I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be. That’s not something that can happen overnight. The bishops who were the fathers of the council from the United States came home and made changes too quickly. They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.His Excellency goes on to say that he has himself begun celebrating Mass ad orientem, leading by example rather than by dictate. Most importantly, he declares:
What we lost in a short period of time was continuity. The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church. Changes, like turning the altar around, were too sudden and too radical. There is nothing in the Vatican II documents that justifies such changes. We’ve always had Mass facing the people as well as Mass ad orientem [“to the east,” with priest and people facing the same direction]. However, Mass ad orientem was the norm. These changes did not come from Vatican II.
Also, it was not a wise decision to do away with Latin in the Mass. How that happened, I don’t know; but the fathers of the Council never intended us to drop Latin. They wanted us to hold on to it and, at the same time, to make room for the vernacular, primarily so that the people could understand the Scriptures.
But we must approach the liturgy on bended knee with tremendous humility, recognizing that it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift. We worship God not by creating our own liturgies, but by receiving the liturgy as it comes to us from the Church.A point, surely, that needs to be reiterated throughout the Church these days.
[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]
16 comments:
Now that everyone has been habituated to the Novus Ordo for 40 years, most first-time visitors to the Traditional Latin Mass have the knee-jerk reaction that, well, OBVIOUSLY the old Mass needed to be fixed, because it's INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
Perceptions can be so blamed shallow!
It is wonderful to hear that a bishop can say such things! I wish they would send him here!
Bishop Slattery's statement is a perfect example of the incoherence of the position of liturgical conservatives today -- Benedict XVI chief among them. How can you have "liturgical reform" without a perception that something about the liturgy needs to be fixed?
If there was nothing in the traditional liturgy that needed to be fixed, then the efforts of Bugnini were the waste of a serious man's time. But Bugnini wrote endlessly in his bloated apologia, "The REFORM of the Roman Liturgy," of all the faults that the traditional liturgy DID have -- and as far as the celebrated Archbishop of Teheran was concerned, it had many.
Thus, the statements of Bugnini make a nefarious kind of sense, while that of Slattery makes no sense at all.
Let's hear it for self-refuting inconsistency, then! At least this bishop is saying some things, among the self-referential inconsistencies, that badly need being said, especially by bishops.
It's far better than the "spirit of v2" silliness, which is perhaps less inconsistent, but more uniformly damaging.
Nah, can't buy that, PP.
Ineptitude of the ecclesiastical silent majority is how we got into this mess to begin with.
Not that Slattery can help it. Benedict is the explicator-in-chief of "reform of the reform," and as such is the source of the incoherence that comes shining through Slattery's remarks.
The real problem is with the zeal to reform in and of itself. The original reformers, Paulist modernists, created a mess of pottage. The fixers of the fix, on the other hand, don't know exactly what they are doing, because what they are doing does not make sense.
As a start, I would like to hear bishops talking about (a) mandatory training in the TLM for all priests, (b) mandatory saying (within a period of time) of the TLM at least once per Sunday in all parishes, (c) a rolling out of the red carpet for FSSP priests in diocese where they are currently anathema, (d) support for and active planning of TLM parishes in all diocese and (e) a general admission from the diocese that the long term goal is a return to the TLM exclusively.
This would not be reformation 3.0, but a counter reformation -- a rebuff of the reform. When Bishop Slattery starts talking about that, PP, I will assume your slightly giddy tone. But not now.
None of that can happen if all the talk is about fixing the NO liturgy with a nice set of Latin drapes, a rearrangement of liturgical furniture toward the east, hands v. tongue, kneeling v. standing, etc, etc, etc. The TLM already has these things, and the idea of grafting them on to a liturgy (actually an anti-liturgy) that was concocted precisely for the purpose of getting rid of them is, when you think about it, an exercise not only in reform, but in sheer wackiness.
The liturgical conservatives' position may be somewhat incoherent but they are not in a position either to write the N.O. off or to call it invalid. They recognize that the Church has a serious problem of its own making. How is the Church to declare that it made a serious pastoral error and needs to recall a product that it delivered and sold as a great gift to the faithful? It cannot and is not going to say that most Masses over the past half century have been invalid.
If the N.O. is a valid Mass but an inferior liturgy with a non-traditional theological emphasis, it nevertheless enjoys widespread support. Younger priests rarely know the old rite. Getting rid of the N.O. by fiat would be much too costly for the Church even to contemplate. Nothing in the way of reform is going to happen overnight-- as logically coherent as that might be.
BTW, in a strict sense, anything susceptible to reform can be reformed without really needing to be fixed. 'Reform' and 'improve' are not synonyms. The presumption of improvement in reform is no more than that. The N.O., after all, was 'reform.'
I think the problem is nomenclature. Of course, "reform" and "improvement" are not synonymous, but they were to Bugnini, et al., as they are to all positivists.
I agree that "reform of the reform," while the catchphrase of the day, is tied exclusively to those who assume that imposing the NO was a valid endeavor to begin with and is still worth salvaging. "Reform of the reform" types never address the divergent theologies of the TLM and NO; if they did, evaluating them in light of Catholic tradition, they would have to sack the NO and they will never be willing to do that. The NO is the avatar of Vatican II; if that falls, so does the legacy of the Council.
Bishop Slattery's thoughts fall squarely within these parameters. He said: "I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be. . . . They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed." What Vatican II "intended" will always be up for grabs, whether one uses the "hermeneutic of continuity and reform," or that of rupture. The fact is, having read SC, it's impossible to tell what Vatican II intended. It's only possible to tell what actually happened.
Bishop Slattery says: "The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church." Fifty years after the fact, this is impossible. If the TLM is restored, there will be the same sense of a "break" with tradition that there was in 1969, because "tradition," is only viewed as what happens within the span of one's life.
"They wanted us to hold on to it and, at the same time, to make room for the vernacular, primarily so that the people could understand the Scriptures." Here Bishop Slattery has clearly been captured by Vatican II modes of thought. Ancient liturgies, besides being the fulfillment of the demands of God, were also the encounter of participants with the majesty of God. Here, the bishop is making the claim that the vernacular was to be used so people could understand the Scriptures. That notion is thoroughly Protestant and completely at odds with the ancient concepts of official prayer and/or liturgy. Those liturgies were not primarily didactic and were not designed to be. The fact that there are as many Scriptural passages, if not more, in the TLM as opposed to the NO, is immaterial. While teaching of a sort always occurs in the Mass, that is not its purpose. That includes "understanding the Scriptures." There are other venues for that.
Bishop Slattery gets a little closer with this statement: "But we must approach the liturgy on bended knee with tremendous humility, recognizing that it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift. We worship God not by creating our own liturgies, but by receiving the liturgy as it comes to us from the Church." This comes close to the ancient notion that liturgy was a divine requirement imposed on human beings, who, nevertheless were privileged to be in the presence of God.
These are the attitudes that must be part of Catholics before any "reform" or change can really occur, no matter what kind of paradigm or hermeneutic one is using.
R.R-D,
What they are doing makes sense in political terms. They haven't got the support to dump the N.O. outright. They know that the 'faithful' to the N.O. are not a sure bet when it comes to being faithful to the authority of the Vatican. Give them time.
I like your program for a counter reformation but I don't think step e is in the cards at this point. That would be a declaration of war. "Preserving the old rite" would be harder for the liberal crowd to oppose.
Otherwise, I second your proposal.
Since I was writing about what I would like to see and not about what I expect to see, from my point of view the realpolitik observations of Dan and Anonymous are beside the point of my original comment.
That said, I would have to agree that the NO reclamation project will likely continue on its loony way, for at least as long as the last of the V2 generation of Church leaders continue to hold sway. One argument put forward for this lunacy is that it would be psychologically ruinous to modern Catholic man to have the TLM restored and the NO withdrawn from service. Such an argument, to take a realpolitik point of view, is spin and balderdash of the sort that neo Caths accept unquestioningly. No such concern was shown when the NO was imposed upon the faithful. I can still remember, circa 1970, the diocesan apparatchik standing in the pulpit and growling "this is the way we will do it from now on, so get used to it." The reason given for that imposition, as Bugnini made clear repeatedly, was to serve the needs of that wondrous and most delicately wired animal, Modern Man, so different from and superior to any man before him. To Bugnini, Church tradition had to be taken out with the trash because Modern Man had outgrown it -- liturgical reform was only one among many battles to be fought in order to bestow upon Modern Man the Church he so richly deserved.
But the reason for a re-imposition, if you will, of the TLM liturgy is far more basic, going to the very center of what Christ intended the Catholic Church to be. Thanks to the efforts of NO partisans and spirit of V2 propagandists, it will indeed be necessary to reclaim Catholic tradition and (re-)introduce most Catholics to it. TLM restoration is crucial to that effort. Compared to this, Bugnini’s purpose in concocting the NO is shown to be a mere bagatelle of intellectual pomposity. Dan asks "How is the Church to declare that it made a serious pastoral error and needs to recall a product that it delivered and sold as a great gift to the faithful?" Yes, that would never do – it would require genuine humility, a virtue in short supply among leaders of any sort. But what was the point of V2 and the NO to begin with, if not to correct supposedly “serious pastoral error,” and to recall the TLM, which the Church had once “sold as a great gift to the faithful”? How is it that violent and sudden retraction of “progressive” beliefs and practices is somehow horrific and unconscionable, while violent and sudden retraction of traditional, even bedrock beliefs and practices is not – and is even proclaimed to be an indication of opening windows, freshened air, and perpetual spring time? It seems to me that what Dan is describing is a continuing failure of nerve on the part of Church leaders who should know better, and do, but are still driven, in the words of that old anthroposophist Owen Barfield, to “save the appearances”.
I would also like to disagree with Dan and Anonymous on another, less serious point: "reform" and "improve" are indeed synonymous. A brief perusal of Webster's will show that the idea of "making better" is at the root of both terms. Or, if you are less fussy, you can check a website such as Synonyms.com.
That is why so many people are in love with the idea of "reform." The cachet springs from the word itself. And its presence there in turn explains why there is such delicious irony in surveying the calamitous results of so many "reforms" throughout history, beginning with Luther's.
Dan might have had better luck if he had said that "reform" and "fix" are not synonymous, which is probably true enough, "fix" being a much broader and more generalized term. Even so, the common clay uses these terms interchangeably, and still the republic survives.
Ralph,
Yes, people do use 'reform' and 'improve' almost as synonyms but they shouldn't. We have two words because they mean different things. "That's an improvement" does not mean "That's a reformation" nor does "That's a reformation" mean "That's an improvement."
Since sometime around the 1950's Webster gave up being 'normative' and turned to being 'descriptive' so that any distortion of the language that gains a modicum of common use gets into the dictionary.
Presumably one would not reform something to make it worse. There is, therefore, a presumption or pretext of improvement on someone's part when a 'reformation' is undertaken. That presumption or pretext does not necessarily reflect the reality of the situation.
Btw,because I am a traditional type and because the Church adopted the N.O., I accepted it with docility and obedience, even though I did not like it. You can say that liberals should be equally docile and obedient if you like. Somehow, though, I don't think they would.
Cessent lites.
Ok, Dan, I know from your previous postings that you are a pedant in matters of language. I should have let it go. Mea culpa. But I have to wonder, if a dictionary like Webster's is not the authority for your assertions, what is? We are all aware, I assume, that in any living language, the meanings of words evolve over time. Although I can agree that the range of application for "reform" is currently narrower than that for the more generic term "improvement", within that range the words are indeed synonymous. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Webster's defines "synonym" as "a word having the same or nearly the same meaning in one or more senses as another in the same language." I choose not to question the "normativity" of Webster's definition of "synonym" in my 1984 college edition. Perhaps the definition offered in a pre-1950 edition would be more in line with your assertions.
Ralph,
You are pretty much on your own if you want to preserve the purity of the language or resist its inevitable change. The problem is that the liberal linguists decided to give up the fight about 50 or 60 years ago. The idea now is that you use a dictionary now to find out how words are being used rather than how they should be used.
If look into an old pre-fifth edition Webster's you will find the other, normative, approach. They have in later editions given in to the "idols of the marketplace."
You weren't wrong in what you said, I just couldn't resist a comeback. The words do overlap. Still, it is interesting to see what happens when you substitute one for the other in common expressions.
"Improved drunk","land or tax improvement," "The Protestant Improvement," "Improve your lives," "The regiment improved and pressed the attack," "We've got to reform our kicking game," "Airconditioning would be a great reformation here" and so on.
It would seem that the improvement in reform is mostly in the mind of the reformer and the beneficiaries.
Anyway, I see your point and wish you well.
There is no guarantee that synonyms are perfectly interchangeable in all conceivable contexts, only that "a word [have] the same or nearly the same meaning in one or more senses as another in the same language."
A reformed (improved) Sluggo stopped mugging elderly ladies and now helps them cross the street.
Usher Sluggo’s reform (improvement) of the procedure for distributing collection baskets during the Mass has resulted in a 29% increase in donations, much to the delight of the USCCB.
Young Master Sluggo’s mother Monica reformed (improved) his attitude toward learning the multiplication table, and today he is chief financial advisor at the prestigious firm of Grabbit, Clutchit & Runn.
Senator Sluggo’s bill to improve (reform) political finance procedures has given hope to many a humble lobbyist.
... and then again... how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?.
(Is the hem on my cassock straight? I wouldn't want God to be upset...)
"... and then again... "
Are you funny? Then again, looks aren't everything.
Post a Comment