A Page for Sacrosanctum Concilium

Sacrosanctum Concilium has joined the list of pages in the header and on the sidebar. I will be cleaning up the individual posts over the next few days, editing out some extraneous remarks and standardizing the format.

Feel free to restart any of our discussions from six-and-a-half years ago. (Has it really been that long?)

Eventually I’ll also add links to other SC discussions, particularly the one Michael Joncas is conducting on PrayTell these days.

The eventual goal will be to have all sixteen Vatican II documents tidily organized on pages with links to each post. Each link will be marked with the section number plus a very brief summary of the content. For each document I’ll preserve the outline as we find it on the Vatican web site. For the next two weeks or so, I’ll be cleaning up individual posts from LG and SC. Then we’ll have Dei Verbum and Gaudium et Spes up by the end of June with edited posts. By summer’s end, I hope to have it much better organized with some revisions.

If anyone has additional suggestions, feel free to comment below, or use the comboxes on the pages as they become available.

 

Doing More With More

There was a fussy comment on a conservative Catholic web site a week or two ago about the way some of us liturgists go hyper when one person is signed on for more than one ministry at a single Mass. I was thinking about that as I was copied an email from a lector substitute for tomorrow who also happens to be on board as a greeter and usher for the same Mass.

These instances don’t bother me unless they become a habit.

Over the years and many parishes, I’ve known people who defined all their Christian activity in terms of liturgical service. And as a starting point, that’s not totally a bad thing. A willing believer and disciple must start somewhere. Nearly every active Christian worships regularly on Sunday. Many liturgical roles lend themselves to visibility. And visibility is a big part of how modern human beings engage in and with the world.

One observes a Communion minister or a lector and one knows what they do. A social justice committee, perhaps not so much. Is it about church social life? Is it about charity? Is it about politics? Or something else?

Even within the range of ministries I oversee, there can be a lack of clarity. At one art and environment meeting, a newcomer showed up. As I chatted with her, it became clear she was seeking a connection between her faith and the Earth’s environment. Not church building environment. An understandable mistake.

I think the liturgy is better served by having thirty to fifty people involved in thirty to fifty small tasks, and each of them doing their one task with attention, quality, and preparation. Three to five people in three to five jobs each–not so much. Sometimes everything gets done well. But sometimes not. The person who is reading the prayers of the faithful may have a brisk walk to get the collection started. And if the sacristan is also serving as a communion minister? What if there’s a spill and everybody’s busy? Not so good then.

One person/one ministry is not a hard-and-fast rule in my book. It’s a useful guideline. And when the semester draws to an end and people need a substitute, I don’t monitor those communications and throw up a red flag when a person lands double duty. I say a prayer of thanks. And hope the next person to get involved is as dedicated to worship.

 

Gloria Sends Cardinals To Conclave

Liam sent me an e-mail noting that the Conclave opening Mass sang the Gloria. I wasn’t terribly surprised. With MR3, it’s not so much about elevating the cardinals to the level of Saint Joseph (19 March) or the Blessed Mother (Annunciation, 25 March–but not this year). The Gloria may also be sung at wedding Masses during Lent, for example.

I was curious that they or Msgr Marini chose Gloria VIII instead of XV, the US choice. A better choice, I think.

 

Love Litany

Liturgy News, the quarterly organ of the Brisbane (Australia) Liturgical Commission, had a brief look at this clunker from the new Roman Missal.

(I)t remains doubtful whether a revised translation (of the Rite of Marriage) along the lines of the new Missal will be helpful. Look what has happened to thse favourite lines from one of the Prefaces for marriage:

Love is our origin,
love is our constant calling,
love is our fulfillment in heaven.

The new translation in the Missal reads:

For those you created out of charity
you call to the law of charity without ceasing
and grant them a share in your eternal charity.

I’m sure the Latin original is caritas, but there’s no doubt the MR1 is superior in this instance. A threefold repetition of a three-syllable word is just too much. It begins to border on caricature. That’s especially true given the frequent attendance of the unchurched at weddings. Charity has shifted significantly in meaning, and in the Western culture, is not always associated with something positive.

Losing this miniature litany is lamentable. Another casualty of the CultureWars(TM). Another turn off/tune out moment for the Roman Rite, just when we needed a stronger dash of evangelization.

 

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?