A few years back a group of priests invited me to come to the Marian Shrine at Knock in Ireland to speak to them about the reverent celebration of the Eucharist. At the time, I can remember being genuinely edified by these brothers in the priesthood. My one challenge, as I saw it, was to confirm them in the conviction that reverence at Eucharist was the crown jewel in a full spectrum approach to Catholic life, enabling the Sacrifice of the Mass to be what it is intended to be, namely the source and summit of Christian existence. The Council Fathers understood and taught that the Mass is not a stand alone. Our daily lives (prayer, penance, study, works of charity, uprightness, etc.) lead us toward the summit which is Holy Mass. The Sacrifice of the Mass in turn is the source of all we need by the grace of God to live as we ought that life in the world.
Some people will try to interpret that understanding as somehow rendering a family's choice of which form they attend, ordinary or extraordinary, of the Roman Rite (to use the language of Summorum Pontificum) to be a neutral choice. Obviously they are excluding such aberrations as clown masses, puppet masses, and dancing in church by the celebrant, but little else. Would that it were that simple a choice for the Catholic family! Sadly, it is not.
Sadly, because over decades of use and abuse the missal of Pope St. Paul VI has been thoroughly compromised and not just by dancers and puppets. The option provision, for example, which may have been intended to be limited in its scope, ends up being applied even to the specific formula for the valid celebration of a given sacrament. As a consequence, we have experienced the devastation and insecurity of invalid baptisms, demanding the repeat of all sacraments for young men who thought they were priests when in point of fact they had not even been baptized as infants in the faith of the Church, thanks to "these or similar words".
Egregious as these instances may truly be, my worry is not so much for the matter of validity as it is for the matter of reverence. Be assured also that just plain irreverent behavior is not what I have set my sights on, although it should be exposed and rooted out. No, rather what worries me is an atmosphere in church, marked by an all-pervading awkward sort of ignorance or unconsciousness. People do not seem to know how to behave in church. So many of them are not unlike the young man who has never been taught to take off his hat upon entering a home or for that matter on entering a church. Few people today could remember being taught as a child, as I was to tip your hat or make the Sign of the Cross simply walking, riding or driving by the front of a church for respect for the Lord Who dwells therein. Perhaps most adults have suffered sports injuries which keep them from genuflecting or kneeling before God, but I worry about all the young people and children either so oblivious or sadly hesitant when it comes to bending the knee.
How did we get to this point of being so dull really and unteachable. Faithlessness is that of which we are ailing. We are hemmed in and blocked in our attempts to express devotion. I am thoroughly convinced that it is, yes, for lack of an adequate liturgical vehicle to inspire a culture which in turn animates liturgy. We need to point to a home life which no longer teaches children to pray, which fails to inspire the next generation to thoughts about the God Who loves us and calls us each by name. But there has to be a summit of expression to which this love tends without hectic, a beautiful, silent place which confirms and further enobles the homely convictions of the smallest child and the frailest adult in advanced age. The way the missal of Pope St. Paul VI has played out has robbed us of the sublime, leaving us at best with theater, but rarely.
People ask me if I worry about what might happen to Summorum Pontificum and I respond no. I tell them our own bishops and priests worry me more, men who cannot bring themselves to admit that the Novus Ordo is up a creek without a paddle. I worry more about the consequences for the whole Church of things like the Dijon intervention, which either do not understand or deny how the Roman Church has been about the business of nurturing the faith in our people since apostolic times.
No doubt I would have better spent my time asking St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church to put in a good word for us before the Throne.
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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