Catholic Sensibility

I thought that some of you might like to read a summary of Fr Keith Pecklers’ “40 Years of Liturgical Reform: Shaping Roman Catholic Worship in the 21st Century,” Worship 79 (2005), 194-208. Fr Pecklers, a Jesuit who teachers at the Gregorian and Anselmo in Rome, begins on December 4, 1963. On that auspicious day, 2,147 bishops voted in favor of the Liturgy Constitution of Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium. Only 4 opposed. That, we might say, is a mandate. Fr Pecklers says that the vote was really the fruit of fifty years of preparation, beginning with the work of the Benedictine monk Lambert Beauduin at the Benedictine Abbey of Mont Cesar in Belgium. When Dom Beauduin became a professor at the Anselmo in the 1920’s, he spread his vision to many students, including a young German-American monk named Virgil Michel who returned to St John’s Abbey in Minnesota and sparked the liturgical revival in the United States. The first “Dialogue Mass,” celebrated facing the people, was at the German Benedictine monastery of Maria Laach in August, 1921. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, there was a notable increase in hymn singing in the vernacular during Mass. The supporters of the liturgical movement were hardly unopposed, however: some actually accused them of not believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, since they would so constantly speak of the church as Christ’s mystical body. … And back to the council. During 1964, the shift from Latin to the vernacular languages became the top religious story. Even Sports Illustrated covered it. This was controversial: Cardinal Spellman of New York spoke against “an exaggerated historicism and a zeal for novelties,” and suggested that confusion and hurt would result if the faithful would “see the unchangeable Church changing her rites.” Fr Pecklers mischievously notes that Cardinal Spellman’s own Latin was, well, not the best. When he spoke at the council, a member of the Vatican staff would stand at another microphone to translate Spellmanian Latin into correct Latin so that the cardinal could be understood. What was going on, says Pecklers, was a visible tension between the local church, which would benefit from inculturation of the liturgy, and the universal church, perhaps more concerned with uniformity. At the center of Sacrosanctum Concilium “was one fundamental principle: full, conscious, and active liturgical participation for the whole mystical body of Christ.” One would belong to the church by belonging to her worship. This stress on “participation” meant that the liturgy would have to be adapted to “the native temperament and the tradition of peoples,” but we can say that the Liturgical Constitution envisioned a balance between tradition and progress. Fr Pecklers notes that certain translations from Latin were made too hastily, and the Council Fathers probably did not imagine liturgical texts sung to the tune of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” … So, where are we now? Remember, Sacrosanctum Concilium was promulgated only twelve days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. What does it have to say to a world plagued by terrorism and AIDS? Closer to home, what does it have to say to a church “rocked by sexual scandal and polarized by conflicting theologies and ideologies,” suffering through a decline in vocations, composed of many who find themselves “‘beyond the pale as far as church teaching is concerned”? Fr Pecklers directs our attention to six areas. First, we will need to be more hospitable. This will involve simple matters, such as making sure that newcomers are not lost in large urban churches. But we will also have to “allow ourselves to be led on pilgrimage to the margins, to association with the great unwashed, those beyond the pale, for whom Christ came” – we will have to become hospitable to disconcerting experiences. For, as Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the former Master of the Order of Preachers, has written, “Our preaching will only gather in the people of God, if we honestly name their sorrows and joys. We have to be seen to speak truthfully, to tell things as they are.” The pain and happiness of our congregations must find “some space in our words.” Second, we will have to answer the question that one liturgical pioneer, Msgr Martin Hellriegel, had already asked in the 1940’s: “Why would we want to throw such rich cultural diversity into the melting pot so that we all appear the same?” Msgr Hellriegel imagined a mosaic; there will be more tessera in any imagined mosaic today. 4.5 million immigrants came to the United States between 1990-1994, and, in an international context, by 2020, 80% of Christians will be people of color who live in the southern hemisphere. Will multicultural parishes be possible? Third, we will have to recover “that sense of awe and wonder, mystery and transcendence that was so evident prior to the council.” The Mass cannot be a merely cerebral event, nor should it be something created by the community. The active subject of the liturgy is the Risen Christ, and, as Cardinal Danneels has said, “The Liturgy is first ‘God’s work on us’ before being our work on God.” The liturgy, he went on to say, is nothing less than “the epiphany of the Christian mysteries through the service of the Church.” Fourth, we need better liturgical formation. Todd can comment on this. Fifth, we will need to deal with priestless parishes. The problems cannot be minimized, ranging from confusion arising from different services of the Word, to the simple fact that people are being denied the celebration of Holy Eucharist, which, according to Sacrosanctum Concilium is the “source and summit of the Church’s life.” Sixth, we should increase liturgical ecumenical exchange. For the most part, the major Western Christian churches now proclaim the same three scriptural lessons in church each Sunday, albeit with variations in translation and the length of each reading. Fr Pecklers encourages that Rome accept the Revised Common Lectionary for usage in Roman Catholic worship in the interests of Christian unity. Well, what do you think?