Why keep talking about all of this? Why keep digging, excavating, learning, remembering, reflecting?

Because it’s all still so unsettled.

Because historical narratives shift, change and are theologized, spiritualized and weaponized.

Because on a deeper level, because talking about and trying to understand this post-Conciliar period reflects the greater, deeper challenge of understanding the dynamic between divine and human action in the life of the Church, period.

Incarnation is messy. Incarnation is, in fact a mystery.

Finally, because decisions that impact Catholics today are justified by appealing to the Second Vatican Council, as if that were a simple, straight line and an unambiguous framework.

But as we know, that is just not the case.

And so yes, we must keep learning, discussing and questioning.

Questioning not only narratives and historical events, but questioning the logic that mandates any particular narrative as the infallible foundation of decisions in the present day.

So, projects like the Hand Missal Project, where is taking deep dives into the history of the post-Conciliar period are just so very important.

As I’ve written before, I’ve studied Catholic church history for almost fifty years now.

Don’t blink, guys, time passes. It’s going to happen to you, too, so get ready.

Anyway, as a student of history and, more generally, of Catholic ways and means in the late 20th century, I’ve always been intrigued by double standards in discourse and narrative-construction.

That is, quite simply, according to some dominant voices and powers, everything in Catholic history is up for grabs, is appropriate for contextualizing and even relativizing - except a particular narrative about the Second Vatican Council and the post-Conciliar period.

In short, nothing seems to be dogmatic or absolute in Catholic life except that narrative. Even questioning that narrative places you in opposition to the work of the Holy Spirit.

So much for synodality. So much for faith in the most mature, intelligent and capable laity in the history of the Church.

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This space emerged from my interest in that period, a period I lived through as a child and teenager, but only remember from the very late 60’s on. I wanted to provide a space for personal memories of the period in relation to various subjects, and I’m content to allow that part of it to remain as an archive. I’m sure more topics along those lines will occur to me as time goes on.

But in the meantime, I’m sporadically updating it with either reprints from Charlotte was Both or a bit of original work, consistent with the theme.

And that theme is not - look how crazy it was, guys. No it’s more - look at what happened. Listen to what people were saying, what their hopes and expectations were. Note the decisions that were made.

And perhaps ask yourself - why must these ideas, thoughts, hopes and decisions be the template the framework for a) all interpretations of what the Council calls the Church to and b)judging the appropriateness of decisions and ways of being Church (yes) sixty years later?

Is the only liturgical life “consistent” with the Second Vatican Council one that reflects the thinking of liturgists and other church people of the mid-60’s to 70’s?

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some history.

Specifically, news reports about the 1967 Liturgical Week, the last Liturgical Week gathering that was fully engaged with Church institutional life. Held in Kansas City, in late August.

You can read the papers from the week here, at archive.org - and I encourage you to take a look at all of the volumes from the North American Liturgical Weeks. It’s an experience. It’s fascinating to see how thinking about the Mass and other sacraments changed over time - and not a very long time.

Anyway, here are images and some text.

The first, as you can see, is from the National Catholic Reporter.

(Based in KC, in case you don’t know.)

Liturgists Chafe at Bit

National Catholic Reporter, 8/30/1967

The theme of the 1967 Liturgical Week was “Experiments In Community.” The question was, When?

The strongest response from participants was drawn by a question asked of a panel of members of the U.S. bishops’ liturgical commission. Father Gerald J. Sigler, executive secretary of the Inter national Committee on English in the Liturgy, asked it. Commenting on the Vatican Council’s decision that there should be controlled experimentation to adapt the liturgy for different cultures, he said:

“There is still no sign of controlled experiment. Aren’t we way beyond the time when we can really hope for authority …”

The rest of the question was lost in the loudest and longest applause of the convention.

“The people are saying something,” Father Sigler said.

“It seems to be coming through,” said panelist Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan, chairman of the bishops’ commission.

When the applause subsided. Archbishop Hallinan warned that “liturgical anarchy”-everyone adapting the liturgy on his own initiative with no provision for controls or for analysis of the adaptation-is “not the answer.”

He continued, however, by repeating two suggestions on experimentation which he had made earlier In the week to a meeting of diocesan liturgical commissions. He called for:

-Establishing experimental centers in universities that have faculties with the necessary background in liturgy, theology and sociology.

-Allowing individual bishops to designate specific parishes, schools or other institutions as centers for experiments in which the bishop himself would take an active interest.

Archbishop Hallinan’s proposals, which would require approval from the Vatican, go farther than a plan now in the wind that would allow national bishops’ conferences to approve specific liturgical experimentation instead of requiring approval from the Holy See.

Father Charles K. Riepe of Baltimore, chairman of the subcommittee on liturgical adaptation of the bishops’ liturgical commission, said he thinks there is a live chance the world’s bishops will vote for such a plan during the September Synod meeting.

The machinery for authorizing experiments aimed at adaptations is cumbersome now, he said. It calls for a proposal to be approved by the commission and then submitted to all the U.S. bishops before it is sent to Rome for approval by the consilium on implementing the liturgical decisions of the Vatican Council.

An Illustration of Father Riepe’s point was the missing canon of the Liturgical Week.

The English canon for the Mass, approved by 95 per cent of the U.S. bishops in June, was supposed to be used for the first time during the week. However, approval still has not come from Rome.

Archbishop Hallinan told the workshop for liturgical commissions that he had cabled Rome to ask for an extraordinary permission to use the canon during the week even If It doesn’t have final approval yet. He didn’t get the permission.

“We hope no one Is fiddling around with the text,” he said. “Our theologians are as good as Rome’s. And our scholars of English are superior.”

The canon, prepared by an International group of experts in several disciplines, is a literal, easy-to-read-aloud translation not very different from the English In missals.

Its absence raised for many of the participants the question of how long It will be before more sweeping adaptations--special Masses for small groups, children and adolescents, for example can be tried legally.

One priest commented: “There are 147 English canons being used Illegally In this country now. Delays like this only mean there will be 247 by this time next year.”

Bishop Charles H. Helmsing of the host Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, who had to tell the participants they wouldn’t hear the new canon during the program, said during his welcoming address that he hoped “no one will sin against unity by presuming to go beyond the grants of the Holy See and the National Conference of Bishops, either in the mode of celebration or the use of the vernacular.”

He was clearly trying to head off a repetition of the protests sent to Rome by the Catholic Traditionalist Movement after last year’s Liturgical Week In Houston, where some of the Masses said In the workshops of the Week were alleged to have involved radical experimentation.

There apparently was nothing really radical this year, but it was apparent that during the year between Houston and Kansas City almost everyone at the convention had seen such experimentation, legal or illegal.

This partly accounts for the general session that laid an egg--a demonstration of a small group Mass in a home. People begun streaming out of the hall after it started with the comment that it was “nothing new” and that they had seen or said similar Masses before, even though such Masses are not authorized in many dioceses.

At the next night’s general session. Father Thomas E. Ambrogt, S.J., professor of sacramental theology and ecumenics at Woodstock College, demonstrated a possible Mass of the future. While enthusiasm for the demonstration seemed to be directly proportional to how close a participant was sitting to the altar for the Mass, there was a general comment that Father Ambrogi was demonstrating what should be the Mass of today, and that adaptation should go on from-not toward-it.

THIS YEAR’S Week drew 6,000 registrants for the whole week, plus several thousand more people who came for individual sessions. The largest attendance was 8,500 for an opening night Happening, “The Experience of Community.” The Happening combined slides, films, choral and small group music, commentary and a balloon drop. It was a critical success, though it was more catechetical than liturgical.

As it went along, the Week developed its own themes and Interests.

One thing that came up at almost every workshop was Daniel Callahan’s article “Putting the Liturgy ln Its Place”(NCR August 9).

At one workshop, Father Sigler said that “long ago (diocesan) liturgical commissions should have solved Dan Callahan’s problems or should have spoken for him” if people really believe, as he said, that the liturgy is so central to the Christian experience that it makes up for service and Christian love. In his article, Callahan suggested placing liturgy lower on the Church’s scale of values so as to strengthen the emphasis on the Church’s mission In the world.

He said the liturgy is not, in practice, what the Constitution on the Liturgy says it is: “the summit toward which the activity of the Church Is directed: at the same time It Is the fountain from which all her power flows.”

Asked during the panel to comment on Callahan’s article, Archbishop Hallinan said he disagreed. The liturgy constitution, he said, makes It clear that the liturgy Is supposed to be relevant to the Church’s mission. “It Is not a shelter for rubrics,” the archbishop said. “I believe he misses the point.”

Another participant In the Week said from the floor during one of the workshops: “I was in Houston last year and I heard the same talks on the same subjects. I think Callahan was right; we’re wasting too much time talking about the liturgy.”

At a workshop on liturgy or adolescents, a youth stood up and mentioned the war In Vietnam, race riots and the fact that several hundred people had died of starvation during the workshop. “For the teen-ager,” he said, “God is dead,” and better liturgy won’t bring him back to life.

Bishop Helmsing, In his opening address, put the Callahan thesis on the floor for discussion by alluding to Callahan’s statement that the “summit and fount” statement of the constitution is a cause of overemphasis on liturgy at the expense of service. The bishop said:

“...Nevertheless the Church dares to repeat for the assent of our faith that the sacred liturgy, especially the Eucharist, is the summit of all our activity, the fount from which grows all grace und unifying force for the world. Today many, even among those who profess to be Christians, deny this teaching of the council. True community, that Is, oneness of mankind, can be effected only through, with and In Christ our Lord...”

A few moments later, Msgr. John J. McEneaney of Brookings, South Dakota, retiring president of the Liturgical Conference which sponsors the Week, said, “It has even been proposed that all this Liturgical Week be called off and we admit that the liturgy does not have the centrality in the Christian life given it by the council fathers...I do not subscribe to this position.”

The problem, he said, was not that the liturgical reform hasn’t worked, but that “the work of renewal has barely begun. Yet it Is this renewal that can transform our minds and our hearts.”

“This is not time for weeping,” he said, “but a time for working.”

Even before Callahan, there had been suggestions that the Week be dropped, or at least not held every year. Msgr. McEncaney’s successor, Father Joseph Connolly of Baltimore, alluded to these suggestions at the closing session:

Father Connolly, who has a background of experience in inner city and ecumenical work, said he had chosen as his motto, the words of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “I did not assume the office of prime minister of Her Majesty’s government to preside over the dissolution of the empire.”

(As a crowd-stirrer, the comment drew a healthy response. And no one was rude enough to observe that Churchill did, in fact, preside over the start of the dissolution of the British empire.)

ONE REASON often given for a proposed de-emphasizing of Liturgical Week is that It supposedly no longer is needed to give interested people an opportunity to experience good liturgy; they can experience it In their home dioceses. Msgr. McEneaney said in his opening address that he disagreed:

“Drop in at one of our parishes on any Sunday morning and see the evidence that the work of renewal has barely begun,” he said.

Another argument is that there is nothing at Liturgical Weeks experimental enough to draw crowds. The Liturgical Week hit a highwater mark in St. Louis in 1964, and one of the biggest reasons was that for the first time the vernacular was being used in a Mass in this country.

For this year’s Week, the only new liturgy was a community Baptismal rite being used in some dioceses on an experimental basis.

The rite is designed for a congregation, which asks the questions the priest traditionally asks for the baptismal promises.

Many participants in the Week were looking toward greater experimentation.

At a workshop on ecumenism, for example, a resolution was approved to ask ecclesiastical authorities in several denominations to permit common celebrations of the Eucharist during the 1968 Week of Christian Unity, observed every January. Much of the argument over the resolution was over why common celebrations should be requested for only one week. One nun taking part summed up the mood when she said they were asking for approval for a specific week “being perfectly aware it is the camel’s nose inside the tent anyway.”

The workshop was attended by theologians and others from several churches. Its chairman was the Rev. Richard Neuhaus, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Lutheran church in Brooklyn.

IT WAS EASY during the Week, however, to forget that the 6,000 participants came from parishes full of people who would be upset by even a camel’s nose.

In one of several thousand hallway conversations, Msgr. McEneaney said, “Sure, we have a long way to go, but a lot of people are forgetting how far we’ve come. It is a fact the bishops have committed themselves to change, and we are changing.”

“Your people who want to change everything faster are forgetting that a lot of good people are still upset about changes we made three years ago.” Bishop Victor J. Reed of Oklahoma City-Tulsa, who is the episcopal chairman of committee on adaptation, put it another way during the panel discussion. “This era of the Church,” he said, “makes it perfectly obvious to anyone who can rend that the people of God are polarized from top to bottom.” That fact, he said, makes it difficult for men In authority to find a pace that will keep everyone moving in the same direction.

Secondly, a syndicated piece by one Richard M.M. McConnell which blends news with a definite point of view. Gently expressed, but still there.

This year’s Liturgical Week, four days of discussion in auditoriums and hotel rooms all over downtown Kansas City, took for its theme “experiments in community.” And it seemed to attract 11,000 people much more interested in community than in experiments.

Perhaps because two fringe groups — those who think liturgical reform is an accomplished fact and those who have despaired of seeking reform through official channels—have spun off from Liturgical Week activities, the field has been filled by priests, Sisters and lay people devoted to bringing liturgical renewal to the home front.

These people are less interested in new forays into the avant garde than they are in updating parish liturgy according to official norms. And while most people appeared eager for more reforms, many of those to whom I spoke admitted that just introducing what is already allowed will occupy them for a long time to come.

As a result, the Liturgical Week emphasized education, catechesis, training for lectors, commentators and musicians, programs aimed at a good today in preparation for a better tomorrow.

From each day’s opening lectures on through the workshops and clinics and into the evening sessions, education was the real effort of the conference.

While Father Francis Bonnike of Oregon, IL, opened the first day’s session with an explanation of the changes already taking place in the liturgy, and Father Charles Riepe of Baltimore opened the following day’s session with a look into the future, other speakers addressed visitors with more experience in liturgical work.

Father Raymond Potvin of the Catholic University of America lectured on the sociology of community, while Dr. Robert McAllister of Reno, Nev., described community psychology. Relating their comments to the liturgy, both men agreed that a community, even a community of worship, cannot be tailored to fill all of a given man’s personal needs.

During one specialized session, Father William Lynch, S.J., of St. Peter’s college in Jersey City, N.J., and Father William Nerin of Oklahoma City discussed the value of symbol in modern life. Father Lynch dealt with symbols in general and Father Nerin spoke specifically of the Eucharist.

Simultaneous with the lectures were clinics and workshops dealing with religion teachers, spirituality in religious life, Bible services, choir directors, commentators and lectors, home liturgies, song leaders and organists. Afternoon workshops dealt with art and architecture; celebrants and homilists; diocesan liturgical commissions; the Eastern rites; ecumenism; the inner city; liturgy and the spiritual life; liturgy and the university; liturgy for adolescents; liturgy for children; and services for weddings and funerals.

In all of these, the underlying theme was the establishment of community. How can the liturgy draw more people into common activity, into common prayer, and ultimately into a common realization of the urgent necessity demanding a sense of worldwide togetherness?

But the community theme was not just part of the background. In a colorful and expensive presentation opening the week’s activities, John Mannion, former executive secretary of the Liturgical Conference that sponsored the week, narrated a happening.

Designed to show the unity in the world, the happening featured talk, movies, slides and recorded music, all blended into a dazzling and sometimes confusing series of impressions. Pictures of Dachau flushed on the screen as a folk group sang a cynical absolution from guilt for the German people. Pictures of Selma flashed on the screen and the group sang the same cynical blessing for us.

In the end, two things were obvious: some people cared, cared about other people and wanted to do something for them; and those who didn’t care had better start caring soon.

In a more restrained mood, other evening sessions also hammered home the urgency of establishing community and explained some ways to do it. On Tuesday evening, a lecture on Baptism and the experience of community was illustrated by a demonstration of a para-liturgical rite designed to show the relation between the newly baptized and those already members of the Christian community. A second demonstration put on by local members of the Christian Family Movement explained the community strengthened aspects of the home liturgies popular in some dioceses.

An evening’s experiment in community included two phases. The first was a demonstration Mass of the future, celebrated by Father Thomas Ambrogi, S.J., of Woodstock college, Md.

Patterened closely after the present Mass rite, tomorrow’s Mass was celebrated all in English, with a revised canon. The “Eucharist” was distributed under both species, with bread replacing the familiar round host. A reading from contemporary literature joined the traditional selections from Scripture, and a dialogue replaced the homily.

The second event of the evening was something that did not get into the official program, although it was listed on the daily newsletter of the conference. Billed in advance as “an alternative worship service,” the event was an experiment in bringing strangers together by forcing them to come to grips with the people around them. Perhaps because everyone was tired from a long day of conferences, perhaps because everyone present came “willing to try anything once,” perhaps because the program played so skillfully on human emotions, it worked.

People who were complete strangers at 10 p.m. were promising to write each other; people who considered a handshake good enough for friends were hugging people who were still just acquaintances.

A return to a more sedate, if less personal, form of community building marked the week’s closing day.

Following observations by members of the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, former U.N. general assembly president Charles Malik addressed delegates on the establishment of world community.

Outlining the problems facing the growth of a community of nations, Malik concluded: “Let our prayer rise as one massive chorus before the throne of the Lord our God, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Then, following a Mass celebrated in folk song, the 11,000 people who came to find community and try some experiments went back home to see if what they had learned would work.

The positioning of the continuation of the piece in this paper - I believe it was the Miami Voice - was…pointed.

Anyway, there you have it. A little bit, at least.

But perhaps enough to force the question - why must this process at that time be the framework and foundation for judging what is consistent with the Council, the Spirit, what God calls us to today, in 2026? Why is judgment of the liturgical thinking of 1946 allowed, but the liturgical thinking of more recent years dogmatized?

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If you would like to search some vintage Catholic archives, two suggestions are via JSTOR or the more extensive Catholic News Archive.

Originally published, June 2025

Yes, we’re on a theme this week. Appropriate, I suppose since it’s Corpus Christi season.

Also, with bishops trying to lay the hammer down liturgically in the context of a new papacy, it’s in the air.

As is my wont, I turn to history. This week, I’ve been skimming through proceedings of the North American Liturgical Weeks, which are here at the Internet Archive.

Three points, briefly:

• When you read mid-century Liturgical Movement material, and then consider the present moment, you see how profoundly the Reform of the Reform and even contemporary advocates of the continued use of the Traditional Latin Mass have been impacted by that work. Whether it’s admitted or not. Of course, it often is, and even embraced as a point of argument – as in, do you know who’s really living out the ideals of the Liturgical Movement and the Council? Not the idiot blessing the congregation with a guitar, that’s for sure. And on that, I hope we can all agree.

• That said, one point that’s frequently argued today is that “active participation” as envisioned by the Liturgical Movement does not center exterior and vocal participation. Reading these proceedings, one sees that this is just not true. Of course internal participation is the core of it all, as Pius X and then Pius XII articulated, but there is no question that when those seeking to deepen the laity’s liturgical spirituality spoke of “active participation,” they meant being attentive to and engaged with the liturgical action as it was happening and, as much as possible, seeing and hearing and then joining the action through saying or singing parts of of the Mass.

This is a frequent subject of talks at the Liturgical Weeks – explaining it, citing parishes where i was happening before the Council, and then offering advice on how to get reluctant congregations on board afterwards.

See Pope Pius XII’s 1958 De musica sacra et sacra liturgia – Instruction on Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy to see what they were working with.

Yes, other more deconstructive and even destructive voices were part of the movement and even guiding it, particularly in Europe, but in these proceedings, we see such positive energy at work, fixed on an ideal: the Body of Christ, joined in prayer both internally and externally, joining in the Sacrifice, worshipping and then going out into the world, sharing the riches of life in Christ.

• Finally, for now, how quickly things changed. Which never ceases to amaze me.

There’s no more instructive way to understand this than to compare, say, the proceedings from 1958 with those of 1967. It’s almost tragic.

In 1958, the enthusiasm for what was possible and probably coming – more vernacular, external congregational participation, probably ad populum – was palpable: that by being able to see and hear more clearly what was going on, encouraged to participate with their own voices, by being deeply prepared through studying the Mass and the Scriptures and papal encyclicals, Catholic laity’s faith would be deepened. And this conversation was, for the most part, framed by the language and structure of the Mass as they received it, not in any future imagined iteration. It was, we might say, quite traditional in content and tone.

And then, just nine years later, Mary Perkins Ryan, a very important figure in the American liturgical movement, who’d written books in the 30’s and 40’s centered on developing one’s spirituality in the context of the Roman Rite, including Your Catholic Languge: Latin from the Missal and – Key to the Missal, recently reprinted by a traditional-oriented publishing house – spoke these words at the 1967 Liturgical Week:

But our problem is that, in the course of the centuries, the liturgy became a “sacral” act, carried out by a priest set apart from the people, carried out in a sacral edifice, a church. It became something sacred more in the pagan sense of set-apartness than in the Judaeo-Christian sense of ordinary life and actions consecrated to God by his gracious presence with his people and their response to him. This, it seems to me, is where the real question of relevance arises. How is the mass once more to become recognized as the focal act of ordinary Christian life, springing as it were from the heart of Christian daily living and in turn illuminating and fructifying it as Christian living?

We have the problem both of rites which do not now, or in the foreseen revisions, seem to spring out of ordinary life nor reflect back to it. And we have the problem of Catholics’ attitude to the rites. Do not a great number of them like a “sacral” mass which seems apart from daily life? Don’t they miss the dim religious light of Gothic churches, the sense of mystery engendered by the “blessed mutter” of the “old” mass? Don’t many of them go to mass mainly to fulfill a sacral obligation having nothing to do with the way they live from day to day, or to “feel good” in a comfortable sense of special religiousness?

How are we going to change their expectations to more integrally Christian ones?

Other questions come to mind here: What kind of architecture, decoration, art, and music would be needed to convey a truly Christian sense of sacredness? What about vestments? It is not simply a matter of using the current styles of architecture, art, music, clothing. This may and already has resulted in mere banality or worse. What is needed is the ordinary given a new dimension, evidencing the transparency of the fully human to the divine, of the human person and community to Christ and the Spirit. But what might this mean concretely? Should we look forward to churches which would be something like stylized living-dining rooms, for instance? The essential phases of the mass are: meeting together with Christ, listening to Christ, giving thanks with Christ as we eat together, partaking of the food and drink that is himself. Do we want the settings of the mass — architectural, artistic, musical — to be conducive to helping the Christians who are to use them to meet, listen, and eat together?..

…..We might also hope that such a future revision would go more directly from the consecration to the actual “taking and eating,” and enable the participants to take and eat and take and drink along with the celebrant. And is it too much to dream of a rethinking of the Lord’s intentions about the kinds of food and drink through which he wills to give himself to us as our food and drink? Did he really mean Orientals or South Sea islanders to receive him under the foreign forms of wheat bread and wine made from grapes? Did he really mean Americans to receive him under the form of a food-stuff which is a mere accompaniment to “real” eating, and a drink which is, for most of us, not the drink of either thirst-quenching or social significance?

Nine years. Like from 2017 to today. It’s astonishing.

For a digest, less importantly of Ryan’s thoughts, but of what was becoming mainstream liturgical thinking, check out her collection of columns – again, published in 1967 – Has the New Liturgy Changed You?

(Included in this is the column used by Nico Fassino as the title to his Pillar piece on the history of standing to receive Communion: “Stand Like Free Men.”)

Studying this period of Catholic history is invaluable and for those engaged in contemporary discussions, necessary, not only for the background itself, but for the cautionary lesson in provides in human nature, as well as institutional and social dynamics. aka: be careful what you wish for.

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(Oh, before you @ me, read this. He is brilliant and aggravating and conflicted and no not a saint, which is not surprising, because most brilliant people are aggravating and not saints. Anyway.)

Most recently, I read The Sign of Jonas , his journal of the years 1946-1952, which includes the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood.

I’m going to quote some of his entries related to the celebration of Mass.

Which was, remember, in the context of a monastery, not a parish. Which gives a specific context to his reflection on celebrating Mass, which was most of the time a “private” Mass.

(Although he did say Mass in a local parish, but could not for very long, since the best-selling monk author would draw a crowd, and not for the right reasons.)

(And remember that Merton on the Eucharist can be read in many other contexts. This is just what I happened to read last week.)

According to Aleteia, this is an AP photo of Father Louis’ (Merton) first High Mass. It would have been newsworthy, since massively successful Seven Storey Mountain had been published a year earlier.

6/10/1949

The big thing in my day used to be Communion. Now it is the Sacrifice of which Communion is only a part. The center of balance of my spiritual life has shifted from the half hour when I kneel in the dark by Our Lady of Victories to the ten or fifteen minutes in which the Body and Blood of Christ are on the altar before me and I stand with my hands sketching that cramped little gesture of supplication that we have come to substitute for the wide-flung arms of the orantes...

...Yet a certain restraint seems to be the best thing about the Mass in our liturgy. The whole sacrifice is so tremendous that no amount of exuberance will ever get you anywhere in expressing it. To bend down, unnoticed, and kiss the altar at the Supplices te rogamus is a movement that lifts me out of myself and doubles my peace. Saying the Pater noster is like swimming in the heart of the sun.

6/19/1949

The Mass each day delights and baffles me at the same time. The beautiful mixture of happiness and lucidity and inarticulateness fills me with great health from day to day. I am forced to be simple at the altar. Our liturgy has a special intensity of its own precisely because it is so straightfaced and non-committal. Never an exclamation! Never any outcry!

It is at Mass, by the way, that I am deepest in solitude and at the same time mean the most to the rest of the universe. This is really the only moment I give anything to the rest of men.

1/11/1950

For the first time in my life I am finding you, O solitude. I can count on the fingers of one hand the few short moments of purity, of neutrality, in which I have found you. Now I know I am coming to the day in which I will be free of words: their master rather than their servant, able to live without them if need be. For I still need to go out into this no-man’s land of language that does not quite join me to other men and which throws a veil over my own solitude. By words I mean all the merely human expressions that bind men to one another. I also mean the half helpless and half wise looks by which they seek one another’s thoughts. But I do not abdicate all language. For there is the word of God. This I proclaim and I live to proclaim it I live to utter the Mass the Canon that implicitly contains all words, all revelation and teaches everything. One day I thought I heard thunder all around me when I was saying it, but that was fancy. It is in the Canon and at the words of Consecration that all solitudes come to a single focus. There the City of God is gathered together in that one Word spoken in silence. The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude. Him will I never deny, by His grace! We are travelers from the half-world of language into solitude and infinity. We are strangers. Paper, I have not in you a lasting city. Yet there is a return from solitude, to make manifest His Name to them who have not known it. Then to re-enter solitude and dwell in silence.

3/15/1950

In the Mass in which all prayer is perfect, we talk to everybody. Sometimes we speak to the Blessed Trinity (Suscipe Sancta Trinitas), sometimes to the Father (Elevatis oculis ad Te Deum Patrem …….), sometimes to Jesus the Word, sometimes to the Holy Ghost (Vent Sanctificator), sometimes to the saints in heaven, and sometimes to the people around us, and sometimes even to ourselves, musing in the presence of God: Quid retribuam Domino ……. calicem saluuris acciptam. If we don’t talk to the angels (until the prayers after Mass) at least we talk to God about the angels who are present as His ministers and play an active part in the Sacrifice. And we talk to Him of the saints and of the holy souls in Purgatory and of the Pope and the Bishop and of all our friends. Nothing could be less private than the Mass. And yet it is also a perfect solitude.

So what is “the problem?“

Quite simply, it is the problem of what to do about the Mass. It is a logistical, organizational, ecclesial and pastoral problem, but most of all it is a theological problem.

Thomas Merton’s writings about the Mass here expresses of the theology and spiritual experience of one priest celebrating Mass before the Council.

It is not something one would hear today, even from a priest himself, as he speaks of the spiritual experience of celebrating Mass. And if he did so, he would be corrected since he fails to frame his understanding in an foundational acknowledgement of the Mass as the action of the whole Body of Christ above all.

Is Merton’s approach to Eucharistic spirituality here wrong? Is it not allowed? If not, why? If so, why?

This is perhaps a peculiar, quite specific example from the non-infallible thinking of one person, but it really does raise the fundamental question, which is of continuity.

The argument for restricting or even eliminating the celebration of the pre-Conciliar liturgy is that the older forms do not and cannot express our current understanding of Church.

So does that mean that Merton’s spiritual insights here were just outdated and wrong? But if they are not wrong, how can the form of liturgy that birthed and formed them be outdated and wrong?

Is this simplistic? Yes, but it’s not intended to be a comprehensive assessment, just a brief note on the deeper question of spiritual continuity and coherence that underlies this issue.

As yes, Merton supported the Conciliar liturgical reforms, even as, every step of the way, he had questions. What would he would have made of his 1949 thoughts in 1965? Who knows. Perhaps he would have had no problem waving them away himself. The late Greg Hillis discusses Merton and the changes here, in a very good article. What a loss!

A more practical reflection at the New Liturgical Movement.

Let’s end this post on a humorous note that has nothing to do with liturgy. Maybe.

“Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go out to the woods on the other side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before. … I drove the jeep madly into the forest in a rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and I sang ‘O Mary I love you,’ went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushed madly into the underbrush and backed out again.

Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stem to stern. I stood in choir at Vespers, dizzy with the thought: ‘I have been driving a jeep.’

Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the jeep out again.” (12/27/1949)

If you were a Mass-goer back in the 70’s – gulp – 50 years ago – fifty! - especially if you were in high school or college, you might have rolled into Palm Sunday Mass with this going on:

Yes, ma’am, it was a time. Along with everything else going on liturgically, we had the Serendipitous Invasion of the Pop Jesus Musicals: Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell.

I’ll put my cards on the table right away. Won’t be coy, and am not a bit embarrassed about it: I don’t hate either of them and I like Lloyd Webber’s music for JCS quite a bit. However, the current fashion in JCS revivals with stunt casting: Cynthia Erivo as Jesus in the Hollywood Bowl last year and this summer, at the London Palladium, rotating Herods ranging from Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Boy George – each getting a chance to camp out with “King Herod’s Song” – is pretty tedious.

I don’t even care much about any of the stage productions at all, not even the movie – I’m all about that big old brown LP – that’s enough for me, since that’s where it all started.

You know that right? Jesus Christ Superstar began, not as a stage musical, but as a concept album because Webber and Rice couldn’t get funding for a stage production. You don’t need to see it onstage to get the intended effect, not really.

But I’m not here to discuss the history of either piece in itself, but to reflect on their roles in the lives of Catholics in that period this blog is all about: those post-Conciliar years.

Timeline first:

The Jesus Christ Superstar album was released in 1970. It opened on Broadway in 1972. The movie was released in 1973, and an American tour – very important in its popularity – began in 1976.

As for Godspell: It began as a Master’s thesis by John-Michael Tebalak at Carnegie-Mellon in 1970. It was produced off-Broadway in 1971, at which point Stephen Schwartz was brought in to write an almost completely new score. It made it to Broadway in 1976, but in between – in 1973 – it made it to the screen. **

Which means they both fell into the laps of enthusiastic young Catholic liturgy committee members, musicians, educators and clergy right at the perfect time: That Catholic 70’s Show.

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To be clear: I never experienced Hosanna! at Mass. Hey JC, JC won’t you smile at me, Sanna ho, sanna hey Superstar! would have been too much in the more conservative south even in a more-liberal college parish. Besides, the charismatics ran the music in that place, I don’t think they approved of JCS at the time.

But we did do Prepare Ye from Godspell during Advent, clapping, I’m sure, and we did sing Day by Day during Mass – but then those lyrics are from, well, the Gospels and a 13^th century prayer by Saint Richard of Chichester, respectively.

In or outside of Mass, we loved both shows. We knew the music, sang it, danced to it, played them in coffeehouses. Did we see them as anything but music about our professed favorite Person, glad, but not surprised that He was popular? Not really.

At the time, Catholic reactions to both – especially JCS – ranged from scandalized to appropriating. So what about that? Do these shows corrupt, dilute and do general damage to the truth of the Gospel or are they invaluable tools in getting the Word out?

Neither, I’d say.

Any creative work is going to tell us something about the time in which it was made – sometimes more than about the subject itself. So of course, both of these reflect the values and thinking of 60’s and 70’s.

Just as, if we were thinking about this back in the 1970’s, we might look fifty years before then, at a book called The Man Nobody Knows, written by one Bruce Barton and the top-selling non-fiction title in 1925. In it, Barton presents Jesus – consistent with the Main Street interests of his time – as “the world’s greatest business executive” and the “Founder of modern business” who built a crackerjack global organization beginning with just twelve ordinary guys!

Only time will tell if something is timeless.

And really, even by the late 90’s, Godspell, at least, was showing its age. A theology teacher – and I swear it wasn’t me, it was someone else in the department – showed the movie to the kids. They weren’t impressed. It didn’t speak to them. It didn’t reveal truths about Jesus in relevant ways. They didn’t think it was cool. They thought the music was catchy, but the rest? The whole thing? Awkard. Laughable, but not in a good way.

I suppose you could – and some probably do – make the argument that the very existence of these two shows, with their conflicted Jesus, their hippie Jesus, their rock and pop rhythms and – this was the dig on both shows, the reason Catholic schools weren’t supposed to perform them – their lack of a Resurrection – are countersigns to the truth.

I don’t. But nor do I think it’s wise to use them – or any pop culture product, even, yes, The Chosen- as a centerpiece for the presentation of the Gospel, whether that be in a classroom, retreat or in your local megachurch’s Message Series. And when that happened during liturgies back in the day, well, it shouldn’t have. It did distract from the truth and beauty that should be at the heart of what people encounter when they encounter the Church.

But yet…both offer insights. Insights about the person of Christ, perhaps, but most importantly, insights about us. About how human beings responded to Christ then – and now.

In Jesus Christ Superstar, no one really understands Jesus, he’s not valued for his teaching or anything particularly spiritual, but for the buzz he creates – his celebrity, his superstardom. This is not a crazy take, is it now? Admit it.

Godspell is a little silly, a vaudeville, a circus with catchy tunes but is, in the end, about something serious: the formation of community.

Both reflect that 60’s and 70’s vibe. Critiques of superficial social mores, corrupt powers, sympathy for misunderstood outsiders. Fun frisky young people forming a joyous happening. One cynically despairing about the human reaction to goodness, the other, almost unbearably, naively idealistic.

Nonetheless, neither of them entirely wrong, when you think about it, about the varied - and variable - responses to Jesus.

You might even say: timeless.

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**A fun note: The 1972 Toronto production of Godspell features a spectacular cast, many of whom went on to great comedy careers: Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin and Jayne Eastwood, with Paul Shaffer (who was the bandleader on David Letterman’s late night show) serving as musical director.

Last year, a documentary about this production, You Had To Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way) was released on the festival circuit. Unfortunately (can we say tragically? ) no film footage of this production exists, so the documentary is apparently composed of interviews and some animated footage – but has still received excellent reviews. I can’t wait to see it.

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A related post from a couple of years ago.

Cardinal Dolan gave an exit interview to EWTN News – the text is here, for those of you who, like me, are too impatient to sit through videos.

In it, Dolan mentions the video series he’s been doing for a while: “Worth Recovering” – link takes you to the NY Archdiocese website, not X – where most will see the series.

Why are you doing that?

Well, first of all, I do that daily video. I don’t know what they call them. Are they apps or pods or whatever? [Mark Irons: social media posts.] I am illiterate, Mark. Okay? [Mark Irons: It’s okay.] But all I know is I enjoy doing them. All I know is they’re the easiest things in the world to do. And all I know is I’m deeply grateful for people to listen to them, including you. But I’m always thinking, “What am I going to talk about now?” All right? And then a couple of months ago, I said, “You know what? Were there some Catholic practices, devotions, traditions in the past that may not be part of our faith and morals, but our beautifully supportive Catholic practices that we’ve kind of drifted away from and would it be worth bringing back?” I wrote a list of them, and I had about 40 of them. And so I do it for a minute or a minute and a half every day — and thanks for telling me — and they’re simple things: Don’t forget the holy water when you go into church. Don’t forget the genuflection. Don’t forget fasting before Holy Communion. Is that in the Creed? No. Is it important? Yeah. All right. And what about other stuff that nobody thinks about today? What about as you pass a church, which you do about every block here in New York, of making the Sign of the Cross?

Okay, what about even more important things, like more frequent confession? What about the holy days of obligation? What about visiting cemeteries? What about Masses for the deceased? What about the poor souls in purgatory? These are all beautiful Catholic [concepts]. … A sociologist will tell you, Mark Irons, that any human community — and of course, the Church is a divine community, but it’s got human elements — needs certain markers to stay coherent — identifiable traits. We as Catholics used to have a whole buffet of them. They’ve shrunk. No meat on Friday; Lent very seriously for 40 days, not just on Fridays, okay.

It’s a nice series, but I confess that there’s a premise underlying the whole thing that’s annoying.

The impression you might go away with from all of these videos is that the loss of these practices and devotions just, you know…happened. And gee, we don’t really know why, but it would be great to get them back. It would be awesome, you guys, if you could just do that.

Of course, spiritual practices do come and go, religious cultures change and respond to change. Spiritual practices are promoted and suppressed.

Yes, suppressed.

Not that any of these small-t traditions Dolan highlights were suppressed by decree, but the fact is, most of them were, indeed, intentionally wiped away, removed from parish life and catechetical materials and at the very least, discouraged or even, yes, mocked right into the shadows of Catholic life.

Mocked by whom? Discouraged by whom?

By church ministers, teachers and thought leaders, of course.

I’m not going to rehash the history or even do a digest of any length, but just understand that one of the goals of the Liturgical Movement was to center Catholic spiritual life on the Mass – at the expense of almost everything else. It makes some kind of sense, as a sensibility of centering Catholic life on the rhythms of the liturgical year and the Paschal Mystery. Reading the writings from the pre Conciliar Liturgical Movement on this score can be quite inspiring – and one sees how it has borne good fruit.

And, I hasten to add, illuminating. There were abuses. There were misplaced priorities. There were superstitions.

But unfortunately, what happened – especially after the Council – was that the enthusiasm for “the source and summit” of Christian life, as well as an idealism about what “modern man” wanted and needed blinded many to the fact that the spiritual life isn’t a single stream – it’s a bounteous fountain that splashes, surges and sprinkles in all directions. And that all of these devotional practices are not in opposition to a Eucharistic-centered life – they support it. They support and nurture our life as the Body of Christ, in all of our varied states of life and circumstances and even quirks and passions.

“We don’t do that anymore.”

So no, it wasn’t just demographic or cultural drift, although of course there was some of that. These practices were taken off the books, out of the classroom and the parish – intentionally.

Those of us of a certain age - especially if we didn’t have any kind of ethnic-heavy Catholicism in our background - didn’t learn about any of it, amiright?

In this video, Cardinal Dolan proposes recovering silence before Mass, instead of an atmosphere that, he says, can be as loud as what was in the parking lot.

Well, of course this is so – because post-Conciliar liturgists encouraged busy, social atmospheres before Mass and have discouraged silence – as, they claim, the latter tempts us to forget that the Mass isn’t – as they told us over and over – private prayer time. It’s Body of Christ time, which must be expressed the only way the world understands communion: through talking and sociability.

So yes, this is a good, and needed series.

But still, a little annoying, since the reasons for the loss of many of these practices, both in the past and yes, in the present – are left to our imaginations. Not that it would be right for the Cardinal to point this out here – that doesn’t fit the purpose of encouragement – but still. Generations have been taught that a loud church is a “vibrant” church and not taught anything about the possibility of devotional practices being integrated into a Eucharistic-centered life in a spiritually balanced way.

Now, pardon me the self promotion:

Not everyone has forgotten these monthly devotions – I feature them in the Loyola Kids Book of Seasons, Feasts and Celebrations. So there.

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Yes, this is a long-time, perennial post over at Charlotte was Both, but it occurred to me that it fit here as well.

I’m not going to reprint the entire post here, but rather reframe some of the material in a way that fits with this space.

Several years ago, I was coasting around the Internet, as one does, and for some reason, the thought came to me - I wonder if there were Lent-specific food ads back in the day? I don’t know why. Perhaps I saw one, somewhere, and I wondered if there were more.

And yes there were!

(How did I find them? Some advertisement archives, some Ebay. I’m sure there are lots more, but you’d need to comb through decades of archives of (mostly) women’s magazines, and while I am tempted, well…it’s just that…a temptation away from more important matters.)

(Oh, and the title? A tribute, of course, to James Lileks’ Gallery of Regrettable Food - dedicated to mid-century culinary horrors.)

What interested me was not just the gruesomeness of some of the food, although there was that, indeed. Even more, I was intrigued by the reality of a time in which the market for Lent-specific food was so great, it was worth advertising for.

I also wondered…why? If, before the Council, Catholics abstained from meat every Friday anyway, what was the big deal? Well, as I discovered - and perhaps some of you already know - the pre-Conciliar discipline in the United States called for “fasting” - that is, only one full meal - every day (except Sunday, of course) of Lent. Meat could be included in only one of those daily collations, and every Friday was a day of fasting and abstinence.

So yes, home cooks would have definitely been open to ideas and products that would help them pull together meatless meals - since they were trying do so far more frequently than just Fridays.

And everyone could benefit:

And here we are, today, with our slight (mandated) sacrifices - which are, of course, not all we can do.

By the way, lamenting the relative ease of “modern” Lenten discipline is an age-old sport. Here’s Cardinal Newman on the topic.

And as for me and my house? Well, remember that I was born in 1960. My mother maintained Friday abstinence through and past the changes - up until she died in 2001. I don’t recall if she kept an expanded Lenten dietary regime beyond Friday for herself or for me (my dad wasn’t Catholic) after the Council. I suspect she didn’t.

And for the record, my mother would never be caught dead serving frozen fish sticks.

(Her go-to quick fish meal was salmon patties from canned salmon. Which were good!)

All I remember about my youthful Lenten practice is my legalistic self giving up sweets or snacks during Lent and then staying up until midnight on Saturday night, breaking open the Cheetos, and listening to Dr. Demento.

What about you? Add any comments you like.

And for more on the changes in penitential practice, go here.

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Add this to the list.

I refer to this document in an old blog post – here. I just went back and read through it again and was struck by a few things. Since we are ever talking about VaticanIIVaticanIIVaticanII these days, even more so.

It’s the Apostolic Constitution in which Pope Paul VI revised Catholic regulations on fasting. There seem to be two major issues at hand:

First, to help Catholics deepen the spiritual meaning of fasting and abstinence beyond a simple identity marker.

Secondly, to position sacrifice and penance at the center, spiritually, but to make clear that the manner in which a Christian might express these realities might differ, and legitimately so.

I have three points to make.

First, the document embodies the idealism of the time, in which Catholics were told they were adults, and would be treated as adults, and that they will be trusted to follow the call of the Spirit, in freedom.

Reality: As one of my readers once related, when the year-long Friday abstinence was lifted, his parents and their friends in the neighborhood celebrated with a steak cookout. Because penance!

I mean, that’s nice, but honestly. Who among us would go to Mass half as often if we didn’t have obligation haunting our subconscious?

But less cynically, what interests me about this document is:

First, the title is PAENITEMINI. It’s about penance. Which is something that contemporary Catholic talk about Lenten fasting and abstinence is mostly missing, even among the Very Online Super Catholics. These days, rather it’s all about how fasting as a spiritual practice that will help you grow as a person and such. Welp, Pope St. Paul VI begs to differ:

Penance therefore—already in the Old Testament—is a religious, personal act which has as its aim love and surrender to God: fasting for the sake of God, not for one’s own self.

So let that settle. Pope Paul VI didn’t present us with a document on fasting and abstinence as a means of personal growth and a way to inner peace. He presented his reform in the context of penance. We are prideful screwups and from ancient days, a primary way of expressing sorrow for the screwups and manning up to avoid such screwups in the future was to fast. By which, of course, we grow as people. But the first goal is not about us but about God.

Secondly, again, in contrast to the present moment, the document is rooted in tradition and the past. As complicated as this period is, and as shaky as the leading lights’ hold on balancing tradition and the needs of the present moment could be, well – at least here, the attempt was being made. He wasn’t all Sing a new church into being! and The Spirit is obviously telling me what to do in the present, it’s all clearly made up on the fly, the past sucks, and if you rigidly disagree you obviously are ecclesiastically seditious.

No.

True penitence, however, cannot ever prescind from physical asceticism as well. Our whole being in fact, body and soul, (indeed the whole of nature, even animals without reason, as Holy Scripture often points out) must participate actively in this religious act whereby the creature recognizes divine holiness and majesty. The necessity of the mortification of the flesh also stands clearly revealed if we consider the fragility of our nature, in which, since Adam’s sin, flesh and spirit have contrasting desires. This exercise of bodily mortification-far removed from any form of stoicism does not imply a condemnation of the flesh which sons of God deign to assume. On the contrary, mortification aims at the “liberation” of man, who often finds himself, because of concupiscence, almost chained by his own senses. Through “corporal fasting”man regains strength and the “wound inflicted on the dignity of our nature by intemperance is cured by the medicine of a salutary abstinence.”

Nevertheless, in the New Testament and in the history of the Church—although the duty of doing penance is motivated above all by participation in the sufferings of Christ-the necessity of an asceticism which chastises the body and brings it into subjection is affirmed with special insistence by the example of Christ Himself.

Against the real and ever recurring danger of formalism and pharisaism the Divine Master in the New Covenant openly condemned—and so have the Apostles, Fathers and supreme pontiffs—any form of penitence which is purely external. The intimate relationship which exists in penitence between the external act, inner conversion, prayer and works of charity is affirmed and widely developed in the liturgical texts and authors of every era.

In the end, the document is a salutary attempt to help Catholics be more intentional about fasting, in line with one of the fundamental programs of the period: this is not just about external actions, but about internal disposition and freely responding to the Lord. The question of whether the disconnect between the external actions and interior disposition at the time was generally as severe as the reformers assumed (hoped?) is a very open question, but it’s hard to argue with the spirit of the thing, really.

So what does Paul VI want you to know about fasting?

Therefore, following the Master, every Christian must renounce himself, take up his own cross and participate in the sufferings of Christ. Thus transformed into the image of Christ’s death, he is made capable of meditating on the glory of the resurrection. Furthermore, following the Master, he can no longer live for himself, but must live for Him who loves him and gave Himself for him. He will also have to live for his brethren, completing “in his flesh that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ…for in the benefit of his body, which is the church.”

In addition, since the Church is closely linked to Christ, the penitence of the individual Christian also has an intimate relationship of its own with the whole ecclesial community. In fact, not only does he receive in the bosom of the Church through baptism the fundamental gift of “metanoia,” but this gift is restored and reinvigorated in those members of the Body of Christ who have fallen into sin through the sacrament of penance. “Those who approach the sacrament of penance receive from the mercy of God forgiveness for offenses committed against Him and at the same time become reconciled with the Church on which they have inflicted a wound by sinning, and the Church cooperates in their conversion with charity, example and prayer.” And in the Church, finally, the little acts of penitence imposed each time in the sacrament become a form of participation in a special way in the infinite expiation of Christ to join to the sacramental satisfaction itself every other action he performs, his every suffering and sorrow.

Thus the task of bearing in his body and soul the death of the Lord affects the whole life of the baptized person at every instant and in every aspect.

In other words:

Be sorry.

Do it.

Mean it.

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More on those changes. This is just an excerpt. Full post here.

If you have any thoughts or recollections, feel free to share them.

This is the cover of a pamphlet introducing the new, stripped-down, freedom-o-the-Christian-centered Lenten framework for American Catholics after the Second Vatican Council. It is part of Notre Dame’s Catholic Pamphlet Collection, which was available on archive.org for a very short time – I discovered it one night, and then, it seems as if a couple of weeks later, it had been taken down, I presume because of copyright issues.

It being the first Friday of Lent, you’re probably going to hear the usual minor rumblings about the purported relative ease of the fast for post-Vatican II Latin Rite Catholics.

Well, here’s my problem with that yearly ritual….

…(the apologizing and complaining, not the fasting, that is)…

The whole idea of the post-Conciliar changes to penitential fasting and abstinence was to present, as it were, a minimum on paper, with the expectation that the individual, flush with the glory of the Freedom of the Christian (and the Spirit of the Council), would take it from there.

The legal minimalism was supposed to unleash an internal maximalist lurking in all of us who had just been waiting to be treated like an adult instead of a child defined by adherence to rigid rules.

The rules are supposed to be minimal. That was the intention of the changes…

But not, let me remind you, to make things easy - but, in that idealistic haze, to make space, as we say now, for adult Catholics to grow in Christ in their own unique way. Etc.

I’ll just venture to say that although I don’t think they should have eliminated the year-long Friday abstinence for any reason, in any way, these efforts to deepen a Catholic’s understanding of the practice are really not bad! In fact, Eamon Duffy, in his excellent article critiquing the loss of Friday abstinence, gives the American Catholic bishops a shout-out for offering a much more grounded articulation of the changes than the British bishops did, who, according to him, basically said, “We know this is a lot of bother, chaps, so you don’t have to do it anymore.”

In reading Catholic observers of the pre-Vatican II era, we do see concern with a distance between practice and understanding (that was the motive for the Liturgical Movement, as a whole, after all), and the rapidity with which Catholics after Vatican II ditched Friday abstinence without replacing it with any other penitential practice reveals that distance.

What I see then, is one more example of the misguided nature of the “renewal” of the Church. Instead of truly starting from where people were and what they already practiced, and trying to help people understand that, they moved to a state of minimalism, stripping the hard-to-follow and hard-to-understand stuff away, trusting in an ideal: people, flush in their mature Christian freedom, would just do what the deeper, yet now impenetrable intention of the “rules” had been guiding them toward through the centuries.

Perhaps for some that happened, but for the bulk it didn’t, and the other consequences were dire, weren’t they?

More here.

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Of course, no charge for any of this, but you’ve a mind to, please take a look at my books.

Hello there!

Today’s post is not about my work, but about something going on that’s very relevant to the theme of this Substack.

The Hand Missal Project is from Nico Fassino. In his words, “It’s an independent research initiative dedicated to exploring Catholic history through the untold and forgotten experiences of the laity across the centuries.”

He’s currently in the process of publishing a series called

The “New Mass” of 1964: Popular reception of the first post-conciliar liturgical changes

Note: This “New Mass” was not the 1969 Novus Ordo. It was a transitional form.

The introduction

Part 1, published today.

As discussed in the general introduction to this series, the goal of this research project is to reconstruct how the laity in the English-speaking world (mainly the United States and the United Kingdom) experienced and reacted to the very first post-conciliar liturgical changes before 1970 – what could be termed “the reform before the reform”.

To begin, I will look at how the initial liturgical reforms beginning in 1964 were explained to and understood by the laity and the wider church. Were they described or understood as minor, temporary alterations to the liturgy? By contrast, when the revised Roman Missal of 1970 arrived, was it described or understood to be a dramatic new creation and radical break with what had come before?

In search of answers to these questions, I analyzed the contents of the US Bishops’ official news service and other national and diocesan Catholic newspapers during this period. These materials offer direct and unfiltered access to the official press releases, legislation, pastoral letters, and commentary by the hierarchy in America and throughout the English-speaking world

Most of all, this content analysis provides a unique and unparalleled window into what life would have been like for the average Catholic during these years. What were they reading, hearing, saying, and being taught about the changes? When they turned to the official paper of their diocese for guidance, what did they find? What did they hear from their bishops, priests, and diocesan officials?

If you’re interested in Trust Walk, I think you’ll be very interested in this series, which Fassino presented at a conference at Marquette University earlier this month.

Also:

My other Substack is chugging away. On alternate weeks, I’m publishing chapters from two different books: a novel, Nothing Else Occurs to Me and a non-fiction book, The Saint Around the Corner. Yes, most of the material is for paid subscribers only, but, as I say…I have enough free words out there on the Internet…let’s try something different for this one!

Thanks so much,

Amy

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Early this past summer, Cardinal Sarah gave a talk at a conference in London in which he suggested that priests take another look at the ad orientem posture during Mass.

Many, many blog posts and articles have been written and passed around since, and I’m sure there are more to come if, indeed, some priests and bishops have been inspired by Cardinal Sarah’s gentle suggestion that if one is going to revisit the practice, the First Sunday of Advent would be a good time to do so.

I have written quite a bit on this matter before, and in a minute, I’ll link to some of those older blog posts, but for the moment, I just want to share some of what I’ve been thinking about on this score in the wake of the Cardinal’s talk and the fallout from it. I offer these points in the hopes that they’ll be a help to the people in the pews who might be seeing this posture for the first time and are confused by it, as well as for priests who might be considering it.

• This shouldn’t be a big deal. Both postures are permitted – and ad orientem is even assumed by the rubrics in the sacramentary.

• If you see a priest celebrating Mass this way, don’t be shocked or offended. It doesn’t mean he hates you or thinks he’s better than you are. He’s praying. For you.

• Celebrating Mass in this posture – facing the same way as the people in the congregation – was the norm for most of Catholic history. It is still the way the liturgy is celebrated in most Eastern Catholic Churches (not Maronite Rite, in my experience), Eastern Orthodox Churches and even in some High Anglican parishes and some Lutheran churches. Here, for example, is a photo of a Lutheran service from a church in Kansas.

Source

Here’s a video of a 2020 LCMS service, randomly pulled from a quick search. Ad orientem.

• To flesh out this last point – here’s a blog post from a Lutheran blog on liturgy expanding on the logic of ad orientem.

• So why did versus populum become the norm in Latin Catholicism? Many reasons, but when you read the literature of the liturgical movement on this score, the idea was that in turning the priest around (in conjunction with the vernacular) , the people would understand more of the Mass and feel more connected to the action at the altar. There is more, but I think that is the simplest way to look at it. And it was a widespread, even pervasive assumption that this, along with more vernacular, would be Step #1.

• But as is always the case, change produces unintended consequences. We can argue about this all day – and who knows, we might! – but in my mind, the primary and quite negative consequence of versus populum has been pervasive expectation that the personality of the priest has an important and even central liturgical function.

• In other words, ironically, the act which was supposed to involve the people more rendered the person of the cleric more important.

• In the Mass, the priest is, of course, of central importance because he serves as in persona Christi. But the genius of the Roman liturgy historically is that the ritual supports his role at the same time as it buries and subsumes his individual personality under vestments, prescribed movements and words, not to speak of the roles that other ministers play. He does not wear his own clothes or say words of his own choosing. He must be present, but everything about what surrounds him in the moment points us to Christ, not this individual human being.

• Which now brings us to possible complaints about this posture. These are simply an intensification of the complaints one hears about priest-celebrants all the time, and are reflective of the misplaced expectations congregations sometimes have of priests and which, in turn, I think are fed and enabled precisely by the versus populum posture, especially if a priest encourages it by his own liturgical stylings.

• This childish notion that one’s experience of the liturgy is somehow dependent on whether or not Father is looking at us when he is praying to God is just that. Childish. Add to that concerns about how much he smiles, how friendly and welcoming he is, the jokes he tells and how relaxed he is, and you have, not The Most Well-Educated Laity in History at Mass, but a bunch of needy infants. It also puts an inordinate amount of pressure on priests. Not only are they shoved up on pedestals, they are considered deficient if they fail to warmly crack jokes and make eye contact in the process.

• I’ll also be so bold as to offer some suggestions to parishes and priests considering incorporating this posture into liturgy.

• Don’t make a huge deal of it. Explain things simply. Emphasize historical continuity, that the rubrics assume it, and that many, many other Christians experience worship in this way. Explain the purpose is to help everyone focus on God as a community. Extra points for mentioning that this is the way Thomas Merton celebrated Mass.

• Consider making a joke or two about how the congregation might be relieved not to have to study your face through the entire Mass or something. I know! A joke!

• Start with daily Mass, school Masses or special Masses for smaller groups.

• Don’t elevate this change to The Most Important Thing About Our Parish. If it is a new initiative, consider coupling it with another new mission-oriented, Work of Mercy-type initiative for the parish. (or 2!)

• Catechize, explain thoroughly, but don’t clutch the podium, heave deep apologetic sighs, and generally act as if you expect the worst.

As I said, I’ve blogged on this before. Here are some links.

Back in 2008, I had three days in a row of focused discussion of this issue.

First – and actually, this is one of my favorite blog posts – I posted a photograph of a TLM, and just asked people to respond to it. I called the post “Necessary Conversations” because I wanted to encourage people on all “sides” to express their responses and listen to each other.

The next day, I reflected on those responses. At the end of the post, I highlighted one of the responses to the photograph, a response I still think about when I’m in the pew, and the priest in chasuble passes me in the entrance procession:

I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.

The third day, I reflected a bit on clericalism in this context.

Finally, I’m going to reproduce part of a two-year old blog post here, just because I like it and it encapsulates so much of what I want to say pretty succinctly:

As it happens, last weekend, we attended Mass in South Carolina, and this happened:

It was at Stella Maris Church on Sullivan’s Island. Stella Maris is a lovely, tiny church. I had hoped that it might be a little less crowded this time, since the summer season was, of course, over, but it was not to be. The place was packed, with, I believe, the overflow area packed as well. Fortunately, we got there just in time to get a seat in the main body of the church – which, as I said, is tiny and historic. It can’t be physically expanded…so they just have to pack them in in whatever way they can.

Tons of servers, good music, solid, focused preaching. Post-Mass prayers, which, in my limited experience, are becoming more and more common in the southern Catholic churches.

And, of course, the Eucharistic Prayer prayed ad orientem. The fact is, the sanctuary is too small to accommodate another freestanding altar, and that is just fine. It was all done matter-of-factly with no fuss and it didn’t seem that the engaged, loudly-singing congregation felt excluded, alienated and crushed by clerical privilege, but who knows, I could be wrong.

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…more than a thousand words, that’s for sure!

Many thanks to all of those who commented below. I entitled the post “Necessary Conversations” because I think they are just that – necessary.

Why?

Because here’s the thing. I just don’t think it’s ever going to be 1977 again. Oh, I could be wrong of course – In 1960, not a Catholic soul alive could have imagined that it would ever be 1977. The idea of it would have flummoxed almost everyone.

(And mind you, “1977” is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for felt banners, liturgies built around 3 chords and a guitar (or maybe 4 chords, because G7 is really pretty), improvised Eucharistic prayers, totally sincere, yet endless Liturgy Committee meetings to figure out what we can “do” to make the Mass more “meaningful” and a liturgical sensibility that said: the less formal, the more in tune to the contemporary moment, the better. )

Not that every parish is going to turn into St. John Cantius tomorrow. Nor, perhaps, should it. Most everyone is still happy with 1989 (more chords, felt banners stuck in the closet now) but the pendulum is swinging in the direction, simply, of the retrieval of the richness of the Catholic liturgical heritage and some serious reconsideration of what ritual is and more specifically what the Catholic Mass is.

As I’ve said before, my big ah-ha moment over the past couple of years has been the realization that most of us – myself included – have been formed to think of the Mass as a prayer meeting. A highly structured prayer meeting, but a prayer meeting nonetheless, one which emphasizes community and who we are in the here and now, a prayer meeting which should somehow be expressive of who we are as individuals and a community.

Prayer meetings are good. But that’s not what the Mass is.

And that understanding is what I see reflected in the comments below. It seems fairly obvious to me – those who respond positively to the photo seem to emphasize the Sacrificial aspect of the Mass, and the necessity of the ritual and other externals reflecting that reality. TSO said it well:

It LOOKS like what it is – it looks like we are offering Jesus to the Father and asking Him (the Father) to look upon His son that we might be saved. The priest, in facing the altar, removes himself from focus and eliminates a distraction: the only thing we can look at, really, is Jesus in the Eucharist.

Those with negative responses – or even mixed – tend to emphasize the Mass as God’s people gathered to share in the meal of Christ’s Real Presence, and they don’t see that reflected in that image.

This, of course, is the classic way of envisioning the pre- and post-Vatican II thinking about the Mass, and it’s not accidental, for the shape and content of the 1970 Missal purposefully diminished the sacrificial sensibility. Whether you like that or not, whether or not you fancy Masons behind it or the Spirit, it’s true. It’s just the way it is – it is the way in which those of us who can claim to be post-V2 babies have been formed by the liturgy. I know I have.

And it can be very difficult to see it any other way.

So what I wanted to accomplish through my little exercise was first of all, the bringing of these differences to light in a way that avoided politics, accusations, ideological battles or spiritual swordsmanship.

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I wanted, if only in this tiny little space of Church, for those who are uncomfortable with certain aspects of the pre-Vatican II Mass to listen to those who find it beautiful and spiritually enriching in an irreplacable kind of way and see that their devotion is not about nostalgia or aesthetics.

I wanted those who do find the Extraordinary Form more spiritually resonant – and even in general a more formal celebration of Mass across the board, which might include the Ordinary Form in Latin and celebrated ad orientem – to listen to those who are put off by it, either by their own history with it or other perceptions of clericalism or obscurantism and be able to talk about all of this without resorting to assertions of spiritual immaturity.

Several commenters who actually were alive during the 40’s and 50’s and remember the Mass before Vatican II have reminded us of the importance of being realistic, and they are certainly correct. In memoirs of these Masses, you tend to pick up that things were either dreadful or glorious, but that seems to be the way of memoirs – that we only remember the extremes. Long-time readers know that I am intrigued – even obsessed – with the period of transition around Vatican II, and that my position is simply – if there was no sense that reform was needed, reform wouldn’t have happened. Any student, for example, of the liturgical movement of the 20th century – and I don’t mean only the academic liturgical movement, but that which expressed itself in the lives of lay Catholics of the 20th century – knows that there was great interest in deepening lay participation in the Mass, both interior and external, that there was concern that Catholics make a greater connection between the liturgical life of the Church and everyday life, and there was a great movement to increase the numbers of Catholics receiving Communion at Mass.

This is absolutely true. But what I would say – simply looking at the comments here – is another reminder. Those who, in these comments, spoke to how the picture evoked in them feelings of awe and connection with Christ, were, for the most part, speaking from experience in the present, not looking back forty years. They were saying, “This is how it affects me, because this is what I feel and think when I attend Mass in this form.”

I just don’t think there is any going back. Not to 1954, not to 1965, 1982 or even 2007. We’re going forward and as Catholics, I wish we could listen and learn from each other without slamming each other in boxes. Perhaps there is something to be gained from contemplating the more intensely sacrificial expression of the Extraordinary Form and the power of careful ritual to “hold” faith. Perhaps there is something to be learned from the congregation’s vocal participation in the Mass. The marginalization, the mutual disdainful dismissals…can we stop? Can we?

Perhaps?

To me, it all comes down to this:

What some see as an obstacle to communion with the Lord, others see as a help. The way out of this is not to argue and engage in tactics of mutually assured destruction, but to explain why this – whether it is the ritual or the relative informality or the Latin or the vernacular – is a means to communion and nourishment for the mission with which Christ charges us all.

Of all the excellent comments below, one brought me to full stop. It was brief, it was deceptively simply, but it bore tremendous weight and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m grateful to all of you, and especially Romulus, who wrote of the picture:

I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.

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When Pope Benedict issued his Motu Proprio last July, some were excited and saw it as the possible beginning of a new New Springtime, and others sniffed and sneered as is their wont about nostalgia and fringe groups, clucking all the while that this really wasn’t that important because such a small minority would go for this business (which begs the question, if it’s such a tiny blip on the radar, why even bother taking one minute of your life to sniff and sneer?).

Six months later, I think some are surprised. Even more conservative/Traditionalist naysayers are a bit flummoxed at what they have seen. It’s not that the Extraordinary Form is flooding the market, but there is definitely growth, not only in numbers – slow but steady – but in apparent openness. Yes, some doors in many dioceses and parishes remain firmly shut, but there is definitely a subtle shift. Even three years ago, I don’t think many with strong interests in matters liturgical could have predicted that the pervasive stigma attached to the 1962 Missal would be dissolving, slowly but surely, that issues like chant and ad orientem would be matters of serious discussion and interest, sans obligatory “Pre-Vatican II Dark Ages” swipes.

But barriers remain – barriers to understanding, most importantly – and I think these barriers should be confronted forthrightly and honestly from both “sides,” and in utmost charity. The ideological “divisions” within the Catholic Church are a terrible scandal, they impede our response to Jesus’ missional call and they drain energy. But they’re real. And no, the Church has never been, in reality, on the ground, an entity marked by mass mutual conformity or homogeneity – nor should it be – the divisions within the American and European Church, at least, on matters of liturgy and ecclesiology are profound.

I’d like to invite some comment on a particular, very specific question to show how this works and to see if it can be overcome at some level. Bear with me.

When you read liturgical blogs – which I do, daily – one of the things that you often find are photographs of Masses which evoke, in readers, responses marked by appreciation for the beauty of what is going on in the photograph. The same photograph, viewed by others, would provoke another, different responses – responses that might include puzzlement as to what is going on, relief that it doesn’t go on much anymore, a reaction to perceived elitism, obscurantism and misogyny.

One viewer looks at the photograph and sees a perfect replication of what Christ intended.

The other looks at it and sees a violation of what Christ surely intended.

And remember – both viewers are Catholic.

Here’s such a photograph. Commenters, if you please:

In a charitable, clear manner, explain what you see here. What gratifies you about the action in the photograph. What bothers you. Those who see it as beautiful, explain why and its deeper relation to your Catholic faith. Those who are bothered by it or mystified by it, explain why.

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Originally published at Charlotte Was Both, 1/19/2023.

And what is it, you wonder?

Why, the Catechism of the Catholic Church of course!

Over the past few weeks, the Catechism has been trending here and there for a couple of reasons. First, Benedict XVI’s death, which prompted folks to recall the Catechism as part of his legacy. Secondly, the Catechism in a Year podcast, which is proving to be as popular as the Bible in a Year podcast. Both are in the top 12 Apple Podcasts as I write, and I know the Catechism edition was #1 for at least a few days when it started at the beginning of the month.

Aren’t we so grateful to Pope Benedict for the Catechism? What a gift! What would we do without it!

Well, I am here to offer, as I like to do, a little bit of historical context. In case you didn’t know it, the Catechism was strongly resisted when it was first promulgated in 1992. This article from Homiletic and Pastoral Review was published near the beginning of the process and reflects the environment:

The sense of published responses to the Catechism by individuals long associated with what might be called “the catechetical establishment” have ranged from serious caveats to shrill alarms. One can see a weather reporter pointing grimly to the arrival of a wintry blast of dangerous storm patterns on the weather map. Some have suggested that the Catechism not be distributed widely to the faithful, that it is not designed for classroom use, that it is only a set of guidelines and certainly not a text to be read at home, that it is only a framework for adaptation and not the result of the adaptation, that it represents merely one ecclesiology among many rather than the fruit of the Council. We are told far more about what the Catechism is not, than what it is, what we are not to do, than what we might do. At this point we are ready to put on a trench coat and flee for the hurricane shelter.

The whole thing was so fraught, an entire book was written about it. You can actually access the entire text here – as it says, Ignatius took it out print, so the content is online here with their permission.

This is something I experienced myself. At on point during those years, I was in a diocesan meeting of parish Directors of Religious Education. The bishop of that diocese was there and the topic was the forthcoming Catechism. He said to us, We have to be careful who gets their hands on this.

The diocesan Director of Religious Education, a religious sister, agreed:

We have to make it clear that it’s for pastoral ministers, not the laity. If they think of it as something for them, they’re going to start comparing our programs with what they read in the Catechism.

As my mother used to say, You think I’m making that up. I’m not.

It was one more element in the anti-JPII/Ratzinger gestalt among church professionals at the time, which was widespread and assumed to be normal. It was difficult to publicly articulate hostility to JPII because he was so popular, although I did hear this same diocesan director saying something about ….when this Pope dies as she prepared to lead us in the prayer service she’d written, lighting the candles atop the kente runner on the conference room table. But Ratzinger, of course, was easy and practically required for them to hate – hate, along with every bit of his thought, from theology to liturgy. Understanding this will help you understand the mindset of those of that generation who are still in Church leadership.

If I had to summarize the mindset I’d say…Why are so you childish that you need to be told what to believe rather than exploring your own mature vision of faith? Oh, exploring includes that book? Nope, sorry. Not for you.

It’s from the same family of ideas as: We’re a listening Church….oh, but not to you. Also: Sensus Fidelium for everyone! Hmmm, that thing over there is getting kind of popular. We should probably shut it down.

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So there’s been a lot of talk of the Spirit recently. Rather, in this particular iteration, since the papacy of Francis began and with greater intensity in all the Synod/Synodality/Syondaliest talk. For example.

Addressing this question together requires listening to the Holy Spirit, who like the wind “blows where it wills; you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (Jn 3:8), remaining open to the surprises that the Spirit will certainly prepare for us along the way.

Of course, this is nothing new. The history of the Church is, in part, a history of discernment – discernment - of the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit at all levels of Church life – in the teaching Church, among the leadership, in lay life, trickling down, bubbling up.

After all, what does Paul say?

“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances (1 Thess 5:19).

And that’s the history of the Church. Continual, engaged, prayerful discernment of what is authentic and what is false: what to quench and what not to despise. People write books about it. They take classes about it. They pray about it. They listen, reflect and yes, judge. Discernment is not a simple checklist.

But what is not done, what doesn’t happen in Catholic history and sound practice, is dependence on blithe, unsupported assertions that if something is “new” it must be from the Spirit and especially if it’s knocking down something “old” it’s quite obviously from the Spirit.

That, to put it frankly, is weaponizing and gaslighting.

Sorry, but “new” and “old” are not criteria for discernment of authenticity in Catholic life. We do speak of "progress" in the spiritual life, but it is not a concept tied to simple movement from one moment to the next in which the present is privileged. “Progress” – in temporal terms of moving beyond the past just because of a belief that the present, by definition must be closer to the heart of God than the past - derives from a particular secular understanding of human history characteristic of Western modernity, and is not a category of Christian discernment.

We are temporal. God is not.

What is a category is “faithfulness” – to Christ, to the Gospel, to God’s Word as a whole, to Big T Tradition, to Big T Truth.

Which, I hasten to say, isn’t simple either. The Protestant Reformers based their entire argument and various movements on fidelity and faithfulness, after all. Most faulty, false or even heretical movements in church history also appeal to fidelity and faithfulness to the original, real meaning of the Gospel, as well. That’s their appeal, obviously.

So, it’s not simple. Which is why it takes time and perspective. Which is why people who do this teasing out and testing must be wise and experienced and why a deep knowledge of history…helps.

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My argument in these days – in 2021, with six decades of intensive Spirit-moving behind us, and with the benefit of more historical awareness than most people in the past have been privileged to have – is that when discerning the Spirit, suspicion and caution is not a bad thing, and we should never be gaslit into believing that our caution when someone waves the Spirit Banner at us must be nothing more than a fearful, closed-minded expression of resistance to God’s will. .

Just. Don’t.

And those who would like to gaslight and have their way? Perhaps remember this:

Those of us who maintain a, shall we say, healthy hermeneutic of suspicion when you tell us that the Spirit is a movin’ – have lived a little. We’ve seen it. We’ve heard it. We might even be victims of it.

(“We” here is a royal we.)

On a large scale, we may be veterans of Church movements – some on the margins…oh, those margins! – some fully approved by the Church and integrated into its structure - that grounded their practices on leaders’ claims to be in tune with the Spirit doing all this new stuff in these new times – and have, indeed, ended up victims of these movements’ and communities’ manipulation, exploitation and repression, and staggered out, spiritually and psychologically shattered.

We may be victims, at close or simply long-range, as we’ve observed and been inspired – by religious leaders and innovators, clearly – clearly – led by the “Spirit” – to create new ways of engaging with the world and ministering. So charismatic! So close to the Lord! So creative! Because new is always best! So courageous! So obviously Spirit-guided! Wait…so…corrupt? Exploitive? Evil?

On a smaller, less dramatic scale, we may have endured liturgy after liturgy in which the celebrant, the musicians and other ministers disdained what was given to them by Tradition and even by Revelation, going with the “Spirit” instead – making stuff up, shifting things around, re-creating all because the Spirit, they felt – they felt - was moving around in them, moving them to express themselves, moving them to set aside the old and go with what they felt was really powerful right then and there in that moment.

We may have been listening, for decades- to confident promises of the Spirit obviously moving in all of these innovations and creative acts of destruction, and then woken up one day and seen…destruction?

We may have heard church ministers and leaders who speak very loudly of the importance of listening to the Spirit and not being afraid of the movement of the Spirit gazing with distinct distaste on manifestations of popular piety and practice that don't fit their agenda and quickly backtracking….Oh. I didn’t mean freedom in the Spirit it do that. That’s against diocesan policies. Let me show you.

We may have endured the same with countless other aspects of religious life, from formation to spiritual movements to even institutional processes:

Individuals with agendas and most of all, egos, using the Holy Spirit as a means to privilege their own notions, plans and self-interests. Manipulating and guilting the rest of us into accepting their purported special insights as real and of God because, of course, “old” is bad and “new” is always, always good and always from the Spirit.

I once – not too, too long ago, and not in this area – had a liturgical experience. The celebrant seemed well-meaning, and he also clearly felt Spirit-led.

Note – he didn’t deviate from the liturgical words and texts. We had that going for us at least. But in this small congregation which was mostly composed of non-parishioners and visitors, his personality absolutely dominated the hour. I think he thought he was serving and bringing out some deeper meaning through his actions, but all that ended up happening was an awkward but unrelenting spotlight on him for a solid hour – his demeanor, his singing, his tremendously odd, dramatic, emotional pronunciation of the words of consecration. I’m sure he thought he was doing a helpful thing, enriching the mere words and gestures of the liturgy with the intensity of his own demeanor, perhaps even moved by the Spirit to do so, but he ended up placing himself in the center and being a distraction and an obstacle.

And all we wanted to do was go to Mass.

I am a student of history. I just read a book on the very exciting topic of Going to Church in Medieval England and just last night, couldn’t put a new book on the history of Anglo-Saxon England down until I’d finished reading the very absorbing (really – quite eye-opening) chapter on (Saint) Wilfred of York.

Catholic life and practice shifts, changes, ossifies and is reformed and renewed. It’s the Holy Spirit at work in all of that.

But it’s a Spirit whose actions must be carefully discerned and sifted as we engage with it and work so hard to be faithful and, most importantly, to bring the power of the Gospel, Spirit-led, into a hurting world.

Because, as we have seen time and time again, in ancient and recent history, as well as in our own lives: all that heady, optimistic Spirit-talk? As we see all around us, constantly and consistently:

Is there anything in life easier to weaponize, because we are yearning so deeply, than the promise of something new, coming to us via the warm assurances of those who identify the movement of the Spirit – good! – with whatever they want to happen next?

Resistance to “new” can, indeed, be resistance to the Spirit. It can also be fidelity to Christ. Whether that thing is “new” or not has absolutely nothing to do with the authenticity of the moment, idea or expression. “New” as I said before, is not a meaningful category for discernment in either a positive or negative sense, and neither is “old.”

In God’s time, they are meaningless terms.

Remember what Paul said up there, about not quenching the Spirit?

Let’s let him finish the thought:

“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances…

…. Test everything; retain what is good” (1 Thess 5:19-21).

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Originally published in November 2023 at Charlotte was Both.

I write frequently in this space about the sheer illogic of contemporary Catholic thought, rhetoric and leadership. The determination to emphasize the present and the new and to detach us from the past is a stance which runs contrary to Catholicism, frankly, but is also quite often an exciting-sounding cover for political maneuvering and power grabs.

My basic message: Put on your Skeptical Hat when someone blows in to inform you that if you don't get on their Very Special New (or Old!) Thing Bus you are bad because you are obviously blocking the working of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, they might be right. Or they might be a megalomaniac gaslighting grifter. You just gotta be careful and think things through and be honest about human nature.

So, again, I return to the continuing, sadly never-ending disputes over "new" and "old" in Catholic Land 2023, particularly as the concepts relate to liturgy and theology.

As I wrote before - in this post - and this one - without taking the ebb and flow of the Liturgical Movement into consideration - which most normie Catholics in 2023 do not - those who seek to suppress the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass have a hard argument to make when these normie Catholics are encouraged to dig deep and benefit from every single spiritual treasure of the past 2000 years - saints, spiritual writings, devotions, art, architecture and music - except the Traditional Latin Mass, celebrated as the Mass, but listening to it in concert - maybe even in a church building! - or while drinking your morning coffee is okay, sure, have at it.

It is the continual tension that emerges as we try to situate ourselves in the midst of human experience and history.

We are so different, it seems. Our lives are radically different.

Aren't they?

Yes? No?

I maintain, fundamentally, no. Fundamentally. Of course our external circumstances impact us profoundly. I've long believed that widespread relative prosperity and mobility have had a deep impact on the way that human beings understand themselves and the spiritual journey. Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self takes on these changes from a different perspective, and I largely agree with his assessment. The internet is different as Antón Barba-Kay explores in A Web of Our Making.

Me, sitting here in Alabama, knowing that if I had the money and wanted to spend it this way, could get on a plane and fly across the country - and then be back home tomorrow and that I can instantly communicate with friends around the world - is a life quite different from the woman of the past who might never have left her own village and knew nothing of what lay beyond it except for what travelers and other storytellers had hinted at.

So yes! The externals have changed, the framework has changed, the assumptions have shifted.

But

Also no.

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And that no is the reason we can read two-hundred year old novels, four-hundred year old philosophical works, eight-hundred year old plays and three-thousand year old epics and still see ourselves.

It is a shock to the system, really, the first time a young person reads the first book of Augustine's Confessions and sees such a wildly familiar landscape, even in the strangeness of it all: she sees parents who don't understand, parents who don't get along, career expectations, temptations succumbed to for unknown reasons, other temptations succumbed to that leave one empty in the end, ways to waste time, education that becomes less vital the more it's required, and of course, questions. Question after question after question.

That brings me to the topic of this post, which I thought was going to be brief. Oh well.

Back in the homeschool days, we spent time dicussing Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, the mystery plays, Morte d'Artur and Everyman - the iconic morality play which you can read here. (And the source of the title of this post)

And how interesting it is that despite the fact that this is not a literary form we produce today - the allegory with such obvious allusions - and is as far away from TikTok or prestige television in form as ox-carts are from jets - the theme and final message is easily grasped and still unchallengeable, at least from the Christian perspective.

You can't take it with you.

And the only thing that you can keep as you are lowered into the grave, and in fact, that you can't shake, are your Good Deeds. Nothing else will remain, no matter how strongly you've clung and how much energy you've put into nurturing their presence in your life: not Beauty, not strength, not even knowledge.

What must I do to attain eternal life?

And even if you're not concerned about eternal life, Everyman, its clunky preaching perhaps seeming to be from a different world than your 21st century clunky relativism, still offers food for thought. How am I spending my time on earth? Facing the grave, what will have been worth valuing?

I have written before that as a teacher - both in the classroom, at home, and in my writing - I have long taken it as my responsibility - and great pleasure, in fact - to help students and readers dig through the initial strangeness of history, of literature, of theology and spiritual writing, of the lives of the saints, and indeed, of Scripture itself - to understand what is essentially and even eternally true there and to see that the questions posed in these works and traditions are, indeed, the same questions they grapple with. They are not alone. They are not the first to wonder. Which should, indeed, come as a tremendous relief, and a moment of yes, communion across space and time.

So the question - yet another question - remains, stubbornly. And I would pose it regularly, if I could, in person.

Why is it permissible to reflect on and benefit from the wisdom, truth and beauty in every corner of the history of the People of God and even outside of its boundaries - except in the ancient liturgical prayer of the Church, actually being prayed?

Some time back, The Catholic Herald published a piece on the Prosperity Gospel. The piece was a sketchy look at the impact of the Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Latin America, and didn’t really deliver on what the headline promised, which was pretty clearly implied by the title, “How Catholics are Falling for the Prosperity Gospel.”

Well, Catholics “falling” for the Prosperity Gospel is touched on in two anecdotes, one at the beginning about a prosperity-oriented element of a Mass somewhere in Africa, and the other in Latin America. The concerns and warnings of clergy on both continents is cited and it’s mentioned that Charismatic Catholic movements are particularly susceptible to the Prosperity Gospel – but nothing specific is described. I suppose the main way we’re to assume that “Catholics are falling” for the Prosperity Gospel on these continents, particularly Latin America is by leaving the Catholic faith for Pentecostal, Prosperity-oriented movements. I suppose?

Reading the piece led me down another mental road, though. It’s a well-trodden road for me, considering the Prosperity Gospel has been around for a while and is something I’ve contemplated both in my studies of religious history and contemporary American Christianity.

That mental road is this: are there other ways in which Catholics are falling for other expressions of what we might call a “Prosperity Gospel?”

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It’s easy for us to look at an interpretation of Christianity with which we disagree and dismiss it out of hand, mock or condemn it – especially something as obviously wrong as the health-and-wealth gospel. More fruitful, I think, is to look at the why and the roots and explore how aspects of an incorrect interpretation might have crept into our own thinking. To examine it, see what’s true, what’s false and use it as a way, not so much to condemn others – over whom we have no control – but to grow in our own faith and conform ourselves more closely to truth.

So let’s take the most recent (2019) newsworthy example – pastor John Gray purchasing a $200K Lamborghini for his wife. Gray defended his purchase against criticism by pointing out that he’d not used church money to buy it, but rather money from a book deal, a television show on Oprah’s network and other income sources. He didn’t go whole hog Prosperity in defending it, but he did say: “God helped me to make my wife’s dream come true,” he wrote in an Instagram post Tuesday night. “Why not? She’s made mine come true!”

This is a little different from promising the impoverished that if they align themselves correctly with God’s will, they’ll find more material comfort, but the very basic fundamentals are the same: When we do God’s will, it shows in our earthly lives. God helps us make our dreams come true.

This is not, of course, incorrect. The deep roots of the Prosperity Gospel are in the ancient life of Israel. Read Psalms, read Proverbs. External blessing is a sign of God’s favor in our tradition.

But then along came the Exile. And the challenge of Job. God’s people had to ask themselves: What does it mean to be blessed by God? What does God’s presence among us look like?

Not such an easy connection anymore.

Over two thousand years of contemplation on the question, meditating on promises of blessing in the context of the Cross has produced a rich, healthy, balanced understanding of what it all means, perhaps best expressed in the Beatitudes and in the lives of the saints.

All heresies are, essentially, an imbalance – the heightening of one aspect of truth over all others.

It seems to me that the fundamental error of any “Prosperity Gospel” lies in the elevation of the truth that yes, we find authentic peace and true joy when our wills and choices are aligned with God’s will. That’s the truth we find in the very beginning of Scripture: Adam and Eve at peace in the Garden, and then at war with each other, God, nature and themselves outside of it.

The way that a “Prosperity Gospel” twists this truth is when it encourages us to uncritically identify the fruits of a right relationship with God with anything temporal.

It instrumentalizes the spiritual life.

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So now, look beyond the easy targets of health-and-wealth. Survey the contemporary popular spiritual landscape, Catholic and otherwise. If there’s a current self-help trend out there, are spiritual gurus close behind, baptizing it?

You might see and hear some of this:

Through faith, I came to understand my purpose and look at the success I’ve found because of that.

Through faith, I came to see and accept how beautiful I am, and what true beauty is.

Because of faith, I feel great about myself and affirm my life as amazing and accomplished.

This is hard, this is tricky, and I hope I can tease this apart correctly. Because I’m sure this might be striking you as just wrong. Because isn't that part of what faith is? In accepting Jesus as Lord of my life, aren’t I opening myself to a re-orientation, a proper understanding of myself and my relationship to the world that’s going to bear this fruit?

True. All that is fruit of a relationship with Christ.

Plot twist: But it’s really not that important, either.

And it’s certainly not the center of the spiritual life, as traditionally understood. It's irrelevant to the core of it and, in the end, is a distraction, and – if used as a selling point evangelization tool, only part of the way to that core.

It’s also the expression of Christians living in a wealthy, privileged culture of choice and social mobility. Our culture values appearance, success, accomplishment and control. If you find your spirituality oriented towards using God to get more of that in your life – that’s some Prosperity Gospel right there.

The only thing I can do to flesh this out is point you to the Gospel, the Pauline epistles and the lives and writings of the saints.

Think about the Gospels. Think about Paul’s words and witness. Go beyond the passages about gifts and talents.

What is the reason we are called to Christ?

Because he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

That’s it. Without him, we are lost.

And the fruit of being in communion with him? Yes, peace, authentic self-knowledge and joy. That’s all over the place, too.

But not in the world’s terms.

For what is it someone has said? What was the only thing Jesus promised his followers about their life on earth?

That they would suffer.

All of this can intersect in our lives, certainly. In giving ourselves to Christ, we find a joy – and we feel that joy – that was unknown to us away from him.

But also be wary. Always be on guard and be willing to look and listen closely. Jesus promises fullness of life – but be cautious when figuring out what this means. Sometimes it means that aspects of your temporal life are going to really and truly feel as if they are in line with that spiritual flourishing, and it’s all coming together. And it may be just that. Or it may be a trap – a trap of narcissism and self-centeredness, a temptation to elevate my will and assume, because things seem to be going great, that of course it must be God’s will as well.

Yes, that’s a form of the Prosperity Gospel. A soft Prosperity Gospel, if you will. I’m not called to follow Christ because of what he’ll do for my life – even though he does everything. I’m called to follow Christ because he calls and he’s Lord.

Period.

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Are Corpus Christi processions and Eucharistic devotions that adoration-centered simply displays that are disconnected from the actual demands of discipleship?

I suppose they can be, because anything at all can be corrupted. Even a simple Mass with a lay homilist, the latest GIA musical stylings and an ad-libbed Eucharistic Prayer. Hard to believe, I know.

As images and videos of processions filled social media feeds, that evolved into one of last weeks’ Catholic Twitter discussions, but of course it’s not a new concern, and it’s not even unique to our post Vatican II – era. Of course spiritual teachers and writers have always been aware of the potential for insularity and triumphalism on the part of individuals or communities who profess faith. That is, the human tendency to completely forget what we’re doing all this for in the first place.

When some observers of, say, the many Corpus Christi processions that occurred over the past few days, say that this must be about nothing more than engaging in public piety for the sake of showing off or flexing, they are not only revealing something about their own spirituality, but, I’m going to suggest, offering unintentional insight into the state of contemporary popular Catholic spirituality and this (I think) transitional period that we’re in.

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Traditionally – that is, deeply traditionally – Catholics understood that the goal of the faith-filled life was, of course, eternal life with God, a life for which all people are created and are waylaid from because of sin. Eternal life is attained through God’s grace and our cooperation with it. Cooperating with God’s grace – offered through the life of the Church, the Body of Christ – means, at root, conforming oneself to Christ. Which means living a life of agape, self-sacrificing love focused on God first, then others. All of this was embodied, in the Christian way of prayer, participation in the life of the Church and letting that grace – that is the life of God – flow through your daily actions, systematized, really, in the Works of Mercy.

So the purpose of a public display of piety or even adoration-centered devotions certainly might take on aspects of display for its own sake or community pride, but in essence, it was understood and assumed that the spiritual end of this for every person there was a deeper faith, a deeper connection to Christ – which meant, everyone knew, an ever deeper grounding in love of God and neighbor.

(“Everyone knew” does not equal “Everyone did this” or that less spiritually mature motivations (do this and say this so I won’t burn) weren’t at play. Again: life/humans/continual need for reform of course.)

In 21^st century American Catholicism, the spiritual assumptions and goals are different now. As I have written before – so many times– American Christianity in general is focused on what American culture is focused on: self-fulfillment and “happiness” in this life. Feeling affirmed, good about oneself, accepted by the universe, strengthened and energized to follow one’s dreams and fulfill one’s potential.

Here’s the irony, then. In that landscape, in which we are all essentially spiritually okay, and the main purpose of faith is to tell us we are okay, no repentance or metanoia required, then, yes, a Eucharistic procession is perhaps more likely to strike the onlooker, even the Catholic, as an exercise in identity-flexing, disconnected from the demands of discipleship.

When the purpose of faith is to reassure you that you okay just as you are, when the effect of God’s presence among us is understood and evaluated primarily in terms of the emotions and sensations it evokes, yes it becomes challenging to understand the purpose of any public devotion – or perhaps spiritual practice at all – in a way that is anything else but performative acts of self-affirmation, rather than, first of all, an act of praise, and secondly, one more encounter with the grace that, when we are open, changes us and brings us into deeper conformity with Christ, which means – you guessed it – a greater capacity to love.

Then with love immeasurable, Christ fulfills his promise and gives Himself to us that we may live by him. With Christ abiding in us, we go out to the work of the day. Christ in our memories, in our hearts, in our minds, on our lips, in our actions; Christ in us and we in Him!

And what does that mean – to live by him?

What does it mean to go out with Christ abiding in us?

Not, it was understood, to simply feel good about ourselves, confident that we are accepted by the universe because Christ “abides” in us. No, to live by him to live knowing that Christ abides in us was understood to mean – follow me.

The Seven Works of Mercy. Source.

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How could I have neglected this one? Especially since it can certainly be a..heated topic these days.

First, my memories, since those are the rules:

Despite the photographic evidence above, I didn’t ordinarily wear any head covering to Mass growing up, First of all, if you recall, I wasn’t taken to Mass until I was five, which would have been 1965, at which point, the head-covering rule was, if not formally dispensed, at least widely disregarded. That’s a photo of my First Communion in 1968, I think, so I was dressed for that. My mother is on the left, and a friend of hers on the right.

So that’s my personal recollection. That’s it!

However….

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My mother’s wardrobe points to the broader experience of head covering, and one that I want to speak to before opening it up.

“Veiling” has come back into fashion over the past twenty years. In my (Novus Ordo) parish, depending on the Mass, you are going to see hefty proportion of women and girls wearing veils - maybe 10-20%.

(Side note: I went to three Traditional Latin Masses in different parishes in France last fall - 2 in Lyon and 1 in Troyes - and not a single woman was wearing a headcovering of any type, hat or veil.)

There’s a lot of conversation about the practice, much of which involves spiritualizing the practicing of wearing a veil, specifically. Articles, books…many words describing “veiling” in ways that frankly, would be rather much for your Catholic great-grandmother.

The traditional practice - like, really traditional, was not about veils, but simply head-covering. In some cultures, veils were normative, in others shawls or hats. And remember, aside from the Biblical injunction and the mention in the 1917 Code, it was simply the social norm for mature adults to always wear a head covering of some sort in public. Hence the necessity of the hat-check in restaurants, since men don’t (aren’t supposed to) wear hats indoors.

Rather than take up space here, I’m going to refer you to an old, but definitely still-worth it post from Aliens in this World - repository of all sorts of great nuggets of Catholic information, still going strong after decades! I don’t know if all of the image links still work, but give it a shot. Maureen reminds us:

In Italian, Portuguese, and Hispanic ethnic parishes (and Filipino, Japanese, and Korean ones, since they were heavily influenced by Hispanic missionaries), sure the ladies wore lace veils and even real mantillas. But in most of the US, pre-Vatican II Catholic women wore a wondrous variety of Sunday hats, sometimes augmented by kerchiefs, shawls, hairbows, and the like. Lace chapel veils (what most people mean by “mantilla”) didn’t become widely popular until the beehive hairdo.

Look at vintage images of Catholic schoolchildren at Mass. The girls aren’t wearing veils. Most of the time they’re wearing a little beret or something similar that’s uniform-issue.

Scarves were very popular. Have it round your neck or over your shoulders, then pull it up for Mass.

Take a look at this old, amusing vintage Irish film on “Manners at Mass” - I can’t embed it, but it’s definitely worth your time, not only for the variety of female headgear, but for the peek into pre-Conciliar Mass habits, good and bad.

And, this brief scene from The Quiet Man:

All of this is to just say that the contemporary spiritualizing of wearing a veil, specifically, is an intriguing example of how thinking about spiritual practices, well, develops.

Finally, here’s a page from a 1962 book on American Catholic Etiquette.

Note what is “obligatory” - a hat. A veil is “permissible.”

My point? Essentially what I made above and what Suburban Banshee wrote years ago. The spiritualization of veil-wearing with this current emphasis on “veiling the sacred” is a development of Catholic traditions - interesting, not illegitimate (I guess), but a way of explaining the practice that would be unrecognizable to our foremothers who in a pinch, grabbed a handkerchief and called it a day.

First, the first (free) post of The Saint Around the Corner is up, Paid posts begin on July 1, no pledges will be turned into paid subscriptions until that date.

Secondly, I’ve decided to use this space to republish some of my related posts from Charlotte Was Both. They’re all still over there, but this is just an added platform to make those posts - which I think are worth preserving - available to more people.

I’ve created a separate section for those posts and will not be sending them out via email on the regular. Maybe once a month I’ll email with an update. Don’t want to inundate you with repeats. This is simply an archive, but do feel free to share.

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Apropos of absolutely nothing that is going on in the world, apropos of not a single traffic-generating SEO, I present to you the fruit of my return to digging through academic journals for odd or interesting things to share in this space.

Today:

Full version:

You can see from the caption what the image is.

I ran across it in a chapter from a book: Quid est sacramentum?: On the Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe and the Americas, 1400-1700. The chapter is by scholar Aden Kumler and is called Counterfeiting the Eucharist in Late Medieval Art and Life and much is available here.

What is going on in this image?

What is confusing, I think, is that Kumler discusses the image in an article about the question of counterfeit Eucharist during the period – the theological discussion of using unconsecrated hosts either accidentally or on purpose – either nefariously or for a purported spiritual purpose, but that’s not really the core of what this image is about.

But anyway:

Quick side note – why would unconsecrated hosts be distributed to the faithful? Sometimes accidentally, sometimes out of spite, I suppose, but two possible rationales that were seriously discussed by medieval theologians: to give comfort to a dying person who might vomit the viaticum – protecting against possible sacrilege on that score – or (and this is interesting) to not have to deny Communion to a person who was known by the minister to be in a state of mortal sin, had not confessed, but would become suspect in the community if he/she did not receive Communion. (Kumler 68-69)

Kumler is discussing the tension between appearance and reality in the reception of the Eucharist, and as depicted in art. But I am not sure the connections she makes here work, but I’m mostly here for the art. I’ll just briefly outline what she says about this piece.

She points out that the scene is very clearly taking place outside of the Mass. But then she suggests that what is going on here is an attempt to depict the impact of unworthy reception on the recipient. Notice the differences in the images on the hosts – moving from left to right – a Christ Child, bread and then a toad or a frog being given to the very creepy looking fellow, clearly in a state of sin.

So what is this depicting? Is it depicting counterfeit hosts or the impact of indifferent or unworthy reception? Kumler’s sense of the theology does not seem right to me but here’s what she says:

The circumstances pictorially described by the illuminator are precise, and precisely motivated. In this miniature, the Lehrbiichermeister has painted a limit case in which the circumstantial guarantees provided by witnessing the performance of the Mass are withheld. in a systematic fashion, the illumination thus alerts its beholder to the impossibility of sensually perceiving sacramental validity under ordinary circumstances.

But painting, the illumination mutely asserts, is — like the Eucharist itself —not subject to the dictates of ordinary circumstances and routine sense experience. With considerable artistic license, the Lehrbiichermeister virtuosically demonstrates how works of art can make visible and vivid truths that would otherwise be inaccessible to the eye. Through its simulative powers, the miniature allows us confidently to discern what would, ordinarily, be impossible to perceive: the first wafer is indeed Christ’s body, but the second and third wafers have been transformed further. Thanks to the inner states of their recipients, these hosts are no longer the Eucharist. The painting thus invests its beholders with a kind of moral-spiritual x-ray vision, allowing them to see the transformative effect of tepid piety upon the second communion wafer and the debasement worked by grievous sin, registered in the third communion wafer and in the repulsive appearance of its recipient. The three clerics standing at the altar remain placidly unaware of what the Lehrbfichermeister makes the beholder of the image see quite acutely: not only the hideous presence of a hidden sinner, but also how weak faith and unabsolved sin transform the transubstantiated bread of life into mere food, or else a poisonous morsel.

I don’t think that quite captures it, since the Real Presence of Christ doesn’t leave the Host – but there’s a tension that the artist is attempting to visually portray – the substance of the Host and the impact on the unworthy recipient.

She gives us another image, from a Venetian Book of Hours, this one more clearly tied to unworthy reception of the Eucharist.

Disposed in a pointedly chiasmic composition, these two-pan sacramental vignettes on the left and right sides of the image are a single artistic conceit that diagrams the very consequential differences between the good and the bad confession, the good and the bad communion.

On Christ’s favoured right side (the left side of the composition as the beholder sees it), the making of a valid, complete confession and the priest’s gesture of absolution has broken a dark cord that encircles the penitent’s neck and floats against the blue back-ground of the painting while a thwarted demon hovers above, holding a length of this broken bond in its hands. In the foreground, overlapping this scene of liberation, a kneeling communicant receives a host from a deacon. The minute form of a dove perched upon the wafer serves as a visible indication of the grace conveyed by the host. The ultimate consequences of these two acts of valid sacramental participation are figured above where two hovering angels hold in cloth-covered hands the decorous twinned forms of two naked souls in prayer, presumably the souls of the devotees.

On Christ’s ‘sinister’ side (the right side of the composition) the illuminator again depicts the sacramental acts of confession and communion, crowned by a psychopompic vignette, but here the variable of impiety animates the pictorial equation and the result is terrifying.

In the foreground depiction of confession, the kneeling man’s impenitence is made strikingly visible in the form of the long dark cord that passes through the scene of communion, as it is hauled diagonally upwards by a muscular demon. Penetrated by the dark cord of sin, the interaction of the deacon holding the host and communicant on the right side of the image completes the pictorial lesson in sham piety and its consequences.

Looking closely, we can discern that the minute wafer the deacon offers to the kneeling male figure conveys a poisonous presence: the tiny black form of a scorpion. That this unworthy communicant eats unto his own damnation is pictorially confirmed in the upper reaches of this half of the composition where the figures of two demons, hellish foils to the angels on the left side of the painting, hold aloft in their grasping arms the agitated damned souls of the unrepentant figures of false piety below.

So I found the article a little confusing – is the point fictive Eucharists or counterfeit/unworthy reception?

Nevertheless, it was interesting, and I’m sharing it with you not only because I thought you’d appreciate the art, but also to take a peek at what history reveals about the complexities and tensions related to the Eucharist and pastoral care. Nothing new there, really.

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My themes are history and transparency, right? Take a good look of the history of the reception of Communion and talk about it forthrightly.

A series of previous posts from early in the summer are linked below. Yesterday, I gave you a couple of more authoritative links – and let’s add Mediator Dei to that, and wrote a bit about the Church’s historical presumption that a spiritually engaged Catholic will, indeed, seek to receive Communion regularly and as frequently as possible.

The assumption being, of course, that “spiritually engaged” means deeply intentional, properly disposed, and in communion with the Body of Christ in belief and practice.

Not “I was baptized so it’s my right to receive Communion no matter what. Gimme.”

Today I want to detour just a bit and revisit history of the laity and Communion from another angle.

For the fact is, that through much of Catholic history, despite the exhortations of the spiritual masters and saints, laity were not expected to receive the Eucharist more than a couple of times a year. Even in areas where Mass was regularly available, the practices evolved that did, indeed, discourage or even prevent the laity from receiving: it was simply not distributed to the laity during Mass, or it was distributed afterwards, or sometimes even before – as I noted in this post about a classic sociological study of an early 20^th century Quebecois community, St. Denis – I made a pdf of the chapters on the Mass, which some of you might find interesting. I know I always appreciate reading more objective descriptions of Catholic practice from outside observers.

So yes, there seemed to be a great distance between the spiritual assertions of the early Church fathers about the importance of receiving Communion as a part of the Eucharistic celebration and the practices that evolved over the centuries.

Hence, the emphasis of the liturgical movement on this very matter. Outside of the scholarly arena, the goals of the popular, lay-oriented liturgical movement of the 20th century were all about engaging the laity more deeply with liturgical action and encouraging the laity to receive Communion.

But again – this did not take the form of simply declaring, “All are welcome! Forget your neurosis and scrupulosity! Just come on up!”

Not at all.

As I’ve discussed here and in other place, the focus of this lay-centered corner of the 20^th century Liturgical Movement was all about, first, education, and then, encouraging the laity to receive Communion more often – as the result of a deeper prayer life and more frequent Confession. Which then, it was hoped, would result in a more engaged, grace-filled laity that would, in turn, be more effective in bringing Christ into the world.

The difference between that and the current push to throw off purported “barriers” between the laity and Communion is profound, I think, is about more than “just” the Eucharist.

Here’s what everyone agrees:

The person who approaches the altar to receive the Eucharist should be “properly disposed” and “worthy.” This is deeply rooted in Scripture and Church practice. It just is.

The question is – what does it mean to be properly disposed and worthy? I unpacked that here, and I encourage you to read it.

Pulling together the historically-oriented discussions I’ve tried to have here, I’ll shorthand it this way:

It seems to me that the tension results in part from assuming that the best thing is to institutionalize the practices of the intentional Christian community of Acts in a modern Church whose practices, expectations and membership reflects 1500 years of unintentional Christian community.

Here’s another example:

In the 1960’s, Catholic authorities decided that the mandatory, year-round Friday abstinence obligation was a relic of a legalistic medieval past and not only could, but should be dispensed with. As I’ve noted before, though – to give them credit – they didn’t just ditch it. In most documents announcing and contextualizing this massive change, these same Church authorities wrote of the continued importance of observing Friday – the day of the Lord’s Passion and death – in a way that involved sacrifice. Done now, however, freely and intentionally, as intentional Christian disciples would, of course, do.

So what happened? What did we do?

We …ditched it and forgot about it.

A commenter on one of my blogs once offered a remembrance of how his parents and the friends in their Catholic neighborhood responded to the elimination of meatless Fridays – by throwing a huge steak cookout party, of course!

And so we enter into that fraught, difficult area of obligation and the freedom of the Christian, worked out in various ways over the centuries, always an matter of tension, both in terms of group practice and identity and, as we all know, our individual spiritual lives.

But the point is this: when you read the documents of the Second Vatican Council, you encounter, among other things, heady idealism about the world and human nature and trust that of course we are all going to be conducting our faith lives at the highest level.

Which, as I’ve written about before, is natural for such documents, but also, well, unrealistic. It’s long seemed to me that the genius of organically developing Catholic practice is that it takes into account human weakness and laziness. So for example, the much-maligned strict rubrics that a priest celebrating Mass in earlier eras were bound by, under pain of sin, even mortal sin. How restrictive! How retrograde! Let the Spirit flow!

Well, you don’t have to be a priest to understand the impact of habit and repetitiveness on any practice, especially religious practice. As we move through our lives, we lose our enthusiasm, we are beset by doubts, we go through dark nights, we get bored and what was at first a marvelous, miraculous gift of an experience evolves into a bothersome routine, and we just want to get it over with.

And you can well imagine, this can happen to a priest celebrating the Mass.

He may be experiencing all of that – but does he have the right to bring the congregation into it? Don’t the women, men and children gathering for Mass, bringing their own hopes and joys, have the right to a proper, elevated experience of worship, no matter what’s going on in the celebrant’s head?

Yes they do.

Hence the rubrics. Hence the sinfulness of violating them: it’s uncharitable, in the deepest sense, to deprive others of a full experience of worship just because you’re bored with it.

Which is a bit of a detour, isn’t it? The point, I suppose, was that in that tension between obligation and freedom, both play a part in our spiritual lives simply because we are not angels. And sound Church practice recognizes that, without condemning us either.

So, back we are to the reception of Communion.

I spent some time a couple of weeks ago reading two of the most iconic post-Vatican II popular catechetical works: the Dutch New Catechism and Christ Among Us, the latter being one of most commonly-found American catechisms both for adults and teens – it was our foundational catechism in high school (1978-82).

You can read them both via the Internet Archive.

I was particularly interested in their treatment of this issue, and what I found was, of course, the idealism of the Conciliar years: noting that yes, to approach Christ in the Sacrament called for one to be ready and worthy, but also characterizing that disposition in the most general way, coupled with the expectation that if one went to Mass, one should receive – that the active participation which a Catholic is called to involves receiving Communion.

Circling back – the assumption that the Early Church ideal was applicable to the present day. In a way, of course, that ignores context – the early Church’s exclusion of public sinners from even attendance at the Eucharistic celebration – and the impact of 1500 years of history.

This has been long and typically convoluted, and guess what, I’m not even done yet. This is why I work these notions out in this space – I can meander, and then later gather everything together in a more cohesive way. So thanks for putting up with it, at any rate.

So what’s the point?

So far it’s been:

The present day encouragement for all to receive Communion, simply because they are Catholic, desire to receive, and judge, themselves, that they should and can based on that desire is not consistent with Catholic practice from any point in its history.

Throughout that history, when Catholics have been encouraged to revisit their practices and receive the Eucharist more frequently and regularly, it has never been in the context of a concern that individuals not feel excluded from the table or feel like “sinners.” It has always been exhorted in the context of a call for individuals to deepen their spiritual lives, turn away from sin and conform themselves more closely to Christ.

The call to receive the Eucharist more frequently, even at every Mass, has been presented with the hopeful trust that all Catholics could be as intentional and Spirit-filled as those early Christians sharing the bread and cup in Jerusalem – not that they already are.

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Eucharistic Coherence 1

Eucharistic Coherence 2

Eucharistic Coherence 3

Eucharistic Coherence 4