus est Deus”, God is to be loved for his own sake and not for what he can give us.
Yes, this is what I meant.
Kathy,
You seem to presume that because I insist on the centrality of the paschal mystery I don’t believe one should be concerned about worshipping God. That’s nonsense, and I never said that, and I’m sure if you thought it through you would see what I’m getting at is, rather, the revelation we have in Christ in its specificity. What I am saying is that if one is serious about worshipping in spirit and in truth, as a Catholic, the paschal mystery has to be at the center of that endeavor.
Fr. Komonchak,
I don’t know what you are getting at above in your anecdote. You seem to have created a straw man and then asked if we can stipulate that he’s made of straw. Well, sure. But what are you trying to say beyond the fact that caricatures are distortions?
Thank you, Fr. K. Excellent point. Everyone needs to take a breath and read The Mass by Jungmann.
Remember – liturgy, sacrament, eucharist, the people of God are always – “NOT YET, BUT ALREADY PRESENT”…..e.g. the presence of the transcedent God and a constant reaching out for God. Or as some say, our encounters are always “BOTH, AND” e.g. transcedent and ordinary; vertical and horizontal; high liturgy – low liturgy.
Rita,
You said, “The liturgy is about the dying and rising of Jesus, and our sharing in that paschal passage from death to life. If we lose our grip on this fact, we lose everything.”
Here is an interesting link that approaches Fr. K’s original question (from Ms. Olivier) from a different angle:
Shortcut to: http://www.catholica.com.au/gc2/dd/010_dd_011008.php
Posted by Jimmy Mac
on October 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
“I have rarely if ever encountered God in the Mass”.
I doubt you would want to. Consider that Moses had to cover his eyes in the presence of God.
It may also be a question of whether one truly believes in the Real Presence. The business of communion in the hand seems to me to have allowed doubt to enter.
A good remark was that of the fireman character on the TV series: “Each week for half an hour, we could believe that it would all come alright”.
Ms. Ferrone: I really had no great ulterior motive in presenting my “anecdote,” as you call it, but on reflection I suppose it was designed to caution people against generalzing about what pre-conciliar liturgical life was like and about its relationship to one’s religious life. There have been, and are, people who don’t think they can defend what Vatican Ii tried to do except by vilifying Catholic life and worship before Vatican II. I think things are more complicated than that. My “anecdote” illustrates that.
“As for Jean Raber’s question, ‘whether you can worship what you haven’t any knowledge of, i.e., experienced?’ I wouldn’t identify knowledge with experience, but if the question is whether we can worship a God we haven’t experienced, I think the biblical answer is that we not only can, we have to worship a God we haven’t experienced. E.g., summing up much in both Testaments, Jn 1:18: ‘No one has ever seen God.’ But perhaps Jean meant something else?”
Clearly, I’m not using “knowledge” or “experience” (and let’s not even go to “encounter”) in the way a theologian would.
I do wonder how you worship a God you cannot know (experience, perceive, believe in, understand, have a notion of, pick-your-own-verb), and I didn’t think the toadstool digression was particularly helpful to that question.
To go back to Ann’s observation: “The liturgy isn’t that good a teacher, I think. I think that the experience of the Mass is dependent on what we bring to it — our understanding of what is going on, and that is dependent of our understanding, limited as it is, of God.”
The statement suggests two lines of discussion:
One is whether liturgy by nature is an inadequate teacher or whether the liturgy could be a better teacher if it fixed up (reformed, improved, restored, your-verb-here).
The other point is whether we impose our own preconceived (or changing) ideas about God onto the liturgy regardless of how good (correct, your-adjective-here) the liturgy is.
A blog is a difficult place to discuss a topic that is bound to break off into many different lines of discussion and when discussions about the liturgy usually raise as much acrimony as the topic of abortion.
“Havers” is a Scottish epithet my Aunt Ellen used to indicate mild irritation.
At my parish in Yonkers New York, one pastor left three years in conflict with the parishioners. The pastor who replaced him never really connected to the people. He simply announced last month that he informed the diocese that he was leaving in two weeks and that he was not sick or leaving the priesthood thus implying that he was angry or disturbed about someone or something. Attendance fell.
A new pastor came three weeks ago. He has reached out to the parishioners and there has been a tremendous response. The parish is resounding with vitality like it has not been in years. This may diminish but it does show how leadership is very important.
We should remember that church does mean community and that Jesus said the second commandment is as important as the first in that one does not love God who does not love neighbor. Very important lesson for those who are all adoration without fraternity. The people are one with Christ in God, a royal nation a royal priesthood. The people offer together sacrifices, love together to unite together with God.
What is my experience of Mass and how does the liturgy relate to my idea of God?
When the homily connects the readings to my personal experience, it can be frightening or exhilarating in its clarity. When it relates the readings to questions of social justice, it grabs my attention intensely and often seems like a revelation. Those are rare events, but they are the easiest way for Mass to be more than a peaceful musical routine.
When we exchange the sign of peace (if people actually look at me while doing it), when I hear the voices of people singing all around me (if they are actually singing), I feel part of a community of believers. The highlight of Mass for me is the prayer of the faithful. I hear people from within the congregation voicing their concerns and prayers for us to present to God together, and it’s a powerful but fragile moment: one wrong word can destroy that atmosphere of communion of intentions! Dull, bland intercessions are my most common disappointments, and intercessions that reveal how out of step I am are the easiest way for me to feel estranged.
The consecration is a brief chance for me to reflect on the mystery of the Eucharist, but almost always my mind just goes blank, and there is no sense of awe or wonder or anything special, really, much as I try.
How does that relate to my idea of God? My focal point at Mass is the crucifix. When my attention wanders, looking at it brings me back to the present. The Lord’s prayer is less dry if I recall Jesus telling his disciples about it. Sometimes I imagine him being there to help me pray. I think of him as a friend and a guide.
I wouldn’t say, like Kathy that “the priest attends to the people and the people to the priest.” The priest helps us pray, that’s all. Basically, he’s one of us, or at least that’s how it seems to me. He earns our respect (or not) by being wise (or not). Since he spends much more time listening to God than us, he can probably hear Him better, and so we try to listen to him with open minds, just in case he happens to know better than us!
Jimmy M: I once knew a priest who used to say (in private): “I am terrified of death. Nobody has ever come back to tell us what it’s really like.” Stunning in content and perhaps even more in its stark honesty!
Is doubt really that foreign to Catholics? Just asking.
In my experience talking to Catholics before and after my own conversion, I would say that most of them see doubt as part of the landscape of their faith. Their attitude, which I’ve tried to emulate, is that true believers do their best to persevere on the days they don’t believe.
Our old priest used to explain it this way, “There are probably days you don’t love your husband. Your obligation on those days is to act as if you do.” Great spiritual and marital advice all rolled into one!
Maybe I’m talking to the wrong Catholics, but I’ve never met one whose “dark night of the soul” ever really ended. And I’m not sure i could stand to be around such a one.
Jean,
Read Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity. It begins with a discussion of doubt and how thoroughly Catholic it is.
Wasn’t it Cardinal Newman who said, “Ten thousand difficulties don’t add up to a single doubt”?
My sense (from reading, obviously) of those who have come out of the tunnels of the dark nights is that they’ve become so humble, gentle, generous, etc. that they are profoundly attractive–like Fr. Zosima in The Brothers K. The saints are supposedly that beautiful.
Cardinal Newman was speaking of investigation, i.e., considering the grounds for assent to propositions or doctrines, without retaining doubts about their truth. For Newman, doubt occurred in the process of inquiry. In Newman’s view the “believer” can have no doubts, at least in theory.
Ratzinger is speaking to the actuality of the human condition and he uses St. Therese of Lisieux as an example. Raised in the most Catholic of households, she nevertheless often had shattering doubts, which almost led her to atheism.
Unlike Newman’s carefully-calibrated gradations of knowledge, St. Therese reveals the dichotomy of doubt: it’s between all or nothing.
I think the question about worshipping a toadstool is central to this discussion. There are a variety of behaviors involved in “worship”, regardless of what is being worshipped — genuflections, abasements, awe, daily or weekly attendance, etc. In some places, neglecting any one of those behaviors is not worship.
Behaviors determined by the object of worship differ with the nature of the one worshipped. Wine for Bacchus, women for Venus, song for Orpheus, whirling for dervishes, etc.
I believe God who created and cares for us, and worship for me is shaped by caring for those whom he has created. Mercy expresses the loving forgiving God better than sacrifice or other generic forms of worship. The closer I come to discovering God in those around me, the more I recognize God is far beyond me. Immanence and transcendence are close to each other, even as they are far apart, almost opposites.
Thank you, Laura, for those distinctions between Newman and Ratzinger. And I was unaware of Therese’s shattering doubts.
The posts here reveal a depth of knowledge about theology that may help answer a question I’ve had for years.
Regarding doubt, is there something by Blaise Pascal regarding the willingness to doubt as the confirmation of belief? Did he also say, “Oh for the faith of a Breton peasant?”
Fr. K’s comment about vilifying pre V-II pricks, I confess, but that is based on my experience of a brittle spirituality. I was determined not to bring my children up in the church I knew. That others experienced things differently is no doubt true.
I still resonate with all that Jimmy Mac posts of that period, turning 68 myself in a few weeks. I recognize clearly what he writes about.
Hi Carolyn,
From what I could find, the quotation you asked about is attributed to Louis Pasteur. “The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant’s wife.” This was apparently written in a letter to one of his children.
NCR reports the Holy Father has appointed an entirely new Liturgical Commission ,maybe one more in line with his notion of bring back the Latin rite to give Tradionalists ” a seat at the table.”
(My poor view is that we’re still going backward and I empathize deeply with Carolyn that I don’t want my family worshipping like it was when I was a kid.)
” Fr. K’s comment about vilifying pre V-II pricks …. ”
Not ALL of them were, you know!
(I couldn’t resist that …..)
Carolyn: I have only a year on you, so we’re talking about the same Church of, say, fifty years ago. It was as complex and varied a Church as we have today, with varied spiritualities, liturgies done well and poorly, with examples of ugliness and of beauty, with authoritarians and liberals, with the various reform movements that would make Vatican II possible well underway and represented, for example, in a Catholic journal like “Jubilee,” and with those in Rome and here who were suspicious of those movements, with people vigorously arguing for the vernacular in the liturgy and others as vigorously arguing for the retention of Latin, etc., etc. At Mass some said the Rosary and followed other directions, and some were following the Mass with their missals. This is the reason why I don’t want to universalize from personal experiences, and why I resist denigrations of the pre-conciliar Church as much as I resist romantic idealizations of it.
Carolyn,
My sense of Pascal is that he was on the opposite end of the faith-reason spectrum. In his Pensees he develops two arguments against doubt. One argument is a diatribe against Descartes, and the other is a proof of Christianity from the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. This second argument goes something like this:
1. The scriptures prophesied strange and wonderful things
2. These came to pass, in Jesus, just as foretold
3. This is proof that the Old Testament is true revelation
4. And it is also proof that Jesus is the Messiah
Pascal (an empirical scientist) thought that this was a water-tight argument.
Having lived through the changeover of the Episcopal BCP, my opinion is that WHAT the standard liturgy is (barring outright heresies, of course) is of less importance than that there BE a standard liturgy.
My sense, from the anecdotes offered here, is that a large part of what people get out of any liturgy is going to be filtered through the baggage they drag in the door (sorry for the mixed metaphor).
So even if the Secret Liturgical Police Force could come up with a “correct” or “perfect” liturgy, you’d never achieve universal approval, some parishes would ad lib and tweak, and argument over what MUST be included and were local tastes and tradition can be allowed will never really end, will it?
Just another note on Pascal, and this is more in favor of the “worship as religious experience” side of the discussion.
Pascal didn’t constantly carry an argument in the lining of his coat. He carried this:
+
The year of grace 1654,
Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.
***
+
L’an de grâce 1654,
Lundi, 23 novembre, jour de saint Clément, pape et martyr, et autres au martyrologe.
Veille de saint Chrysogone, martyr, et autres,
Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit et demi,
FEU.
« DIEU d’Abraham, DIEU d’Isaac, DIEU de Jacob »
non des philosophes et des savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
DIEU de Jésus-Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
« Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. »
Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis DIEU.
Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile.
Grandeur de l’âme humaine.
« Père juste, le monde ne t’a point connu, mais je t’ai connu. »
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m’en suis séparé:
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.
« Mon Dieu, me quitterez-vous ? »
Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement.
« Cette est la vie éternelle, qu’ils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu, et celui que tu as envoyé, Jésus-Christ. »
Jésus-Christ.
Jésus-Christ.
Je m’en suis séparé; je l’ai fui, renoncé, crucifié.
Que je n’en sois jamais séparé.
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile:
Renonciation totale et douce.
Soumission totale à Jésus-Christ et à mon directeur.
Éternellement en joie pour un jour d’exercice sur la terre.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.
Two tardy comments.
First, about experiencing God or some saint. I recognize that people do have such experiences and they are important. What I find worrisome is the tendency that some people that I’ve know to claim the such an experrience gives them access to some unchallengeable truth, either about how they themselves should live or abour how the rest of us should live.
Second, re the Mass. There are two things that I look forward to in the Mass. One, and it is the main one, is attentively associating myself with the prayer of the Canon that the celebrant articulates. Each of the Canons so magnificently expresses the Paascal mysteries that we ought to be constantly thankful for. If the celebrant spole this prayer either in Latin or in an inaudible voice I would find his doing so deeply saddening.
The other thing that I look forward to in Mass is consciously associating myself with and being grateful for being included in the wonderful mix of people that receive the Eucharist. We come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, all doing and receiving the same Gift.
No other religious experiences would be on a par with these, atleast as far as I’m concerned. It’s these experiences that help me to live with all the issues that confront us as Catholics and as citizens.
I think our judgements are frequently based on useful and experience generalizations, and I thinmk my views of the Tridentine rite fit that mold, granted some exceptions. I also think it;s true on US Episcopla leadership as in teh Hesburgh thread.And so on…