by Francis X. Clooney, SJ

Cambridge, MA. You may have read Kenneth Wolfe’s Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times (Week in Review), Latin Mass Appeal. Mr Wolfe’s argument has to do with what he considers the undue and ill-considered influence of Father (and later Archbishop) Annibale Bugnini on the reform – or deform – of the Eucharistic liturgy of the Church in the years before Vatican II. Mr Wolfe laments the movement away from the Latin Mass, the turning around of the altar to face the people, and an array of later changes including altar girls, communion in the hand, etc. I am not sure why the Times chose to publish this piece — because it was the First Sunday of Advent? — but I found it unconvincing, not as a liturgist or liturgical historian or Vatican-watcher (I am none of these), but as a Catholic who is old enough to have served Mass in Latin as an altar boy, young enough to had no say about the changes in the liturgy, but nevertheless privileged to serve as a priest for more than 30 years thus far in the parishes and campuses of our Church, here and abroad. So here’s what I think: First, we’ve been taught for centuries to trust the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Many a time the Vatican has called to work in the Vatican men without any particular training or experience that would justify their appointment; many a time, Popes have trusted such individuals with very important roles in shaping the theology and practice of the Church; and many a time, God has worked through such men. Archbishop Bugnini is one such person, and I see no reason to think that the Spirit, and intention of the Church, did not work through his sincere and humble efforts. [Really? No reason?] reason?] Second, while as a child I found the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church deeply satisfying and loved the ritual, the Latin, the mystery of this worship, I have never found it the case that the conciliar changes were a mistake or a loss.  [Really? Never?] The typical Eucharistic celebration is no less holy or sacred now than it was in 1960. Many of the reforms were intended to restore practices of the Church far older than Trent, and it is good that we were — and are — reminded that neither Latin nor particular forms of music and piety are essential to the effective celebration of the Eucharist or to the grace that is the real presence of Christ in our midst through it.  [I have a problem with this. It seems to me that we must go beyond reducing our worship to what is valid. Sure, it is important and consoling to know that every was valid despite music, ugliness of translation, etc. But our worship must aim at mystery or it misses the mark. Am I wrong? Shouldn’t we avoid reducing liturgy to the bare essentials?] Third, Mr Wolfe notes that Archbishop Bugnini sought to reform the liturgy to remove barriers dividing us from our Christian neighbors in Protestant traditions. I gather that he sees this as a fatal mistake, but I think it was a very good thing to remove, for many good reasons including the ecumenical one, barriers that made the Eucharist needlessly different or divisive. It is not a good thing when we Christians are divided to no good purpose; and when there are real differences, such as different theologies of the Mass (as meal, as sacrifice), we can still seek, as did Archbishop Bugnini, to show in our practice that such differences can be signaled in various ways. There is nothing essential or unchanging about receiving communion on the tongue, for instance, or faddish about welcoming girls as well as boys to serve at the altar efforts. [Really? I thought service at the altar had theological implications. Perhaps "fad" isn’t the best category for this subject.] — and if some of Archbishop Bugnini’s changes meant that our worship would become more like Protestant worship, that seems to have been for the better. [LOL! Really? Well… I guess I am not that surprised to read that statement here.] (Yet even today, I doubt very much that even newcomers will confuse Catholic and Protestant Sunday worship.) Fourth, Mr Wolfe finds it particularly disappointing that the altar was turned around to face the people; he cites Pope Benedict that externally at least, when the priest faces the people, this signifies a community “closed in on itself.” But this is unfair, just as it would be to complain that in the old liturgy the priest kept turning his back on the community.  [This is an example of using a cliche to address Ratzinger’s deeper theological argument.] If there is deep meaning to the community and priest facing forward together, in worship, so too there is deep meaning in a community context where priest and people face one another:  [What if it is the wrong meaning?] in my 30+ years of presiding at the Eucharist, [Note the vocabulary choice.] I have always found it a grace that in this way we gather around the sacrificial gifts, face to face, and in attentiveness and vulnerability stand together before our Lord, around the altar. [If feeling are the basis, what about the feelings of those who don’t want Mass that way?] Given the rich and beautiful and deep commitments and faith that people bring to a parish Mass on Sunday morning, there is nothing merely “closed in on itself” in our way of worship,[So, Pope Benedict doesn’t know what he is talking about, I suppose.]  and I am sorry that Mr Wolfe has found it to be so. Perhaps in an Advent mode of expectation, Mr Wolfe concludes with a visionary look foward: the Pope, and good Catholics, are doing away with the reforms and putting things back the way they were, and should be. [Name one thing, Father, with citations of Sacrosanctum Concilium in Latin, that Pope Benedict is doing against the Council.] But I think he has not seen deeply enough: God does bless us in the way we worship today, Christ is present in the Eucharist as we celebrate it, the Spirit touches our minds and hearts as we stand, hands outstretched, to receive the Body of Christ, and then proceed to drink his Blood from the cup. [And let’s find out how many people are going to confession, or going to Mass at all, or what they think it is all about.]  Even the English language serves very well as the language of prayer. [It may someday.] Thanks be to God, Deo Gratias. As always, I welcome reader comments.

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America Mag reacts to NYT Op-Ed

I had this from a reader:

Beginning Monday, November 30th there will be a new daily Low Mass (in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite) every weekday at 6:00 PM at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan.

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NYC new daily TLM

Many prelates from around the world would stay at my residence in Rome when they would come for business with the Roman curia.  As a result, at mealtimes you would find yourself eating with Bp. X or Archbp. Y or Card. Z from here there and everywhere.  At a certain point you start to take a little less notice of these fellows as they would come and go.

In one case, I recall for several days being on pretty much the same schedule as a visiting priest from Argentina.  He was a very pleasant fellow, whose Italian wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad.  He was clearly very smart and had a serene and affable way about him, though he wasn’t loquacious.  We chatted for some days and enjoyed company at meals.  Normally, I would just stick to small talk with visitors, and let them guide how far they wanted to talk about their business.

Then one day as I was leaving the palazzo, he was getting out of a car and coming in, wearing under a greca the house cassock, fascia, and zucchetto of a Cardinal of Holy Roman Church. 

It turns out that it was Jorge Card. Bergoglio I had been lunching with.

Since he had impressed me simply as a person, I started paying more attention to him and what he had done.  I asked around and learned a little about this S. American prelate.

When the Holy Father John Paul II died, I was pretty convinced that Card. Bergoglio was papabile, and didn’t rule out that he had the potential of being elected.  His draw back for that prospect was more than likely his membership in the Society of Jesus.  Card. Bergoglio is a Jesuit, and there has never been a Jesuit Pope.

The gentlemanly Sandro Magister has a post on Card. Bergoglio, and I recommend it.

Effectively, Card. Bergoglio thinks that baptism should be given more freely even to the children of those who are not practicing their faith.  Some time ago, Pope Benedict also said something along these lines, explaining that when he was younger, he had a more restrictive view.  The Church in S. America is facing a horrible challenge from secularism and relativism on the one hand, fundamentalist sects on the other.

Here is a big chunk of the article, though I recommend that you read the whole thing:

[...]

In some parts of Europe, baptizing a child has already become the exception, requiring an unconventional decision. But now, the number of unbaptized infants, children, young people, adults is also rising in Argentina.

This decline in the practice of baptism is the result of a weakening of family ties and a withdrawal from the Church. Some of the clergy have drawn this conclusion: where they see the signs of faith being extinguished, they maintain that it is right to decline to administer the sacraments.

But in Argentina today, the Church authorities are moving in the opposite direction.

Already in 2002, the archdiocese of Buenos Aires and the diocese in the surrounding area had published an instruction urgently recommending the baptism of both children and adults, and explaining how to overcome resistance to the celebration of the rite.

But now the bishops of the area have returned to the task with a booklet entitled "El bautismo en clave misionera," which reproduces the 2002 instruction and supplements it with other guidelines for parish pastors.

So beginning this year, the most conscientious pastors are regularly holding "baptism days," on which they administer the sacrament to children and adults in situations of poverty or with broken families, who have been helped to overcome their own uncertainties and those of the people around them.

Cardinal Bergoglio has explained the meaning of all this in an interview with the international magazine "30 Days":

"The child has no responsibility for the condition of his parents’ marriage. The baptism of children can, on the contrary, become a new beginning for the parents. A while ago, I baptized the seven children of one woman, a poor widow who works as a maid and had her children by two different men. I met her on the feast of Saint Cajetan. She said to me, ‘Father, I am in mortal sin, I have seven children and have never had them baptized, I don’t have the money for the godparents and for the party… I saw her again and after a little catechesis I baptized them in the chapel of the archepiscopal residence. The woman said to me, ‘Father, I can’t believe it, you make me feel important’. I said to her, ‘But madam, what do I have to do with it? It’s Jesus who makes you important."  [Do I hear a big "Amen!"?]

Bergoglio is anxious not to extinguish a tradition typical of the most remote areas of Argentina, in those towns and villages where the priest comes only a few times a year:

"There, popular piety feels that children must be baptized as soon as possible, so there are men or women known by all as ‘bautizadores’ who baptize the children when they are born, in anticipation of the arrival of the priest. And when he arrives, they bring the children to him so that he can anoint them with holy oil, completing the rite. When I think about it, I am reminded of the story of those Christian communities in Japan that were without priests for more than two hundred years. When the missionaries returned, they found all of them baptized and all of them sacramentally married."

The cardinal continues:

"The conference in Aparecida urged us to proclaim the Gospel by going to meet the people, not by waiting for the people to come to us. Missionary fervor does not require extraordinary events. It is in ordinary life that mission work is done. And baptism, in this, is paradigmatic. The sacraments are for the life of men and women as they are. They may not make big speeches, but their ‘sensus fidei’ grasps the reality of the sacraments with more clarity than many specialists do."

What reemerges here is the ancient and still unresolved dispute between a Church of the elite, a pure, minority Church, and a Church of the masses, populated also by that immense sea of humanity for whom Christianity is made up of a few simple things.

In Italy, for example, the dispute came up again during the last major national conference of the Church, held in Verona in October of 2006. On that occasion, one position held by the "rigorists" was precisely that of withholding baptism and the other sacraments from those believed to be unfit because they are not practicing.  [A position which can be argued and defended.]

It is a dilemma that Joseph Ratzinger himself experienced personally as a young man, and finally resolved in the same direction indicated by Cardinal Bergoglio. This is what, as pope, Ratzinger himself said in replying to the question from a priest of Bressanone, in a public question-and-answer session with the clergy of the diocese on August 6, 2008.

The priest, named Paolo Rizzi, a pastor and professor of theology, asked Benedict XVI a question about baptism, confirmation, and first communion:

"Holy Father, 35 years ago I thought that we were beginning to be a little flock, a minority community, more or less everywhere in Europe; that we should therefore administer the sacraments only to those who are truly committed to Christian life. Then, partly because of the style of John Paul II’s Pontificate, I thought things through again. If it is possible to make predictions for the future, what do you think? What pastoral approaches can you suggest to us?".  [What an excellent question to put to Peter.]

Pope Ratzinger responded:

"I must say that I took a similar route to yours. When I was younger I was rather severe. I said: the sacraments are sacraments of faith, and where faith does not exist, where the practice of faith does not exist, the Sacrament cannot be conferred either. And then I always used to talk to my parish priest when I was Archbishop of Munich: here too there were two factions, one severe and one broad-minded. Then [wait for it….] I too, with time, came to realize that we must follow, rather, the example of the Lord, who was very open even with people on the margins of Israel of that time. He was a Lord of mercy, too open – according to many official authorities – with sinners, welcoming them or letting them invite him to their dinners, drawing them to him in his communion.

"Therefore I would say substantially that the sacraments are naturally sacraments of faith: when there is no element of faith, when First Communion is no more than a great lunch with beautiful clothes and beautiful gifts, it can no longer be a sacrament of faith. [So, he is not saying we should apply no criteria.] Yet, on the other hand, if we can still see a little flame of desire for communion in the faith, a desire even in these children who want to enter into communion with Jesus, it seems to me that it is right to be rather broad-minded.

"Naturally, of course, one purpose of our catechesis must be to make children understand that Communion, First Communion is not a ‘fixed’ event, but requires a continuity of friendship with Jesus, a journey with Jesus. I know that children often have the intention and desire to go to Sunday Mass but their parents do not make this desire possible. If we see that children want it, that they have the desire to go, this seems to me almost a sacrament of desire, the ‘will’ to participate in Sunday Mass. In this sense, we naturally must do our best in the context of preparation for the sacraments to reach the parents as well, and thus to – let us say – awaken in them too a sensitivity to the process in which their child is involved. They should help their children to follow their own desire to enter into friendship with Jesus, which is a form of life, of the future. If parents want their children to be able to make their First Communion, this somewhat social desire must be extended into a religious one, to make a journey with Jesus possible.

"I would say, therefore, that in the context of the catechesis of children, that work with parents is very important. And this is precisely one of the opportunities to meet with parents, making the life of faith also present to the adults, because, it seems to me, they themselves can relearn the faith from the children and understand that this great solemnity is only meaningful, true and authentic if it is celebrated in the context of a journey with Jesus, in the context of a life of faith. Thus, one should endeavour to convince parents, through their children, of the need for a preparatory journey that is expressed in participation in the mysteries and that begins to make these mysteries loved.

"I would say that this is definitely an inadequate answer, [Gosh… see how harsh and rigorous Pope Benedict is?  The former "enforcer" of doctrine?] but the pedagogy of faith is always a journey and we must accept today’s situations. Yet, we must also open them more to each person, so that the result is not only an external memory of things that endures but that their hearts that have truly been touched. The moment when we are convinced the heart is touched – it has felt a little of Jesus’ love, it has felt a little the desire to move along these lines and in this direction, that is the moment when, it seems to me, we can say that we have made a true catechesis. The proper meaning of catechesis, in fact, must be this: to bring the flame of Jesus’ love, even if it is a small one, to the hearts of children, and through the children to their parents, thus reopening the places of faith of our time."

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Who’s the important one?

I see that Damian Thompson has his blade sharpened:


My emphases and comments:

November 30th, 2009

Happy 40th birthday, Novus Ordo!

It is 40 years ago today since the New Mass of Paul VI was introduced into our parishes, writes Margery Popinstar, editor of The Capsule. [Blue or Red, I wonder.]  We knew at the time that this liturgy was as close to perfection as humanly possible, but little did we guess what an efflorescence of art, architecture, music and worship lay ahead!  [That’s a good way to put it.]

There were fears at first that the vernacular service would damage the solemnity of the Mass. How silly! Far from leading to liturgical abuses, the New Mass nurtured a koinonia that revived Catholic culture and packed our reordered churches to the rafters.

So dramatic was the growth in family Mass observance, indeed, that a new school of Catholic architecture arose to provide places of worship for these new congregations. Throughout the Western world, churches sprang up that combined Christian heritage with the thrilling simplicity of the modern school, creating a sense of the numinous that has proved as irresistible to secular visitors as to the faithful.

For some worshippers, it is the sheer visual beauty of the New Mass that captures the heart, with its simple yet scrupulously observed rubrics – to say nothing of the elegance of the priest’s vestments, which (though commendably less fussy than pre-conciliar outfits) exhibit a standard of meticulous craftsmanship which truly gives glory to God!

The same refreshing of tradition infuses the wonderful – and toe-tapping! – modern Mass settings and hymns produced for the revised liturgy. This music, written by the most gifted composers of our era, has won over congregations so totally that it is now rare to encounter a parish where everyone is not singing their heads off! Even the secular “hit parade” has borrowed from Catholic worship songs, so deliciously memorable – yet reverent! – is the effect they create. No wonder it is standing room only at most Masses!

Did Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who birthed this kairos, have any idea just how radically his innovations would transform the Church? We must, of course, all rejoice in his imminent beatification – but, in the meantime, I am tempted to borrow a phrase from a forgotten language that – can you believe it? – was used by the Church for services before 1969: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

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Damian Thompson’s obervance of the 40th anniversary of the Novus Ordo

I thought the Soviet era Soyuz was pretty interesting.

And I thought the American astronauts were brave.

I bet the first cosmonauts who looked at this stuff on the outside just shrugged as thought….

... "Hey… what could go wrong?"

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Off to Cape Canaveral!

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iBreviary - the iPhone app

Some recent posts:

• NYT Op-Ed on 40 years of the Novus Ordo
• Whatever it is we’re doin’… ain’t workin’!
• My view of Benedict’s XVI’s sermon for 1st Vespers in this new liturgical year
• Australia: Holy See tells http://wdtprs.com/blog/wp-admin/post-new.phpCatholic diocese not to host Anglican ordination of women
• “Bishooooops, don’t let your chapels grow up to be discooooos….”
• “Catholic Democrats” … “Sycophantic Toadies”… take your pick 
• DOG BITES MAN! SUN RISES AT DAWN! LIBERAL SISTERS UNCOOPERATIVE!
• CDWDS responds on question of H1N1 and restriction of Communion on the tongue
  
• The Holy Father’s new Ferula
• New Benedictine Ferula
• REVIEW: St. Antoine Daniel Gregorian Chant Ordinaries (and Fr. Z rants)
• A little … not so little… project for US Catholic bloggers
• PODCAzTs on the 40th Anniversary of the Novus Ordo
• John Paul II - flagellation before he ordained priests

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Some recent posts

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Your good news

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Fr. Rawley Myers, RIP

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Fr. Robert Fox - RIP