Catholic Sensibility

(This is Neil)

My first conviction is this: Liturgy is never my own possession, or my creation.  It is something we are given, from the Father.  Therefore my own tastes, my own preferences, my own personality, my own view of ecclesiology, are marginal, of little importance, when it comes to the celebration of the Mass.  We don vestments to minimise our personal preferences, not to express or emphasise them.  Liturgy is not ours. It is never to be used as a form of self-expression.  Indeed the opposite is the truth. … I once heard that Blessed Pope John Paul never commented on a Mass he had celebrated.  It’s the Mass.

-         Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Homily, Celebration of Priesthood, Diocese of Westminster, June 7

I suppose that most Catholics will be in broad agreement with the Archbishop’s words. He is espousing what we might call “liturgical impersonality.” Of course, there will be disagreement about just when liturgy descends into mere self-expression. Furthermore, we might want to raise a few questions about the priest’s need to renounce “my own personality” – a need which seems to have shaped seminary formation before the 1970s with its discouragement of particularity, including particular friendships (see here). This renunciation of self can create space for God to act through the priest. Or it might mean that the priest replaces his own personality with an “ecclesiastical self” devoted solely to the church’s power, influence and reputation. It happens.

But, like I said, I think that most Catholics will generally agree with the idea of “liturgical impersonality.” “Liturgical impersonality,” though, isn’t something that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters might immediately recognize. I would argue that it is recognizable during the singing of traditional hymns. Still, when attending – say – a Methodist service, one usually is very aware of the minister’s presence and his or her guiding hand behind the planning of the liturgy. For most of the Methodists, the very thought of the minister facing away or using an “impersonal” chant will sound strange.

So, why might “liturgical impersonality” be a good thing? And, if it is, what might that mean?

I’d like to look at part of an older article (sub. required) on liturgy published by Fergus Kerr, OP, in New Blackfriars in 1971. (The article’s description of liturgical controversy might convince you that nothing ever really changes.) Kerr first quotes from Willa Muir’s study Living with Ballads (my emphasis):

Harry sang his ballad as if sure of understanding and sympathy from his audience. There was no need for personal invitation, emphasis, or deprecation from him. Consequently, he himself faded out of the song as he sang it. The ballad needed only to sing itself.

(In contrast, a singer of a less familiar ballad had to self-consciously “invite people to listen.”)

Now, someone might say, “Fine, the ballad needed only to sing itself. Who cares?” Kerr argues that, when “the ballad needed only to sing itself,” the song had access to a “strata of experience far deeper than the conscious and rational and civilized.” He likens these strata to “chthonic or ancestral memory.”

Later, Kerr quotes F.R. Leavis on tragic drama, which establishes:

[A] kind of profound impersonality in which experience matters, not because it is mine – because it is to me it belongs or happens, or because it subserves or issues in purpose of will, but because it is what it is, the “mine” mattering only in so far as the individual sentience is the indispensable focus on experience.

The broad similarity between Leavis’ “it is what it is” and the Catholic ex opere operato (Nichols’ “It’s the Mass”) is fairly evident. Kerr says that the point of tragic drama is to make us face “something essential about human life.”

Thus, like the ballad which “sings itself,” the tragic drama that “is what it is” has the capacity to move us at levels “deeper than conscious will,” a process that  we can liken to conversion – “a steady re-direction of the personality as a whole.” Presumably, if the liturgy doesn’t “sing itself” or isn’t “what it is” – if it is in part about the priest’s personality –  then it might teach us something or lead us to moments of emotional intensity, but it will be shut out from these deeper levels.

But, practically speaking, what does this mean? I think – and I continue to draw from Kerr – that we can say one thing that will seem “conservative” and two things that will seem “liberal.”

First, liturgy depends on a “feel” or “a whole atmosphere of reverence.” There is a significance – more than conscious and rational – that only comes through proper enactment or performance. This means that liturgy must be celebrated with care and objectivity, that gestures and tone of delivery are really quite important.

Second, “liturgical impersonality,” like the ballad or tragic drama, depends on a “community of feeling.” When this ceases to exist, a liturgy, no matter how traditional or meaningful for a past generation, really no longer works in the same way. “The priest who has to celebrate the Eucharist for people who are for the most part (as he too may be) groping and skeptical in faith cannot leave the rite to speak for itself but must intervene personally to commend it.” “Liturgical impersonality” can’t serve as a thoroughgoing argument for traditionalism.

Third, Kerr draws on the Benedictine theologian Sebastian Moore to argue that, if the liturgy is meant to reach us at deep levels, we can’t focus on the “empirical level.” For the liturgy to access the deeper levels, there has to be a degree of “light-heartedness” at the top level. “Holy fuss at the level where all should be ease and decent practicality prevents people from making their own highly personal equation of the bread and win with Christ’s body and his blood.” We can say, then, that “liturgical impersonality” demands rubrics, but dies at the hands of anxiety over rubrics.

So, the claim that liturgy should be “impersonal,” like the ballad that “sings itself” or the tragic drama that “is what it is,” might have rather surprising consequences. What do you think?

(This is Neil)

Some of the last words of Gaudium et Spes– the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World – read:

By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope—the gift of the Holy Spirit—that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord.

If it seems like the Roman Catholic Church – perhaps just in some contexts – is failing to foster that “lively hope,” we really should ask why. Put more constructively, how can the church be a sign, even a sacrament, of hope?

As I mentioned in my last post, the current issue of Theological Studies has a few articles about hope. Another one of them is written by the Australian priest Richard Lennan. Among other things, Lennan lists four elements that must be present if the church and hope are to be related. They are mostly taken from the Dominican theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet. These four elements are, in my opinion, rarely held together in most Catholic discourse.

First, Fr Lennan says that we must recognize the church as the “only guaranteed means of access to Jesus as crucified as risen.” This seems mostly argued as necessary to prevent a search for a direct “Gnostic line” to Jesus Christ, or to preempt reliance upon a mere memory of Christ – the seeking after a “corpse,” in Chauvet’s words. Through accepting the church, we hand ourselves “over to what is not the product of one’s own initiative.”

This element is an expression of hope, because the recognition of the church expresses hope that Christ is still alive – an “undreamed of possibility of love” in the words of Juan Luis Segundo – and can be encountered in word and sacrament.

(It probably should have been mentioned here that there is no reason at all to use “church” in an unnecessarily narrow sense. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified, “It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.” See my post here.)

Second, we must recognize that the church has an institutional dimension. This is a rather unlikely expression of hope. To be sure, institutions can be effective. But they can also clearly be self-destructive. By accepting the institutional church, we hope that we can retain institutional tools – including bishops as “bearers of tradition” – without becoming the sort of institution that insulates itself from self-criticism, dialogue or cooperation.

Third, for the church to be a sacrament of hope, it has to avoid “necrotic” temptations. These all involve “claiming ownership of the grace proper to sacramental encounters.” We sense this sort of temptation when doctrine is used as an instrument of managerial control, or liturgy becomes magic – a “way to achieve an effect we desire without having to face the consequences for our inner life of a genuine encounter with God.” We also see this in works-righteousness, when grace is supposed to function mechanistically. A “necrotic” church cannot be open to conversion – there is nothing more than what it already has and carefully guards.

I suspect that part of this would have to involve a renewed, and inevitably ecumenical, commitment to the doctrine of justification.

Fourth, for the church to be a sacrament of hope, it has to remember that it is a sacrament – a sign. The church cannot confuse itself with the Kingdom of God and just focus on defining its sacred boundaries against non-Church, while strategically expanding its blessed ecclesial territory. Instead, the church must “radicalize the vacancy of the place of God.” It shouldn’t attempt to fill this vacancy.

The church actually becomes itself by being willing to recognize the presence of God in other ecclesial communities and religions and forms of belief, because that shows awareness that it neither controls nor exhausts the Holy Spirit. And what is the church but a sacrament of the union between God and not merely Catholics or even Christians but “the unity of the whole human race?” (Lumen Gentium 1). Establishing “Catholic identity” is a paradoxical endeavor, because it is an act of dispossession. The church is most itself as a sacrament of hope for the “whole human race,” when it is least anxious about its own sufficiency.

In your view, then, how can the Catholic Church foster hope among people “throughout the whole world?” Or is this simply impossible?

(Regarding our four elements, it strikes me that most writers emphasize either the first two or the last two.)

(This is Neil)

Let’s say that someone tells you, with both finality and unmistakable sadness, “There is no hope for the church.” You, hoping that she has used “hope” in a somewhat indefinite way, say, “Look, there might be no reason for optimism, since that’s based on our estimation of human capacities. And that might be pretty low right now. But hope is based on faith in God and God’s promises.” She responds sharply, indignant after reading the reports of clerical abuse in Philadelphia and Kansas City, saying that you are still idealizing the church. The church is what the church will be, and, so, we can just happily disregard all of the empirical evidence before us, content that the ever-increasing distance between present reality and future promise will be magically bridged. At least, that’s what it seems you are saying.

Does hope lead to complacency? In the present issue of Theological Studies, there are a couple of articles about hope. One of them is by Dominic Doyle. A short part of it addresses this question, arguing that hope actually destabilizes any such complacency.

First, Doyle says that we have to define the relationship between faith and hope. Following Aquinas, he says that faith is the mind’s assent to a “divine reality that exceeds the capacity of the human intellect.” There is an “obscurity” in faith because of our intellectual limitations. And this cognitio aenigmatica leaves us unsatisfied. As Aquinas tells us, “the knowledge of faith, far from appeasing desire, rather excites it, since every one desires to see that which he believes” (my emphasis).

If we are to have any chance to “see what we believe,” we need another virtue besides faith. This virtue cannot be cognitive, subject to the same limitations of the human intellect. And, so, it is hope – located in the will – that moves us closer to God. In his commentary on 1 Timothy, Aquinas says that “faith shows us the end” but “hope moves us to the end.” (It is charity that finally “unites us” to God.)

If we have hope, then, we realize that faith is still inadequate, incomplete, enigmatic. We can have faith and still need, Doyle says, to “face difficulties and own up to its own personal and collective imperfections.” As we move in hope to the end, we discover that we are not possessors, but pilgrims and wayfarers, and our journey must involve purification. The way is cruciform.

The real danger is the temptation to believe that hope is not necessary – that faith is already sufficient. When it becomes quite clear that very bad problems still exist in the church, sometimes even in the midst of self-proclaimed orthodoxy, we imagine that faith just has to be imposed more strictly or defended more harshly. We become more and more anxious when we discover that theological faith can strangely coexist with self-deception, which leads to more and more desperate forms of rigidity. Or, perhaps, we just throw up our hands and wait for the magic solution that will suddenly change present reality to future promise. This is what the Jesuit Michael Buckley has called “bad faith.”

Doyle says that hope does not change the content of faith, much less suggest that it is unimportant. Hope presupposes faith. Still –

By registering the imperfections and internal tensions within faith, the virtue of hope moves the believer to expect more. It prepares her to imagine new forms of church, to see God at work in change, not only in continuity. Most importantly in the context of the abuse crisis, it generates a mindset in which the Church can be open to the difficult changes required to prevent such widespread abuse and failure in leadership from happening again.

So, then, it can be said that hope for the church should never lead to complacency. In fact, the very opposite is true.

61. The Liturgy of the Hours has as its goal the praise of God and the sanctification by prayer of the day and all human activity. Episcopal conferences can make adaptations in the second reading of the office of readings, hymns and intercessions and in the final Marian antiphons. (GILH 92, 162, 178, 184)

The Liturgy of the Hours has not made many inroads in non-mission lands. The sanctification of both time and human activity is a very noble one. However, if the Hours are ever to take root in the religious imagination and practice of the laity, a more far-reaching inculturation is needed. A monastic tradition–a very worthy one–will have to be overhauled before we see this kind of spirituality take root among committed Christians, let alone a religious minority in a mission situation.

I hardly ever get to Mass on Friday–my day off, and usually a time for catching up around the house. Today’s list: balancing the checkbook, mowing the yard, folding my clean laundry.

I alert you to an interesting blend of readings for today’s feast. The second suffering servant song, usually applied to Jesus, is suggestive of the rough-and-ready Forerunner:

He made of me a sharp-edged sword …

The entire passage is also proclaimed during Holy Week, just a bit more than two months ago.

Psalm 139 is just lovely, even when truncated like it is today. As much as I love this, I wonder if a better psalm would be the 71st, which is used on the Tuesday before Easter. My suggestion would be verses 5-6, 7-8, 10+13, and 15-16. Another thought would be to use the Canticle of Zechariah, which has been excised from today’s Gospel passage.

We have a rarity in the Lectionary, a passage from Acts used as a second reading. Likely it’s because it’s one of the few non-Gospel passages that directly references John the Baptist.

So John has inspired a Holy Week first reading, an “Easter-ish” selection from Acts, and a familiar Advent scripture for the deacon or priest to proclaim. All at Midsummer.

I can imagine the Church’s homilies today are/were all over the place. Any reports from the liturgical front?

Dr Karen Terry steps up to respond to the “Blame the 60′s” theme. And other criticisms of last month’s JJC Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse.

Most readers have their own assessments, opinions, and such about this. I’m not going to rehash anything more than just one point. Dr Terry:

Though we recognize that sexual abuse has always occurred in the Catholic Church, as well as in other organizations and society generally, we were mandated to study the problem from 1950 onward. It would have been prohibitive to study abuse prior to this time for practical and methodological reasons.

And this is my main point. It’s also why this quote from the May 18th press release has a problem:

The increased frequency of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s was consistent with the patterns of increased deviance of society during that time.

“Increased frequency” implies a comparison with the decade(s) prior. Dr Terry concedes that a thorough historical study of sex abuse was both beyond the mandate to study from 1950 onward. What she fails to mention is how much more unreliable her data set is, the farther back in history one studies. People simply didn’t report abuse in previous generations.

I’d also like to see how one backs up the claim of “increased deviance” in the 1960′s. I’m sure if you ask people who haven’t been lynched, spat upon, employed in American sweatshops at an early age, electroshocked in mental health therapy, or seen their way of life eradicated by European invaders, then sure: for many white adult men it was a rosy era indeed.

Dr Terry seems to have her dander up about not only the expected sound bites, but also genuine criticism and questions about her methodology and her conclusions. That’s fine. But don’t obscure the real debate because 14,000 news outlets picked up on “Blame Woodstock.”

It was a good and necessary report. I’m satisfied enough I can trust the data. But the interpretation of this data is important. Any false step, like suggesting we know there was an increased frequency of abuse at this point in time, will have an effect on any remedial steps we can take.

Maybe it’s not Dr Terry’s or John Jay College’s place to expand their study and focus on the bishops. But that’s where the concern of nearly every Catholic is today. Even Bishop Finn’s defenders accept he did something gravely wrong. They are content to receive and accept an apology. But absent in the messes in Philadelphia and Kansas City are any widespread desire to see the offending priests wrapped in concrete and tossed into the abyss of the sea. Why do you think everybody wants to see their offending bishop in a prison jumpsuit?

The American bishops have their million-dollar study. I don’t think it was money ill-spent. But now they have to look in the mirror and examine their consciences, individually and collectively, and begin the process of healing, making amends, and restoring trust. Here’s a clue: they aren’t going to get any help from the research department on this one.

Some direction on adding or suppressing liturgical feasts:

60. As regards the liturgical year, each particular church and religious family adds its own celebrations to those of the universal church, after approval by the Apostolic See. (Cf. Normae Universales de Anno Liturgico et de Calendario, 49, 55; Congregation for Divine Worship, instruction Calendaria Particularia, 349-370.) Episcopal conferences can also, with the prior approval of the Apostolic See, suppress the obligation of certain feasts or transfer them to a Sunday. (Cf. Canon 1246.2.) They also decide the time and manner of celebrating rogationtide and ember days. (Cf. Normae Universales de Anno Liturgico et de Calendario, 46.)

With Christian countries abandoning the obligatory nature of some observances and moving others to Sunday, I can’t suppose very many obligatory days are successful in mission countries. Any readers know of any in which some tradition has developed?

My sister-in-law has made the trek back east for my brother’s memorial service in the city of his and my birth. Family infighting seems to be trickling out here and there. I’m fairly glad I’m not there right now for it.

Instead, I enjoyed playing some jazz with my friends Brandon and Sean tonight. We still need to find a good drummer to hold us together. I’m not used to the harmonic changes in tunes like “Dolphin Dance” and “Mahjong,” and I tend to slow down the music when I take a solo. Nothing at all like church music. But my jazz brothers let me keep playing with them.

My wife suggested a retreat earlier this month, so I’ll be vacating ordinary life Sunday through Thursday next week. Unless Neil has a contribution or two, blogging will shut down for those five days. I may give my wife the passwords and all, and ask her to keep an eye on you commentators. I noticed Mark Shea shut down his comboxes over Fr Corapi, but I know we won’t have any problems like that here.

I could turn blogging over to my daughter. That would be interesting. Instead of Herbie Hancock and Monteverdi you might get Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

My wise spouse and generous daughter gave me a retreat for Father’s Day. It’s only been eight months since my last one. But I think the timing is right. With the upheaval of end-of-school, my brother’s death, and whatnot, I’ve kind of lost a spiritual thread. I feel a little bit unraveled. It will be good to get some sanity.

59. The blessing of persons, places or things touches the everyday life of the faithful and answers their immediate needs. They offer many possibilities for adaptation, for maintaining local customs and admitting popular usages. (SC 79, De Benedictionibus, Praenotanda Generalia, 39; Ordo Professionis Religiosae, Praenotanda, 12-15.) Episcopal conferences will be able to employ the foreseen dispositions and be attentive to the needs of the country.

Blessings are also a way in which the Church can present its generous face to non-believers, and if handled well, will be a good front for evangelization.

NCR is all over a passel of news coming out of Kansas City today.

On the liturgy front …

Bishop Robert Finn directed the diocesan worship office today to remove its participation in a special Latin-language “Solemn High Mass” being celebrated June 26, said a knowledgeable source in the chancery office. Organizers say the Mass is to “promote unity” among the faithful amidst the “discord and disunity during this present darkness.”

It seems that if anything has unified most of the diocese is an extreme distaste of the way sex abuse has been handled and a desire that the bishop resign.

What I’m sure is more the point of this liturgy is to calm and bolster the few faithful who are conflicted in their alarm over the grave sins perpetrated and hidden, and the sense that their bishop may well be in deeply over his head.

The main story is that the diocese may have broken legal commitments by not adhering as promised to a 2008 agreement that stipulated better behavior on reporting abuse. Naturally, that latter point will get sorted out in court. But it’s one more obstacle for the institution in Kansas City.

And lastly, if tradition won’t assist in vanishing the scandal, Bishop Finn seems to think throwing more clergy at it will:

Fr. Joseph Powers, rector of the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in St. Joseph, Mo., has been named the Vicar for Clergy, a new position, and “will assist the bishop with any allegations of clerical misconduct,” the diocese said in a statement.

Given the recent track record, I’d think the KC/SJ faithful would feel better about a lay person appointed as vicar for clergy. Of course, that would signal a full-scale retreat from neo-orthodoxy.

I loved my six years serving my parish in this diocese. I may not like the bishop’s ideology or his inexperience, but I wouldn’t have wished this mess plop in his lap. It just gets worse and worse.

Before:

After:

Jimmy Mac alerted me to this liturgical gesture for Kansas City unity. Where to start? It’s like “themed” Masses in the immediate post-conciliar Church. A Mass for Love. A Mass for Peace. Now a Latin Mass for Unity.

Unity is not about gathering all the flood survivors on one branch of the tree.

Unity is not forged or repaired in easy gestures that someone else does for you:

Toward this end, we have quite intentionally arranged for three priests of somewhat disparate callings to unite in the celebration of this Holy Mass. Specifically, Canon William Avis of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest will celebrate the Mass, assisted by Fr. John Fongemie of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (deacon) and Fr. Evan Harkins of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph (subdeacon). Deacon Wehner, Director of Sacred Liturgy for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, will serve as Master of Ceremonies. Seeing these priests come together for a common end – namely, the greater glory of God – will do more for unification of the flock than a myriad private prayers.

If the priests and deacon unite (albeit in hierarchical order), then surely the people will follow. Make sure, by the way, it’s an ideal photo-op:

I really hope you can help me in publicizing this event. Because this Mass is being offered for the intentions of Bishop Finn and for unity among his flock, and because footage of the Mass is potentially to be acquired by EWTN, we are really hoping for a full house.

Seventy-five people came out on a nice day for a stroll. Do they have a real hope for a “full house”? I do like that they borrowed a picture from NCYC (“Before,” above.) a few years back. Young people walking for Christ: that will fill up the streets. This, (“After,” above) not so much.

This is probably why the unity Mass won’t be in a larger venue. Learn from the mentor, I guess.

In addition to weddings, funerals are also a more common point at which the practices of non-Christian religions and cultures intersect with Church practice:

58. Among all peoples, funerals are always surrounded with special rites, often of great expressive value. To answer to the needs of different countries, the Roman Ritual offers several forms of funerals. (OCF 4) Episcopal conferences must choose those which correspond best to local customs. (OCF 9 and 21.1-21.3) They will wish to preserve all that is good in family traditions and local customs, and ensure that funeral rites manifest the Christian faith in the resurrection and bear witness to the true values of the Gospel. (OCF 2) It is in this perspective that funeral rituals can incorporate the customs of different cultures and respond as best they can to the needs and traditions of each region. (SC 81)

Commentary:

As we saw in our recent review of the funeral rites (note the page on the rites, above) the OCF is eminently flexible and pastoral in its approach. Wise and thoughtful bishops and ministers will utilize it to its full potential.

Much has been made on a few Catholic sites (like dotCommonweal) about the so-called Marriage Crisis.

I have little to add to 100-post threads and the usual hand-wringing. At the risk of some overlap, I’ll sum up my thoughts and experiences:

The bishops are as blameless as anybody, but then again, they don’t exactly provide leadership in evangelization, or more importantly, in maintaining Catholic culture in parishes. Witness New York and Los Angeles, where conservative, institution-preserving bishops have sliced away at campus ministry and young adult outreach in the name of balancing budgets. No worries there, I guess, as long as the immigrants keep rolling in. And you have large cathedrals to build/maintain.

Parishes are where young adult ministry happens or not. I was thinking about all the young people I know getting married this summer. I haven’t seen a summer like it since 1985, when I was invited to thirteen weddings of friends and parishioners. In the good ol’ days, we didn’t have hordes of conservative youngsters bowing and nodding. Our outreach was far more broad. If parishes began talking and (more importantly) acting like all were welcome, they’d actually start making inroads.

My parish is far from perfect, but we welcome everybody, even non-Catholics. We strive to make the parish a comfortable environment for people to come. What’s that you say? Too comfortable? What about challenge? Yes. Committed Catholics need to be challenged. They need to grow in their faith. They need to set aside old ways and embrace conversion. Even conservative Catholics. But more, Catholics, especially those not well planted in their faith, need the encouragement and back-up to live a Gospel life in a world that is not always amenable to Christian choices.

When Archbishop Dolan and others start talking tough on same-sex unions, it’s tempting to give up. Aside from the likelihood that his idelogical opponents are drooling over episcopal pronouncements, this is not helping marriage at all. There are so many challenges to spread the Gospel today, and we’re piddling away resources and time on what non-Catholics (mostly) are doing.

And can we dispense with the “ignorant laity” meme? For heaven’s sake? In the minds of some Catholics, there’s nothing wrong that a little head knowledge wouldn’t solve. It could be that two Catholics have the same set of information and knowledge. One toes the line and draws up a sign “We love our holy bishop.” The second is disgusted at immoral leadership and has long since left to join a community (hopefully) where some semblance of faith can be practiced.

That’s about all I can contribute to this discussion, except to say that if we had taken Vatican II more seriously, these issues would have been headed off years ago. Instead we are saddled with a sense of entitlement that seems happy enough to say, “To hell with the ones that haven’t stuck with us.”

Marriage, unlike Christian Initiation, is nearly universally observed culturally. And naturally, it predates the Judeo-Christian tradition.

57. In many places it is the marriage rite that calls for the greatest degree of adaptation so as not to be foreign to social customs. To adapt it to the customs of different regions and peoples, each episcopal conference has the “faculty to prepare its own proper marriage rite, which must always conform to the law which requires that the ordained minister or the assisting layperson, (Cf. Canons 1108 and 1112.) according to the case, must ask for and obtain the consent of the contracting parties and give them the nuptial blessing.” (SC 77, Ordo Celebrandi Matrimonium, editio typica altera, Praenotanda, 42) This proper rite must obviously bring out clearly the Christian meaning of marriage, emphasize the grace of the sacrament and underline the duties of the spouses. (SC 77)

I don’t know that there is much to comment on with this. The “faculty” rests with the national conference, not Rome and not individual bishops. The essential elements are the consent and the nuptial blessing. And of course, somewhere in its content to draw out the sacramental understanding of marriage.

Seminarians on board. How about the bishops?

I noticed that Cardinal Rigali was off to central Europe instead of the Pacific Northwest last week. No bishops’ meetings for the embattled archbishop. I didn’t know that John Neumann was from Europe, and a naturalized US citizen.