Liturgy

Zenit has an
interview with the
recently elevated Cardinal Daniel DiNardo that is great
reading.

…With regard to the liturgy, I think
we can take a cue from the liturgical piety of the Church Fathers. In
the Fathers, you see an emphasis not only on the words said at Mass,
but also the importance of the gestures of the liturgy. In other words, say the black, do the red.

I had previously read great things about this patristic scholar, but
this simple statement makes me really love him.  What was the
last time you heard American Cardinal say something like “say the
black, do the red”?  Cue chirping crickets.

According to EWTN (I didn’t watch the
proceedings), there are two pieces of news on the the proposed music
document that had been scheduled to be considered at the Fall USCCB
meeting: 1) it has been downgraded from particular law to advisory,
which means that it will not have the same binding status and will not
require Rome’s approval, and 2) it has been otherwise withdrawn because
there were 100 pages of proposed changes and there was no way it could
be tackled at the USCCB meeting.

Very interesting.  This
document was suppose to be a response to Liturgiam Authenticam (and it
is late in submission in the first place) for Episcopal conferences to
submit to the Congregation for Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments for review.  I don’t think the document “Sing To
The Lord” they submitted to the CDW meet the requirements of Liturgiam
Authenticam since it was on vague guidelines and not the translations
of scriptural texts used in Sacred Music.  It was thought by
many that the CDW would likely reject their submission, something that
is all to familiar for our bishop’s conference.  So possibly
this move is to save face as Bishop Trautman leaves the BCL to be
replaced by Bishop. Seratelli.



I also see a problem with just changing
this from particular law to advisory.  For one Liturgiam
Authenticam still needs to be replied to.   Liturgiam
Authenticam was issued in five years and called for submissions by the
Episcopal conference within five years.  “Sing to the Lord”
has been seen as a mishmash of the defense of more traditional sacred
music while at the same time being a defense of the status quo.
 We can only hope that it’s switch to advisory won’t be used
in the same way that another document that was never approved,
Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, was used as dogma within the
United States.

Rochester Catholic relates his ten years since he returned to the
Church in a couple of posts that detail a large number of things he has
had to contend with.  As Rich Leonardi writes in regards to
this post “You can find an abuse or two like those above in most
dioceses, but I know of no other place where they are so widespread and
flagrant.”

Some of the abuses listed are common ones, but others are quite a
doozy, for example:

There were the liturgies at my
daughters’ high school in which the
priest would stop the Mass and take a vote on which Eucharistic prayer
to use. The group that yelled the loudest would win. At the end of
Mass, the priest would walk around the room throwing candy to the crowd
and high fiving everyone in sight.

The site doesn’t have direct links to
posts, but currently the two posts are at the top.

Via L.A. Catholic

A Catholic News Service article in this
week’s issue of The Tidings quotes Vatican II luminary Cardinal
Gottfried Danneels of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium, as making an
interesting admission:

“‘The active involvement of the people in the liturgy is an
unparalleled gift of the [Second Vatican] council to the people of
God,’ he said.

“While endorsing that participation, he also cautioned that ‘there is a
shadow side’ to it.

“‘Participation and mutual celebration can lead to a subtle form of
manipulation…. Those who serve the liturgy, both priests and laity,
become its owners’ instead of its servants, he said. This can lead to
trivializing the liturgy, eliminating the sacred and turning it from
the worship it is supposed to be into a mere social event, he added.

“Cardinal Danneels said the trend he was describing is not universal,
but it would be wrong to ignore it in any serious attempt to evaluate
the state of liturgical practice some 40 years after the council.”

Cardinal Danneels said these things, and others, on Oct. 25 at a
liturgical conference at the Catholic Univetsity of America.

These points by Cardinal Danneels have also been made for the past 40
years by so many Catholics whom the liberals continue to deride as
“traditionalists.”

Wow, I didn’t know Cardinal Danneels was a traditionalist. Did you?

The Cardinal could easily be
the most progressive member of the college with his support for condom
use and being a past president of Pax Christi, so this makes
his commentary all the more interesting and harder to dismiss.
 The experimentation that has taken place within the liturgy
shows exactly this idea of people seeing themselves as owners of the
liturgy than as servants to it.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has an interesting critique and commentary on what passes for hymns now. I think he underlying conclusion is right on that it stems from a lack of understanding of what the Mass is in the first place.

MARYSVILLE, PA, OCTOBER 30, 2007 – The
Confraternity of Catholic Clergy respectfully asks the Bishops of the
United States (USCCB) to disregard the recent letter from the National
Coalition of American Nuns on Liturgical Translations. We totally
disagree with their request to reject a literal and accurate English
version of the Roman Missal based on the typical Latin text. It is our
contention as ordained ministers who daily celebrate the sacred liturgy
and who serve the spiritual needs of the faithful that they deserve
nothing less than total and complete conformity to the authentic and
official texts approved by the Holy See.

Since the Eucharistic Sacrifice is the ‘source and summit of
Christian life’, it is imperative that the Church’s
ministers celebrate ‘digne, atténte ac devote’ (worthily,
with attention and devotion). Reverence is achieved not only by
diligently following the rubrics but also by having accurate texts
which incorporate sacred language. Ritual (gestures) combines with Rite
(words) to make proper worship. ‘Full, conscious and active
participation’ by the faithful in the sacred liturgy is only possible
when pedestrian language and banal translations are abandoned once and
for all. The congregation is more educated and sophisticated than
purported by those who insist accurate and literal translations from
the Latin into English would be confusing at best and frustrating at
worst.

We live in a culture where the vulgar, crass and obscene are part of
everyday conversation. It proliferates the media at all levels: radio,
television, movies, theater, magazines, and the internet. Yet, good
taste and graceful language are not archaic. Sacred worship requires a
sacred vocabulary and nomenclature which expresses the value and need
for reverence for ‘the Holy’ and which transcends
the secular world and allows the worshipper to approach the threshold
of heaven. Accuracy demands that the word “consubstantial” be restored
to the Creed since the Council of Nicea (325) canonized the terms
‘homoouios’ (Greek) and ‘consubstantialem’ (Latin). Adjectives which
predicate the divinity of Christ, prominent in the Latin, need to be
reinserted into the English. ‘Holy’, ‘sacred’, ‘venerable’, and
‘immaculate’, etc., are not foreign terms to Catholic vocabulary.
Edified language “inspires the believer to aspire to those things which
are holy and sacred. Banal and pedestrian language lowers us into the
gutter. One can and ought to seek a poetic sacred language that uplifts
the human spirit to seek the divine rather than being content with the
mediocrity of mundane.

Contact: Confraternity of Catholic Clergy PA, US

At most Catholic parishes throughout the world the Mass is divided into two sections. The Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I have come across a third section at some parishes. The Liturgy of the Bulletin. This is where the celebrant towards the end of the Mass reads the whole bulletin pretty much verbatim. This is almost always done in a monotone voice. Though I do wonder if a more traditional parish would chant the bulletin?

Now I could see the highlighting of one or two items from the bulletin but when it seems to be longer than the Easter sequence at it becomes rather silly.

A reader brought my attention to a Catholic News Service article on the Dutch Dominicans by Carol Glatz. In this highly sympathetic article (almost a press release) you would basically have no idea how wrong the proposals are. In fact the only negative reactions are phrases such as:

The general curia of the Dominicans expressed surprise over a booklet..

and

while they "laud the concern of our brothers" over the shortage of priests, they did not believe "the solutions that they have proposed are beneficial to the church nor in harmony with its tradition."

By that would you have any idea that the booklet proposed male and female lay presiders for the Mass? My readers informs me that Carol Glatz has also done questionable pieces for the U.S. Bishops news service.

Here is some of the worst Eucharistic theology I have ever read.

Because of the priest shortage in the Netherlands, local church officials advise Catholics to drive to a nearby parish that has a priest, and some parishes have a Liturgy of the Word and a Communion service with preconsecrated hosts.

But Father Lascaris said a eucharistic service with preconsecrated hosts is like receiving “bread and wine from someone else’s table.”

He said to imagine going to a restaurant, “and you sit down and they bring you food from another restaurant” from a city far away.

Parishioners also want to celebrate together with a presider from their own community since a leader or priest is a member and “a servant of the community,” he said.

He said Mass should not be “a method of power; we see it as a method of celebrating.”

Ironic though since only progressives see the priesthood as a method of power in the first place. Though this someone else’s/another city analogy really angers me for describing the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus as being somehow lesser if not consecrated at that specific Mass. As if his sacramental presence in the Eucharist can become stale and needs a "Consecrated on" date to ensure Eucharistic freshness.

"Parishioners also want to celebrate together with a presider from their own community" is also so much nonsense. If people have a visiting priest do they stand up and demand that he go away? So much for the priest being In Persona Christi – In the Person of Christ. So much for one baptism, one faith – that guy is a stranger — drive him out in favor of somebody else. Stone him he isn’t from our parish.

ROMA, October 3, 2007 � In restoring full citizenship to the ancient rite of the Mass, with the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” Benedict XVI said that he wanted in part to react to the excess of “creativity” that in the new rite “frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear.”

In view of what happens in some areas of the Church, this creativity affects not only the liturgy, but also the very foundations of Catholic doctrine.

In Nijmegen, Holland, in the church of the Augustinian friars, each Sunday the Mass is concelebrated by a Protestant and a Catholic, with one presiding over the liturgy of the Word and the sermon, and the other over the liturgy of the Eucharist, in alternation. The Catholic is almost always a layperson, and is often a woman. For the Eucharistic prayer, the texts of the missal are passed over in favor of texts composed by the former Jesuit Huub Oosterhuis. The bread and wine are shared by all.

No bishop has ever authorized this form of celebration. But Fr. Lambert van Gelder, one of the Augustinians who promote it, is sure that he is in the right: “In the Church there are different forms of participation, we are full-fledged members of the ecclesial community. I don’t consider myself a schismatic at all.”

Also in Holland, the Dominicans have gone even farther, with the consent of the provincials of the order. Two weeks before the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” went into effect, they distributed in all the 1,300 Catholic parishes a 9,500-word booklet entitled “Kerk en Ambt”, “The Church and the Ministry,” in which they propose to make into a general rule what is already practiced spontaneously in various places.

The proposal of the Dominican fathers is that, in the absence of a priest, a person chosen from the community should preside over the celebration of the Mass: “Whether they be men or women, homo or heterosexual, married or unmarried is irrelevant.” The person selected and the community are exhorted to pronounce together the words of the institution of the Eucharist: “Pronouncing these words is not thought to be the sole prerogative of the priest. The words constitute a conscious declaration of faith by the whole community.”

The booklet opens with the explicit approval of the superiors of the Dutch province of the Order of Preachers, and its first pages are dedicated to a description of what happens on Sundays in the churches of Holland.

…The Dutch bishops’ conference is refraining from making an official reply. But it has already let it be known that the Dominicans’ proposal appears to be "in conflict with the doctrine of the Catholic Church."

As Sandro Magister notes the number of Masses in Holland has dropped from 2,200 to 1,900 in just two short years due to the shortage of priests. The Dutch bishop’s are now just reaping what in part they have sown. The infamous Dutch catechism that only got worse after the Vatican demanded changes is evidence of the wide-spread experimentation that has occurred on all levels.

I remember hearing Fr. Roderick, a Dutch priest and podcaster extrodinaire, talk about as he became a more convinced Catholic seeking a priest to go to confession. When he did, the priest he went to had not heard a confession so long that he could no longer remember the rite, though he ended up doing it in Latin since this was all he could remember.

It seems the evidence is overwhelming that experimental theology and liturgies never lead to attracting vocations or increasing Mass attendance. Though they are often justified so as to be more appealing to the people. The truth is that these practices are like throwing the seed into rocky soil. At first their is attention to to the novelty, but they fall away.

You know you have just got to love an article called "Respect for Liturgical Norms: An Expression of Love for the Church." His Excellency Most Rev. Arthur Seratelli, Bishop of Paterson has written and excellent and short article on the subject.