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(More customer reviews)'The Liturgy Betrayed' and 'The Liturgy after Vatican II'
In The Spirit of the Liturgy Cardinal Ratzinger asserts that the Church is experiencing a profound liturgical crisis and has been since the Second Vatican Council.The existence of such a crisis is beyond doubt. From the objections of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to the new Order of Mass promulgated in 1969, the wholesale rejection by Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers of the new liturgical rites promulgated by Paul VI, and the widespread disregard with which the directives of these liturgical books are held by so many priests and liturgical `planners,' (let alone those who construct ceremonies which, curiously, they call "liturgies," along feminist or other ideological lines), and the controversy and even dissent over the recent Roman directives on liturgical translation, it is clear that liturgical unity and discipline in the Roman rite has been haemorrhaging for some time.
Various persons and groups, typically motivated by a love of the Church and of her liturgy, have suggested ways to address this ill. Some want to hold to the pre-conciliar liturgy, others to the liturgical books promulgated by Paul VI. Others want to look again at these and see whether they could be revised to recover elements of our liturgical tradition that have been discarded. Others still want to create liturgies along national or cultural lines. From a different motivation, some continue to hanker after a freedom and spontaneity of liturgical expression that is, frankly, protestant.
In the ongoing debate about this far from marginal question, we can be grateful to Ignatius Press of San Francisco for a number of important contributions from Cardinal Ratzinger, and for Looking at the Liturgy by Father Aidan Nichols OP. Ignatius Press' founder, Father Joseph Fessio SJ, is deeply committed to addressing the liturgical crisis.
He has recently published these titles as another contribution. Father Fessio prefaces the latter, saying:
"The author...is a French theologian, and he is describing the liturgical crisis in France. But while his examples are taken from that French context, his experience and the conclusions he draws are...entirely applicable to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom."
Father Fessio continues: "We think that Dr Crouan's analysis is both succinct and accurate." This sentence is more than unfortunate. Crouan's analysis is in fact shallow and myopic in so far as he ignores the facts of recent liturgical history, and because an uncritical ultramontanism blinds his perspective.
Before substantiating these judgements, we must first give credit where it is due. Crouan does admit that the liturgy is in crisis (many don't), and he writes in the hope of awakening others to this fact and to the fact that vast riches of the Church's liturgical tradition that have been widely discarded since the Council. Both are laudable.
Furthermore, chapter eight of The Liturgy After Vatican II contains a superb critique of the plague of liturgical subjectivity, i.e. the "many pastoral gimmicks that in the end simply pollute the liturgy of the Church," and of the highly dubious emotional and psychological factors that often underlie the legions of extraordinary `ministries' that invade liturgical celebrations. According to Crouan, such `ministers,' and indeed the clergy, can often forget that:
"In the liturgy, beauty ought not to be the result of the talent of the celebrant or the liturgical team or the choir or indeed the animator. Liturgical beauty ought to remain something above the competence of the actors in a celebration, something above their talent, if they have any. Liturgical beauty resides in the fact that the sole aim of the priest when he celebrates is to want to do what the Church does. Since this is the case, the celebration is not merely beautiful in the human sense of the term: it is also a good in the theological sense of the term. And therein lies its essence, for it is this essential good from which true liturgical beauty proceeds."
This objectivity is indeed of the very nature of Catholic liturgy.
And so, Crouan argues throughout both titles, all liturgical problems in the Church today stem from subjectivity, disobedience and a failure "to do what the Church does." This is certainly a large part of the problem. However, when disobedience is regarded as the sole factor, such reasoning is, as has been said, shallow and myopic. It ignores the complexities of the history of the implementation of the liturgical reform called for by the Council, and the theological status of such reforms.
In the first place, Crouan identifies absolutely and without distinction Vatican II and the liturgical books promulgated in its wake by Paul VI. This lacks historical depth. Briefly, the actual history runs: the Council called for a liturgical reform and enunciated principles according to which it was to be carried out. Then a commission began the work of its implementation. This commission, by the admission of its own members, went beyond that which was called for by the Council, and key individuals secured Paul VI's authorisation for liturgical books which, it is argued by many, do not accurately reflect the principles of reform enunciated by the Council and which include substantial elements not envisaged by the Fathers of Vatican II. (Even Archbishop Lefebvre signed the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.) Accordingly, the question arises as to whether the resultant liturgical books are in fact the organic developments of those prior to the Council for which the Council called, and whether they are in substantial continuity with them?
Crouan's stance belies reality: "there is no substantial difference between the Roman liturgy before Vatican II and the Roman liturgy after Vatican II." One can argue about what a "substantial difference" is. However, in the experience of the man-in-the-pew (even in the most liturgically correct of churches) and of the scholar who compares the respective liturgical books side by side, there are many differences. For example: the vastly expanded lectionary cycle; the introduction of other eucharistic prayers (something utterly foreign to the Roman tradition); the overhaul of the ordination rites; the ideological editing of the Latin texts of the Mass collect, secret and postcommunion prayers; and the dramatic change in theological orientation of the offertory prayers. Whether or not such differences accord with Council's principles of reform is arguable, as is whether any of them individually constitutes a substantial difference. However, when considered overall, "substantial difference" between the two cannot be doubted.
Secondly, Crouan accords liturgical reforms a theological status they simply do not have. Throughout these books we hear complaints about people disobeying the "teaching of the Church." But he is not referring to a denial of an article of faith or of the Church's moral teaching. He is talking about the Church's liturgical discipline. Discipline, however, is not dogma.
This is ultramontanism. It leads him to elevate liturgical discipline (about which a pope can err in his prudential judgement, and about which Catholics may in good faith disagree) to the level of the "teaching of the Church" (which Catholics must accept). This distinction is crucial and Crouan's failure to make it is a very grave flaw.
Let us be clear: the Pope and the bishops have the right to govern the Church and we have the duty to obey them. Yet this governance involves prudential judgements about the disciplines to be practised in the life of the Church. We are free to disagree with them, and indeed appropriately and in charity to represent our criticisms. In certain exceptional circumstances one could, in good conscience, even disobey disciplinary rulings without sin.
We are not free, however, to reject the teaching of the Church. The creeds, the dogmatic and moral definitions of the Councils and of the Popes are not matters that are negotiable or changeable. Rejection of them is grave matter.
What the liturgy is (theologically) can certainly fall into the latter category, but how it is to be celebrated is a matter of discipline, not dogma. In other words, I may disagree with a Pope or a Council that a liturgical reform (or a particular aspect of it) is appropriate, but I cannot dismiss their teaching that the liturgy is the "source and summit of all Christian life." In celebrating the Sacred Liturgy, though, we must obey the directives of the competent authority.
For Crouan everything the Pope promulgates is beyond question. History, however, teaches us otherwise. In the sixteenth century the prudential judgement of Paul III in promulgating the breviary reform of Cardinal Quignonez was an error, finally corrected some five popes and thirty-two years later, in the light of the evident dissatisfaction of the faithful and at the prompting of scholars. And the seventeenth century promulgation by Urban VIII of new breviary hymns (revised to conform to the taste of the times at his request by a commission of Jesuits) was redressed only in the twentieth: partially in St Pius X's reform of the breviary, and thoroughly (and somewhat ironically) in the breviary produced following the Second Vatican Council. If there were indeed errors in the implementation of the reform called for by Vatican II - and we have it from the likes of Cardinals Ratzinger (a "fabrication") and Stickler ("a destruction") that there were - then it is legitimate to hope, work and pray for their correction.
Awareness of these issues creates a problem for those who seek "to do what the Church does." Such persons...Read more›
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