What we think is the right road
Our pastor is an innovator, an improviser, a mover and a shaker. We love the way he ad-libs during Mass – and the upbeat and humorous homilies he offers. Best of all, though, are the cool innovations he adds to the Mass. In other churches, the priests stick to the script, but our pastor isn’t afraid to be stylish.
But it’s the wrong road
In the sybaritic culture in which we live, silence is rare, solemnity is forbidden, and sacredness is incomprehensible. We are awash in the profane – and often we don’t know it.
Too often we confuse the blasphemous with the blessed, the modern with the moral, and the hollow for the hallowed. Anything new and shiny is seen as progressive. As the French writer Charles Peguy put it, though: “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking progressive enough.” Moreover, the New American Bible offers this translation of 2 John 9: “Anyone who is so ‘progressive’ that he does not remain rooted in the teaching of Christ does not possess God.”
When we are present – and assisting (that is, joining with the priest) – at Mass, we are at the foot of Calvary. The Baltimore Catechism answers the question “What is the best way of assisting at Mass?” this way: “The best method of assisting at Mass is to unite with the priest in offering the Holy Sacrifice, and to receive Holy Communion” (364). Because Mass re-presents Christ’s sacrifice, the Mass at which we assist and Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary are one single sacrifice (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 1367). Mass truly belongs to the Church Triumphant (those in heaven), to the Church Suffering and Expectant (those in purgatory), and to the Church Militant (those of us who, by the grace of God, are working out our salvation in fear and trembling, as Philippians 2:12 says.)
The Mass must never be thought of as the “property” of a certain priest or parish. Not too long ago, I was in Connecticut, and I went to Mass at a “progressive” church where the priest improvised many of the prayers. After Mass, the priest jovially greeted me, and I had the chance to inquire: “Father, why do you make up the Mass as you go along rather than offer the Church’s prayers?” Taken aback, he replied: “Because that is how our community wants it!”
What he meant, of course, is that he wanted to do it – pray the Mass – “his way.” The Second Vatican Council taught, however, that no person, “not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority” (“Sacrosanctum Concilium,” 22).
In Leviticus, we find mention of two priests, Nadab and Abihu, who decided, for unspecified reasons, to make an offering to the Lord “such as He had not commanded them.” They were promptly incinerated (10:1-2). They had violated the rules and rituals laid down by Moses. I rush to write that no one is hoping that fire will descend upon anyone who improvises in and during the liturgy!
To be sure, Mass in the Ordinary Form can accommodate distinctive cultural norms and expressions. As Bishop Peter J. Elliott has pointed out, however, “theatricality was another modernist tendency, first evident in the liturgical decadence of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when sung Mass became the vehicle for a concert. This decadence returned after (Vatican II), but in a twentieth century form focused around the individual. Some celebrants imagined that they were entertainers, imitating a television personality with off-the-cuff comments and jokes, even amidst the prayers of the Mass.” He continues: “There is no such thing as a ‘spontaneous liturgy.’”
Mass is centrally about worshiping God. It is never about human achievement.
Some key liturgical questions involve inculturation, which is a new term for an old Catholic obligation. How do we, as two writers put it, “contextualize and indigenize” the Christian message? St. Paul and other missionaries, for instance, had to adapt to non-Jewish believers. The Christian message is not merely European, and it must be incarnated in every society and culture. This requires recognition of and respect for various liturgical expressions but without validating, say, magical practices, superstition or novelties contrary to the Gospel.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, from Guinea, is profoundly aware of the benefits and liabilities of inculturation. He urges caution, saying that if one “claims to adapt the liturgy to his era, to transform it to suit the circumstances, divine worship dies.” Mass draws us near to God. We may be drawn to the “throne of grace” (Heb 4:16) on different paths, but always reverently, to worship the God who loved us to His death.
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.