Turning Around

St Augustine famously said to the people of Hippo, 'for you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian',

I have been a priest for long enough to remember people who lapsed after the Council, as a seminarian I remember meeting a rather harassed mother who had been deserted by her husband. She spoke rather energetically about men and women behind desks who she had problems with, teachers, social workers, people at the council officers, people at the housing office, people at the post office where in those days she had cash her benefit cheque. She ended by "And even the bl**** the priest says Mass from behind a desk nowadays".

In the last few of posts I have been trying to compare aspects of the two forms of the Roman Rite, and although Mass maybe celebrated facing or not facing the people in both forms and the CDW have constantly reiterated the orientation of the priest is his choice in the Ordinary Form, in the same way as the choice of Eucharistic Prayers is his, it is perhaps the question of orientation that the marks the strongest rupture between the two Forms.

Saint Augustine's words highlight the two aspects of ministerial identity, one is a bishop (or a priest) first and foremost because one is a Christian, from and amongst other Christian people.

The years after the Council marked a change in many aspects of priestly life, indeed many of the main concerns of groups like ACTA seem almost wholly concerned about the dynamic between priest and people. The problem is that such groups start off from the premise that it is essentially a 'power relationship', in much the same way as the other categories mentioned above of teacher, social worker etc. The true spirit of the Vatican Council presupposes that priest and people are co-owners of the Catholic Faith, and yet the 20th century seems to be marked by division between those who have the 'traditional faith' or the faith of the catechism, and those who seem to question every aspect of it. There should be no distinction between the faith of the heirarchy and that of the man in the pew. On the contrary today often the heirarchs are portrayed as wishing to change or impose something on the received faith of the man in the pew, rather than increasing devotion or fervour they seem to mitigate it. It is perhaps significant that the leadership of many dissident groups are made up of laicised priests or professional lay Catholics.

It strikes me that the orientation of the priest marks a change in how priests were seen or see themselves. It marks a change of emphasis from something cultic to some governmental. It can be summed up in the use of the terms of 'priest' and 'president'. These terms are often are matters of contention when speaking of the liturgy, but more importantly they mark two very different ecclesiologies. Celebrating Mass facing the people speaks 'presidency' whilst celebrating facing the same direction as people speaks of 'priesthood', though when speaking of priesthood and using more traditional terminology 'offering the Mass' might be better.

The idea of a priest in Old Testament or pagan terms works on three levels, first it is about dealing with blood and entrails and the messier side of human life, he deals with sinners, his hands are filthy with touching that offered for sacrifice and with contact with those who want to offer sacrifice, he is comparable to a tradesman, a slaughterman. Secondly he stands with the people before God, he represents them in the Divine Presence, if he or his people cause God's anger, it falls first on him. His duty is to prepare the sacrifice but also his people but most importantly himself for the act of sacrifice. On the third level he enters the Holy of Holies to bring something of the Divine to his people but it is always something of God and never his own.

The idea of a President, is a modern form Kingship, there is gulf between him and the people. The etymology is he 'sits before', or above the people, his role is to rule and govern. Whilst a priest is essentially a servant of God and man, a President is the opposite. A priest is one who stands between God and man, he has nothing of his own to offer. The notion of presidency seems to be one who only has what is his own to offer, his teaching, his instruction, his rule.

Pope Francis speaks of the clergy 'smelling of the flock' he condemns 'clericalism'. One of the great failures of the post-Vatican II era is essentially a failure of leadership or even of government. Rather than celebrating a common faith with our people, praying with them, the role of clergy today has become one of teacher or administrator. It is precisely these areas of teaching the faith and administering government in the Church in terms of morality where we have failed drastically.

The problem I would suggest is one of authority; as a priest of a cult, authority comes from within the cult, as something God given. In the pre-Concilliar Mass the priest took off his chasuble and maniple to preach, in many places where Sunday Mass was on the hour and half hour he didn't preach at all, the sermon was reserved for the High Mass and or the evening service, which was not of obligation, of Rosary, Sermon and Benediction. Indeed the priest was ordained 'to offer Mass for the living and the dead'. The post-Concilliar priest is ordained 'to proclaim the Gospel', again a drastic change. The pre-Concilliar model sees the priest as giver of sacraments, a bringer of Salvation through the sacraments, the post-Concilliar model is that of herald of the Gospel or of the Kingdom of God. The pre-Concilliar model sees the priests authority coming from what he does, the post-Concilliar model suggests it comes from what he says.

'Doing' is something that can be learnt, it comes from the office, basically any fool can learn to perform rituals; 'saying' comes from personal skills, it is however intensely personal but it is on this personal level that we fail. The post-Concilliar period saw a movement away from ex opere operato where the concern was simply about the 'doing' of a rite, to ex 'opere operantis' where the concern is much about the 'doer', his style, his learning, his personal authority. The Church today faces similar problems Augustine found amongst the Donatist contagion, we are obsessed with, not so much the holiness but the personal qualities of individual ministers, a very heavy psychological burden is placed upon them to live up to it. In assessing priests and bishops, even popes our concern is not an objective concern about the office but subjective about personal traits. This is a decidedly Protestant quality and ultimately destructive to all that is Catholic.

What I have been trying to explore briefly and sketchily is does the re-orientation of the altar re-orientate our theology, our understanding of the relationship between God and Man, and ultimately the Church.

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More on the two Lectionaries

A commenter on the previous post said, "'New' lectionary. Most living Catholics have only known this lectionary. Do you see no merits in the OF lectionary?"

Of course Summorum Pontificum means that the ancient Lectionary is still part of the living tradition of the Church today, it hasn't been abrogated and at least for priests and people stands as a counterbalance for the Pauline Lectionary.

There are obvious advantages to the new Lectionary, even if it is a product of a committee and let us leave aside the matter of that committee's theology. The most obvious is that it gives a much broader and richer selection of the scriptures is offered, the Old Testament for example is not really present in the Lections, in the older form. Weekdays have their own readings rather being a re-presentation of Sunday, again opening up more of the Bible, at least for those who attend weekday Masses.

The problem is that the new Lectionary demands a deeper knowledge of scripture than most members of a congregation, or even most priests, actually have. Continuous readings are fine but miss a day with a feast or solemnity and there is a wait until the cycle reappears the year after next. Obscure readings from the Old Testament tend to go over people's heads unless the context is explained, for a highly mixed congregation the second reading and even the more difficult portions of St John's Gospel can exclude rather than include. In fact the new Lectionary more or less always demands the priest to give some explanation.

The newer Lectionary because of its Sunday three year cycle and weekly two year cycle always stands independent not only of the Divine Office but more importantly of the other texts and prayers of the Mass, this is not so with the older Liturgy were the Word of God is integral to the celebration not just of the Mass but of the whole days liturgy.

The change in the liturgy marked a distinct change in the use of scripture in the Church, the Mass of Paul VI made scripture essentially didactic, the ancient Lectionary is theophanic, a moment of divine revelation, an encounter with God, but it is also kérugmatic, it was honed to the proclamation of Christ, his death, resurrection and return. The single year cycle means that those things considered important by the Church are returned to repeatedly, year after year. The annual cycle of saints, remember the high significance of the cult of saints in the tradition of the West, their place in the ancient Roman Canon for example, constantly repeats the necessity for Christian virtues.

The scatter-gun approach of the OF Lectionary has meant that scripture is not memorised, as it was by previous generations. Most people's memories do not retain texts over a three year period (six if the cycle is interrupted by a transferred Holyday), and memories are confused by similar texts, for example stories that appear in all the Gospels, like the feeding stories, especially when the writers have different doctrinal reasons for presenting them.

Perhaps one of our big problems as a Church is that Catholic doctrine seems so very complex and that it is not understood by most regular Mass attenders, I think this is the result of the imprecision of the Pauline Lectionary, and that in fact more scripture in the Liturgy often means less scripture in the heart.

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A New Image of God

In last Sundays readings Jesus says to his disciples: "Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division". It is the type of reading that the compilers of the Lectionary normally move to the Wednesday of the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, or there abouts.

A useful tool for any spiritual director or regular confessor is to get the directee or penitent to examine his image of God. Images of God change through history, iconography changes, they are important in that they affect the way in which we relate to God and understand His relationship to us and to the world. The image of the young smooth faced shepherd, says something different from the mighty Pantocrator, Christ the Priest reigning from the Tree produces a different spirituality and sentiments to the bloody Christ suffering in agony on the Cross; Christ the Judge "with limbes white and woundes rede who comes the Judge the quicke and dede" again produces a different understanding to the image of the tender Sacred Heart.

Images are important.

The problem is we tend to make of God in our own preconceived image of other things, often they are socio-political and from our own experience, thus the child of a brutal harsh distant father often tends see God in those terms, and will have difficulty in relating to God as Father or to Jesus, until they have learnt to change their image 'fatherhood'. I always tell dads at baptism how important they are in being an icon for their children of God.

The lectionary for Extraordinary Form seems to present Christ in a more vivid way than the Ordinary Form Lectionary. It was organic, hammered out over the centuries, although the Sundays are basically those in use at the time of Gregory the Great. The readings for feasts reflect the imagery, theology and spirituality of the time they were introduced. What was used at the time of Pope Gregory in the sixth century had undergone a long process of redaction going back presumably to the early Church. The old Lectionary by the time St Thomas wrote the Office and selected the Lections for the Feast of Corpus Christ had undergone a slow development and of course the old Lectionary itself had formed the theology and spirituality of St Thomas himself. The Church's theology until the 20th Century was built on her Liturgy and the scriptures presented there and most especially in the Lectionary of the Missal

I can't help thinking of Abp Annibale Bugnini writing the Missal of Paul VI and composing the present Lectionary through a haze of whatever was smoked in 60s. Maybe I am being unfair and he didn't smoke anything but the Pauline Lectionary has a decided 60s feel to it. The image of God, of Jesus is not organic, it has the feel of one particular period in history, to me it is decidedly Beatnik to early Hippie. If it hadn't been compiled after two World Wars and the Holocaust it would probably have been quite different, if Bugnini or Paul VI had been different types of men the image of God presented to us would be quite different. Because fundamentally it is their image of God, it is not the image that St Thomas Becket, St Francis, St John of the Cross, St John Vianney, or Padre Pio met every day at the altar.

The OF Lectionary presents us with a new theology; the ancient Lectionary formed the theology of the Church, it was an unchanging 'given'. What Bugnini produced was very much the product of the Council and 20th century theology. It comes from the same school that applied the scalpel to excise the cursing psalm, that separated that bit about eating and drinking one's own condemnation from the Epistle for Corpus Christi and so many other bits and pieces that they were uncomfortable with, that simply did not reflect the theological fashion of the time.

Yes, we now have a lot more scripture but it is carefully selected, carefully edited and from a very particular time in Church history and produced by very strange men indeed, some of whom were quite unsaintly, who had their own image of God they wanted to impose on the Church.

In a sense the new Lectionary gives a new image of God, in that it has change the Church fundamentally because it has changed the face of God.

I know I have written about this before, but the image of God we worship and that Church believes in is of absolute importance.
Ben too has done a lot of work on a comparison of the two Lectionaries.

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Irrational Islam

The religious internet has been alive with pictures of burning churches, of nuns being paraded through the streets as prisoners of war, with abduction and murder of bishops and priests, the abduction and forced conversion and forced marriage of young girls, the abduction and murder of young boys, the killing of so many and the flight of even more from their ancient homelands, the question raised is: Why?

Again we see in Syria mass murder, the use of chemical weapons, torture, mass rape, again: Why?

As Sandro Magister points out for an answer we can go back to the 2006 Regensburg speech of Benedict XVI, we can state with the Pope Emeritus and the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." 

Both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism are dangerous, as is secular fundamentalism, it always leads to inhumanity. The Emperor continues,  ""God is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…"

For Catholics revelation is about Faith and Reason; Reason, which comes from God and is God's gift to mankind is part of man's very nature. Faith without Reason is dehumanising, even Christianity when reduced to mere Fideistic Positivism, the mere following of rules, rather than its emphasis on worshipping God "in Spirit and Truth", in Jesus as being the Incarnate Logos or forgetting Paul's insistence that the Law brings death and the Spirit brings Life, can be dangerous indeed.

The problem with Islam is that the best man can hope for is to become abdullah, a slave of God, a slave of a God who commands and instructs, but who is actually as far removed from man as a man is from a microbe, whilst Catholicism insists that man can hope for 'divinisation', we can hope "to see God face to face", to become Sons. We believe that Grace transforms base fallen nature that distorts man's rational nature, it enthuses our very nature and transforms us. Islam does indeed believe in 'One God' but it is God who is distant. It is certainly a God who is merciful and who expects his creatures to be merciful if they are to expect mercy but the Christian God transforms. The difference is Grace. The difference is the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity.

Human reason transforms, Islam in the Spanish pre-reconquest Convivencia, when Islam, Christianity and Judaism dwelt more or less happily together was an age in which Islamic scholarship embraced, preserved and eventually passed on to men like Aquinas the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. It is not by accident that Christianity rediscovers Aristotle and Plato in dialogue with a rational Islam. Today's problem is that contemporary Islam has lost its sense of the rational. Nostrae Aetate urges us to dialogue, Benedict's Regensburg speech was a model for blunt, frank and courageous dialogue, it is more necessary now than it was 50 years ago.

Catholicism unlike than secularism, which can only confront, can engage in dialogue with Islam but it strikes me that in the West especially but elsewhere too amongst Moslems there is a great hunger for a faith which is rational. In my 'dialogue' with Islam - talking with local shopkeepers and cafe owners and students - the more Islam identifies itself as irrational and bloodthirsty, the more tentative enquiries I find are made about Christianity. 

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Poorer Church, a non-Pelagian Church, a re-Orientated Church

The Pope talks about a poorer Church, so did his predecessor. It is very simplistic and I am of that generation that would see a poorer Church in terms of "The Shoes of the Fisherman" but that is a bit superficial, probably adolescent and actually in terms of the Roman Church would merely mean the Pope transferring a mass of 'treasures' and buildings from its care to the care of the Italian State, according to the Lateran treaty most of what the Church cares for actually belongs to "humanity".

A poorer Church could mean bishops and other clergy driving older cars, going to a cheaper tailor, drinking beer rather than wine, having a more working class rather than middle class lifestyle. I can't imagine that will convince anyone. Although I must say I am shocked to hear bishops talking about trips to Sandringham for the weekend or about dinner parties with the great and the good, the powerful and the political, I am not sure whether that in itself constitutes a 'rich' Church. I suppose actually it shows an orientation towards wealth and power rather than a healthy disdain for such things. I was certainly shocked by the appearance that the Catholic Education Service under Oona Stannard seemed to be enthral to the Labour Government and various other Catholic organisations involvement with government departments. Some of the discomfort I feel comes from my own inverted snobbery but more it comes from a sense that there is something wrong with the Church so orientated.

Rather than discreet chats in the corridors of power with Minister and Civil Servants I would be much happier if our Bishops looked more to the struggling Catholic masses and St Laurence-like called them to demonstrate in the courtyards of the powerful, whilst at the same seeing a responsibility to teach those masses clearly the Catholic faith, but maybe their Lordships understand that the Church orientated to towards such masses is likely to prove disappointing. There is nothing worst than marching towards the barricades and finding no-one is following.

Father Simon Henry has an interesting post in which he points out, as we of a particular stripe tend to point out, the wholesale failure of much that has taken place over the the last few decades of motivating 'the once Catholic masses'. He is right, everything seems to be going down the pan. I was talking to school governor who just appointed a new head teacher, of the five applicants, they appointed the only one who was practising and they were not entirely happy with her but the panel thought that if they re-advertised they might get no practising Catholic applicants. We are getting to a stage where we will soon have to admit that we do not simply have a vocations crisis with priestly vocations, but with every other area of Catholic life has a shortage of vocations. An impoverished Church, rather than a poorer one is actually what we are going to get, like it or not, but perhaps a poorer Church though is actually about our acknowledgement of our poverty and weakness and that left to ourselves, without God, we are doomed!

Reading through Fr Simon's catalogue it seems as if what he is suggesting is that a great deal of what is wrong stems from an almost Pelagian attitude that has been part of our catechesis and our celebration of the sacraments for the last fifty years. In brief, our catechesis, like our sacramental celebrations have been person centred rather than God centred. We have emphasised human skill, human ingenuity, the human nature of worship, the human-centredness of catechesis and avoiding anything to do with God. Ratzinger spoke of the 'closed circle' not just of contemporary worship but of contemporary Church life, similarly of "the community celebrating itself", of "self reverentialisam". We can see much of that in modern funeral liturgies, 'A Mass to celebrate the Life of ...." "A Memorial Mass for ...." and indeed the life of an individual is celebrated and the 'Eternal Memorial established by Christ for the Redemption of the Living and the Dead' is merely architectural background, with or without Christ, the dead will attain his or her reward, there is nothing more Pelagian than that. Ratzinger's answer was 're-orientation'. It is the dependency on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ which is lacking.

When Ratzinger spoke of 're-orientation' it was certainly about liturgical re-orientation but that was only a symbol. From the late 1950s he had spoken about a 'smaller, poorer Church', for him a poor Church was one which placed God at the centre, that hungered for and begged from God. When we speak about 'poverty' in the Church what we are actually speaking about is a Church that recognises its poverty and powerlessness but more importantly its absolute dependence upon God. It knows that without God it is merely a gang of thieves and brigands destined for damnation.

The problems with the Vatican Bank, the 'Gay Lobby', the 'Masonic Lobby' isn't merely deviant naughtiness on the part of a few sinful individuals but a metaphysical dysfunction that can only be remedied by a radical metanoia, a re-orientation of the Church as whole, a literal turning towards Christ in every aspect of its life. With a 'closed circle' or a "the community celebrating itself" a move as Pope Francis says 'to the peripheries' is a movement outside of that circle or that community to that which is beyond, in such circles or communities it is God himself who is at 'the peripheries'.

A poorer Church therefore is one that recognises its need for re-orientation because centred on itself it is heading to ruin. For Benedict the symbolic re-orientation of worship was of absolute significance because it was about the Church looking beyond itself towards God as true believers rather than looking inwards to itself as a congregation of self sufficient Pelagians.

Yes, I am saying the post-Concilliar Church is essentially Pelagian.

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Dublin diocese is an unhappy place

Without trying to re-hash controversy about it again, apart from the riding rough shod over the rubrics regarding the gender of the owners of the feet the Pope washed last Holy Thursday. I was disappointed that the feet the Pope washed were not the feet of priests, it is not in the rubrics, but it has been the custom of the Roman Pontiff to wash the feet of priests who are from his diocese. It is an important sign for the world's bishops and clergy.

A good bishop's first responsibility must be to his clergy, before he is the Father of anyone else he is the Father in God of his co-workers, his priests, the promise of fealty made by the priest to his bishop at ordination places the both in unique position in the modern world, it is not one of the managed and manager, and certainly not one of employer and employed which increasingly it tends to become today, the model is actually that of God the Father, the loving Father of his sons, to them he is supposed to be the good Shepherd. Above all he is supposed to strengthen them, first of all because he loves them and secondly so that through them he might serve the flock of Christ.

I occasionally get emails from clergy in the Dublin diocese, it is difficult to tell from this distance whether they are typical or exceptional. No where in Ireland does the Church seem to have lost the faith more quickly, no where do the clergy seem to have been more bruised and battered by the fall out of the child abuse crisis than in Dublin. From across the water for a long time Archbishop Martin seemed to be the only effective Irish Bishop, the only one to address the terrible history presented in the media of the Irish Church, it seems almost as if all his efforts and energies have been spent on this issue.

 Fr Eamonn Whelan has published his own reflections on the relationship of Dublin's clergy with their Archbishop, who rather than offering healing and paternal care seems to be bullying and domineering and damaging further those who have traumatised by the faults of their confreres. What what I hear and from what Fr Eamonn reports Dublin is an unhappy place.

Charity begins at home!

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The Trouble with the Poor

The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

There is a secluded area between the church and our hall, a passage, occasionally we find someone has got a few cardboard boxes together and has slept there and if it has been raining leaves a sodden blanket, cardboard there to be cleaned up, often it also smells of urine and there is often excrement there and sometimes a used needle or two.
There is a man who comes into the church, especially during the trad Mass and during the silence of the Canon will pray aloud, "Jesus, I want you to bless Fr Ray and ...., and God, can you persuade the good people here to give to the poor, I am poor", unchecked he will take his cap off and have a collection. It makes a mess of our prayers, it stops some coming to Mass here.

If they are not doing that they are ringing the door bell at every hour of the day and night, and they tell lies. They tell you their Gran is dying in Southampton and they need the train fare, you give it to them and if you don't find them drunk in the street they are back the next day and the other Gran is dying in Hastings this time.

After delivering the poor, the treasure of the Roman Church, to Valerian's palace Laurence was grilled to death. What I don't believe is, the legend tells us, Laurence said to his executioners when he had been on the griddle sometime, "turn me over, I am done on this side". I don't believe it but there is an important message in these words, even in our pain and suffering we can grow complacent, 'the poor' challenge our complacency. They interrupt our comfort, our prayer, our routine bringing the mess of their lives into our lives.

There is an interesting discussion on sin on Cranmer's blog, sin indeed is a metaphysical reality, the Protestant argument was against the pre-reformation Catholic Pelagian practice of salvation through works, the Catholic conter-reformation argument was against Protestant belief that once you were saved you were saved. Catholic's believe the great danger in Protestantism is complacency, having received 'the blessed assurance' of Salvation one can relax. The Catholic doctrine is that complacency about salvation is dangerous, hence the counter-reformation and biblical teaching of 'faith fruitful in good works', no 'assurance' can guarantee salvation, it is God's free gift, unknown to us until judgement day.
The sin of the Pharisees, of the rich man in the story of Dives and Lazarus is complacence. The rich man didn't even notice the mess that Lazarus created at his front door, he didn't respond to it, he needed someone to bring him out of his complacency.

My big difficulty with confession at the moment is that I have grown complacent in my lifestyle, I don't want it changed, the message of the Gospels seem to be let the poor into it to mess it up a little.

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