Perhaps you’ve visited the popular weblog of the inimitable Fr. Z
(AKA Fr. John Zuhlsdorf at WDTPRS.com) where one of his trademark battle
cries is, “Save the liturgy, save the world!” If you haven’t, I highly
recommend it.
“If you throw a stone, even a pebble, into a pool it produces ripples
which expand to its edge. The way we celebrate Mass must create
spiritual ripples in the Church and the world,” Fr. Zuhlsdorf writes,
making the point that our liturgical practices have a truly universal
impact; whether positive or negative.
With this in mind it occurs to me that if one examines the history and the fruit of the post-conciliar reform of the Roman Rite, the liturgy’s impact on the way Catholics view the gay “marriage” issue can be brought into focus.
With this in mind it occurs to me that if one examines the history and the fruit of the post-conciliar reform of the Roman Rite, the liturgy’s impact on the way Catholics view the gay “marriage” issue can be brought into focus.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc? No, it certainly isn’t a matter of simple “cause and effect,” but follow me here and then draw your own conclusions.
Polling data published by the Pew Research Center in October 2010 claims that 42% of Americans support gay “marriage,” while an even greater percentage
of self-identified Catholics (46%) responded likewise.
More noteworthy
still is that the percentage of those who so reject Church teaching on
the sanctity of marriage remains remarkably high (34%) even among weekly
Mass-goers!
Though the gay “marriage” movement is a relatively recent one, it’s
difficult to imagine more than one-in-three Catholic Mass-goers
rejecting any such foundational doctrine of the Faith back in 1963; the
year the process of liturgical reform was formally set in motion with
the promulgation of the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concilium.
So, how did we get here? Let’s begin by looking back to the year 1969
and the inception of the “gay rights movement” at the inaugural event
often cited by its proponents; the “Stonewall Riots” during which
homosexuals clashed with police in Greenwich Village over a period of
three days beginning on June 28. It was an unprecedented uprising
against secular authority for the gay community; setting the tone for
decades to come.
Less than 90 days earlier, on April 3, Pope Paul VI had issued the Apostolic Constitution, Missale Romanum, with high hopes that the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae
(now known as the “Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite”) would put an end
to the challenges being leveled against the Church’s liturgical
authority and all of the experimentation that came with it throughout
much of the decade.
Fast forward to today.
Fast forward to today.
It’s important for us to realize that the Council Fathers never
envisioned, much less encouraged, a scenario in which the Church would
in essence create a brand new “form” of the Roman Rite while leaving the
Mass according to the 1962 Missal (now called the “Extraordinary Form”)
unchanged. How and why this happened is a subject unto itself, but the
salient point here is that the near “overnight” emergence of a
“bi-formal” Roman Rite is as unusual as the unique set of circumstances
it created!
The liturgical rites of the Church are recognized by their apostolic
roots, and they admit of change only organically through the course of
the centuries. The Council Fathers underscored this important point by
insisting, “There must be no [liturgical] innovations unless the good of
the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be
taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically
from forms already existing” (SC 23).
Well, needless to say, this is not what happened. In 1993, Cardinal
Ratzinger felt compelled to write of the post-conciliar process of
liturgical reform, “We abandoned the organic, living process of growth
and development over centuries, and replaced it - as in a manufacturing
process - with a fabrication... a banal on-the-spot product.”
These are harsh words to absorb indeed, but we mustn’t fear to meet
our challenges head on with confidence in the Lord who redeems us. (On
that note, take heart, as we are on the cusp of recovering much treasure
in the new English translation of the Roman Missal!)
As Cardinal Ratzinger’s words suggest, never before has a liturgical rite, or even a given form
of a liturgical rite of the Catholic Church, been simply “born” of a
commission in just a matter of several years. Yet, this is exactly what
transpired and the implications are considerable.
The peculiar set of circumstances in which we find ourselves today
have created an environment in which Roman Rite Catholics are faced,
either in practice or in theory, with two entirely valid liturgical
“choices;” i.e. what form of the Roman Rite works best for me?
The majority of Catholics, who as the name suggests worship in the
Ordinary Form, are further faced with yet another unprecedented set of
potential liturgical choices as the Novus Ordo is given to multiple
variations.
Do I prefer the Folk Mass or the “regular” Mass? Do I like Fr.
Joe’s Mass or Fr. John’s Mass? Do I want to drive a few extra miles to
go to the charismatic Mass, or should I take the kids to that parish
across town with the video screens and the PowerPoint homilies?
Saving any commentary on the merits of these choices for another day,
the very idea of shopping for a liturgy that suites one’s fancy is
inherently flawed in that it approaches a divinely instituted gift that
is given by Christ to His Church (not to the local community, much less
to the individual) and it treats it as though it is a product of the
people that can be repeatedly reinvented according to popular fashion as
seems useful to the meet the demands of personal preference. It is, in
other words, a liturgical approach that is inordinately “me-centered.”
This is an entirely new situation that came about only after the
advent of the newer form of the Roman Rite, and keep in mind - we’re not
just talking about an expression of personal piety here, like choosing
the Rosary over the Chaplet of Divine Mercy; no, we’re talking
about the central act of our Catholic faith; “the summit toward which
all of the Church’s activity is directed and the font from which all of
her power flows” (SC 10).
Alluding to the diminished sense of the liturgy’s “giveness” in
today’s environment where a certain “freedom of liturgical choice” has
become normative in the eyes of many, the Prefect of the Congregation
for Divine Worship, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares de Llovera, said in a
2009 interview:
“The liturgy always looks towards God, not the community; it is not
the community that makes the liturgy, but it is God who makes it... The
greatest evil that is being done to man is trying to eliminate from his
life transcendence and the dimension of the mystery. The consequences we
are experiencing today in all spheres of life; the tendency to replace
the truth with opinion, confidence with unease, the end with the
means... Never before has there been so much talk of freedom, and never
before have there been more enslavements.”
With this being the case, is it any wonder there are Catholics in our day who operate as though their personal preferences legitimately reign supreme in such fundamental matters of faith as how one defines the sanctity of marriage? Consider, if you will, the convoluted yet not entirely unpredictable logic that the current liturgical climate has invited.
With this being the case, is it any wonder there are Catholics in our day who operate as though their personal preferences legitimately reign supreme in such fundamental matters of faith as how one defines the sanctity of marriage? Consider, if you will, the convoluted yet not entirely unpredictable logic that the current liturgical climate has invited.
Liturgical rites are by their very nature, according to Cardinal
Ratzinger, “anchored in the time and place of the event of Divine
revelation.” (Spirit of the Liturgy – Ignatius Press - 2000)
Our Catholic faith likewise professes that marriage is a gift that is
divinely given. (The similarities do not end there, indeed they are
many, but I trust the point is well made.)
If the Church’s desire for renewal at Vatican Council II opened the
door for the former to be legitimately approached as an expression of
personal preference, why not the latter? And so the logic goes.
Perhaps this is why so many on the Catholic Left who embrace personal
choice when it comes to things like abortion and sexual morality are
often moved to outright hostility at the mere suggestion that there is
value in the traditional form of Holy Mass for anyone. Could it be that
they realize there is much more at stake in the liturgy than what goes
on within the walls of the church building? (Ironic, is it not, given
the mantra of the Left, “Stay out of my bedroom?”)
The fundamental difficulty here is that when liturgy, in practice,
becomes a venue in which believers are empowered to exercise choice as a
function of personal preference the stage is set for a certain
“idolatry of self” to play itself out.
Evidence of this danger is made manifest in any number of ways in the
Ordinary Form; the orientation of the priest and the physical layout of
our church buildings wherein the community of believers is turned
inward upon itself, the narcissistic music that we often bring into the
Mass, the ever increasing roles that we assign to the laity while
granting them the title “minister,” etc.
Perhaps the most telling example, however, is witnessed when the
celebration of Holy Mass takes on the appearance of a “social justice
rally” in which the community enters into a trap that is similar to that
which binds and hardens the hearts of many Reform Jews in our day,
ceasing as many have to await a “personal messiah” while adopting
instead the notion that they must look to themselves to “be messiah” in
the world.
The social justice themed liturgy, in practice, can tend dangerously
close to a quasi-religious form of secular humanism, and it is no mere
coincidence that such causes as those that have come to define Reform
Judaism as much as anything else - abortion on demand, gay “marriage,”
and a glut of other leftist social agendas - have also found favor among
the very same Catholics who resist any effort to “reform the reform” of
Holy Mass today.
So now what?
So now what?
“Save the liturgy, save the world,” of course.
Louie Verrecchio has been a columnist for Catholic News Agency since April 2009.