For the week of Sunday, January 23, 2022
Dear Friends,
Because we Catholics are so steeped in a sense of sacramentality, we are convinced that every public expression of our faith discloses what we really believe. We take human behavior seriously as an indication of our values, not only in church but wherever we find ourselves. Here I'm not speaking of sacraments as being limited to the "official seven," although it includes those. You can tell what a person cherishes the most in life just by watching them for a while. With whom or what do they most readily engage? Who or what do they believe has a primary claim on their personal resources? Even such things as body language offer disclosures. Where does a person choose to locate themselves physically, and what does their bodily presentation disclose when they are there? At a social gathering, for example, a person’s slouching alone in a chair in the corner is deeply sacramental and informative.
In church, this is all the more true. Our physical behavior reflects strongly what we think we are here to do, what we think is taking place, and how we should behave. Bodily expression holds a clue to all of these questions. It expresses our very sense of who we think we are before God.
About fifteen years ago, Pope Benedict VI made an extraordinary decision when he permitted, under some circumstances, the celebration of the Latin mass as it was before Vatican II. I thought it was a terrible idea then, as well as now, for exactly the reason that it has become so contentious: it split the church, as if we needed more of that. It has intensified the "liturgy wars" played out all over our country and certainly in our archdiocese.
Worse than the decision itself, in my opinion, is that the then-Pope opined that it's really the same worship offered in two forms. I beg to differ. The liturgy is the very sacramental expression of who we think we are as church, and these two forms of worship reflect a deep rift in that regard. A presider who doesn't face the assembly, is not the same thing as a presider who does. Latin, an unintelligible language for most Catholics, is not the same as English in worship. Two forms of liturgy that are so different do not reflect sacramentally the self-understanding of the same church.
So Pope Francis inherited a mess in this regard, a thoroughly avoidable one, and he is now working to restore some greater sense of unity in our liturgical prayer. And, of course, he's taking heat from all sides on that.
Fr. Mike