I think
what put LTP over the top in getting this award was something I did
myself though it was not mentioned in the introduction: in the service
of the liturgy I have twice in the last six months set my own hair on
fire. First, at the Easter vigil in our parish, I thought I would sit
for the first reading before blowing out my candle. Second time was at a
once-in-a-lifetime vigil of the Assumption, outdoors. I can tell you:
fiery hair isn’t a big deal. The people next to you just use their
hands or anything in them—obviously not including other lighted
candles—to beat on your head and before you are even aware of what it
is that is lighting up the night (your own hair), it’s out. This is
quicker and far more lively than someone leaving the assembly to go to
the restroom. And afterwards, what lingers gives whole new meaning to “smells
and bells.”
I am so happy
that this award comes in Region 11. Not only does LTP have so many good
friends here, not only do they give a fine convention, but increasingly
the rest of us look west for leadership, to this Region, to the
southwest and to the northwest for leadership in liturgical and
ecclesial renewal.
What I love
about this award is its name: The Frederick McManus Award. In March of
1965, at a party in an apartment somewhere between Baltimore and
Washington, I was introduced to Msgr. McManus—introduced to one of my
three or four heroes. In fact, the people who had invited me to come
East for a job interview with Helicon Press sat me down
with Fred in a quiet corner. Next day they told me: We figured if
Fred McManus and you could talk for fifteen minutes, you were good
enough for the job. And I still talk to Fred a few times a year for my
own good—a kind and wise
and learned gentleman now largely
ignored by many who could well heed him. I got that job, by the way.
But twenty-three
years ago last spring I was, again, out of work. There were two jobs I
applied for and really wanted to get. One was liturgy director in
Denver, to follow the excellent Sr. Anne Stedman who was leaving that
position. And the other job I sought was the executive director of the
FDLC, which was then in Chicago. I wrote my best letters to both, sent
resumes. But as best I remember, I never got an interview either place.
Instead, urged by friend Ron Lewinski, I inquired of Dan Coughlin about
coming to work for Liturgy Training Program (as it was known then). The
question Dan had to decide: LTP had flourished in the late 60s and early
70s as Ted Stone, Jerry Broccolo, Bob Oldershaw, Ed Siedlecki. Dan, Ron
and others provided training materials for dioceses around the country,
working from the new rite for this sacrament to the new rite for the
next sacrament. But by the mid-70s in
had run out of sacraments and things were much quieter. Was there
life for LTP or not? Dan decided there could be and talked Cardinal Cody
into hiring me. I was one half of LTP’s staff in the fall of 1977. Mae
Dore, who was present at the creation in 1964 and who was in fact the
good spirit behind the whole enterprise, was the other half. (I wanted
to say “Mae Dore, may she rest in peace,” but that would be
pointless: Mae won’t rest in peace until the church and its liturgy
are in far better hands than they are now.)
That was
more than a generation ago. We have employees at LTP who were not born
in 1977. LTP is now about sixty people, and a few of them are with us
here. We had a lottery of sorts for those who would not ordinarily
attend FDLC so that a few could share the spotlight. The winners of that
lottery are people you folks should know because they’re the people
who day-by-day try to serve you well, Louise Griffin from the Customer
Service Department, and Donna Hathaway from, the Shipping Department.
They and their associates carry on that hospitality which Mae Dare made
integral to the very being of LTP. Our General Manager is here, no
stranger to FDLC people, John Wright. John has been 15 years at LTP new,
he makes everything function day to day and year to year. John
always brings a needed angle, a good question, an idea no one else
thought of. And we have three of our acquisition editors: Vicky Tufano,
David Philippart and Maria Leonard. What LTP does, most of you know and
these are some of the crucial people. Insofar as LTP achieves something
unique, it is due to an approach to publishing that is editorial and
design intense. We’re not just a go between from author to reader. Our
editors work together on LTP’s directions; they work intensively with
our authors. Our production staff in design and typesetting spends time
and care, on every element of a book or magazine design, on each cover,
on each choice of typeface. The same care goes into the videos and other
products. My favorite sentence in our mission statement says: “In its
products and in its operation, LTP strives to express the justice and
the beauty that are fundamental to the church and its liturgy.”
Within
the structures of the archdiocese of Chicago, LTP is a part of the
Office for Divine Worship. That means that for the last six years the
director of ODW, Sheila McLaughlin, whom you all know well at FDIC, has
had to keep a careful eye on all of us, especially me. Getting along
with, my boss, or anyone in authority, has never been my strong point,
but at my age and with things as they are, I always figured I wouldn’t
have many more chances after Sheila, so I’ve really tried.
So,
in good times I would stop here and say: There’s a little gift from
LTP at each place, please accept it and know of our gratitude and
delight in this award.
But
these are not good times So I am going to say a little more—I called
Adé Bethune to ask how long these remarks could be. She told me:
Don’t you worry, but just watch out for that priest from Boston who
might try to get you off the podium!
Times
are tough. That’s been reflected here these past days. We have a
responsibility to seek fidelity to the vision of Vatican II and its
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and in doing that we have
to speak the truth as best we can. About
ourselves, about our institutions. Not to do that is to betray
that bold Council. So there has been talk here of problems and of the failures
in Rome, in Washington, in
the Bishops’ Conference, in
dioceses and in seminaries, in FDLC and in publishers too. And
we have encountered the
painful and tangled relationships that have come about,
as well as tangled motives for liturgy
has become the ground where people
chase after or display power and control.
I agree with
what Archbishop Lipscomb said: It is good to take stock. Amidst a
multitude of mistakes, look at the
achievements following the Council,
things done sometimes in haste, but with
great conviction and good scholarship. You could tick off on your
tablecloths tonight litanies of achievements, solid
work, solid pastoral work in Rome
and in the
English-speaking world through ICEL
and in this country through the BCL, the centers, various
organizations: the lectionary
and its introduction, the RCIA, EACW; all that was involved in
making a sacramentary the Sunday
ritual of parishes, Music in Catholic Worship, OCF and Pastoral Care of
the Sick, NPM, North American Forum, this
very FDLC organization. And
on and on: not just documents
and organizations either, but living implementation.
How
could there not have been screw ups?
How could we not be far from finished just 37 years after the
Constitution? And if the reform of
Vatican II has not taken
firmer hold in our parishes, well, the document itself already recognized
that scholarship, zeal and organization would not be enough. It
said bishops and pastors
would have to be imbued with the spirit
of the liturgy. And we still don’t
knew well how to do that. But
when it happens, we see so clearly: good parish liturgy is not in
crisis. Those people are not
awaiting a new GIRM or a replacement
for EACW; they are not
confused about who is ordained and
who is not. Good parish liturgy may not be everywhere, but it is
in many places and that’s
good news and we need to know
well that that this liturgy
is the work of the assembly, people knowing their rites by heart. Such
liturgy is what makes us, what makes Catholics.
But
today there is another theory: We’re made by catechisms. We’re made
by keeping the lines between us clear. We’re made not by the Catholic
genius for sacramentality and metaphor (with all its dangers), but by
the Catholic weakness
for power and for
the literal. And we are in the midst of a whirlwind of the line-drawers
and the literalists, the successors to those fearful curial folic
who never wanted
a council called in the first place. A whirlwind, and I
like many am
angry.
I
am angry about that never-discussed rewriting of the concelebration
guidelines a year
ago—a rewriting that flies in the face of SC #14.
I
am angry about Rome’s suffocation of ICEL and our bishops’ so far
willing compliance. (In years to came we are going to miss the gifts of
ICEL more than any of us now can tell.)
I
am angry about the endless drafts of a document about the arts that does
not for a single sentence rise to the eloquence and the power of EACW.
I
am angry at the way that GIRM has been recast in Rome without
consultation beyond those . unhappy few who grind their paltry axes on
tabernacle centrality and such, ignoring the solid experiences of a
generation.
I
am angry that this third edition has been mishandled in translation and
in publication.
I am angry
still about the NRSV lectionary rejection about the whole mess that was
made of the NAB lectionary, and I am
angry about the Rome-ordered removal of the imprimatur for the ICEL
translation of the psalms.
And I am angry
about the work that isn’t being done—isn’t being done by Rome, by
the BCL secretariat, by the FDLC, by me and
by us because we have to spend our time talking
and working against a vision that is no vision, a fearful,
non-scriptural, and non-conciliar understanding of liturgy. We want to
be about what is really our work, the creation of a justice that we’ll
only know and love and seek at great
cost from our regular participation in a liturgy reformed, and
the creation of a solidarity that we’ll only glimpse with eyes opened
by a liturgy that Sunday by Sunday in every parish is the exhausting
work of those Catholic people.
Tough times. We
must hold to the good that has been done, enrich it in Catholic ways. We
must live ourselves in parishes where people do and live their liturgy
so that we have hope and energy. We must build again those bonds to
catechesis and justice in our dioceses and parishes. We must protect the
Council’s good work from the assaults of the fearful, and we must open
the eyes of our bishops. I hate to use this phrase so close to the
boyhood home of Richard Nixon but there is still a silent majority of
bishops who know that the post-Vatican II work was good work. What they
seem not to know is bow to. organize and bow to lead. Archbishop
Lipscomb made much of the relationship of you to your bishops. Go home
and do it, before their November meeting, and then on and on. Help them
see; in parishes where people do and live from their liturgy, there is a
vibrant, reverent church. Build your relationship to the bishop. Do the
homework. Get informed. Give the bishop clear, concise information and
opinions. Help each other do that. Use the
technology. I know you all have many responsibilities, but this
moment must not pass us by.
So yes, we have
to give ourselves to fending off the fearful who sit in powerful places,
but let’s give ourselves also and more to imagining haw even in these
times the renewal of the liturgy can take place in our lives and our
parishes. We may be as close to leaders as this generation is going to
have. T hope you build this organization. I have heard and seen things
in these days that move and inspire me - coming from this floor. This
organization need not be edged out. Build it. Do what has to be done
even in ecclesiastical politics to become an authoritative voice in good
times and bad for the liturgical renewal of the church.
At Morning
Prayer today we prayed Psalm 51 as we do every Friday. The refrain was
from the verse "cor mundum crea in me, Deus": Create a
pure heart in me. That’s been with me all day. Perhaps in some of what
I’ve said I make it plain: my heart is not so pure, not so forgiving.
I’m working on it.
Thank you
for honoring LTP tonight.
