Disappointment. And ramblings.

I hoped and prayed that my pastor would say something—anything—about Summorum Pontificum and what it might mean for our parish. After all, he's a great priest and a theologically sound and orthodox pastor, the sort of priest you'd expect might take the Motu proprio and run with it, so to speak. Consider: our parish doesn't have altar girls, or bass n' drum worship music, or felt banners, or even female lectors. And our priest insists on ad orientum—and our bishop has never had a problem with it.

Of course, those who know a bit about me realize that I'm writing all of this keyboard-in-cheek since the parish we've been attending for seven years now looks like this:

In other words, it is a Byzantine, or Eastern, Catholic parish, Nativity of the Mother of God Ukrainian Catholic Church in Springfield, Oregon. The usual or most common liturgy—Divine Liturgy—is the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. For some of the differences between Western and Eastern Catholicism, see my January 2006 This Rock article, "The Rite Not To Be Roman."

Although the parish is Ukrainian (it is part of the Eparchy of Saint Nicholas, Chicago), very few of the parishioners are Ukrainian. Roughly 80% of the liturgy is sung in English (there are no instruments used). I'm occasionally asked if we attend Nativity because we don't like the Novus Ordo. The short and long answer is, "No, not at all." Back in 2000, having completed my Masters in Theological Studies, I was desperately seeking to flee from the depressing world of retail advertising; Father Richard Janowicz, pastor of Nativity parish, offered me a job as catechist, and I worked for the parish for two years. Father Richard and I first met in 1998, not long after my wife and I became Catholic, and we quickly formed a warm friendship, based in part in our common interest in theology. (It may come as a surprise to some folks, but some priests don't like to talk theology. That's not a criticism, just a fact.) Since I worked for the parish, we of course went to Divine Liturgy there. At one point, while working at Nativity, Father Richard politely but assuredly told me that I'd always be Western in my heart of hearts. After all, my patron saint is St. Thomas Aquinas, my Old Slovanic stinks, and keeping the Great Fast (Lent) is really rough (totally vegan. Try it!).

It's impossible to say, in a sense, if I'm "Western" or "Eastern," and it is ultimately, I think, a moot point: I'm Catholic. However, it's rather strange in a way to consider that I've spent seven of my ten years as a Catholic in an Eastern Catholic setting—not as a fugitive from bad Masses (there are good Western rite parishes here in Eugene, Oregon), but as someone who has formed a strong affection for a particular parish and the beautiful liturgy, not to mention the blessing of superb homilies each and every Sunday.

All of this to say, in part, that I am following the release and reaction to Summorum Pontificum with both great interest and a certain detachment. I think the document and thinking behind are wonderful; I have high hopes for what may, God willing, come from Benedict's actions. Having a certain "Eastern" perspective can be helpful. For example, I have to laugh a bit when I read or hear some Catholics insist that having the priest "turn his back to the people" is a bad or bizarre thing, as though it will somehow create a sort of dark and emotionally-draining chasm between the priest and the people. It's interesting to hear the reactions of Western-rite Catholic after they go to Divine Liturgy for the first time; they are usually both mildly confused and extremely moved. And more than once such folks have said, in essence, "Now I understand far better why the priest does that (that is, stands ad orientum)."

Another point, if I may. I've been to Mass in many different settings, in part because of traveling quite a bit in 2003-06. I've been fortunate to experience (and I use that work purposefully) far more reverent Masses than not-so-reverent Masses; I can count the number of "out there" or "sloppy" or "loose" Masses on ten fingers or less—and for that I am grateful. But I have to say that one thing that comes up on a regular basis regarding the Novus Ordo as it is commonly celebrated that doesn't always make sense to me is the notion that it allows for far more active participation on the part of the laity. I know that I'm skipping through deep and even dangerous waters here, but there seems to be a fairly common notion that the "old Mass" kept the people at such a distance that they really had little clue about what was happening, or why, or perhaps even when. Along with this is the idea that because, in many parishes, lay people do everything except consecrate the elements, the laity are now actively involved. Perhaps. I'm not convinced. Put another way, I'm not sure how having 99% of the laity watch the remaining 1% doing this or that (lectoring, cantoring, bringing in the gifts, etc.) equals active participation for the 99% who are, in many cases, standing and watching the 1% do this or that.

There are, I think, a couple of issues. One is that some Catholics (certainly not all Catholics, of course) think the greatest thing they can do as a lay person is to be up front, doing stuff. In which case they misunderstand what the primary role of the laity really is, as I discuss at length in this article. Secondly, as Joseph Ratzinger writes in The Spirit of the Liturgy, "participation in the Liturgy of the Word (reading, singing) is to be distinguished from the sacramental proper. We should be clearly aware that external actions are secondary here. Doing really must stop when we come to the heart of the matter: the oratio." That is, active participation is finally located in prayer, in the people joining with the priest in praying together. "Anyone who grasps this," wrote Ratzinger, "will easily see that it is not now a matter of looking at or toward the priest, but of looking together toward the Lord and going out to meet him" (p 174). And in his foreword to U.M. Lang's book, Turning Toward the Lord, then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this reason, [Josef Andreas] Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action." Interestingly enough, in the Divine Liturgy, there would seem to be little overt activity "up front" by the laity. There are lay cantors and the Epistle is read by a lay man (in the rear, not front, of the church), and there are altar boys. Yet, at the same time, the entire Divine Liturgy is incredibly active (and even exhausting at times) for the laity, for they sing about half of the liturgy, as well as make the sign of the Cross some 45-50 times. And much of it while standing. Now, as Ratzinger points out, the external actions (singing, sign of the Cross) are not the final goal, but as he indicates throughout the book, the external actions inform and direct (and even educate) our interior disposition and attitude, and they do bring us into deeper, more concrete contact with the spiritual reality of what is happening at Divine Liturgy/Mass.

This is not—and I emphasize this point—a knock on the Novus Ordo (the "ordinary expression" of the Roman rite, as Benedict XVI describes it in his Apostolic Letter), nor an insistence on the superiority of the "extraordinary expression" of the Latin Mass. (In fact, I've never—gasp!—been to the latter, so I'm hardly the person to say much about it.) Nor do I think that Eastern-rite Catholics are somehow more spiritual than Western-rite Catholics; after all, I can just as easily go through the motions at Divine Liturgy as someone can do the same at Mass in a Roman rite parish. Rather, my hope is that Catholics will be inspired by Benedict's actions to better understand the what and why of liturgy, to comprehend the essence of what is happening, to appreciate more fully why the Catholic Church teaches this or that about particular aspects of the Mass. As the Holy Father states, "it has been the constant concern of supreme pontiffs to ensure that the Church of Christ offers a worthy ritual to the Divine Majesty, 'to the praise and glory of His name,' and 'to the benefit of all His Holy Church.'"

Finally, I should make perfectly clear that my rambling thoughts here are strictly my personal opinions. I don't want to see a quote yanked out of this post and paraded as something "that Ignatius Press stated." There are folks at Ignatius Press—Fr. Fessio and Mark Brumley, in particular—who know far, far more than I do about liturgical matters, controveries, and theology. And in the days, weeks, and months to come, I'm sure there will be more on these issues from those men and others. But, seeing the chance to get in my two cents worth, I've taken it.

Comments

[David Deavel]

Carl,

For the first six months or so after being Catholic I went to a Ukrainian Parish most Sundays and then again for a three month period a couple years later. I, like you, feel incredibly enriched by the Eastern Church and sometimes wish I were back there. (By the by, perhaps your language problems stem from the fact that you tried to learn "Slovanic" instead of "Slavonic"?)

I've only been to an "Extraordinary" mass a couple of times, so my problems with the Novus Ordo are more theoretical than experiential. But it seemed to me that the TLM was closer to what I experienced in the Eastern rites than is our Novus Ordo. I have heard Eastern Christians agree with this conclusion. My guess is an extraordinary rite dialogue mass is very much like an Eastern liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. But my experience is too limited. Anybody else with experiences of both forms of the Roman Rite and the liturgy of St. J. Chr. have any thoughts?

[MMajor Fan]

I really enjoyed reading your perspective. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the Eastern Rite myself, as my stepfather was Russian Orthodox. My brother and his wife, who had never been to an Eastern Rite or an Orthodox Church, were totally bowled over by the sanctity and unity of the laity in prayer, and the very tangibility of the use of incense, when we all attended our step dad's funeral mass.

About the Latin Mass. I'm beginning to feel as old as Methuselah! So many people have never been to one, and so forget that it was the ordinary for farmers, auto mechanics, homemakers, school teachers, clerks... the sorts of folks I grew up with in a small town who all packed the Church on Sunday and were totally involved in the Mass with nary a linguistics degree among them! Rather than isolate, I remember the unifying effect of the Mass, as people followed along in Missal in English, yet like listening to sacred music in the background, absorb the Latin as the tongue of the Church. I love the Pope's book on the Liturgy. He's also old enough to remember what it really was like ha ha.

[fr richard]

First, just a note of explanation about the color photo of our church, above. The reason for all the tree branches is that the photo was taken on Pentecost Sunday, and our churches are decorated with green branches to remind us of the freshness of the new life given to us by the Holy Spirit. At least in the Slavic Byzantine Churches, Pentecost is also called "Green Sunday."

Secondly: We have male servers, lectors and cantors largely because we still have minor orders that are connected with these functions, which are also steps to the priesthood/diaconate and therefore it is more fitting that such roles should be filled by males. In some parishes men are actually "ordained" to these minor orders and will remain in them without going on to the diaconate or priesthood. And since there is no absolute prohibition against it, women are still able to fulfill these functions if needed.

David, I attended a Roman rite Catholic school in my childhood where we attended the Tridentine Mass on schooldays(obviously many, many years ago), so hopefully my memory is correct here.

Put simply, as I recall, the similarities between the Tridentine Roman Mass and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom are a richness in the language of the prayers and in the ritual gestures, a genuine sense of the sacredness of the celebration and an awareness that it transcends the boundaries of ordinary daily life and is truly a fitting act of worship, emphasizing the participation and unity of the Church both in heaven and on earth. Both are very Scriptural and pay great attention to the awesome act of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. Both have a structure that does not depend on innovation or "options" but rather tradition.

Some differences: Eastern Liturgy is a continual back and forth in prayer between the priest (and perhaps a deacon) and the congregation, in united prayer, which is always sung from beginning to end. Tridentine Mass has much less participation by the people, with the servers making most of the responses on behalf of the congregation, and can be done without any singing. Eastern: most of the praying by the priest is done aloud. Tridentine: A great deal is done silently by the celebrant. Eastern: more open to the vernacular, and a bit more relaxed. Western: fixed on Latin with a great emphasis on rubrics.

Maybe that helps a bit.

[David Deavel]

Thanks, Fr. Richard. That's probably how I'd summarize it, too. It seems to me from reading Sacrosanctum Concilium many times that what the Fathers wanted out of the Roman Rite was something a bit more like the Liturgy of St. John--i.e., more congregational singing of the liturgy itself, some openness to vernacular for parts of the Mass, etc.

The problem is, as Thomas Day has put it memorably in his books, WHERE HAVE YOU GONE MICHELANGELO and WHY CATHOLICS CAN'T SING: the result of the Consilium is even less like the Eastern liturgies.

[John Michael Keba]

Some time back, I read a conversation between two Orthodox saints (I believe one was St. Seraphim of Sarov, but perhaps not) who had achieved living theosis. They both noted the light that they saw emanating from each other.

I suspect that, when they attended the Divine liturgy, and were they to so today, or either of the Roman Masses, they would see, after the consecration, light streaming out of the chalice, or the Host glowing with something like Cherenkov radition. How could they not, for all three forms of worship are valid, and God is present physically at each.

Those of us struggling far from theosis simply cannot *see* what must be there right before our very eyes, and our sense of the sacred is informed and activated by so very many other things. It is subjective.

The Father Neuhaus article linked elsewhere on this site states that "Benedict notes that, over the many centuries of the Roman Rite, popes have from time to time made modest changes. Pius V did so in 1570, John XXIII did so in 1962, and Paul VI did so in 1970, the last producing what is called the Novus Ordo."

That is not actually what the Holy Father said. He noted the general reforms made by various popes through the Blessed John XXIII, then in a new paragraph wrote

"In more recent times, Vatican Council II expressed a desire that the respectful reverence due to divine worship should be renewed and adapted to the needs of our time. Moved by this desire our predecessor, the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI, approved, in 1970, reformed and partly renewed liturgical books for the Latin Church."

A panel of scholars reformed the liturgy, and Pope Paul VI approved their work. And that would be fully consonant with the "needs of" the "time," for ours is a scientific age, and a scientific and scholarly reform of anything is de rigeuer.

There is a Japanese organic farmer, a fully-trained soil microbiolgist, who has mostly abandoned modern scientific agriculture and is a pioneer in the sustainable agriculture movement. Masanobu Fukuoka has been growing rice, white clover and a winter grain on the same 1.25 acres for decades without tilling, weeding or chemical fertilizer. He doesn't even grow the rice in standing water. Yet his yield compares with "modern" farms, and the soil becomes richer and more life-bearing with each passing year. He describes his break with modern methods in "The One-Straw Revolution" (Rodale Press, 1978) and has this to say about scholarly solutions:

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way."

I cannot think of a better description of what happened in 1970 to the Roman Church. The Bugnini "engineers" sought to correct problems with the old liturgy and their solution sent the Church into shock. It was as if they injected an engineered "virus" designed to remove some benign tumors that were nevertheless impairing the function of the Mystical Body of Christ, but the cure got out of hand. The Body adpated, and the worst of the liturgical deformations are over (or at least reduced in frequency and scope), but the healing is still ongoing.

Perhaps, if the above analogy is at all valid, the freeing of the 1962 missal is like going down ito the vaults to obtain some marrow from the bones of those saints who thrived under the Mass of St. Pius V. It cannot help but strengthen the blood.

[JACK]

Fr. Richard:

I appreciate your comments tremendously. I've tried to put my finger on why I found myself so enamoured with the Byzanine liturgy when I attended it and why I found traditionalist celebration of the Roman Rite (I'm including in this the NO, done ad orientem, etc.) so stale. The differences you highlighted were the core things that came to my mind and I can't figure out what to think of them. Other than that the Byzantine liturgy struck me as real and living today without giving up tradition whereas the other struck me as nostalgic.

[Kris Snyder]

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