Defending liturgical renewal
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff
If American Catholicism is beset by liturgy wars,
its in part because activist groups such as Adoremus and Credo have
denounced the liturgical establishment in the United States for what they see
as debased art, architecture and ritual in the years after the Second Vatican
Council (1962-1965).
On May 1, the establishment returned fire.
On that date, the latest issue of the bulletin of We Believe, an
association of American liturgists, scholars and their supporters, began making
its way to every member of the U.S. bishops conference as well as more
than 9,000 people who signed a 1994 statement sponsored by the group in support
of the liturgical renewal launched by Vatican II.
New efforts to establish a Web presence for We Believe and to
produce its bulletin in electronic form mark a return from a recent hiatus for
the group.
Its May 1 issue discusses the controversy over the Psalter
produced by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, echoed the
recommendation for a bishops pastoral letter on liturgy made by church
design expert Fr. Richard Vosko (NCR, April 14), and offered an analysis
of attempts to render liturgical terms into American Sign Language -- an
instance where the word-for-word approach to translation now demanded by the
Vatican is literally impossible.
We Believe was launched in 1994 because we felt the
continuing voice of the reform was not being heard, said Capuchin Fr. Ed
Foley, president of the groups board and a professor of liturgy and music
at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. The people who are the
scholars, who are doing the work in liturgy were being attacked. Our fidelity
was being questioned.
Originally centered in Chicago, where We Believe was encouraged by
Cardinal Joseph Bernardins signature on its founding statement, the group
today has offices in St. Paul, Minn. Its eight-member board includes one
bishop, Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa., current head of the bishops
doctrine committee and former head of the liturgy committee.
Foley said the perception among liturgists in the mid-1990s was
that Adoremus, whose publication is edited by Helen Hull Hitchcock, and Credo,
an association of priests critical of post-Vatican II liturgical reform headed
by Fr. Jerry J. Pokorsky, were dominating the debate.
Adoremus has blamed liturgical changes since the council for
falling Mass attendance, declining priestly and religious vocations, a
decrease in belief in the Real Presence, the weakening of doctrinal content and
a loss of the sense of the sacred.
Hitchcock told NCR that to date she does not see any
particular impact resulting from We Believes 1994 statement or
subsequent efforts. Some might even wonder what the point of having a
separate organization is, since the point of view it expresses is already the
one held by most diocesan liturgical commissions and so on, she said.
Foley said the goal of We Believe was not to establish a left-wing
mirror image of conservative activist groups, but to give voice to liturgical
professionals.
The centrist voice, the Catholic voice in the richest sense
of the word, was not being heard, he said. Were the ones
citing Trent, were the ones citing the General Instruction on the Roman
Missal. Our conscious concern is to support the people doing the work in
parishes and dioceses.
The name We Believe was chosen as a counterpoint to Credo, Foley
said, which literally means I believe.
The Mass of Paul VI has such a different ecclesiological
vision, Foley said. The entire eucharistic prayer is about we
believe, not I. Its about the community, not the isolated individual. We
wanted to defend the ecclesiology of Vatican II, especially as its
presented in Gaudium et Spes.
Foley said that while We Believe is supportive of the
International Commission on English in the Liturgy, its support is not
uncritical. For example, he said that the commission made a tactical error in
treating inclusivity primarily as an issue of gender in the debate over
inclusive language.
Inclusivity is not about gender, its about being
Catholic, Foley said. If youve ever sat in middle of an
African-American community and sung texts about being black as
death, or sat with a deaf congregation and sung about being deaf to
Gods call, youd know how exclusionary language can
be.
The group also acknowledges that sometimes liturgists have been
their own worst enemies. The idea of liturgist as terrorist is not just a
joke, Foley said. Instead of beating you over the head with the
1917 Code of Canon Law, they beat you with the RCIA, he said, referring
to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the widely used process for
bringing new members into the church.
In the 1970s, we were not doing liturgical reform as
pastoral care. A new pastor would come in and decide to take out the Communion
rails, move the altar, dump the statues. Even though the purported image was
the people of God, nobody asked them -- it was an assertion of the divine right
of kings.
Beneath such miscues, however, Foley said that Vatican II put
forth a liturgical vision worth defending. The idea that everybody
belongs, everybody is called to holiness, listening to the voices of linguistic
and cultural diversity. We cannot turn the clock back on that.
Foley said the next project for the group is the establishment of
a Web site to offer news and documentation on liturgical issues. Readers
interested in obtaining a copy of the May 1 bulletin may contact We Believe at
Webelieve@uswest.net
The 1994 We Believe statement may be found at
http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/documents/index.htm
National Catholic Reporter, May 5,
2000
|