The Momentum of Non-Change

We’ve been fairly fortunate since our church fire to have consistent worship in one place on Sundays. Today, however, was the only exile weekend (late September to mid-April) in which our usual venue, the Iowa State Center’s Benton Auditorium, was booked. So we decided to do as much as humanly possible to promote the change. We were able to score the large hall in the student union across the street from our building. Worshipers were able (as they have been for the past three months) to leave their cars in our new parking structure, and walk across the street for Mass. The Knights also picked this weekend to welcome people back (temporarily) to Campustown with a pancake breakfast.

But as we hoped wouldn’t happen, not everybody got the message. It was on Facebook–all the parish Facebook pages. It was tweeted. It was on the banner all week at the parish web page. It was communicated in “traditional” ways–the post-Communion announcement and the print bulletin.

One of our more active students posted to Facebook:

This was not published very well …

I admit feeling a bit stung by that.

It’s a good thing modern Catholics, God bless them, don’t live in a catacomb-to-catacomb Sunday existence anymore. But they do have expectations of … what’s that monastic virtue? … stability.

It is a good thing to have a known, comfortable, and expected place to which to go to worship. Seven more weekends. Can’t come soon enough.

 

Sampling the Music Scene

Jeffrey Tucker calms down and pulls back from his elation on Tuesday:

Fixing this fixes nearly everything.

And today:

There are two errors to correct in the news that Bishop Alexander K. Sample is headed to Portland, Oregon. The first is that it means nothing. The second is that it means everything. As is often the case, the reality will be something in between.

The reality is always to be found between two expected extremes. If you believe the reform2 camp, it was all vocal cords and roses before Vatican II, and all guitar chords and crap afterward. That might not be as gross a caricature as it might seem. Jeffrey does talk about 1968-2010 as if it were a monolithic age of impoverishment. I found a 1983 Music Issue from OCP at the bottom of a box a few years ago. Not much similarity between that and the 2011 on my office bookshelf. It’s been a significant and steady upward crawl from there. Oh, wait: Jeffrey is already talking about that today:

The change won’t happen immediately. It might not even be detectable by anyone but the closest observers. It might takes several years. But it will come. And the Church and her liturgy will be much better off as a result. Making this change in Portland will spread change to the whole of the American Church and then to the whole of the English speaking world and then to the whole rest of the world. This is the center, the core, the spot from which a major problem that exists in the Catholic world can be rectified.

This is typical of my excitable friend. He starts off with a dose of reason. Change is incremental. Change happens slowly, and often with great resistance. Our life experiences in the Church and outside of us inform us of this.

Of course, the kind of change he’s been speaking of has been taking place in the Catholic Church over the past fifty years. OCP included. Comparing Music Issues twenty-eight years apart makes it seem like night and day. Anybody want to check on how many of the Hymnal for Young Christians are still in pews? Those red, sky blue, or orange Glory & Praise books? Tens of millions? Are you sure? Are all those Protestants still laughing at “Here We Are”? Really?

Jeffrey dreams big. Portland to all of America to the English speaking world to the whole planet. Suddenly Bishop Sample seems to be at the spiritual epicenter of “everything.” Oops.

There are a lot of false assumptions running up the spine of reform2. It’s one reason why the movement borders on dangerous–a lack of respect for history. You heard that right.

Jeffrey and his young CMAA turks think that we’ve all been languishing with Pete Seeger for the past two generations. The truth is that Ray Repp was exploring plainchant before most of these guys were born, and before Jeffrey could define “anarchism.” He concedes Bishop Sample’s approach of gratitude and gentle urging forward is wise and effective. And he’s right. Too bad many of his buddies don’t emulate it.

As for me, don’t criticize me because I choose not to fly in your flock. Just thank me for learning to read chant notation (1984) for improving my abilities as a singer and conductor (since 1983) for a theological education, for teaching plainchant hymns, propers, and antiphons to my choirs for the past two decades. Acknowledge that your contemporaries in American church music don’t betray chant by not programming it 100% of the time.

And here’s the thing: everyone knows that things must change. The problem with Catholic music is famous. I’ve never spoken to a group of Catholics where the problems are not well known and understood widely. You only need to raise a slight eyebrow on the subject to garner laughter. Everyone knows. More importantly, everyone at OCP knows too.

Of course things must change. That’s the whole point of reform. Of liturgical renewal. It was bad and worse in 1950. I don’t think the problem with Catholic music is “famous” so much as it galls a number of people who care. People have laughed at me for being Catholic for a lot more than their possible perception of poor church music. I was asked to play guitar at a friend’s wedding in a Protestant church many many years ago. “That was actually quite … good,” their music director said. I said thanks and I packed my instrument and left. I know I work on my musicianship, and even three years into playing, I was a far better than average guitarist. But I don’t need the regard of snobs to keep me afloat.

“Everyone” at OCP indeed knows. That’s why they offer a substantially better set of options today than they did ten, or thirty years ago. Perhaps if Jeffrey really talked with his “friends” at OCP and less with the bitter voices of resentment in CMAA, he might learn a thing or two. I suspect that if Bishop Sample is as described today, he’ll learn a thing or two in Portland too. Somewhere between nothing and everything.

 

Sampling Some Bitterness

I see the Chant Cafe commentariat is excited about a new sheriff bishop riding into Portland. There’s a good bit about which to comment about this move.

Careerism, first. I remember feeling hopeful about Pope Benedict’s early episcopal appointments in Marquette and Nashville. Wasn’t Nashville’s bishop even baptized in the cathedral? In my thinking, it’s about more than tradition for tradition’s sake. There is a serious pastoral disconnect in the episcopacy these days. That’s not to say that skilled bishops are achieving success or fruitfulness in a third, fourth, or even fifth diocese. But the serious matter is the jockeying for plums, rather than contentment in serving one’s local church. I could understand a bishop being appointed from outside a troubled diocese to bring a degree of healing and order. But the pipeline of otherwise good candidates from small cities to larger doesn’t benefit those smaller communities, and seems to perpetuate a certain insular subculture, separating bishops from the laity. Not to mention the clergy.

Canon law, second. Bishop Sample is a canon lawyer. Ho hum. Is the Church well-served by having so many bishops with such similar resumes? If music is so important, what about a singer, a conductor, or even (gasp!) a person with a liturgy degree. Personally, I’d say the route from abbots and spiritual directors would be more fruitful. One doctor of the church came to us from the catechumenate. And consider: the main interface between canon lawyers and the laity are through marriage cases. What else do we need them for? Appealing to the Vatican on closed parishes? Maybe that’s the idea from the Congregation of Bishops: appoint an episcopacy that knows how to dot its ecclesiastical i’s and cross its episcopal t’s. Fair warning: lots of lay people have canon law degrees, too.

Music. Wow. A canon lawyer from Upper Michigan is going to “clean up” OCP? Are music publishers really, and still, on the list of the Church’s biggest problems. Declining inner city and rural parishes. Not enough pastors. Sex abuse and cover-up settlements. Priests in non-sexual bondage. Bishops have enough on their plates–I doubt they are aiming for church music publishers.

Some of the more humorous comments, especially from people who live nowhere near the Pacific Northwest:

This news makes me feel like when the lights go on at the Easter Vigil!

Really? Christ brings light to the world, rises from the dead, and frees us all from sin. I don’t usually make connections between ideology and the very stuff of salvation.

They had 1700 years of Christian art to choose from (for the Breaking Bread cover), and they chose a picture of an explosion in a confetti factory.

Nice. Not only does the music suck, but the bishop will reform the graphic art department.

Going to Portland is to go to the heart of the issue. Fixing this fixes nearly everything.

I suppose it fixes even the art department.

Speaking for myself, I was never into heroes so much. When I was in Catholic high school, I noticed a minority of teachers were petty gossips, or who had affairs with students, or who had little sense of the self-control, dignity, and honesty my parents tried to instill in me. I listened to teachers I disliked, and I learned from them. But I didn’t emulate them. And I didn’t have really high expectations of them.

I never expected such people to come to my rescue. I prayed to God. I relied on a Savior, not a savior.

If things weren’t working well in my parish, I would look to my own failures and fallibility. I would try to change the things I could: my own attitude, my deficiencies as a musician or a pastoral person. I didn’t need to blame Father N for being a bad pastor. I can’t control Father N. I can make an effort to reform myself.

Likewise with the situation of church music today. Like my friends at the Cafe, I find many aspects deeply disappointing. I don’t affirm everything I see in the major publishers. But I also don’t think they’re colonies from hell looking to seduce the faithful, even the orthodox, into pelagianism or Wicca or such.

When it comes to art, I don’t expect quick fixes. Especially from a canon lawyer-made-archbishop. You can’t legislate quality. You can’t persuade with a fist. Music, like any kind of ministry, is darned hard work. There are no short cuts. It requires prayer, persuasion, passion, and tenacity. It doesn’t happen because a human being has suddenly been transformed into a savior. Hoping for it is a sure path to disappointment. And with that disappointment, I see the bitterness of the Catholic Right continuing to deepen.

So I wish Archbishop Sample the best on the left coast. I think it would have been better had he stayed put. But that’s not something I’m looking to the next pope to remedy. It will remain, in my view, a serious flaw in ministry. But at the end of the day, I think about what I can control: loving and serving my family and engaging my sacramental life there and in the Eucharist, loving and serving my parish community by being the best liturgist and campus minister I can be. Such a life allows me to focus on personal reform and renewal, and bringing Christ (when I can get out of the way) to a relatively small circle of people. Which is as it should be.

 

She or We, Caesar or Serf?

One of my pet peeves is listening to an individual refer to herself or himself in the third person. Example, when LeBron James announced on tv he was ditching Cleveland for Miami:

I wanted to do what was best, you know, for LeBron James, and what LeBron James was gonna do to make him happy.

I don’t know why a person couldn’t come right out and say, “I’m going to make myself happy.” The ego-centeredness will be communicated just as clearly–this guy had a television show to announce it, for heaven’s sake.

Not to pick on athletes exclusively, but politicians have done it. Artists and other celebs too. I’m aware illeism has a more complicated history than how it surfaces in the modern culture.

It has a historical context, too, either from a sense of self-importance (as in Julius Caesar) or humility (the rejection of some or all of the self in relation to a superior).

When the Church self-references as “she,” which is it: Caesar or serf?

David Friel leads off his defense of MR3 with a spirited advocacy for the Church as “she.”

The Bible uses lots of imagery, and one of the most pervasive, overriding images of Scripture is the marriage of Christ with the Church.  The image begins in Genesis, and extends throughout all the prophets; it is mentioned in the Gospels, and it takes center stage as the wedding feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation.  Cover-to-cover, the Bible is the story of the marriage between Christ and his Church.  Just as in earthly marriage, this heavenly marriage necessitates the union of a man with a woman in an inseparable bond that is faithful, fruitful, and utterly free.  For this reason, the Church has always been regarded as a feminine entity.  Now, our English liturgical prayers reflect that great truth.

One problem in all this is that marriage is a partnership between equals. It hasn’t always been so. And the Biblical notion of marriage has included the idea of multiple wives, especially for the privileged patriarchs from Abraham to Solomon. That marriage metaphor is part of Christian tradition. But these days, it’s overused quite a bit. The city is the bride, but the Church is a lot of other things, too. Branches of a vine. Sheep of the shepherd. No longer no-people, but God’s people.

Is Fr Friel elevating us (or she) to some higher level of partnership with God? Are we the Caesar? Or the hierarchy that seems comfortable with this notion? Are we some sort of equal marital partner with Christ, or is this just some ancient arranged marriage, and this is all about a wedding day and its adornments? That final reunion with God in Revelation 21–that’s a particular metaphor with a context–it’s used on conjunction with the city Jerusalem. (See Gal 4:26)

Have we become like Cam Newton or LeBron James, referring to ourselves in the third person in these most important prayers? Or is it a humble act of supplication: the third-person reference of a child? Maybe it depends on the culture and context.

I don’t have a problem with an accurate self-reference as “we.” It acknowledges we are an organic community, not an individual. It doesn’t overstate the marital metaphor and strain the cultural references of most of the Christian West. It states a reality about which some of us might shudder: that like it or not, we’re all in this together, clergy and laity.

Most importantly, we stand as a community called by God. That’s Scriptural, too. Maybe “we” is better in that it covers more bases, more metaphors, and it avoids some awkward places if we reflect on the bride aspect too deeply.

 

Auxiliary Worship

Some of you may have had this experience … having an auxiliary room associated with the main worship space.

In our temporary Sunday worship, we have chairs and a video/audio feed set up in the lobby outside of the auditorium. We need that overflow space, as we routinely have more worshipers than can fill the 455 seats at our 10:30 Mass.

Yesterday was a scramble, as the chairs were set, and the video feed was working. But sound? Nothing. A staff colleague asked me if he should read the readings. The people on staff at the center were trying to get that audio hook-up to work. I gave them the first reading and the psalm before giving the go-ahead. We actually had a permanent deacon visiting from out of town. So after my colleague read 1 Corinthians, we had a deacon proclaim the gospel and give a mini-homily. First time that’s happened to me.

They never did get the sound link to work.

Anyone else ever have such a situation, possibly with a technology feed to a basement or other room? What’s the best practice? Do you make sure the Word is heard? A songleader to lead the responses and psalm and maybe a hymn or two?

 

Burdens

From Peter van Breemen, SJ:

We are all wounded people. Therefore, we are all a burden to ourselves and to others. … There is no getting around this. We simply must accept it. We must let ourselves be healed by others, and be open to healing, correction, and deeper self-knowledge. We must also accept others without condescension as wounded people, bear with them, and contribute to their healing.

Fr van Breemen channels Jean Vanier to provide the spine of his extended essay “Respect–the heart of love” in his book The God Who Won’t Let Go.

I’ve been dwelling on this chapter in the book for a few days now. For myself, it merits a closer personal look–mainly because of life circumstances. I’m not going to bore you with that. I have two places to explore with this concept. It will be sketchy, so if any reader would like to elaborate a bit . .. go for it.

First, more briefly, most of you are aware of Jean Vanier’s apostolate with developmentally disabled people. In that context, he realized that every human being is burdened with some kind of “disability.” Are we obviously limping on a leg? Maybe it’s a leg of self-esteem. Or addiction. Or something deeply hidden. But we all have something. Are all healed? Are all whole? I seriously doubt it.

Second, with more elaboration, how does this recognition of a common disability affect our worship? Some things are obvious. We depend on God, quite simply. Our efforts alone cannot make for perfect or even optimal liturgy. Great learning, doctrinal orthodoxy, the ability to follow a recipe: none of these are guarantees that our failings will not surface in some way during a particular Mass, or routinely in the liturgy because of a missed opportunity or misunderstanding. As much as we try to celebrate great liturgy–and I think we should always try–we achieve only a shallow representation of something far greater: the Son’s expression of adoration and affection for the Father, united by the love of the Holy Spirit.

And to be clear, our petty mistakes, errors, irreverent moments, and even our catastrophic blunders that border on (or dwell in) sacrilege do not burden or affect Christ’s action in the slightest. God absorbs these too. God accepts poor liturgy, disabled celebrants as wounded people. He bears with our poverty of worship. He even uses it to invite us to healing.

A deaf person is not excused from the obligation of listening, of communication, and of integration into society. Likewise, a person or community struggling with worship is not excused from the effort to get better. In worship, we have something of an advantage, in that we are all in the same boat. We can cooperate with the ways in which God invites us to be a source of healing, correction, and self-knowledge for one another.

Difficult, sure. But very much a reality on this plane of existence. How do you see the liturgy as a source of healing? How do others in your community help this?

 

Kneel Or Not–I Like Not

Deacon Greg pens a manifesto for the good ol’ days. Man, I worry about this guy. He’s been hanging around the wrong crowd, I think.

Catechesis is fruitless. We’ve tried. You can show people how it’s done; you can instruct them; you can post reminders in the bulletin and give talks from the pulpit. It does no good.

I often feel the same way about priests and deacons. You remind them you sit in the pews every week. We watch them. The “uncatechized” watch them, and who are they not to imitate what they see in their leaders? They’re the ones on display, and a significant minority of them seem not to care. They do it the same way they learned it in seminary, five or ten or fifty years ago.

Take your time distributing the Eucharist. Act as though it’s the most important thing you’ll do all week. It’s not pecking your wife on the cheek when a longering embrace is called for. It’s not slugging back a shot of booze when savoring a sip of wine or even water is needed.

Of course catechesis is not needed. A good or better example is. Better than what is being given. If Greg’s parishioners are misbehaving, I’m going to place part of the blame on him and his clergy.

Problem is, that Greg’s commentariat won’t be satisfied with kneeling, on the tongue. They want people to stop receiving so they can go back to the one occasional, hurry-up priest giving Communion to the chosen few. I think there is a rose-colored look back at history. Some people are trying to convince us that our foibles and missteps have damaged everything. I’m not so sure Catholics of ages past didn’t have the same problem: they weren’t perfect either. No wonder that Tridentine bishop proposed keeping the laity home and safely away from ruining the Mass. On a web site this week someone accused me of sarcasm when I mentioned that.

So I’m going to offer this small pushback against the kneeling, on the tongue thing. If that helps your spirituality, by all means, live it and experience it richly. And if people are mishandling the Eucharist, show them the right way in absolutely everything. Especially by what is not said. And as for the rest of us, we encounter the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist just as profoundly as other Catholics.

 

Using Holy Innocents

Somewhere today, some preacher is likely drawing some connection from the massacre of the young boys of Bethlehem and abortion. And Newtown. Probably not the infants who die from particular diseases, or from famine in places like Africa, or even Iraq.

The problem with going too deep into the Matthew 2:16-18 narrative and using it as a springboard into the political issues of the day is pretty basic. Politics on this level is about critique, if not revilement of the opponent. The Christian view is critique of the self. If we are going to look at ourselves, it can be helpful to consider the ways in which our jealousy, like the jealousy of Herod, gets the better of us. Envy and jealousy are my biggest trip points. And while I haven’t committed infanticide to further my life’s goals, I am obligated to look within for sin, rather than check off the list, “Nope, I haven’t assisted in the procurement of an abortion,” and move on to my neighbor.

There are two other Scriptures presented, and I believe they illustrate my point.

First, is the psalm refrain from verse 7 of the 124th:

Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare.

The psalmist is talking about God’s redemption of the soul–not the body. Verse 5 speaks of the onrush of a flood:

The torrent would have swept over us;
over us then would have swept the raging waters.

I don’t know about your experience, but in mine, the inner surge of anger is well described here. It’s not always a flame. Sometimes I just want to take my arm and brush aside what stands in my way. A firehose would be more satisfactory than a flamethrower, as the flotsam of my obstacles would be pummeled away from my footsteps. I don’t want to be swept away by the torrent, and carried to a place in which I do not recognize myself.

Saint John gives believers the core message they can take away from Holy Innocents. Watch out for self-deception:

If we say, “We have fellowship with him,”
while we continue to walk in darkness,
we lie and do not act in truth.
But if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
then we have fellowship with one another,
and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
If we say, “We are without sin,”
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just
and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. (1 John 1:6-9)

And even if we have sin, even if we come to that shattering personal revelation, we also have the Lord.

My sense is that today’s feast is about self-deception, and placing a guard over ourselves, our intentions, our attitudes, and our spiritual lives. Christmas is just four days old, and we’ve already observed two red feasts. Stephen, the protomartyr. Plus the infant boys of Bethlehem. If we’re going to congratulate ourselves for personal suffering, and that we’re not the Newtown shooter or an abortion provider, perhaps we should take a closer look at what the Lord is nudging in our direction.

 

Holy Family Options

The Lectionary edition of 1998 gave us a number of new readings. The most prominent additions were for some of the white feasts that pop up during the year, including the observance of the Holy Family on the Sunday between Christmas and January 1st.

The “old” readings, now cycle A, are Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14, Psalm 128, Colossians 3:12-21 (or just through 17), and Luke 2:41-52 (the finding of Jesus in the Temple). The gospel reading is proclaimed every year, but the Lectionary gives options which may be used in years B and C. You might hear Hannah dedicating her son Samuel to the Lord in 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28, plus John’s reflection on love and the relationship between the Father and the Son in 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24. It might be a plus to have Psalm 84 instead of Psalm 128–the musical option for the Liturgy of the Word.

What do you think? Do these new readings offer any additional insight? Or is it better to keep the major white feasts of the year focused with a single set of readings?

 

A Skeptic on Liturgical Technology

In the comments, Mary asked about my averrance to the use of video images. She had some specific questions:

How do you think that parishes should handle it when the bishop issues a pastoral letter by video?

I’ve had to set up multiple televisions for this four or five times. I remember the process quite well. I can hook up multiple screens to a single player and run audio through a sound system. Once, in an unprepared parish, I held a microphone to the sound grid on a projector. Having monitored the message for four or five Masses on a weekend, I don’t recall any of the details. On the other hand, it happens so infrequently that parishioners may well remember the details.

When the bishop sends a video message, I’m a good soldier and I make the best of what the parish provides me. I’m usually the most technologically savvy person on staff, so it’s always left to me to coordinate the presentation. But I’m also an acoustic musician, and I believe in the personal connection between a person speaking or making music with a minimum of in-between stuff. I acknowledge this is just my idealism.

Can you imagine sermons being improved by a well-chosen image or two?

I can. But most preachers struggle mightily to string together a beginning and an end with a significant portion of meat in between. There are priests who could probably do this well, especially if they captured the images themselves, or worked with a photographer-collaborator. That last option would probably be deeply fruitful. I just don’t know how it would possibly work without a lot of practice. And many images are owned by people who captured them. Credit, and compensation, are due.

Showing hymn-words when there are more people present than you own hymnals for?

I will say that the assembly sounds great when their noses are not in a book.

Let me say that as a skeptic, I’m not totally closed to the idea. If a priest wanted to work with a photographer, that might be a great collaboration, like music & lyrics, or ice cream & cake. The last priest I knew who worked with a visual medium, employed a power point to enhance his “sermon” on respect for life–it was a Votive Mass for Life. He used it to cite long stretches of church documents. Eye-catching and accurate. Notable for being different.

My own sense is that unless one is prepared to use the medium of images and video as an artist, I think any presentation will fall short of an ideal. The commitment comes with the building, however, not with the priest. In a parish from twenty years ago, they used to regularly have “post-Communion meditations” projected on a video screen. I never saw one. The pastor who hired me put the kabosh on the project. He hated the big black screen above and behind the altar. But there was nothing to do with it, not even projecting a single image on a seasonal basis.

 

“Blue” Christmas

We’re not talking liturgical colors.

Teresa Berger posts on “Blue Christmas” on PrayTell. In my parish, we devote November to reaching out to those who have lost loved ones. So this sounds a lot like what we do, except the month before:

These are worship services designed for those who know that the upcoming Christmas celebrations will be painful for them, usually because of the loss of a loved one in the past year.  A blue Christmas service allows people to acknowledge their sense of loss and the shadow it casts over this holiday season, with its deeply emotional and familial  traditions.

Liturgy is a start, but by itself, doesn’t replace the necessary pastoral connections. People who attend a remembrance service for their deceased loved ones likely need (and recognize they need) further healing and those connections with people of their church community. I’m not sure that Advent, with reconciliation form II, one or two (8, 12 December) holy days, family and/or school events, and preparations for Christmas, is the best landing place for another liturgy.

Or perhaps it fills a need not covered at other times. Ms Berger is right that holiday time is a difficult time for people struggling with loss. Reforging interpersonal ties can start with worship, but it also needs personal invitation, and a sensitive reaching out to those in sorrow or pain. Does your community do anything along these lines?

 

Advent Wreath

Our townie neighbors to the north have their Advent wreath set up in their narthex. The icon of Christ in the center–that’s usually where they display an icon or image of a saint on the feast day. I like this set-up. I think it tempts young Christians to enter that circle, but hey–seasonal festive adventurism is good.

 

Anglican/Catholic Endings

Reading with some lament the abandonment of shared Sunday worship at Holy Apostles in Virginia Beach. The description of two separate altars, one each for Catholics and Anglicans strikes me as somewhat cringe-worthy. But it’s been a liturgical practice there for thirty-four years and hasn’t yet emptied the pews.

It reminds me of the situation my late brother found himself in many years ago. In California, he was a “high-church” Lutheran, and once found himself at a Catholic wake of a friend. The priest didn’t show up to lead the rosary, and my sister-in-law reported that after a brief check-in among those present, my brother drew upon his experience and offered his leadership services to the gathered Catholics.

A bishop is morally and theologically obligated to work for Christian unity. If indeed the time has come to end the Holy Apostles Sunday experiment, it is incumbent upon the bishops involved to forward other substantive ideas.

 

Choice of a Baptismal Day

I was noticing up-and-coming blogger, atheist-converted-Catholic Leah Libresco posted on her baptism yesterday. I’m always curious about the choice of a day for adult baptism when it’s off the liturgical year. The Church strongly urges Easter Vigil, of course. It does so with such an insistence that it presumes that if an adult is baptized elsewhere in the liturgical year, that it be prepared by a Lent of sorts. Not only by the elect, but also by the community, or a portion of it.

The 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time is an unusual choice. If Easter Vigil is not possible, there are other baptismal feasts, even this time of year. All Saints Day and Christ the King seem more fitting for this particular month. And a seven-week wait for Epiphany or Baptism of the Lord, is a thought too. The Orthodox embrace the Epiphany/Theophany as an appropriate baptismal feast, along with Easter and Pentecost.

The picture posted is also intriguing, as it features two clerics (plus one in the background) but no sign of a godparent.

I am aware of a conservative or clerical pushback against “RCIA” as it surfaces in parishes. It’s important to keep in mind that RCIA is, by definition, rite. Not a catechetical/faith sharing offshoot on weeknights or during Sunday Mass. One priest I knew commented several years ago, “I don’t do RCIA if it’s not called for.” I could well have commented, “If you’re a Catholic priest you sure should be doing it. What other initiation rite is there?”

Whatever rite was used, congrats to Leah on her baptismal day.

 

Confessor Station

Busy day today. First Reconciliation this morning. Thirteen second-graders, plus family. Still out of the church, so our lower lounge, ordinarily the setting for social life and large group catechesis, filled in as a space for worship.

Left, one of four confessor stations.

Catholics devote lots of pen and internet strokes to the orientation of the priest at Mass. I’ve never seen any discussion of the orientation at Penance. The old confessional booth usually finds the priest facing at right angles from the penitent, who is usually oriented toward the confessor.

Outside of the booth and leaving the screen behind, what orientation makes sense? Different priests I’ve worked with have different opinions. One liked to have the chairs facing each other. That is the way the “face-to-face” option is usually set up in the reconciliation chapel upstairs. Other confessors opt for side-by-side.

When we’re in our church, some stations are set up in pews, so the orientation is more the former. Otherwise, I angle the chairs at ninety degree, as imaged here.

Which makes sense given the Catholic understanding of Penance? Would some arrangements, and some clergy attitudes, cloud the action of Christ in the sacrament?