received an e-mail recently from a lay pastoral associate, whose ministerial focus is on adult education and who possesses a graduate degree from a Catholic university. I have his permission to cite a portion of our exchange in this week’s column.
I have suppressed some of the details lest his pastor identify the source and seek to jeopardize the pastoral associate’s job.
The e-mail came from a large suburban parish in which the pastor has apparently done everything that he can to remove most traces of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by the late Pope Paul VI, and approved by the late Pope John Paul II and the current Pope, Benedict XVI.
The pastor has done away with all contemporary music at Mass, and has restored pre-conciliar devotions along with auricular confession. He even gives the impression that confession is the greatest of the sacraments.[reference]
I must of missed that part of the Vatican II documents that mandated contemporary music along with removal of pre-conciliar devotions and auricular confession. Though I wonder why he even pointed out the auricular aspect? Pretty hard for a priest to forgive yours sins if you don’t tell them what they are.
Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here because the Council of Trent, back in the 16th century, made clear that the greatest of the seven sacraments is the Eucharist.
Of course we have no idea what the pastor actually said to give this apparently disgruntled pastoral associate an “impression”. Though it is rather funny to see Fr. McBrien quote the Council of Trent. Isn’t Trent pre-conciliar or something?
Under the pastor’s control, the parish has no youth ministry, no parish council, nor any other consultative body. According to my correspondent, “consultative is not in his vocabulary.” He also gave vocal support to the minority of U.S. Catholic bishops who proclaimed in effect that “Catholics could burn in hell” if they voted Democratic in the recent presidential election.
Again hard to know what the pastor actually said and how he said it. But certainly if someone voted for Obama supporting his abortion agenda they are in objectively grave sin and could indeed go to Hell if they fully met the conditions of moratl sin.
My correspondent reported that other members of the parish staff are hurting “terribly.” Indeed, they share the feelings of the woman who darted out of church recently during the homily — in tears.
She informed the pastoral associate that she could no longer handle the situation, and that she had to leave the parish. She said that all that she ever hears from the pulpit is what sinners the parishioners are, and why it is so necessary for them to “go to confession.”
Gee you would think they would pass on what the homily was about?Rather an important detail needed to judge the situation. I have heard that one of the priests at my parish had people walk out on homilies at his previous parish. In the homilies I have heard from him he certainly did not shy away from bringing up contraception as a grave sin and other topics. Though certainly done in a pastoral way and not trying to beat people over the head. People don’t mind most homilies as long as they focus on somebody’s else’s sin.
That particular Sunday, with the old-fashioned church music, all the statues covered in purple as they were before Vatican II, and the usual severe words in the homily, the pressure was simply too much for her to bear.
Yes covering statues is harsh! Rather odd complaint considering how many more progressive parishes have simply removed statues and devotional art in the first place. Putting sand in the Holy Water font is the way to go don’t you know. Now how could severe words bring pressure? I guess if you have unrepented sins, hearing that they are sins is rather annoying.
The woman poured out her frustrations, saying that the pastor had taken the parish back to a Church that she knows nothing about and in a manner that showed no understanding of others’ feelings.
At the end of his first e-mail, my correspondent asked, “Are we expected just to get used to it?”
In my reply, I wrote: “No, you are not simply to ‘get used to it.’ Parishioners need to go elsewhere, like the woman who left Mass in tears.”
I continued: “If there are no parishes or other worshipping communities in the vicinity where the pastoral leadership is healthy rather than driven by a narrow ideology, then one simply has to ‘take a vacation’ from the Church until the skies finally clear and we are bathed in sunlight once again.”
Yes telling people to miss Mass and commit an objectively grave sin until a pastor that suits you comes along is great advice from a priest. Funny when we complain about liturgical abuses they basically tell us to “suck it up” and don’t complain.
At the end of his first e-mail, my correspondent asked, “Are we expected just to get used to it?”
Well if the priest is actually going against Church teaching or any Church documents than they can bring it up with him or end up taking it to the Bishop. These would be the proper steps and not winning to a dissident like Fr. McBrien.
I continued: “If there are no parishes or other worshipping communities in the vicinity where the pastoral leadership is healthy rather than driven by a narrow ideology, then one simply has to ‘take a vacation’ from the Church until the skies finally clear and we are bathed in sunlight once again.”
It is interesting how progressives see orthodoxy as being narrow. Though living the faith in an orthodox way can lead you on the narrow road defined in the Gospel. It is the progressive view that is so narrow with sharp edges defined by culture and not the Gospel. Disagree with a progressive and you easily find where their dogmas lie and that are more binding than anything the pharisees came up with.
The lead article in America magazine’s 100th anniversary issue (April 13) is by a Dominican who is justly admired the world over (by Progressives). It is Timothy Radcliffe’s “The Shape of the Church to Come.”
However, he does identify this polarization as consisting of self-defined “traditionalist” Catholics in open conflict with self-defined “progressive” Catholics.
Because it is only “traditionalists” who cause polarization. Playing games with the liturgy never causes polarization. Playing fast and loose with the theology of the Church never causes polarization.
The pastor in the true story above surely would regard himself as “orthodox,” but the woman who left the church in tears would never have defined herself as a “progressive” Catholic. That adjective would mean nothing to her.
It is not polarization but the pastor of the story and many like him who are responsible for the grieving Church.
He has passed sentence on a fellow priest he has never met and knows nothing about except for this report of hearsay. You would think that he might have made some caveat about this in his article. Though this might be an ironic charge coming from a blogger. It is often quite hard knowing what the actual facts are, but this article was extremely low on actual facts such as what the pastor actually did wrong except for maybe being too blunt. If the pastor actually did something wrong besides violating the phony Spirit of Vatican II then it could be addressed.
We need another petition to have Notre Dame professor’s Fr. McBrien columns removed. His columns serve no useful purpose other than undermining the Church at every opportunity. Telling people to take a vacation from Mass if the parish doesn’t agree with them is evil. You sometimes hear traditionalists calling into Catholic radio asking whether than can not go to Mass because some parish angers them so. They of course don’t tell them to take a vacation, but to address it via the proper steps and to pray. Fr. McBrien didn’t ask anyone to pray for this priest that he has condemned as responsible for a grieving Church. I will pray for Fr. McBrien and I hope you do to.
24 comments
Too bad Fr. McBrien didn’t mention the specific parish in question; I suspect it’s attendance and membership would have grown significantly. The bottom line is that there are many, many churches in America that will fit a self-conceived view of it’s liturgy. Just not the Church.
I’ll remember Fr. McBrien in my daily prayers as I remember all priests who struggle with the orthodox directives of our Holy Father and his Church.
I have experienced some of these new priests, and thank God for them.
No, they are not nostalgic for a church that never existed. They are nostalgic for Catholicism that had a majority who actually believed what the Church had and has always taught about Christ and his Church. Something they recognize to be in the minority today.
Whatever issues the Church had in the past, and I’m sure it did and needed correction, we’ve lost that utterly in the older generation, to our great detriment, and I find it ludicrous to hear about this woman leaving the church.
Are you kidding? Most everyone is already gone… the ones coming back are the ones who had to go and catechize themselves…
I read this in the local diocesan paper. It was typical of Fr. McBrien. Unfortunately, your post was apparently written in haste.
“must of missed that part of the Vatican II documents that mandated contemporary music, pre-conciliar devotions, and auricular confession.”
Er, you really didn’t think that out. The point is that the first was said to be done away with, while the other two were emphasized or brought back.
“The pastor in the true story above surely would regard himself …”
You didn’t get it here either. By “pastor”, Fr. McBrien means “pastor”.
Because it is only “traditionalists” who cause polarization. Playing games with the liturgy never causes polarization. Playing fast and loose with the theology of the Church never causes polarization.
I call this the “if it weren’t for you” fallacy. It’s easy for anyone to assume that their perspective is the norm and anybody they disagree with is the troublemaker, but I’m amused at times when people go around effectively saying “We just achieved the status quo! You and your historical-consensus types are going to ruin it for the other 1% of us!”
Can anyone tell me what “If it weren’t for you” would be in Latin? I think it’d carry more oomph.
Thanks, updated to reflect your points.
I know as of late, the younger priests in my diocese aren’t just interested in preserving the good of the past, they have a kind of nostalgia for a Church that never was. I did a reflection assignment where I had to interview a number of people who lived before Vatican II and had experienced the church both then and now. It was very interesting. The thing I heard from the priests (I mean the good holy ones) is that the danger for the younger generation was for then to have nostalgia for a church that exists only in their imagination. However, the priests did see that a number of younger Catholics were rediscovering parts of the faith that seemed to have slipped away since Vatican II, which they thought was fine — especially if done in an authentic way.
Many of the younger priests that I am seeing that come out of the seminary in my area, who have never really studied the Liturgy or Liturgical Theology, miss the fact that the Liturgy itself has an organic development that exists within it. The Church is alive. That is, they celebrate mass not like it is a natural portion of the spiritual life, but that it is artificial to all human sensibilities and is to be celebrated in a ridged, mechanical form.
“Say the Black, do the Red” might be a nice slogan for some of the newer priests, but if all the priest does is say and do then he as missed the essence of what the liturgy is, and he falls in to the danger of making the Liturgy into some kind of magical spell or superstition.
“That is, they celebrate mass not like it is a natural portion of the spiritual life, but that it is artificial to all human sensibilities and is to be celebrated in a ridged, mechanical form.”
I encountered this a few times by the same priest. A young one. I have little experience with the Latin Mass, though I did try it once. I’m a post Vatican II baby but am enjoying this re-finding of the older ways but keeping the personal relationship with Jesus (or what I see as that).
This one priest, who served the Latin Mass in one town about 20 miles from another town where I happened to go to Mass for a few months (I learned it is his regular church) is unbelievably rigid, down to the way he gives Communion. It’s like watching an automatron. He jerks his hand and arm each time someone comes up to him for the Body. I think it strange. I know he thinks he’s being reverent, but it’s awkward and distracting.
Then again, I am also trying to not judge. I came back to the Church through a lefty parish, and though I now am not appreciative of that given the divergence from the metrics (et al), I am not sure I would have responded to a more traditional church at the time I was lapsed. Not trying to make a point; just saying.
I pray these folk don’t take his evil advice and miss mass. Isn’t it true that anyone who counsels such evils take upon themselves the selfsame sins of those they counselled to do evil?
I do not take delight in the discomfiture of those who must endure changes they don’t understand. I think it very important that we lay folk who delight in the return of our patrimony instruct these people in the “old ways” so that they can come to appreciate it as it ought to be appreciated. The fact that the “old ways” are themselves “catechetical” will be an enormous boon to the spread of the faith.
Oh no! Don’t tell me this wicked priest actually did away with Protestant, Gnostic and Pelagian ‘hymns’ and went back to the bad old days of showing reverence to God. Don’t tell me that he was so rude as to inform people that sinners need to go to confession. Say it ain’t so.
I’ll bet this renegade actually spoke ill of abortion and sodomy during his homilies. O tempora, o mores.
We should clarify. On another blog, someone pointed out that “nostalgia” is a sentimental feeling for something unrecoverable. The desire for solemn liturgy worthy of Our Lord is not nostalgic. It’s not a sentimental feeling. It is a real, natural and objectively good desire that is entirely recoverable. In fact, the sentimentalism is ENTIRELY on the side of the modern fluff liturgies.
For what it’s worth, here is what Fr. Radcliffe wrote in his piece in America:
“The Second Vatican Council tried to liberate us from this mental imprisonment [of opposing tradition and progress], but it is hard to give up entrenched ways of thought, and so many Catholics still define themselves as either ‘traditionalist’ or ‘progressive.’ Such polarization is deeply wounding and inhibits the flourishing of the church.”
Fr. McBrien’s conclusion — “It is not polarization but the pastor of the story and many like him who are responsible for the grieving Church.” — is another instance of the polarization Fr. Radcliffe deplores as deeply wounding and inhibiting the flourishing of the Church.
(Though I suppose Fr. Radcliffe would also express sorrow at the actions of the pastor as described in the article.)
I will keep all the players anomymous.
I know whereof O’Brien laments.
I was talking to the pastor the other day and we both agreed that we are righteously doing our damndest to bury the putrid corpse of modernist heresy and save the faithful from mental imprisonment to self and sin.
I also can make up stuff to suit my agenda.
If Vatican II did away with auricular confession, then local diocesan offices have really dropped the ball at providing priests and laity with all that sign language training which is now needed.
Hmmm – aren’t statues “pre conciliar devotions” which were supposed to be removed? If so, perhaps the pastor has brought them back. Then why the complaint that they are being covered with purple? Every parish around here covered their extensive bare white walls with splashes of purple cloth during lent.
As I’ve always thought, progressive/traditional labels are really not the issue here. It’s about pride and control, pure and simple. If you had a parish with a new pastor who wants the monthly clown mass to happen on the 3rd rather than the 4th Sunday, you’ll hear the same people complaining that they were not consulted!!!
We Believe As You Onced Belived
We Pray As You Onced Prayed
If We Are Wrong Now
You Were Wrong Then
If You Were Right Then
We Are Right Now
Fr. McBrien’s confused and contradictory statements are typical of a pride filled and controlling man who tenaciously clings to a myth partly of his own making. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit nudges the listening faithful toward saner and Catholic shores (away from the shoals of relativism and the culture of death).
“Say the Black, do the Red” might be a nice slogan for some of the newer priests, but if all the priest does is say and do then he as missed the essence of what the liturgy is, and he falls in to the danger of making the Liturgy into some kind of magical spell or superstition.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
It is exactly this kind of thinking that gives us the crap we get at Masses from priests who want to add their own junk to it.
Really. Say the black, do the red. I would add “and mean it.” That’s fine. It’s hardly “some kind of magical spell.” It’s trusting the effectiveness of the rite to work.
If the form, matter, and Holy Spirit won’t effect the sacrament, then all the good wishes and pixie dust won’t, either.
Andy,
I suggest going back and reread what I wrote. I never said do away with the rite. I never said the rite is magic. I never even hinted that priests should add junk to the mass. That is as far from my thinking as one can possibly get. However, I’d also be willing to bet that where some of this junk comes from are the few passages in the GIRM that use the phrase “In these or similar words” where priest then interprets that to mean “do whatever you want.”
You are correct. The priests should mean what they say.
However the liturgy isn’t just doing and saying. The liturgy is the work of the Trinity and that work being Love. Love is not artificial. If the priest “Says the Black and does the red” out of his love for the rite and the church and God then that is a good thing. However, a priest who sees the rite as only doing and saying, he does RUN THE DANGER of viewing the rite as some kind of magic recipe.
The form and rite of the liturgy have changed numerous times through the ages, people seem to ignore this reality. Change is often organic (or it should be) but it should also be approved via the proper means. In fact there is a rite (I can’t recall which one but it is approved by the Roman Catholic Church) that does not use the institutive narrative that is present in all Roman rites.
There are some parts of the rite that are more open to change than others. Still there are other parts of the rite that are not open to change. The problem comes when people think themselves to be the Pope and Magesterium and take it upon themselves to authorize any kind of illicit crazy puppet mass.
You know, I think I would agree with the bit about young priests “being nostalgic about a Church that never existed”. I think he is right on both counts [nostalgia and existential concerns], but for the wrong reasons.
Young priests of this age have a very good sense of the legitimate “both-and” tensions in the Church… much more than they are given credit for, by and large. Afterall, Jesus is BOTH human AND divine. The Eucharist is BOTH meal AND sacrifice. Worship takes place through BOTH liturgy AND devotion. To deny or overemphasize one side over the other or to the exclusion of the other can be, indeed, heresy.
My point? Young priests know that the Church is in constant reformation, and that to go forward in an authentic and necessary “Spirit of Vatican II”, that it will look alot like the forms and designs which were dismissed out of hand a generation ago in misplaced, idealistic, one-sided, iconoclastic fervor that needed to be reformed.
The OF and the EF must exist hand-in-hand right now. No, that Church has not existed before, but it is going to have to look like ‘something’ if it is in necessary continuity with the past [nostalgia]. What will happen in the future is still up for grabs, but the Spirit is in charge and we need to simply stay out of the way.
“Both-And” tension is not ‘middle-of-the-road-ism’ or mere dialecticism. As they say, those who are in the middle of the road are bound to get run over. The legitimate tension of orthodoxy spreads over the entire expanse of thought on the issues in question, lending tremendous power and strength and grace to the theological superstructure. (Think of the tension necessary to hold a bridge statically in place… same idea. Civil engineers do it… so must theologicans.)
To be truly orthodox, one needs to hold a great number of theological, doctrinal, and christological dichotomies in exquisite tension between the dualisms and exclusivisms of the world. No, our young priests are not going to settle on facile answers: mere rubricism on one side vs. false chumminess on the other.
Those who are lost in polarization (on the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ for that matter), who expect and insist on the priest looking and sounding and thinking like them and their particularities and idiosyncracies, will be the people who will feel left behind when these priests invoke ‘Catholic’ (literally, ‘universal’) ways of thinking about the Church and the world.
Sorry for the ramblings… I should tighten up my argument a little more, but alas, I need to get back to life.
I pity the lay person in this story. It would seem that the ongoing reform of the Church is much more complicated than “Sing[ing] a New Church into Being”.
Excellent “ramblings” there, CarpeNoctem. Much to consider. Thank you for your balanced treatment of this topic.
Fr. McBrien ignores the bitter tears of those subjected to “reform minded” priests.
High altars have been jackhammered out, paintings whitewashed or covered over, and marble statues removed and sold to a local bar at auction.
Time honored devotions such as Eucharistic Adoration and other pius practices have been spurned.
The ancient treasury of Church music has been replaced by already tired folk music.
All concerns were dismissed as being “contrary to the Spirit of Vatican II,” and anyone who voiced a contrary opinion was labelled as a bitter reactionary.
While all this was going on, where was Fr. McBrien?
I know everyone is focusing on the pastor’s theology but I wonder if it isn’t more a question of personality. Priests – and all of us really – are called to speak the truth with love (not an easy thing to do, I admit). An orthodox priest may overemphasize sin just like a progressive priest may overemphasize compassion. I have no idea what the pastor in the article is really like but it could be his personality that’s the root of the problem if what is written is true. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “From somber, serious, sullen saints, save us O Lord.”
Dick Mc remains a joke.
One really cannot tell from this story whether it is about a priest with the right ideas who is personally too rigid, thus alienating people, or whether the real story is that this woman has a ‘lets all be happy happy happy, I’m OK you’re OK’ idea of religion, and also is involved in some sin, most likely contraception, that she doesn’t want to be called on. In either case Fr. McBrien’s advice is really evil, telling this woman that if her parish priest upsets her, and she can’t find one that doesn’t, she doesn’t have to go to mass. Why did those who are upset by losing the old mass, by the removal of altar rails and standing in a cafeteria line for communion , by silly, musically bankrupt, vapid, and sometimes heretical songs, not hear this? No, they heard that they had to get used to change, that the mass was still the mass and they should adjust or tough it out. Let us pray that this woman does not take Fr. McBrien’s advice.
Susan Peterson