High anxiety
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Costa Mesa, Calif.
Dont be angry, said Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb. But the
diocesan liturgical director at the microphone was clearly among the walking
wounded, victims of an explosion detonated by the Bishops Committee on
the Liturgy, which Lipscomb chairs.
So heightened were the anxieties of 200-plus liturgists
attending an Oct. 3-7 meeting of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions here that the federation suspended its normal order of business to
deal with delegates resolutions of concern.
Among other things, resolutions urged the U.S. bishops to quickly
limit the damage caused to liturgical renewal by the July 28 release of an
English-language study translation of the General Instruction for
the forthcoming revised third edition of the Roman Missal. The Latin and
English texts of the instruction were released simultaneously.
The resolutions and the debate around them spoke to the
considerable damage and pain already inflicted on diocesan liturgical
directors, pastors and people along the rarely tranquil road to post-Vatican II
(1962-65) liturgical reform.
Among the more controversial passages in the study translation, it
prohibits lay eucharistic ministers from breaking bread or cleansing vessels
and directs that the Lectionary should not be carried in procession. Another
directive states that priests must remain in the sanctuary during the sign of
peace rather than go out into the congregation to greet worshipers.
I think what happened, St. Joseph Sr. Eleanor
Bernstein told NCR, is there was spotty information. Catholics
have seen quick summaries and highlights of the text that are
attention grabbing. Bernstein is executive director of the Notre Dame
Center for Pastoral Liturgy.
Because those things are very close to the grassroots, these
are where the laity connects, said Bernstein. So many Catholics
have a high involvement in parish ministries that these things really touched
them right away. We need to have clarity about the status of this document and
when it is to be implemented.
Fr. John Burton, new chair of the federation, said, Many
come to this meeting concerned, confused, apprehensive and angry. And because
the text became so widely available, theres [been] implementation on the
basis of newspaper articles.
Liturgy director Gerard Hall of Norwich, Conn., said he had
learned of the new directives from reading The New York Times before
receiving them in the mail. When I got to my office, there was a message
from my bishop asking me what was going on, he said.
Both Lipscomb, archbishop of Mobile, Ala., and Fr. James Moroney,
executive director of U.S. bishops Secretariat for the Liturgy, defended
issuance of the study translation by the bishops committee. Lipscomb told
NCR, A lot of people I think quite honestly are exaggerating
the extent of the confusion.
In an interview, though, Moroney said the frontline
troops, that is, diocesan liturgical directors, were not kept in
the loop as much as they should have been.
The Bishops Committee on the Liturgy made a good
decision to publish the study translation so there would not be a flood of
competing translations out there, Moroney said -- translations developed
through the lens of peoples particular interests or
prejudices.
At the same time, I would have done it differently, he
said. I would have delayed releasing the text to the press. Moroney
said he would have given bishops and liturgy directors two weeks to review the
study translation first.
In no way were the federations resolutions an attack on U.S.
bishops or their conference. Indeed, the delegates were so anxious not to
appear anti-bishop, so willing to build bridges to the Bishops Committee
on the Liturgy, that many would not allow their photographs to be taken in what
was an open meeting.
The problem, one delegate said privately, was a pervading sense of
betrayal among delegates struggling over how to deal with the new
directives.
Many delegates brought with them horror stories of liturgical
confrontations provoked by the new directives as reactionaries and liturgical
zealots took advantage of the confusion over the directives to press their
individual or claque points of view.
Away from the microphone, one liturgical director told of two
parishioners weeping on the telephone because their pastor had immediately used
the study translation to turn back the clock to pre-Vatican
II.
The parishioners have left their parish and now drive 35 miles to
attend church elsewhere.
Pastors have been verbally attacked by liturgy factionalists in
their parish for not immediately putting into practice the new rules.
Pre-meeting buzz in cyberspace included an account of a priest
compelling a deacon to kneel during the consecration in obedience to the
Holy Father.
The zealots are premature, Lipscomb assured delegates. The General
Instruction, he said, will not be implemented until two things happen. First,
he said, U.S. bishops must receive their own official English-language
translation. Secondly, U.S. bishops must write their own appendix to the
General Instruction, detailing what in fact will be implemented in the United
States.
Moroney in a Sept. 8 letter to liturgical directors said that the
Bishops Committee on the Liturgy is not likely to receive the official
revised texts of the new directives for at least a year, if not
longer. That means U.S. bishops would not receive them much before
Nov. 2001 or even June 2002. And then theyd go back to Rome for
confirmation.
Meanwhile, many delegates present appeared to agree with Linda
Gaupin of Orlando, Fla., who said that to her the General Instruction on the
Roman Missal represented a significant change in ecclesiology.
Other delegates -- mulling over concerns in their hotel rooms --
had deeper suspicions. Among them:
- That U.S. bishops had been deliberately set up for a
major embarrassment by well-funded U.S. liturgical reactionaries with
influence in Rome;
- That the secretariats Moroney was functioning more as a
representative of the Vaticans Congregation for Divine Worship (to which
he is a consultor appointed by the pope) than as liturgical spokesperson for
the U.S. bishops, and that he was involved in policymaking reserved to the
president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Moroney strongly
denies playing such a role. The only way he would be involved in policy, he
said, would be to serve as a representative of policies already put in place by
the U.S. Bishops Committee on the Liturgy and the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops;
- That the new liturgical directives smack of a return to
clericalism and rubricism in a church where Rome and many bishops --
especially the younger ones -- are afraid of the laitys role in taking
ownership of the church;
- And, most worrisome, that, because of the new directives, a
liturgical movement seeking unity now sees liturgies vary not just from diocese
to diocese, but from parish to parish and from Mass to Mass.
While not one word of criticism of the Vatican, including the
Congregation for Divine Worship, was heard from the speakers platform,
liturgical directors privately expressed concern that the Vatican, in the
declining years of Pope John Paul IIs papacy, was attacking the
reform.
Fr. Ron Krisman, former executive director of the secretariat,
addressed some of the confusing points, clarifying some:
Quite simply, he said, the new directives became effective the
moment they were promulgated, and that was June 11, 2000 -- prior to the
issuance of the Roman Missal and prior to the final Latin text being available.
General Instruction is in circulation ahead even of the Roman Missal it is
supposed to instruct on. Yet, because the final Latin text is unavailable,
federation delegates and others were debating a text practically no one has
seen.
At the same time, the directives do not actually apply in any
country until the local conference implements the revised General Instruction
on the Roman Missal.
The most polite news releases and communications to the U.S.
bishops from other English-language conferences have called the study
translations release unofficial,
unauthorized and hasty.
Perhaps the decisions were not perfect, admitted
Lipscomb. In particular I regret whatever actions or omissions resulted
from publication. But please know that the decisions made in regard to the
study translation were made by the [Bishops Committee on the
Liturgy] itself, and we take full responsibility for it.
I would exhort you, he continued, do not let
those who would abandon liturgical reform or seek to reverse the great
accomplishments, discourage or distract you from your important work. Nor
should you let them dictate the tenor or the agenda of liturgical reform. I
chair the Common Ground Initiative [a meeting of a wide range of Catholics of
varied progressive to conservative viewpoints] and questions on the liturgy
always raise up the very worst and most aggressive responses. I try to calm
people by saying if you will just step back from where we are now in worship to
where the whole church was when the council began, you have to admit how much
progress we have made.
Lipscomb, the new chair of the Bishops Committee on the
Liturgy, stepped into the liturgical melee here and made himself personally
popular not simply because he directly dealt with the issues, however
defensively, but because he announced his willingness to take questions. That
was something his predecessor, Bishop Jerome Hanus of Dubuque, Iowa, last year
avoided.
Lipscomb further encouraged hope for some by saying the
Bishops Committee on the Liturgy intended to recommend to the U.S.
bishops that they request an indult, or exception, from Rome in order that U.S.
eucharistic ministers be permitted to wash the eucharistic vessels. Further, he
assured the gathering, the federations collaboration would be sought as
the bishops committee discusses indults and issues germane to U.S.
implementation.
Not everyone was mollified.
In private discussion, the announcement about an indult brought a
sigh of dismay from one delegate. He saw the current situation as an indication
of the extent to which the Vatican is managing local churches.
Said one woman liturgist, The reform has worked. We have
developed Catholics who own their faith.
[Now], in our diocese, damage
has been done to the people in the church, to the people on the altar and to
people like ourselves. The main question is whether it was
deliberate.
She was not angry. She was grieving.
Arthur Jones e-mail address is
ajones96@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, October 20,
2000
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