Denver's Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley addressed a group of church
musicians on Nov. 20 at Colorado's Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs Church,
celebrating the feast of their patron St. Cecilia and discussing
important changes in the forthcoming English translation of the Mass.
He expressed hopes that the new, more accurate translation of the
Roman Missal would enhance the reverence and beauty of Catholic worship.
The new translation will become standard next year, at the beginning of
Advent in 2011.
Bishop Conley also acknowledged liturgical abuses and aesthetic
misjudgments in parts of the Church, but said these problems were not
due to the Second Vatican Council, or the practice of having Mass in the
local language that it allowed.
Rather, he said, the problems had arisen from a misunderstanding of
the council, and resulting misconceptions about Catholics worship.
“The
new liturgy that the Council gave us is beautiful,” the bishop affirmed.
“The problem has been that even good people have misinterpreted the
Council badly.”
To illustrate this misunderstanding of the Council's spirit and its
liturgy, Bishop Conley recounted an occasion in the life of Dorothy Day,
the respected co-foundress of the Catholic Worker movement.
Known for
her social activism and service to the poor, she also described herself
as a Catholic “traditionalist,” and resisted attempts to use the liturgy
as a political tool.
When one misguided priest offered Mass at a Catholic Worker house
using a coffee cup as a chalice to consecrate the blood of Christ, Day
was “scandalized by the sacrilege,” in Bishop Conley's words.
She “dug a
deep hole in the backyard … then she kissed the coffee cup, and buried
it,” ensuring the impromptu “chalice” would never be used for mere
beverages.
In this incident, Bishop Conley observed the contrast between the
priest's clumsy attempt to acknowledge Christ's humanity –at the cost of
dishonoring his divinity– and Day's understanding that “in the Mass,
God stoops down to lift us up to his level.”
God “makes it possible for us, though we are but creatures, to sing
and worship with the angels” – an awe-inspiring task for which household
objects, popular music, and casual language are inappropriate.
Bishop
Conley indicated that many attempts to make worship feel more familiar,
have instead made it less inspiring.
The new Mass translation reasserts “the continuity of the Novus Ordo
(Mass) with the ancient liturgy of the Church” – where the apostles and
the first Christians understood themselves to be “singing the song of
angels,” participating in a heavenly ceremony while on earth.
Bishop Conley cited the words of Pope Benedict XVI, who said Catholic
worship “presupposes … that the heavens have been opened,” and must
reflect this reality. “This is the truth we need to recover,” the bishop
taught.
“Christ has rent the heavens and come down to us. Again he has
been lifted up and carried into heaven to take his seat at the right
hand of power.”
And although “the dividing walls between heaven and earth, the human
and the divine … have been torn down,” this has occurred in order to
raise up humanity –as authentic liturgy does– rather than to diminish
God, he said. “In the holy Mass, heaven reaches down to earth, and earth
reaches up to heaven.”
Bishop Conley specified a number of changes intended to recapture
this sense of the sacred in the new translation, including the revival
of the congregation's traditional response “and with your spirit,” the
restored and “more faithfully translated” prayer of the priest before
the Eucharistic rite, and the more exalted language in the “Gloria”
hymn.
“Our new Mass translation replaces the mundane affirmation –'Happy
are those who are called to (Christ's) supper'– with a confession of
faith … 'Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb'.”
The
bishop explained that these changes “get us closer to the theological
richness and the poetry of the original Latin.”
He hoped that the new translation of the Eucharistic Rite would
especially help Catholics “penetrate more deeply into the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass,” in which “we join our self-offering with the
self-offering of Christ on the Cross.”
While the Church has maintained
its belief in a direct participation in Christ's sacrifice, many modern
Catholics lack an understanding of this principle.
Near the end of this talk, Bishop Conley turned his attention to
another sacrifice he hoped would not be forgotten: the massacre of more
than 50 Iraqi Catholics during a Sunday Mass in Baghdad on Oct. 31.
“This tragedy,” he said, “puts our conversation today into some
perspective,” particularly since the faithful were taken hostage and
killed in the course of their worship. Islamic militants “broke into the
Mass and destroyed icons and stained glass windows; they desecrated the
tabernacle.”
While virtually all of the worshipers at Baghdad's Cathedral of Our
Lady of Salvation either died or received serious wounds, Bishop Conley
noted that “they made their final moments an eloquent testimony” to
their sense of sacrifice, gratitude and love.
By using their last
strength to reach out to God in prayer, the worshipers “died as the must
have lived – 'eucharistically',” he said.
“We may never be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for our faith,”
the bishop reflected. “But we are called each day to live by the
Eucharist we receive, and to make our lives an acceptable sacrifice that
is pleasing to the Lord.”
SIC: CNA/INT'L