SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM: ochlophobic thoughts

The English text of the Motu Proprio is here (a link to the Latin is provided). Some links to solid commentary on the matter are also provided by Ad Orientem here.

Now for my thoughts.

1. Benedict XVI had to do what he did if he was at all serious about addressing the liturgical malaise within the RCC. Given the circumstances at hand, he had no better choice.

That said, from an Orthodox ecclesiological point of view, the liturgical problems of the RCC reveal something of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. A significant majority of bishops in the RCC have been infected with a modernist aesthetic, even among many of those bishops who are otherwise considered "conservative." This is evident in the new liturgical forms, the new architecture, and the new religious art found throughout their dioceses. For most this is a soft modernism, for a minority of RCC bishops it is a harsh and unrelenting modernism. JPII encouraged his bishops to promote the old Roman Rite within their dioceses, at least to some degree. That encouragement resulted in very little. Most Roman bishops did not encourage the old Rite, most were not particularly friendly toward it, a significant minority were blatantly hostile to it. Thus the culture of traditional Catholicism (I here consider those traditional Catholics still in communion with Rome) was, most of the time, a culture in some degree of confrontation with the local bishop. The only hope for traditional Catholics to obtain full freedom to worship as traditional Catholics within the RCC was the Motu Proprio. But what a scenario we find now. It is inconceivable in the Orthodox mind that a priest could choose between various rites, or significant varations within a given rite, without the consent of his bishop, meaning the local bishop he is subject to. This document gives a priest the right to choose which Missal he will use for Masses he celebrates without other persons (of course, in Orthodoxy, there is no such thing as a Divine Liturgy said only by a priest, but nonetheless the point remains - it would be the local bishop in Orthodoxy who makes the final determination with regard to rite). For Masses and other liturgical acts celebrated with the people, it is now not the ordinary bishop who has final authority to determine the appropriate rite, but the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei." Again, if one holds that the old Mass was never abrogated, given the canonical and ecclesial peculiarities of Catholicism, then Benedict XVI had no choice but to create such a Commission, since so many bishops were thus obviously failing in their duty to protect the rightly ordered religious observance of traditional Catholics. But in doing so Benedict XVI pulls the RCC even further into a situation in which there appears to be only one bishop, that of Rome, who has many, many auxiliaries. Within Orthodoxy there is any number of variations over liturgical forms. The local Orthodox bishop has final control over what particular forms are used. One can think of a few relatively recent situations in which synods have tried to bring about greater liturgical uniformity within a given synodal Church and yet a given bishop still insists on holding on to this or that particular form within his diocese, because he has some attachment to it. I am not parading such hierarchical individualism as a virtue, but no one seems to question much the mild manner in which this occasionally happens within Orthodoxy. Such attachments to this or that liturgical form come and go within Orthodoxy and always concern relatively minor things. What is remarkable is that for all of the freedom an Orthodox bishop has with regard to the liturgy in his diocese, Orthodoxy has maintained, by modern standards, a relative aesthetic and textual continuity that is, so far, quite astounding. There are the differences between Slavic, Greek, Arab, and other ethnic liturgical forms, and we have certainly had a simplification and shortening of the Divine Liturgy (as well as the office as it is usually observed on the parish level) in modern times. I suppose one might argue that the differences between your average ROCOR Liturgy and your average American Antiochian Liturgy compare to the differences between the old Latin Rite and the Novus Ordo, textually. Perhaps. Of course, the modern shortenings of the Divine Liturgy in some Orthodox camps are not commonly associated with the culture of irreverence and the anti-Christian aesthetic that has too often been associated with the Novus Ordo. I know plenty of ROCOR (and ROCOR wanna-bes) who think that anything short of a 3 hour vigil each Saturday night is a matter of impiety, but these same people, almost always, accept the modern shortened versions of the Orthodox services as still being Orthodox, and most of those persons in ROCOR will tell you that all that is essential is there in the shortened liturgies. They simply believe that a fuller use of the texts is better, that the curtain and full iconostasis is better, that confession before each Communion is better - that these things are more Orthodox, as it were, and more conducive to salvation - life in the Kingdom. Of course, Orthodox have their überfromm on both sides, some who think that 3 hour long vigils are a requisite for every Orthodox person's salvation and some on the other side of the fence who think that veganism, pop leftist sentimentalism, and the liturgical monstrosities published by the New Skete former Franciscans amount to authentic Orthodoxy. But by and large Orthodoxy has a fair amount of liturgical variance that most Orthodox are perfectly happy to live with, in part because of the perception that there is a vibrant aesthetic and textual continuity to be found among the differences. Most persons who have been to a ROCOR church and an American Antiochian church sense that in both they have been to an Orthodox service. I wonder if those who attend your average Novus Ordo Mass and a reverently done 1962 Roman Rite Mass sense that the two services are both Roman Catholic. They may know such to be true, but that might well be in spite of their senses and even their non-sensory devotional faculties. In any event, I am not sure to what degree we can accurately compare liturgical variance in Orthodoxy to liturgical variance within the Roman Church, but we certainly can compare the ecclesiologies by which each Communion governs liturgical variance.

2. I have heard over the years many RCs state that one of the reasons they most desire reunion with Orthodoxy is their belief that our liturgical life would act as a good influence on the liturgical life of the RCC, now in quite difficult times. As I have oft stated, I fear the exact opposite. In such an event I fear that instead the greater influence would be on the eastern churches, as we now see with some Eastern Catholic rites basically novus ordoizing their own rites, despite Rome insisting that the Eastern Rites remain faithful to their liturgical heritage. If the Novus Ordo (and current Novus Ordo culture) is faithful to the tradition of the Roman Rite then why not go a similar route with the Eastern Rites and posit that one is being faithful to those rites? Thus we see a bastardization of liturgical language and a clownish marketing aesthetic enter in. If modernist liturgical forms are granted an egalitarian standing in the Church, then all forms will veer in that direction. Just as with Neuhaus' law (Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed), so too with liturgy - when and where traditional liturgies play a niche role in the Church, they eventually die. They only seem to survive long term among those who believe that traditional liturgy is the true liturgy. The Motu Proprio allows for further development of the old form of the Roman Rite. This would seem to allow for the possibility of some modernist influences. In the short term this seems unlikely, because the old Rite is in the hands of persons who tend to be purists. But what will happen when "moderate" Novus Ordo priests begin to have Latin Masses in their suburban auditorium churches? This phenomenon will almost certainly happen. What of the aesthetic divorce between good textual liturgy and religious architecture that teaches the exact opposite? When one has a solemn high Mass in a setting which is far more fit for a James Taylor concert or a filming of an Oprah episode, there is an effect on the local liturgical culture which can facilitate the continued strength of modernist aesthetic on the whole of RC liturgical culture. A former boss of mine who was a theologian in residence at a "conservative" Catholic parish once chided his priest saying that no matter how many sermons the priest gave on the Real Presence it would not matter so long as the priest allowed the Catholic schoolchildren to place the backdrop for their Nativity play in front of the Tabernacle each year. My old boss told him that that single practice caused Catholics to not believe in the Real Presence who would otherwise believe it - and that even some who believed it as a matter of theory (good neo-Caths) did not believe it as a matter of lived reality, of appropriated belief which is indeed faith, because their belief was not nurtured in an environment of due reverence. Mere belief is the seed, a culture of right reverence and worship is the soil belief grows in. Without such a culture, the belief will either die or, at best, remain in an embryonic state. It may well be that Benedict XVI and his successors will address the whole problem of modernist liturgical aesthetic in contemporary Catholicism, but unless it is addressed in its entirety, we may see that things ultimately become worse instead of better. As many commentators have stated, the ball has now been put into the traditionalists' side of the court. Their cause has been vindicated, to a significant degree. But all this rests on the traditionalists assenting to the Novus Ordo being a legitimate form, the ordinary legitimate form, of the Roman Rite. As at least one commentator put it, the success of the Motu Proprio in many dioceses may depend on how the traditionalists respond to this. If their response includes deprecation of the Novus Ordo, the traditional liturgy projects may well fail or be subtlely suppressed in various ways. The traditionalists then have to walk a very fine line. Most traditionalists do not see the 1962 Mass as just their liturgical preference, they see it as the authentic Catholic form of worship and devotion. In order to have greater ritual freedom, they are now going to be pressed to adhere to the public conviction that there are two liturgical forms within Catholicism, both equally valid and venerable, of which some people prefer one type and other people prefer the other type. In this very situation which appears as a triumph for traditionalists, we have an underlying modernist victory of sorts.

3. The "victory" I refer to is that of religious consumerism. The RCC now lets appear a vast institutional instance of what the Lutheran and Methodist churches down the street from me offer - a contemporary service and a traditional service. Choose your flavor - both are valid - both can equally bring you to God, or so the market tells us. Do not get me wrong, I am all for liturgical variance. Liturgical variance rightly happens because of cultural and linguistic differences. But in the RCC now we will have both options in the same diocese, even in the same parish. This is not the same as a RC parish having one Spanish Mass on Sunday. Two white, anglo-saxon devout converts to RCism who are the same age, went to the same high school and married sisters are now going to go to different liturgies at the same RC church. Each will choose the Mass, indeed the ritual style, that he prefers. One is quite traditional, one is quite contemporary. They will learn and be absorbed into two different liturgical languages, two different liturgical pieties, two significantly different ways of praying. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they will each feel traditional some Sundays and contemporary other Sundays. The choice will be theirs. This is different from a Mexican immigrant going to a Spanish Mass at a parish that offers mostly English Masses, or a Benedictine oblate going to Mass at a Benedictine monastery on occasion, or someone who has only ever attended old rite Latin Masses attending Latin Masses. The Motu Proprio is quite clear. This is not like Roman Rite - Eastern Rite distinctions in which a Catholic has to finally decide which he is going to raise his family. A priest can change back and forth with regard to his personal Masses as he pleases. A Roman Rite Catholic layperson will be able to go back and forth as he or she pleases. In accepting these terms, traditionalists are forced, now more than ever, to accept the legitimacy of the Novus Ordo. The extent to which they accept that legitimacy, in order to hang on to their own traditions, may have a bearing on the extent to which current Novus Ordo culture pervades Catholicism. I should make it known here that as an Orthodox I find both the Novus Ordo and the 1962 Missale Romanum to be flawed liturgies. But both are, from my Orthodox perspective, pretty easily fixable. Neither would take much work to be made Orthodox. There are some things that I especially do not like about the Novus Ordo (Orthodox have always complained that the West is liturgically minimalist, but the Novus Ordo, even in its official Latin text, approaches being überminimalist), but what concerns me the most is what I have been calling the Novus Ordo liturgical culture, which has more in common with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood than traditional Christian liturgy. One can only hope that my fears here are wrong, that so many Catholics file into traditional liturgies that the Novus Ordo is either changed for the better or let go, and that the Novus Ordo liturgical culture is finally squashed. But so long as "conservative" RC priests allow tritely painted children's play backdrops to cover Tabernacles I doubt that this will not happen. And while I cannot think of a better choice on the table for a Pope with Benedict XVI's beliefs than the choice he has made, I fear that the RCC has unwittingly advanced the cause of religious consumerism and the modernist notion that Christianity has optional styles, broadly speaking traditional and contemporary, and that charitable Christians allow for both. Indeed, I fear most this cult of stylization, in which modern identity politics makes its way into ecclesial life. The neo-trad Catholics I have been reading of late have commented on the fact that besides the general pathologies one stereotypically finds in traditionalist groups there is also that sinking realization that the whole traditionalist project is inherently modernist, despite the fact that it is entirely devoted to the destruction of modernism. One will always become what one hates. The Vatican has offered traditionalists something of a way out, but it involves owning up to their modernism, as it were, and embracing it in the form of big tent liturgical consumerism. Is there another way for the RCC? Is there another way for any of us Western Christians (I include Orthodox who are Western in cultural upbringing)? As I suggest in my überfromm posts, it is difficult for all moderns to avoid the stylization of everything. And the modern project has left its total stylization imprint everywhere modernity has reached, even in Orthodoxy. Orthodox evangelism and the Orthodox media (which is increasingly web based) are highly stylized in the West. All Christians living in a modern context are in grave danger of attempting to morph Christianity into a commercial. We are at the point where to suggest some form of counter culture is to simply suggest a different commercial. Being anti-modernist is just as modernist as buying a wanna-be bauhaus toaster at Target and liking it. It seems to me that the only way out is for one to have essentially no agenda - to not embrace modernism, to not systematically reject it. To be not of this world in that respect. To simply live one's life in accordance to the Apostolic witness as best one can and leave most things be. To attempt to live quietly, fly under the radar, subscribe to nothing unessential, and to avoid agendists of all sorts. And that is the final problem as I see it for the RCC liturgy. Both the ardent Novus Ordo culture types and the ardent traditionalists are agendists. The RCC needs a liturgical transformation brought about by persons who have no liturgical agenda, as it were. How on earth, in a highly politicized modern context, does that happen?