I do wish and intend to address some of these particular matters, but I think that they are largely irrelevant, frankly. The image that comes to mind is that a building is on fire, and someone is worried about refurnishing it and redecorating it, rather than helping human beings escape from the fire to safety. That our culture is seriously flawed, that many human beings are suffering badly from the effects of major social problems, that life in the Christian churches is often mediocre at best should be obvious to anyone of sense. As I see it, to concern oneself with Latin in the liturgy, or with the direction the priest faces, or with the kind of music, or with vestments, or with proper liturgical diction (such as the highly stilted, cultic English in the poorly done new Sacramentary)—such concerns are frankly largely irrelevant. Even if a small number of traditionalistic Catholics want a return to earlier theological, doctrinal, and liturgical ways, from years of pastoral experience I can say that such people are a very small minority of practicing Catholics. Furthermore, based on what I have observed in my own diocese, the few young priests who have sought to impose such antiquated, Romanticized, and surely doctrinally and liturgically rigid norms upon actual Catholics have driven more people away from the Church, and surely have caused much division and needless squabbles over relatively unimportant matters.
We are all dying. It appears that our culture is dying, the country that we have known for decades is dying, the churches (Catholic and other) appear to be very sick or dying, and of course each of us individually is dying. Given the reality of our spiritual and cultural health (or lack of it), what possible good can arise from attempting to return to now fairly long-gone ways of worship, of faith and belief, of life? The attempt truly to help human beings by the kind of “reform” that these traditionalists seek seems to me at least as foolish and as tin-eared as the attempts of some clergy fifty years ago to “accommodate” to the “modern world,” and to adapt its ways. Granted the Catholic Church and Christianity in general are in serious trouble, the kind of quasi-Tridentine revival that I am seeing attempted seems to me inordinately foolish and unlikely to produce anything like the good results expected. It may or may not appear to be “beautiful,” but in truth it is more of a museum-piece than a return to the truth of God experienced through faith.
A different approach
Rather than respond to each concrete proposal of the would-be Tridentine or at least “pre-Vatican II” clergy and lay people, I wish to examine the real problems in the spiritual lives of real human beings in our society, as I have seen them from years of pastoral and teaching experience. I really have no wish to enter into any discussion on liturgical vestments or cultic language, because such matters “do not tend to edify” (borrowing a phrase from the Buddha), and even derail a genuine search for what really does matter. Again, I refer to the image of persons quibbling about redecorating a building that is burning down right now, with human beings dying in the flames.
As I see it, Christianity as it emerged over the centuries, as it existed in various cultures, as it benefited or hurt millions of human beings, is either dying or at least undergoing major changes requiring leaders and thinkers who can deal with present reality, and not dream of imagined pasts. What is at stake is not Christian dogma or doctrines, or styles of liturgy or music, but how to live well, to live happily, and attain peace with God and with one’s fellow human beings. For my part, I have no interest in protecting or shoring up old and fixed dogmas, doctrines, creeds, styles of worship, hierarchies, institutions. I surely have no interest in preserving the “hierarchy” as it has emerged historically. My focus is on seeking to help concrete human beings experience the reality of God, and respond to the presence of God with self-giving love. That is what matters, and not plastic, artificial, even naive notions about “holiness.” One must ask himself or herself: “Do I truly wish to be holy, to be alive in God, or do I want to appear `holy’ to others, and so to flatter my own ego in the process?” From what I have seen of the traditionalistic clergy, they have a strong desire or need to appear “holy,” and far less interest in seeking God and helping others to seek the true and living God. They want their religious deeds to be seen before men.
A large part of the problem for human beings in the various churches is Christianity itself. Many of its doctrines are misleading to contemporary minds; more importantly, the entire emphasis on doctrine rather than on lived spiritual experience is a betrayal of the truth and goodness of God. Faith is not a belief in creeds, doctrines, Scripture, or clergy; faith is a simple, childlike, and intensely personal and loving surrender to the presence of God breaking into one’s consciousness. Faith opens up to God, not to sets of beliefs and liturgical practices. Indeed, real faith frees one from attachments to all externals. By focusing far too much on non-essentials, the Christian churches have, for centuries, in effect betrayed, mislead, and surely malnourished millions of human beings. Some good has come across to people despite the petty preoccupations of clergy. Fortunately, God has been able to work on human beings outside the structures and strictures of the historically decaying Christian churches. Whether through the beauty of nature, the truth of love, the expansion of the human mind through genuine learning and science, or nourishment through the arts, God has played a role even in the lives of practicing Christians—despite the failures of “religion.”
What does a minister of Christ owe the human beings to whom he or she has been “sent” to minister? The role of the minister is not to preserve an institution, nor to destroy it; the minister’s task is not primarily to “teach doctrine” or “celebrate the Sacraments worthily,” or “bring about social change.” The minister’s task is utterly simple, and can be well expressed through the words of the Apostle Paul, who know much about ministering: “My little children, with whom I am in labor, until Christ be formed in you.” Such is the ministerial task. If one truly trusts in the presence of God, one does not attempt to tell the other persons the only ways in which God can be found or experienced. God works on and in each human being according to what works in and for that person: “Whatever is received, is received according to the manner of the one receiving,” borrowing St. Thomas’ apt phrase. No doubt there are some human beings who need or at least want strict conformity to externals to think that they are “close to God,” or “holy.” These men, women, children are also “the little ones” to whom one must minister, but they are not the most mature or healthy souls. Out of fear and mistaken understandings of genuine spiritual life, these “traditionalists” cling to externals and to what is not essentially God. They need to be helped to grow up, but it is a serious mistake to allow spiritual immaturity, and even a kind of religious neurosis, to rule in the churches, and dictate what and how others worship. Often it is the more immature human beings who seek to “change the liturgy,”rather than do the hard work of allowing God to be present to them.
From my experience, and knowledge gained by questioning actual adults, I know of very few human beings who want to return to “pre-Vatican II” ways of thought and worship. For many of our older people, even to suggest a return to the past is in effect pointing them back to what they now think was largely a prison which they had to suffer through, and surely not something to which they in any way wish to return. The clear majority of Catholics with whom I have spoken have expressed with pain and anger their disgust at the pre-Vatican II church, and the way it treated human beings, making them feel imprisoned in excessive human rules and mindless practices. Many regular Catholics now, for example, refuse to go to confession, or abstain from eating meat on certain days, because for years they felt forced to obey and do such things under the threat of damnation. For many of our older Catholics, a return to the past is a return to a vengeful, punitive, childish deity; they have tasted the sweetness of the God of love, and of “Christian liberty,” or “the Holy Spirit,” and now even the attempt to impose rigidities from the past disturbs them. When I have asked parishioners about returning to the older style of worship, for example, they look me in the face and shake their heads no, not even wanting to consider the option. Why not? When they speak, their words are simple, and often tinged with pain: “I was made to fear that God would punish me if I did not obey the priest, or sister, and keep all of the knit-picking rules.” And they will add, “I never understood what we were doing, or why. Now I feel a part of the service, part of the church, and I understand, and I appreciate it.”
What the Christian churches need is not a Romantic and futile attempt to return to the past, but a more genuine openness of spirit to the Spirit, a rediscovery and practice of the ongoing search for the God who is searching for us. They need—or rather, we all need—an appreciate exposure to other ways of worship, to various insights into God, or into divine peace, and not to be forced into a sectarian, cultic box. Our parishioners need truly to seek God, to question, and to discover the joy of using their God-given, God-inspired minds. They need and deserve far more than can ever be gained by “following an antique drum.” Ministers need to discover and practice various forms of prayer to ground themselves in God, and then to share the fruit of their response with those to whom they minister. Many priests, for example, are so busy tending multiple parishes, or engaged in “works of justice,” that they neglect quiet prayer. Without a return to genuinely contemplative prayer—of one type or another—there will be no real spiritual or healthy revival in the lives of Christians. External worship not supported by the minister’s study, meditation, and contemplation is actually empty and stultifying, regardless of what vestments the minister may be wearing, or in what language he or she publicly prays. Only by a renewed and ongoing grounding in God, through contemplation and faith working through love, can the fire of divine love leap from one soul to another. Only the utterly free Spirit can truly bring about union with God and one’s fellow human beings.
