Month: July 2024

At mass, crying rooms for chatters? The worshiper reported and commented decades ago.

MODEST SUGGESTION . . . . An idea whose time has come, or so said the worshiper. A special room for people who want to chat during mass. Yes, we’ve had crying rooms for people with babies, he conceded. But now it’s time for chat rooms in church! It would be a way of recognizing that some people worship differently from others.

He walked into church one Sunday, and everyone was talking. Mass hadn’t started, it was not too big a crowd, it was like walking into a school board meeting before it’s called to order. And as in some board meetings, the calling to order did not entirely silence some, who took mass as chat time: it was a family group, with infants in arms, just the kind of people you like to see. But couldn’t they be quiet?

PARISH BULLETIN WARNS PEOPLE AWAY FROM ILLEGAL LATIN MASS CHURCH . . . . It’s a “chapel,” says the bulletin, “that advertises itself as ‘Our Lady Immaculate Roman Catholic Church.'” But it’s actually not Roman Catholic but is run by the St. Pius X society founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicated, etc. etc.

The bulletin quotes the Pope about the “grave offense” involved in adherence to the Society leading to excommunication. The worshiper is at risk, therefore, by now and then attending the Latin masses at Our Lady Immaculate.

Would the parish consider now and then having a Latin mass, so as to ween him away? For pastoral reasons? A recent special mass for gays and lesbians at a neighboring church was a one-time thing, apparently. Maybe have a one-time thing for Latin mass enthusiasts who make no claims about being born that way but only say they were raised that way?

THE MODERN CHURCH AT PRAYER . . . Warmup for a recent RC funeral mass included an organ-ized rendition of “All the Things You Are” — lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Only the music (by Jerome Kern) was played, however. The words go this way and would have been applicable to the deceased or to Jesus, though that would be a major surprise to Hammerstein:

You are the promised kiss of springtime That makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the breathless hush of evening That trembles on the brink of a lovely song. You are the angel glow – that lights a star. The dearest things I know – are what you are. One day my happy arms will hold you And someday I’ll know that moment divine When all the things you are are mine.

Ain’t liturgy grand?

KEEN ANALYSIS . . . Sacramentalism used to be the thing, but in contemporary Catholicism it’s the person. We take our cue from Evangelical Protestantism, where grace (divine help) comes from praying with partners after service and not from the sacrament. Potential partners wait at the end of each service, usually couples. It’s ministry up close and personal.

Ritual was the medium in Catholicism, not one’s fellow worshipers. This was a major sticking point of the Reformation, as in whether the sinfulness of the minister affected a sacrament’s value. “Ex opere operato” was a key term, from or because of the thing done, vs. “ex opere operantis,” from or because of the one doing it.

It’s a 500-year-old or older divide. In bald terms, for the sake of argument, does it matter who administers the sacrament (who’s the minister) or does the sacrament carry its own weight? Fall on one side, you have something good anywhere, any time, any place. Fall on the other, it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.

Lacking ritual, you have something here today gone tomorrow or next century. Lacking the personal, you have the unsalable, the unpersuasive. You always depend on people. But with ritual, you have what lasts, what relies less on performance by the minister. Do a good formula right, you’ve got it right.

But Catholic worship has gotten flaccid and informal, compared to 50 years ago. It features priest as performer, even showman, vs. priest as follower of ritual prescribed by the church as millennial institution.

Importance of ignoring what’s up front during mass, 2004 . . . Various ministers are thrust up front by current rules. It’s not their fault. Politeness does not require looking at them, however. So don’t look but mind your own business, reading and meditating on the day’s Scripture. There’s so much going on up front, traipsing to and fro with book held high over forehead as if to ward off falling plaster, prior to reading Scripture of the day. It’s not helpful ritual but merely distracting. Then you look up and see priest looking at you. He can’t help it. Reverentially downcast eyes have not been part of his training. But you can help it by not looking.

Halfway through the last year of the 20th century the worshiper mused about what happened to the mass in the previous 30 years and put it in writing . . .

. . . here presented once again in these millenial reflections
JIM BOWMAN
JUL 24, 2024

Is the two-mass Sunday schedule [down from three] related to diminishing numbers among priests? Is the change a one-timer, or are we headed for one-mass Sundays in our cathedral-class Gothic church with the big oak doors?

A certain kind of person is reminded of magazines and newspapers faced with declining circulation, whose editors remake the publication only to find the changes alienate regulars and attract too few new readers. Tricky business.

One is also reminded of earlier efforts at bringing the body religious into new realms. In the tragicomic vein, there’s the recent roping off of back pews (by a previous pastor) in this same church, with a view to getting us Catholics to sit up front and close to each other, not at comfortable distances, but close enough to exchange handclasp of peace at the appointed time.

There were the lines of yellow police tape one Sunday, silently telling us to move up front, as if plaster was going to fall soon on the prohibited pews. Yes, dear reader, in due time someone tore the tape and moved into the forbidden territory. This is rebellion, dear reader, the sort to be cherished years after the fact at class reunions, as above.

More seriously (and successfully) was the all-church changeover from Latin to English after Vatican Council II. Was this centralized planning or not? Enough to make a statist weep with envy. The world over, Catholics got used to mass in everyday language. It became part of the worldwide social engineering taking place – change by design, not by natural influences.

Vatican II celebrated the freedom of the children of God, but not in liturgy. Latin had to go. Latin went. Rebels were marginalized. Only recently has Latin returned with church authority’s blessings.

So it goes, change dictated from above for our own good by people who know what’s best. My friend M., in his last year before ordination as a holy Jesuit, complained. He had enough trouble believing in the mass in Latin, he said. Now the mystery would be severely lessened. He was not happy.

This from a Catholic-school-educated fellow, including Jesuit high school and college in the 1950s, a straight-arrow fellow from an Irish Catholic Chicago neighborhood, who swallowed hard and went on to be ordained — later to fall by priestly wayside, get married: the full catastrophe, as Zorba said.

M.’s problems sound strange to today’s 27-year-old who learned her Catholicism in our parish – the part about the mass being hard to believe in. But friend M. had much more to believe about the mass than she does today, when it’s essentially a church-sponsored, Scripture-referenced celebration of unity with each other.

He had to believe in transubstantiation – who now says the word? The bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus in substance, while accidents (of breadness, etc.) remained, etc.

The priest held the host (bread) and believed he held the body of Christ. At least one could hardly do it and would stutter at the “words of consecration,” barely able to say them. A whole new mass developed after Vatican II — was developed quite consciously, as young Jesuits debated in the mid-50s, looking ahead — this liturgy of the future, vernacularized, would be as much communicating with people as with God. The priest would face the people, look at them, saying the dread words, making them more pew-sitter-friendly.

My friend M. saw the mystery dissolving away, and with it his belief. This has happened. Mass is now something else — arguably a very good thing, in which we celebrate unity with each other. As for the mystical and mysterious, that’s a happy memory, fast fading from Catholic consciousness.