The Universal Church and its Liturgy
Because of my exhausting St. Elizabeth projects, I’ve missed a lot of blog-worthy subjects lately: Paris Hilton’s Bible reading’! The New Atheism! (Now there’s a pair of topics for you). All the latest summer blockbusters! (I hope to see one or two before the summer is over, particularly Ratatouille and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). And speaking of the last, I guess I could still be joining in the speculation over the last Harry Potter book and how J. K. Rowling will resolve Harry’s fate — except that I don’t have a clue as to what will happen to Harry, though I’m dying to find out.
Then there’s the ever-popular subject of the Motu Proprio, in which Pope Benedict XVI has indicated that the Traditional Latin Mass or Tridentine rite according to the 1962 missal will be more widely available. I was amazed by the amount of bloggage over this on various Catholic sites: the subject gets at least three times more commentary than any other, even posts on the war in Iraq. I’m also amazed at the extremism of some of the positions. It ought to be clear to everyone that the liturgical situation is more or less what is was before. The 1970 Novus Ordo, as the Pope is careful to point out, remains exactly what it was before — the ordinary normative liturgy of the Western Rite. So no, the decision does not destroy the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, as some have lamented. And it does not mean, as others are hoping, that the new rite they think is an abomination is on its way out, that there will be no more guitar Masses or liturgical dancers (an apparently mythical creature, which I have yet to glimpse in my many years attendance at NO liturgies).
I was also amazed at the level of ignorance, pride and arrogance in many statements on the liturgy. A large number of people on both sides seem to be bitter and relying on emotion without being able to give an objective account of whatever liturgy it is they abhor. Most of it is incredibly one-sided. Many lovers of the NO seem content to pile up complaints of the worst abuses the TLM was subject to in the past, without admitting its beauties, while Trads are content to complain about the worst abuses of the NO and treat them as typical, while at the same time making no real effort to even understand the purpose of the liturgical reform, even as a platform for criticizing it. We have to move beyond this. The truth is that every rite has its good points and any rite can be celebrated well or badly. And mere emotion or ascetic appreciation connected with a rite shouldn’t necessarily be confused with the genuine spiritual or moral experience brought about by an attentive, loving and above all humble participation in it. Let’s recall C. S. Lewis’ admonition that our primary purpose at any liturgy is not to criticize but to open ourselves to whatever spiritual nourishment is going on. And he was a man who found much to criticize in many Anglican liturgies.
One typical ignorant comment that I have read a lot of lately is that diversity in the liturgy is a somehow a bad thing. The norm, these people believe is that there should be a single text of the Mass, in Latin, the world over, because this uniformity is a perfect expression of the universality of the Church (”wherever you go, to Paris, London, Czechoslovakia, China - there is one Mass, the same Mass, everywhere the same!”). The only problem is that this uniformity of the Mass has never existed. These people seem to believe that “Western Rite” and “Catholic” are the same thing. In fact, there are a dozen or so rites in the Church, including several Eastern rites: some of their liturgies are older than any of the present Western ones. And all those who celebrate these varied rites are Catholic. When one of the uniformity posters had this rather forcibly pointed out to him, his response was basically “those rites involve only a small number of people” — so obviously they don’t count.
I’m writing this because I have just had the wonderful experience of having the true universality of the Church’s liturgy brought home to me at the Secular Franciscan Quinquennial Congress in Pittsburgh, the them of which was the cultural diversity of the Order and the Church. We had many wonderful presentations by Secular Franciscans who were, among others, Mexcian, Korean, Pueblo and Osage Indians, and enjoyed a number of native (non-liturgical) dances, which were wildly applauded.
But the best of all were the liturgies in two rites of the Church I had never experienced before. One was in the Syro-Malabar rite from India, celebrated in English and one of the Indian languages. a liturgy which traces its history back to the community founded by St. Thomas the Apostle. The other was the Byzantine Catholic rite Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, sung almost entirely in English by the whole congregation with a wonderful choir leading us. The liturgist who led us and gave instructions warned us “we sing fast.” Most of were surprised at just how fast. But there was nothing irreverent about the speed. The chant was easy to catch onto and melded with the experience of the beautiful and effusive words of God’s love, so different from the N0 liturgy I’m used to, that the total effect was one of golden buoyancy. It really did blow me away. Partly it was simply the fact that the rite was different: those who celebrate it every week must have to struggle with the over-familiarity of the words, just as we often do with the text of the Mass that we are familiar with. But mostly it was the connection with a living tradition of liturgy that preserves its own particular flavor of the one divine liturgy we all celebrate.
Attending these two beautiful and reverent Masses made me more grateful than ever that the Mass is so old, so varied, so much the same, yet so ever new.