Do you know what ‘hermeneutic‘ means? If you do, Fr. Martin Fox has a reflection on the two hermeneutics used to view and interpret Vatican II that will provide interesting reading and fodder for thought and possibly even debate. If you don’t, Fr. Fox provides an explanation of hermeneutics as a part of the post. He is, as usual, well-informed and well-centered, reserved yet unflinching in his analysis. No matter which hermeneutic you find yourself using, there is ample feed for your intellectual chewing here. Something to whet your appetite:

The problem is, there is but One Church; or, there is No Church. I mean that the Catholic Church–if she is who we profess her to be, must be essentially one, or it is none. Meaning however apparent and interesting the “discontinuities” in relation to the Council’s impact, the continuities are vastly more significant. And we risk a grave misunderstanding of the Church and of Christ’s promises to the Church, if we miss that.

Personally, one thing I find both refreshing and edifying is his reminder that liturgy affects theology, although he makes the point in less confrontational terms than that. It is a great consolation to me when I hear a priest understand and put in practice the ancient law of “lex orandi, lex credendi” (literally, “the law of prayer is the law of belief”).

Very often the only grounding contact people will have with their faith these days is at Church on Sunday. If that experience is wishy-washy, influenced by New Age spiritualities or devoid of color and beauty it can only have a deleterious effect on their beliefs. If, however, that experience is straight-forward, allowing the inherent beauty of God who is the source of all beauty to flower forth, and has as its guide posts the faith handed on from the Apostles it can provide a source of light and guidance to all who participate. The former points in many directions weakly; the latter points in one direction strongly. A person can only travel in one direction at a time – offering the former allows them selection of any number of paths, some of which can lead to perdition, while offering the latter lays before them the road that leads to God.

Whew, it feels like forever since I’ve had a chance to sit down and blog. Okay, it’s been over a week – no wonder I was starting to twitch… Anyway, over at RCP a couple of days ago there was an exquisite post examining the hermeneutic of continuity (the hermeneutic itself, not the blog). At times educational, insightful and inspirational, it deserves your attention even if it is on the long side. I’ll start with the conclusion and let you re-start at the beginning.

I ask you: What paths do we have before us on which we can choose to move forward? We can dismiss his plan as naïve and ineffective, making snide remarks behind his back. We can distrust him, essentially labeling him as a deceiver who is using this idea of harmonizing Vatican II with the rest of Tradition as a means of leading the flock astray. Or we can follow his lead as our spiritual father, putting our trust in him and putting into action his hermeneutic.

Pertinacious Papist continues his examination of life pre- and post-Vatican II with a very interesting and accurate look at the reality of the missing reverence of modern days. I can’t yet share in his quoted Mosebach’s personal distaste for receiving in the hand, but I do recognize much of what he says as thoughts that have run through my head as well. It was how I was brought into the Church and frankly has been the subject of much consternation and internal debate for me. There is something less-than-reverent that I see with many people who receive in the hand but there are also those who receive well this way which keep me from making a blanket statement.

Every time I think I’ve had it watching person after person turning away from the host before it is even placed in their hand or snatching it from the hand of the priest, deacon or EMHC along will come someone who receives Jesus in their hand as if being handed a newborn baby and coddles it with all the care they can muster. Certainly as well there are those who receive on the tongue without even a modicum of reverence, although my personal experience is rather limited since the great majority I see these days receive in the hand. But the good doctor correctly reminds us that liturgical deformation is not purely about hand-vs-tongue reception:

The new outlook sees all the fastidious formulas, prescriptions and proscriptions of the old Mass as representing a flight away from actuality. It wants to simplify things, demystify things, demythologize things and get to the essence of things. However, in doing so, it misses the counter-intuitive insight that the shoe is actually on the other foot: all of these external forms, in fact, facilitate our advance towards actuality and usher us into the precincts of the Real Presence of the Person of Christ Himself.

Indeed, the question is not about what acts are done nor about in which exact way they are done. If one follows, to steal from St. Paul, all the prescriptions and proscriptions of the Ancient Mass but does so without love, the altar bells may as well be a clanging cymbal. We all, collectively, must come to a deeper and more personal understanding of just what it is that’s going on “up there”. Then the question of reception, of genuflection, of physical orientation will be discussed in a manner worthy of Him whom they consider. When we all come to realize the intent of those prescriptions and proscriptions, to see their liberating rather than oppressing purpose, then we will see that reform of the reform.

The great beauty of the Ancient Mass is that it is “prayed” rather than “participated”, “celebrated” rather than “presided”. At the same time, those properties need not be the exclusive purview of that Mass but rather must become central to the liturgical celebration of Mass throughout the Church, regardless of rite or country, priest or congregation. I pray that day comes soon.

Personal aside: I think I’m in the same position as Rich Leonardi only a short time ago – knowing what probably needs to be done, but in the awkward position of knowing (or, at least, thinking) some will sneer in condescension at my supposed act of superiority. And the last time I walked up to receive on the tongue, the host was almost placed in my breast pocket by a priest who hadn’t even looked up from the ciborium. After that embarassment to both the priest and myself I lost a bit of the nerve to be one of the handful in my parish who receive on the tongue. So in the interim, I carefully and lightly moisten my finger tips which held the host and carefully wipe my palm into which it was placed, waiting for the day when my courage to counter that culture returns.

Dr. Phil Blosser has posted an excellent reflection on the state of the liturgy vis-a-vis the desires of the Second Vatican Council especially as stated in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Of course, if you know the good Doctor, it doesn’t stop just there. In particular I find his question on whether the ready accessibility of every part of the Mass to the people without some amount of intellectual exercise is in fact damaging to their overall comprehension to be both accurate and timely.

But the issue goes a bit deeper than these extraneous (if entertaining) horror stories. The question, really, is what does it mean that anyone should want to make the Mass “more real”? We already know by virtue of the principle of ex opere operato that the miracle of Transubstantiation objectively occurs and the sacrifice is rendered present for us on the Altar, regardless of what anyone perceives or feels. What more could we want? If the sixties, which gave birth to these strategies for “making it real” are any indication, I suppose what we want is some intensification of feeling generated by external means: the spiritual acid trip. We do not want to rely upon our own disciplined active effort in entering into the cosmic rite unfolding before us so much as to be passively swept up in the event, the ‘happening’, the warmth of the engaging priest’s voice and words, his stories and jokes, the personal experience of the communal shared moment. In short, whether or not we thought there really was anything to this medieval mumbo jumbo about Transubstantiation, what we finally want is the piano bar, Jay Leno, and the acid trip.

Although this does bring to mind a question. If before what was going on “up there” wasn’t spoken of, and what is going on “up there” is still not spoken of at the pulpit, then why do we think people are going to understand what is actually going on up there? Have we settled, or rather have some in the Church settled, for a “good enough” understanding of the Mass? As I suggested in his combox, “the most closed mind is the one that thinks it already has the answer and needs know no more”. Put another way, that which seems obvious invites no deeper reflection to those not already inclined to dirty their hands in the hard work that is understanding the infinite. What do you think?

Jimmy Akin has a masterpiece of a post on the famous “smoke of Satan” homily from Pope Paul VI. This is one of the terms that has been twisted and bandied about by just about anyone who really wants to make a point about what happened during and after the Second Vatican Council. Jimmy’s unfolding of the original homily just plain makes sense, which is usually a good thing. Even better, it douses the smoldering flames of conspiracy with a good bucket of water. A snip of one part:

The Second Vatican Council did its work to renew the Church and to bring a new day of light. However, the Council’s work has been frustrated by an attack by the devil by means of broader sociological currents that were present in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as secular social experts and social movements and scientists who lack faith and political and cultural revolutionaries. These sociological currents (“the smoke of Satan”) have infected the Catholic community and caused many to doubt and trust the Church and turn away from the eternal answers it has to offer and folow after passing modern ideas that are hostile to Christian thought. In this way the devil has thwarted the work of the Council in bringing in the day of joy and renewal that should have followed the Council.

As is said in blogville: Go. Read.

Some of you will recognize the subject as the beginning of the infamous line from Joseph Goebbels which continues, “…and keep on repeating it people will eventually come to believe it.” Now…as if that isn’t a big enough lead-in to any post…

A friend at the catholic-pages forum posted a link to a story from James Carroll of the Boston Globe. If you haven’t already heaved a sigh at that combination you may not know of their combined, err, “issues” with the Catholic Church. The Globe, of course, is where the priest child abuse scandal really broke in Boston and they have angled after the Church ever since.

In this piece, Mr. Carroll goes after the desire of many in the Catholic Church to be allowed to celebrate the Mass in the manner stipulated by the Second Vatican Council. No, that does not mean free-form Masses, the “four-hymn sandwich” (thanks Amy – I love that term!) or the complete removal of Latin or chant. As a quick refresher in case you’ve been asleep for the past forty years, let’s review some of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
2. But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters.
…
54. In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their mother tongue. This is to apply in the first place to the readings and “the common prayer,” but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people, according to tho norm laid down in Art. 36 of this Constitution.
Nevertheless steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.
And wherever a more extended use of the mother tongue within the Mass appears desirable, the regulation laid down in Art. 40 of this Constitution is to be observed.

Now, if you’ve read this carefully you’ll realize that Latin was, in fact, never to be removed from the Mass in the first place. The closest one comes is in Art. 36 wherein the phrase “some prayers and chants” could be construed to mean “all prayers and chants”. But then, one is left to wonder, if the Council had meant “all”, why did they not in fact use the word “all”? Occam’s Razor would suggest, in fact, they never did mean “all” and its interposition is in fact an error.

This contrasts sharply with what James Carroll posits, having of course introduced himself as one “in the know” by repeating a well-known Latin phrase and citing his credentials as a former altar boy:

The first vote taken by the bishops of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 concerned liturgical reform, centering on use of the vernacular at Mass. If the Council fathers had voted against worshipping in language ordinary believers could understand, the revolutionary impulse driving that Council would have been stopped dead in its tracks, but the tally was overwhelmingly in favor. The Latin Mass was finished. With that single vote, the Council set loose a current of change that is still running.

Once Catholics entered into the mystery of the Mass as literate participants instead of as dumb spectators, an unprecedented renewal took hold.

For anyone who can read between the lines, Mr. Carroll has clearly insulted just about anyone who attended Mass prior to the upheaval following the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium. In his estimation you all were akin to sheep, or perhaps more accurately cows, meandering along an unwitting path totally devoid of knowledge of your surroundings as the hammer raised over your head. Is it true that many people did not know enough Latin to understand the “old Mass” and that there were liturgical abuses such as the “McMass”? Absolutely. But is it not also fair to say that many, if not most, people were raised with a sufficient knowledge of Latin to understand the Mass? Indeed, if you look into almost any Missal even today you see Latin on one page and English on the other. It doesn’t take a PhD. to learn the translation one to the other.

Now, as Pope Benedict has said previously (for instance, in his book Principles of Catholic Theology) given the length of time this error has been in force it is entirely probable that a surgical removal of this error and complete replacement of it with what had originally been intended would likely cause harm to the Church, much as its original implementation harmed the Church. This is why, I believe, the Pope is leaning towards not so much a universal indult but a universal clarification, possibly in the form of an indult (how’s that for cutting hairs?) that the use of Latin in the Latin Rite Churches is to be restored as a universal right not dependant on the whim of the particular Ordinary at the time. The further restoration of the Tridentine Latin Mass (or, as many of those who are strongly drawn to it would say, the “TLM”) is likely and I would expect it to be received as any of the other Rites of the Catholic Church only, I believe, in much greater number.

The one thing that seems missing from the whole discussion on liturgy among Catholics of different persuasions is often, sadly, respect for differing viewpoints. Is the Novus Ordo the cause of all of the current ills in the Church? Hardly. Abuses of the Novus Ordo are clear signposts, however, of those ills and at the same time pointers to what must be done to remedy them. Here’s a strange thought – it is possible the Novus Ordo is a movement of the Holy Spirit designed to highlight the dark corners of abuse which the Tridentine Rite with its strict regimentation and whispered (or mumbled or slurred or perhaps ignored all together) prayers may have left unlit. Is that a fault of the Tridentine Rite? Not at all – those participating in it, both at the altar and in the pews are called to an actuose participet (Art. 113), an “actual participation” (not the “active” participation that has led to some “interesting” liturgical inventions) which also presupposes a spiritual predisposition to performing a respective role properly and with humility.

I suggest that, now that these corners are lit, the time has come to allow the Church to reconnect with Her history and allow both the Tridentine Rite and Latin in the Novus Ordo to co-exist as equals with the vernacular Novus Ordo. After all, is this One Holy Catholic Church big enough for these Rites, properly observed? I think it is.

Update: Gerald has been good enough to give his own riff on this subject and link over to this post as well. Heavens! I have company coming – I’d best tidy up the place! Welcome to anyone coming here from his The Cafeteria is Closed blog!

Update 2: Diogenes has picked up on this story too (thanks for the pointer Lilo!). And, might I say, in his own unique way, nailed it. And he is precisely correct – how is it that the Globe manages to keep publishing personal vendettas like this and still call itself a responsible journalistic source?