Dear
sisters and brothers in Christ of the FDLC, colleagues in the liturgical
apostolate of God’s Holy Church. I am deeply moved by this signal
honor you confer upon me today, the McManus Award for 2007, an award, as
you yourselves describe it, “to recognize the work of someone who has
made a significant difference in the Liturgical life of the church.”
I
deeply regret that prior unchangeable commitments have made it
impossible for me to be present in person to accept this prestigious
award, and I express my gratitude to my former doctoral student and
friend, Ukrainian Catholic priest Father Mark Morozowich, professor of
liturgy and Associate Dean for Seminary and Ministerial Programs at the
Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, for agreeing to accept
the McManus Award in my name. Mark is one of my success stories.
It
is special source of pride for me to receive an award named for my dear
friend of many years, Monsignor Frederick R. McManus, one of my heroes,
one of the great Catholic priests of modern times, with so many feathers
in his cap that he must have entered the Heavenly Kingdom looking for
all the world like an Indian chief!
Fred
was renowned for many reasons. He was a superb canonist who knew that
church law was not about legalism, but about facilitating Christian life
in accord with Catholic tradition. He was a kind and astute academic
administrator, who saw that position as one of service, not command. He
was a pioneer of the Church’s liturgical renewal. He was a friend of
the Christian East, and, as such, an ecumenist before most people knew
what the word meant, one who strove all his life to knit up the rent
fabric of Christ’s seamless robe. Some of these tasks and interests I
had the privilege of sharing with Fred and, as a younger colleague, I
learned from him. One of these tasks was, of course, liturgical renewal,
on which I shall concentrate my remarks here.
For
over a century now the Christian Churches have been preoccupied with
liturgical renewal, under the influence of “The Liturgical
Movement,” a worldwide effort dedicated to making Christian liturgy
better. But good liturgy is liturgy that glorifies God and sanctifies
those glorifying him, and that is God’s gift to us, not ours to him.
So if it is God who does it, how could the liturgy be better? It could
be better from our side, for we too have a part in the liturgy, which is
neither magic nor unconscious. So God’s part would better achieve its
aim if we would drink more fully from the saving waters he offers us in
the liturgy via a participation that would be more active, more
conscious, more communal, as Sacrosanctum Concilium, the 1963
Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy
said forty-four years ago, and which the decrees and documents that flow
from it have reiterated and paraphrased time and again. For Vatican II
this was not just a question of esthetics: the Council boldly asserts
that full lay participation in worship is demanded by the very nature
of the liturgy and of the assembly of the baptized which is the Church (§14).
In
one of his last articles, Fred McManus wrote lyrically of this
liturgical renewal’s “fresh breadth and flexibility” flowing
“from a genuine return to evangelical and patristic sources...a return
to the “venerable traditions of the early post-biblical centuries.”
This echoes the mandate of the Vatican II Constitution on the
Sacred Liturgy, that the rites “be restored to the vigor they had in
the tradition of the Fathers” (§50). Has this promise been fulfilled?
Was the liturgical reform mandated by Vatican II a success? From where I
stand as an historian of Christian worship down through the centuries,
it has been an overwhelming, resounding success!
Then
why have we now entered into a period of darkening storm clouds, when
the liturgical renewal of the Roman Rite is under attack, the gearshift
has been put into reverse, and the order of the day seems to be
full-speed backwards? The short answer is that those who want that
don’t know much about the history and theology of liturgy. One
anecdote will suffice to illustrate that. A reliable eye-witness
reported to me that during the 2006-2007 academic year, the graduate
students of liturgy from the Pontifical Liturgical Institute Sant’
Anselmo in Rome, during their customary annual courtesy visit to the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments,
were informed by a high official there that the purpose of the Mass was
the devotion of the priest! That would be simply funny, were it not also
rank heresy.
Having
sunk so low, all roads must lead up. So my wish for you today,
fellow-workers in the Catholic liturgical ministry so marvelously
renewed at Vatican II, is to be of good heart! We are passing through a
bad patch, as often happens in the history of an organization so complex
and huge as the Catholic Church, which may occasionally stumble, as I
believe it has recently with regard to liturgy. But in this time of
shockingly mediocre liturgical leadership on the part of some of our
Church authorities, we should take courage that the People of God and
the vast majority of our bishops throughout the world are with us—even
if not all of them have the courage and integrity to exercise the
leadership we have a right to expect of them by speaking up like Bishop
Donald W. Trautman of Erie, PA.
Let
me illustrate popular sentiment on these issues by what took place on
December 11, 2003 at the Symposium “Sacrosanctum Concilium
Forty Years Later,” in the basilica of the Pontifical Liturgical
Institute Sant’Anselmo in Rome. In his talk, the recently deceased
Catalan Servite priest Fr. Ignacio Calabuig, OSM, spoke with deep
emotion about the “greats” of the Liturgical Movement he had known.
Towards the end of his paper, he turned to Cardinal Francis Arinze,
Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments seated to my right in the presidium, and, in a trembling
voice, departed from his written text, saying (in Italian of course)
something like this (I am paraphrasing what I recall, not translating
literally): “I feel I must tell the Prefect [Cardinal Arinze] that the
devastating impression the Congregation [for Catholic Worship] seems to
be spreading throughout the Church, that men of great culture in their
own lands are not capable of translating liturgical texts into their own
mother tongue, is causing great discontent and concern in the
Church”—at which point the entire audience, some 600 strong crowding
the basilica, spontaneously exploded into prolonged, enthusiastic
applause that thundered on for about three minutes. It was an historic
moment, the message was crystal clear, and even Cardinal Arinze himself
finally joined in the applause that went on and on and just would not
stop. This is my 43rd year in Rome and I have never seen anything like
it before or since.
Such
a resounding affirmation of the Vatican II mandated liturgical renewal
by God’s Holy People does not mean, however, that our work is over and
done with. For the Council also taught us that the Church is “semper
reformanda.” So let me add my wish list to your own ideas regarding
what remains to be done or redone.
- First,
in seeking solutions to problems new and old, the “Magisterium
doctorum”—i.e., the common teaching of reputable Catholic
scholars and theologians—must be returned to its proper and fully
traditional place in the “ordinary magisterium” of Catholic
theological discourse. The Magisterium is not a substitute for a
brain, or for a solid formation in the history and teaching of the
Church across the entire continuum of its history, and not just what
happens to be in vogue today, or was at Trent.
- Second,
as for what some call “the reform of the reform,” I continue to
maintain that the western liturgical renewal in the wake of Vatican
II was a great success, returning the liturgy to the People of God
to whom it rightly belongs. The Vatican II reform was not perfect
because only God is perfect. But we have a saying: “If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it!” So we should stop tinkering, leave alone
what has been done already, and concentrate on what was not done
well or not done at all. Done well were the Rite of Christian
Initiation of Adults, the Mass, the translations into the
vernacular, which are certainly not to be redone according to the
norms of that unfortunate document Liturgiam authenticam—at
least not until one has read the absolutely devastating scholarly
critique of Prof. Peter Jeffrey of Princeton in his book Translating
Tradition: A Liturgical Historian Reads “Liturgiam
Authenticam”
So instead of messing eternally with already finished business,
I think it is time to turn to unfinished business. The Vatican II
reforms were done as well as was humanly possible at the time, and
we owe an enormous debt of gratitude and respect, not denigration,
to those, some of whom are now with God, that had the courage to
carry them out and implement them. The problems in ritual and
language came not from the language and the restored rites, but from
implementing them poorly or employing them abusively, and one does
not change a language because some of its native speakers and
writers are incapable of using it well. This demands not “reform
of the reform,” but better liturgical formation.
- Finally,
the unfinished business not done well or not done at all would
include, in my view, the Liturgy of the Hours, some aspects of the
Lectionary, and the Calendar, especially the Sanctoral, where more
space should be given to local saints over against the centralized
cult favored by the overly-centralized canonization process with its
unfortunate “political canonizations” directed at the
self-glorification of the ecclesial nomenklatura. And above all, one
must restore the Roman Rites of Christian Initiation of infants to
their traditional sequence and unity, because the way they are
structured now is little better than ridiculous.
*
* *
Historians
are inveterate story-tellers Let me conclude with a final story, one
that testifies to what I have tried to do with my life. Not too many
years ago I received a letter from one of my students, a Latin rite
missionary in the Middle East. As a westerner who had studied eastern
liturgy, he had to celebrate a liturgy he did not study, and study one
he did not celebrate not only because it was not his, but because he had
no desire to make it his. He found it overburdened, deadeningly
monotonous, stupefyingly long. Besides, the members of that Oriental
Church would never tolerate a foreigner meddling in something so close
to their whole being and self-identity as their rite. Maybe he should
have studied Sacred Scripture instead he mused? I answered with the
following lines that sum up, as well as any artifice I could compose to
close these reflections, what I hope my life’s work is all about.
“Carissimo
amico.
Believe
me when I say I have often read and reflected on your cri du coeur concerning
your future in liturgical studies…
“I can only give personal testimony to the enormous amount of good one
can do by the objective, honest, scientific study of liturgy. As a
teacher one can change people’s lives forever by bringing them into
living contact with the wellsprings of tradition after the layers of
later, unhappy developments and misunderstandings have been stripped
away. As a writer one can also have a profound effect even on those who
are such jealous guardians of their heritage. Of course this can be done
only with the utmost objectivity, and with no ulterior motive but the
desire to serve God by serving his people. I know perfectly well what I
would do to change, restore, reform certain liturgies I study, but I
have never put myself forward as a reformer. What the scholar has to
offer is knowledge, from which comes understanding. With a few
exceptions, because of the present situation of most Eastern Churches,
this is a service that we in the West can best provide.
“I do not say this with arrogance, or any idea that we are better or
more intelligent than the orientals. But we are not oppressed by
Communism or Islam, and we have the level of economic and educational
development necessary to provide this service, which is a true ministry
of God’s Church. This is an ecumenical service that Catholics can
offer the Eastern Churches with no self-interest or attempt at fishing
in their waters. Every Christian ministry, like that of our Redeemer, is
one of reconciliation and service. That includes the ministry of
scholarship, which serves nothing but the truth, in the service of the
Truth.
“So you are wrong in thinking that a stranger like yourself will never
be able to involve himself in such matters. For there is no one else to
do it… I think you are especially mistaken in thinking that, perhaps,
you should have selected another area of concentration. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The key to the heart of the Christian East is
its liturgy. As you yourself say, it is only through the liturgy that
Scripture, tradition, the Fathers, piety, spirituality—everything—is
transmitted and lived. Sometimes, as you recognize, this expression of a
living faith can become sclerotic, overgrown, too heavy. But underneath
the overgrowth of centuries lie the jewels of a people’s incarnation
of the gospel, waiting to be uncovered by someone willing to cut back
the brush.
“I cannot imagine a more fitting, immensely rewarding ministry than to
study the heritage of a people—and in the East that heritage is
conserved and transmitted through the liturgy—in order to uncover its
riches for the good of that same people, and of all peoples, to the
unending glory of God’s eternal name. Of course it is not an easy
ministry, and the results do not appear immediately, but I really could
not imagine doing anything else. Apart from the intellectual and
spiritual satisfaction it can give, and the good it can do, it is also
good clean fun.”
.
*
* *
Thank
you for your attention, and especially for the honor you do me this
evening.
