Traditionis custodes

My late great-aunt’s accompaniment book. She was an organist in a Catholic parish in Maine

I have a few new readers around here since I published a throwaway post on the …illogic behind certain current thought and actions in some circles.

I thought I’d take this post and gather what I’ve written about Traditionis custodes over the past few months.

First reaction (7/16)

I mean, we can talk history, ecclesiology, theology and liturgy all day long, but that’s about as basic as it gets or needs to be. I was there. Well, not literally, but I can tell you that this generation of clergy and church activists – now maybe from their late 60’s on up – were formed in a way that they cannot envision a healthy Church in which the TLM is still a part. At all. I mean – it’s inconceivable and ridiculous in that generation’s minds. It’s almost as if they can’t believe they’re still having to deal with this, amiright?

What is striking, if not at all surprising, is the, shall we say, flexible use of various concepts in this document and letter, since that flexibility is characteristic of most people in positions of power and yes, of this papacy.

In short: a papacy that, in words, emphasizes synodality, accompaniment, listening, dialogue outreach to the margins and consistently condemns “clericalism” – has issued a document that embodies a rigid approach to the issue, and then restricts, limits and directs more power, ultimately, to Rome.

More Reactions (7/17)

On Participation: (7/18)

I’ve talked to a lot of people who lived through and had awareness of the changes brought by the Council.  Some were heartbroken – I remember in particular one man who had converted right before Vatican II and expressed feeling as if he had been lied to and betrayed when the changes hit.  Others were elated and welcomed the changes that came.  Another older friend has expressed to me his experience of finding the religious experiences of his pre-Vatican II childhood and young adulthood dry and lifeless, and the vernacular liturgy and other changes, including for him, involvement in the Catholic charismatic movement, bringing a good kind of transformation – a deep connection to Christ and the Church, which he had not felt before. Life-saving, as he put it.

This post isn’t about rehashing all of that.

It’s just about these artifacts and memories. About a woman with a high school education and her well-worn and marked-up book of chant technique in Latin and French. It’s about a bit of an exercise in imaginative memory, as I wonder what Eva and Louis thought about as they sat there in the pews of their parish after the changes – for they did, indeed live through them – having been informed that for the sake of full and active participation of the faithful, their services were no longer needed, contemplating and remembering as the strains of a tinny recording of Sing to the Mountains wafted through a silent church.

Unity! (7/20)

“An already reconciled and engraced abyss…” (7/21)

The generation that set all this into motion – the generation that produced the generally optimistic documents and Spirit of Vatican II was a generation that had actually looked into the abyss.

It was the generation that had suffered through the ravages of the Second World War right where many of them lived, that had fought in it, been imprisoned by it, that had rebuilt from the rubble – rebuilt the structures which had to be rebuilt from the previous war to end all wars, that had seen tens of millions killed by totalitarian regimes all over the world, that lived, at the moment of the Council in the shadow of possible nuclear destruction, which was keenly felt by all.

I’m endlessly fascinated by that question.

Where did the Council Fathers’ optimism about the “human family,” come from?

We’re sixty years past that now, and there are different motivations at work, all worth exploring. But the failure to critique and radically stand in opposition to nihilistic modernity and offer what Christ offers – and has always offered – didn’t begin today. This particular failure (because the Church has failed to answer urgent questions of the moment with great regularity through its history) has its roots in the decisions of men who knew what horrors human beings were capable of.

The question to me, is – why, then, did they decide that what they had inherited was inadequate, and, with the liturgy as it developed over the decade following the Council, actually stood in the way to human wholeness in the face of the abyss? Was it simply that they saw the destruction of the old world all of a piece that included the Church within it, and that if it were all rebuilt, the abyss could be breached?

It’s not the reverence, it’s the ego (8/9)

One of the stated purposes of the conciliar liturgical reforms (growing from the Liturgical Movement) was to help the faithful see the sacredness of the moment – by breaking down the wall between the altar and the pews, that would work to help the faithful bring the sacrality found in worship out into their individual lives and the present moment. Again, how much more impactful on this score is liturgy that reflects the current moment in that community’s life rather than something that reflects the experiences of 16th century hierarchs?

How does this work out in real life?

Well, in real life, this grand theory is put into practice by a small group of people – depending on place and time – celebrants, lay ministers, worship committee, musicians – who are operating out of a set of perceived needs and agendas – theirs. It can be little else. Oh, some people have a more expansive vision, but most don’t.

And of course, these people in charge of liturgies are human beings.

Eucharistic Incoherence (8/10)

You may value these artifacts, you can kneel in those churches, you can be in communion with those saints, you can pray those prayers, you may learn from the theologians – you could do it all in one place, if you like. You could attend Mass in a medieval Cathedral on the feastday of medieval saint, listen to plainchant and a homily referring to St. Terea of Avila by a priest who might be using vessels fabricated before 1965 and might even pray in the same direction you’re facing, as used to be the norm. Before. Maybe there will be a bit of Latin in there, too. That’s fine….

…as long as it’s not…that Mass.

Because that’s off limits.

That would be a violation of…some spirit of something.

Bringing the Mass to the People (8/13)

How could anyone think that taking an ancient form of the Mass and totally reforming it in a matter of less than a decade would not turn out to be problematic? Reinhold refers to it as a “thorough reconstruction.”  How could they not see that taking what Catholics had been taught was the “Mass of the Ages” and that in some way represented truths about their faith, not just in the content, but in the fact of its antiquity and universality and what those qualities expressed about the antiquity, solidity and universality of the faith itself…and then saying, “Oh, here’s a new one..” – how could they not see that as disruptive and a recipe for confusion?

It wasn’t, I know, a totally academic exercise. There had been experiments with reform and revision in various places, and perhaps the popularity of, for example, the Dialogue Mass, made people think that this would work just as they had envisioned.

I don’t know.

As I said – there are many points of this program I understand, intellectually. I can understand the intellectual direction of this, even as I disagree with some points of it. And there was, indeed, as I attempted to point out at the beginning of this post, a sense of liturgical reform in the air, even among the laity.

But what I just can’t grasp is the blindness in two areas: pastoral blindness as to how a wholesale, complete and relatively fast-paced reform would impact people’s sense of the Church, how it might even cause them pain, and a kind of spiritual blindness that can’t see that there is a lot more to spiritual life and health that rational schemas, and that sometimes “lucidity” works to obscure, rather than reveal.

Ego: A two-way street (8/16)

We are formed to believe that this engagement is dependent on the human factors involved: how open we are, yes, but also how powerfully the actions and words of the moment express those spiritual expectations. We’ve been led to expect that we can judge the authenticity of the spiritual moment by, essentially, how emotionally moved we are: how excited, how peaceful, how amused, how content, how welcome we feel.

It’s a valid Mass, in other words, if I feel what happens in that space affirms and satisfies my expectations.

Expectations being the equivalent now of spiritual hunger.

The trouble being that each individual’s conscious expectations that she brings to the moment are a mess cooked up from her own background, psychological, emotional and spiritual experiences and cultural and social framework.

The very, very short version:

The ego’s at work in the congregation as well and it emerges in that enormous, endless, exhausting pressure:

Meet my expectations.

Affirm my presence.

Entertain me.

And then I’ll know God’s been here.

The Emerging Laity (8/19)

If you read the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity that emerged from the Council, you’ll see this. It’s a very optimistic and strong call to the laity to be formed in faith and take the light of that faith out into the world.

But what happened, within minutes, it seems of the Council’s close, is that the focus of this call – go out into the world, where you live and work– was forgotten or abandoned, and what rose instead was the conviction that what “Vatican II did” for the laity was to open up the doors of the Church to them in ways not possible before.