A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities (part 27 and last)

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 27

THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE FASTEN SEAT BELT SIGN AND REQUESTS THAT YOU PUT YOUR TRAYS AND SEATS IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION IN PREPARATION FOR LANDING.

So what do we do now? First a word to the Catholicism-lite crowd -- be who you claim to be. Tolerate diversity. If there’s a group who wants to have Mass by the book, do a Mass for them without eight mini-sermons, liturgical dancers, incense in bean pots and lay concelebrants holding hands while singing Kumbaya. Have a Mass that allows the old fogies and the young fogies (to borrow Fr. Andrew Greeley’s phrase) to kneel for communion if they want, or to say the Our Father without holding the sweaty hand of some stranger. Have a Mass that’s guaranteed to be “by the book.”

The incomparable Fr. Zuhlsdorf quotes a liturgy director as saying “Say the Black, and Do the Red.” In the Roman Missal there are things called “Rubrics.” They are printed in red (ruber, Latin for red, red=ruby. Get it?) They are the directions for how to say Mass. There are words in black. They are what we are supposed to say.

For instance, one hears the phrase, “Pray, sisters and brothers.” After all, we want to be inclusive and affirmative so we must insert “sisters” and affirmatively put them first. The semi-literate drones that our institutions of higher learning now produce have no idea that “brethren” in English is the inclusive term, like “Geschwister” in German, which sounds like the word for sisters. When I am addressed at a German language Mass as Geschwistern I am not insulted. I don’t imagine anyone is favoring women over men.

However, some that now seem to run things are afraid of insulting someone so they have to add “sister” and say it first to be on the safe side. They don’t speak English very well and unaware that “Brethren” is an in inclusive term in modern English. (It is the archaic plural of “brother”) Well, the text says “Pray, Brethren”, not “Pray, sisters and brothers.”

My suggestion is that you have one Mass at your parishes in which you allow people to go to a Mass at which the Black is said and the Red is done ─ just one, Father. You can do your liturgical dancing and affirm your artistic side at the 11AM Mass. Just say the 9AM by the book, so that if a person wants to go to a Catholic Mass, she (or he) will have the opportunity to do so. I have always maintained that the faithful have a right to go to a Catholic Mass if they want to. It is your duty, Father, to provide at least one a Sunday. You can say a Mass later of which you are the star and during which you can let your inner poet out.

Now a word to my own brethren ─ the stick in the mud, curmudgeonly, reactionary, traditional types. Lighten up on the New Mass. If you are one of those folks that think that the new Mass is somehow less, somehow not quite as holy, and worst of all, one of those who think it is not valid, it is here that we part company. Have you no trust in God? Do you think the Holy Spirit is incapable of guiding the Church? The New Mass, as I have described it and as the Council Fathers (sorry, there were no Council Mothers as far as I can tell) envisioned it, is a very beautiful thing.

They envisioned a reverent Mass with much Latin, traditional postures and gestures, with the celebrant facing the Lord, when appropriate, facing the people when appropriate. The new Mass was supposed to involve kneeling, genuflection and so on. They envisioned a Mass in which the treasury of sacred music continued and Gregorian chant had pride of place, though allowance was made for a limited use of local music for pastoral reasons provided that music was of an appropriate nature.

Well if all that’s true, how have we ended up with the triumphalist, narcissistic, battle-of-the- bands lunacy that passes for liturgy? I have spent half a year explaining that and I am not going to repeat myself. I would however like to explain, at least in my own limited understanding, why we have the new Mass in the first place: Three simple words THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The Holy Spirit anticipated the wild ride. Blessed Pope John and the Council Fathers invoked the Holy Spirit and convened the council, giving a mandate to streamline the liturgy; they could not have seen what the world would become in forty years. They could have known nothing of handheld computer phones so common that eight-year-olds would have them. Who could have imagined the world wide web, the fall of Marxism, a roaring Chinese economy and an heroic, growing Chinese Christianity, as well as a resurgent Islam, (though Hilaire Belloc had warned us.)

They couldn’t have imagined, artificial birth control claimed as a civil right and enforced abortions as a civil duty. Would they have believed anyone who told them that filth would be available 24 hours a day on handheld televisions and that computer access to pornography would be defended by leftist librarians as a right even for children? They couldn’t have imagined gay parades led by Irish Catholic mayors. They couldn’t have imagined television commercials in prime time with nearly naked models hawking things to enhance etc. (family column). They would have wept to imagine the depravity of modern society and, infinitely worse, that some of the clergy would plunge themselves and the good name of Holy Mother Church into that sea of filth.

Certainly, they could not have imagined the collapse of education that was to afflict the generations raised by television sets and day care providers. Could they have possibly known that, in a wave of pseudo-tolerance, academic excellence would take a back seat to political correctness? Who knew that the great universities, secular and Catholic alike, would produce generations of culturally and sometimes functionally illiterate graduates who thought themselves brilliant?

Had the Council Fathers a clue, that forty years of politically correct, ideologically anti-Catholic religious education, largely taught and controlled by people who had turned their backs on religious life itself, would produce two whole generations of Catholics who learned nothing more about the faith than that Jesus loves me and this is how you hold your hands for first Communion? Who could have imagined that the heritage of two thousand years of art and wisdom, of saints, martyrs and scholars would be threatened with extinction in the blink of an eye?

I’ll tell you who ¬ THE HOLY SPIRIT! We live in a world that cannot chew gum and walk at the same time. We think we are brilliant, but we are among the stupidest generations in history. We think we are wise and knowing because we can do swell things with computer graphics and the latest software, but we moderns are the least personally productive and the least individually competent group of people since the fall of the Roman empire. When I was a lad, people still knew how to play musical instruments. Now they know how to play a radio. We listen to whatever music we please on handheld devices, but pull the plug and we are bored with the wind in the trees and the chirping of birds.

In the same vein, we can’t spell, but we can access spell check. We can’t add or subtract, but we can work a calculator. Have you ever been in a fast food restaurant when the computer is down? The pierced and painted sophisticates who work there can’t make change for a five dollar bill! We don’t talk to one another; we text short shallow messages. We can communicate by key board but there are precious few who can actually read or write handwritten messages. We don’t know how to grow a potato or raise a chicken or build a chair. When the power goes out, and at some point it will, if human history is any indicator, millions and millions of suave urbanites will wander around indignant that the government is not doing anything and then they will starve to death.

I am not urging you to run to a commune in the mountains. Jesus said, “But when these things begin to take place, stand straight and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” (Luke 21:28) Don’t run for the mountains this time. Stay. Live among those who don’t know the Lord, because they are going to need Him. If you abandon them, who will help them? The world has collapsed before and will collapse again.

For two thousand years, the Church has been the source and guardian of the civilization. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit is still in charge? The great difference between the New Mass and the Old Mass is that the Holy Spirit designed the New Mass to be LINEAR. That’s the whole difference. We live in a generation of intellectually-challenged electrified zombies who, as I mentioned earlier, can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

The old Mass was complex. The choir would do one thing, the celebrant another. There was time for quiet. There were things that happened that were unseen, unheard and unexplained. Earlier generations could perceive the sanctity and beauty of the ritual. When confronted by mystery, this generation says “Huh? I don’t get it.” So the Holy Spirit gave us a linear Mass. It is easy to understand, even if you are chewing gum.

Inspired by the same Holy Spirit, the Blessed John Paul and his successor, Benedict, have preserved the older more complex expression of the one sacrifice of Calvary for those to whom it is meaningful. At some times, for some people and in some places, the Latin Liturgy of John XXXIII is helpful. At some time, for some people and in some places the vernacular, linear Liturgy of Paul VI is helpful.

It is time for three things to happen.

1) Let us finally implement the council’s directives by “Saying the Black, and Doing the Red.”
2) It is time for liberals to finally be liberal and respect those for whom the traditional liturgy is meaningful.
3) And finally, it is time for people like me to stop harshing on people who are not capable of entering the mysticism of the old Mass.

As in the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, the Holy Spirit has done something wonderful, despite the questionable motives of some of those He used. He has given the Latin Rite of the Church two liturgies, as in some of the Eastern Rites. We in the West now have the Liturgy of the Blessed John, which some call the Tridentine Mass, and the Liturgy of Paul VI which some people call the “Mass of Vatican Two” or “the New Mass” There are two widely available expressions of the Latin Rite, the Johannine Mass and the Pauline Mass. There is, however, no Hootenanny Mass, at least not in the vision of the Council.

I’m done now. I’ve gotten it all out and I feel better.

Sincerely,

The Rev. Know-it-all

PS Don’t panic. The Rev. Know it all is not about to stop pontificating or fulminating. I think I will move on to the Rev. Know-it-all’s “Guide to Reading the Bible, the Big Book on the Coffee Table” and perhaps a diatribe against Ayn Rand.

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 26

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 26

As I told you the last time you were foolish enough to read up this column, the solution to the current liturgical mess is to implement the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The reforms mentioned nothing, as far as I can tell about moving the tabernacles, whitewashing the churches, breaking the images and stained glass, ending novenas, rosary devotions and benedictions of the Blessed Sacrament.

And amazingly enough, the second Vatican Council did not mandate the turning of the altars. There is no requirement in the general liturgical norms of the Church that the congregation be forced to stare at their pastor’s ugly mug for the entire liturgy, nor he at theirs. My dear friend, the Rev. Colonel O’Leary, deacon and research monkey extraordinaire, has been spending a little time studying the 3rd edition of the Roman Missal which is to be implemented in the coming Advent. He has been comparing the new Missal to the current Missal particularly those rubrics which address the orientation of the priest to the people.

Amazingly, both documents assume that the priest is facing in the same direction as the people for much of the Mass! The current Missal seems to allow for the priest to face the altar for the sign of the cross and then turn toward the people for the greeting, while the revised Missal seems to envision that both the sign of the cross and the greeting be done facing the people. The Penitential Rite, Opening Prayer and Profession of Faith give no indication as to orientation. Specific instructions to face the people are given at the offertory for the prayer “Pray Brethren” (Orate Fratres) in both Missals. The Eucharistic prayer indicates the consecrated body and blood of Christ are to be “shown” to the people but does not seem to require facing the people while doing so. The elevation at the doxology omits any reference to the “showing” of the host or chalice. No indication of orientation is given for the Pater Noster, however the revised Missal instructs the priest to face the people for the greeting of peace. Specific instructions to face the people are given for both the Lamb of God, the prayer “Lord, I am not worthy” and the closing prayer.

If the Missal tells Father to turn around and face the people it is clearly assuming that he is not facing the people at other times. Such instructions would be unnecessary were the priest already facing the people. The basic assumption seems to be that when the priest is addressing the Lord, he faces in the same direction as the congregation, in solidarity with them, praying together.

However, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal indicates in paragraph 299 that

“The altar should be built apart from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible.”

There is ambiguity in this instruction as to whether it is the free standing nature of the altar or the facing of the people that is “desirable.” Let us look at the original Latin Text of paragraph 299 of the General Instruction. That should muddy the waters nicely.

“Altare exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum paragi possit quod EXPEDIT ubicumque possibile sit.” (Pay attention! There may be a brief quiz.)

As anyone who has taken beginning Latin knows, translating Latin into modern English is really just a sort of educated guess. Latin has no “the” or “a”, there is really no word for “yes” and so on. Word order is different than in English and the sentences go on and on like this brief history. One ends up sounding like the Star Wars nebbish, Yoda (played by Fozzy Bear of the Muppets). Here is my literal translation, “May altar be built from wall apart, so that it may be easy to be gone around and in it celebration facing (the) people to be done which helps (or makes available) wherever it may be possible.”

You figure it out. It sure doesn’t say you gotta do it this way. The word desirable doesn’t seem to appear. At least I wouldn’t translate “expedit” as “desirable.” Its usual meaning is “untangle”, “prepare”, “make free” or “available. ” All those “maybes” leave a lot of room for flexibility. “Expedit” would more commonly be translated "useful" or “available” rather than "desirable", in translation. In either case, it is plainly evident that a posture versus populum, or facing the people, is not mandated.

The text seems be saying that the possibility of Mass facing the people should be available. But if that’s not possible, that’s okay too. To be possible, is not the same as to be required. The council did an amazing thing. It mandated flexibility, that rarest of virtues. I am reminded of the old joke: “What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can’t negotiate with a liturgist.” (For the humor impaired: insert laughter here.)

It is a great wonder that the inflexibility of times past is now a mark of the progressive movement in the church. When someone wants to kneel for communion, or doesn’t want to hold hands at the Our Father, or, heaven forfend, wants to receive Holy Communion on the tongue rather than in the hand, that person is reprimanded and there is much pious talk about unity of gesture and division in the congregation and yadda, yadda, yadda.

It takes an old curmudgeon like me to remind the young church crafters that uniformity is not necessarily unity. Let people do different things if they are legal and moral. The “my way or the highway” approach to worship that is common among so many self-styled progressives is one more reminder that no one is so conservative as a liberal. Father may improvise as much as he pleases. God have mercy on you however if you want to kneel at the wrong time. Let us take the sage advice of Chairman Mao and “Llet a thousand flowers bloom.”

So, it seems that the liturgists have been pulling your leg. Most of what passes for Vatican Two is really off-off-off Broadway planned by frustrated actors. I have said Mass the way the Council Fathers envisioned, except that I used mostly English. It was very beautiful and very reverent and I have the feeling that had we obeyed the Council, we would not have emptied the churches. By the way, the Council Fathers insisted that Mass be mostly be in Latin. That canoe has been over the waterfall for some time now. I have seen people storm out of church if they hear so much as a “Dominus vobiscum.”

For some reason not even known to heaven, these same people gush with inclusive joy when the prayers of the faithful are offered in eight different languages. Recently I was at a Mass during which one of the prayers of the faithful was offered in Hebrew. I’m sure all the orthodox Jews at the service were pleased. Kurt Vonnegut in his book “Cat’s Cradle” invents the word “duffle.” A duffle is the situation in which the lives of thousands are in the hands of a few fog bound children. What we have here is a duffle, even though most of the children in control are pretty old by now.

Next week: DOES THIS GUY EVER QUIT KICKING A DEAD HORSE?

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 25

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 25

I have always enjoyed the song that says “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put in a parking lot.” The Scriptures say it differently: “Do not move your neighbor's boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.” (Deuteronomy 19:14) Holy Writ goes on to say it five more times: Deuteronomy 27:17, Job 24:2, Proverbs 15:25, Proverbs 22:28 and Hosea 5:10.

When the Bible forbids the same thing six times, it’s probably because God wants us to get the point. You shouldn’t move a boundary stone because you can never get it back in exactly the same spot. It’s there for a reason. Oh, but that’s not true anymore. You could do it with global positioning satellites! Don’t be an idiot! Haven’t you ever gotten totally lost in some construction zone because your GPS lied to you? That’s exactly the attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.

There is another song from the sixties, “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.” We actually believed that lunacy. We somehow thought we were smarter, better, wiser and more fully human than our parents. Something had happened in the stars and we were the generation that would end war, poverty, hunger and save the whales. Mine is the generation that gave you the drug wars, new and more horrible sexually transmitted diseases, new wars of religion, universal divorce, fatherless children, spiraling gas prices, spiraling environmental degradation and Jerry Springer.

We also gave you a dying Western culture and, in the field of religion, we provided feel good mega-churches and a much diminished quickly graying Euro/American version of modern Catholicism. It is a wonder that aging hippies like myself occupy senior teaching positions like snarling guard dogs and force the failures of the 60s on the children of today. They must never have read that Bible verse, “O LORD, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” (1Kings 19:4)

Here is another worthy quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Paragraph 365: The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

CS Lewis says it much more simply in The Screwtape Letters. He points out that we are not spirits trapped in flesh; we are incarnate spirits. What we do with our bodies we do with our souls. That is the reason for all the kneeling and standing, for bread and wine and oil and water and candles and incense and vestments and wood and gold and stone. We are incarnate spirits. We speak the language of matter because that is how God made us.

Many of my teachers left the priesthood for which they presumed to prepare me. One of those who left to marry a wealthy divorcee opposed my entering holy orders on the grounds that I was too “proclamational” and not “incarnational” enough. In other words, I talked about Jesus too much. Now that I am old I have realized that he and his friends were not incarnational at all.

The glass chalices that looked like tasteful Salvador Dali abstractions, the trimmed down liturgy, the de-mystification of ceremonies, the anti-clerical clerics who refused to wear vestments, the breaking of the stained glass, the wooden tables that replaced the marble altars, the removal of the tabernacles, the coffee table Masses that tried to consecrate donuts, these were all attempts to make the faith more reasonable.

Enough of the dark and mysterious churches, the mumbled rosaries, the plaintiff novenas, haunting chants and sentimental hymns. We would be reasonable; we would be spiritual; we would be modern! They thought they were embracing the fullness of human nature, but they were in fact rejecting it because they failed to understand the unbreakable connection between body and soul, even as their bodies ran rampant and their souls withered. They thought they were above the moral restraints of a darker age and could dispense themselves from old restrictions.

Part of the great de-mystification was the removal of the confessional screens. People said the dark confessional box was too frightening, particularly for children. I remember what an old priest said when they took out the confessionals for more compassionate and comfortable “face to face confession rooms.” He remarked that “It won’t be long before they realize why they put in the confessional screens in the first place.” Do not remove an ancestors’ boundary stone.

So what should those of us who are left to do? Simple. Obey the Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council said nothing requiring the use of popular music at Mass, about removing altars and altar rails, about removing icons and images, about standing for communion. Nothing was ever mentioned about the face to face confessions or face to face Masses. Fasting was never forbidden, rosaries and novenas and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament were never suppressed. Chalice veils and maniples and beautiful vestments were never abolished. Study the documents. Put back the boundary stones. They were there for a reason.

Here’s an example: The thinkers of the sixties, who were about as deep as a puddle, decided to take out the communion rails. “Nothing should divide us from the Lord,” they said. “Communion rails emphasized clerical privilege and made God separate and forbidding. We should gather around the altar holding hands, singing Kumbaya. That would express the great truth that we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.”

Did it never occur to these yahoos, that it was a communion rail? Communion: a coming together. Humanity IS separated from God by sin. The point of the Gospel is that Christ breaks down the barrier between God and man. To take out the communion rail is to say there is no barrier. It is like one spouse saying “There is no problem in our marriage” while watching the other spouse packing a suitcase.

The symbolism that the communion rail expresses is that “God so loved the world.” It is the place where God comes to meet us. He comes to us. We go to Him. With our bodies and our souls, we acknowledge that truth by kneeling at a communion rail. We wait for the Lord and the Lord comes to place Himself in our keeping. With our bodies and our souls, we acknowledge the great truth of grace, that we cannot achieve heaven unless God gives it to us.

The experts of the age of plastic committed the sin of the tower of Babel, “Let us build a tower that reaches to the heavens.” Chaos ensued then and chaos ensues now. The great lights of the sixties believed that removing the communion rails would bring us closer to the Lord. I think it has had the opposite effect. One stands in a line, shuffling slowly, eyes focused on the back of someone’s head waiting for him to move. The celebrant says “Body of Christ” but more often than not, is thinking “next...” There is rarely a sense of waiting on the Lord, there is no sense of a gift lovingly given and humbly received. There is just, “next....”

Around 400 AD, a theologian named Pelagius taught that moral perfection, and thus salvation, could be attained by human effort and action without God’s grace. The removal of the communion rails is the Pelagian heresy in stone, or a lack there of. It is sad to see little children grabbing the Communion host and running back to their pews with it. They are clueless as to the beauty and grandeur of the gift.

At a funeral, a few weeks ago a young woman came to communion and, when I said “Body of Christ”, took the host, looked at it and started to walk away, I caught up to her and asked her if she had made her first communion. She looked a little surprised and said, "No, of course not! I’m Jewish.”

I don’t fault the poor, embarrassed young woman. I fault us. We have been making up the rules for forty plus years now and communion just didn’t seem very special anymore. People are living in common law marriages, or second or third civil marriages and they come to communion. They haven’t spent a moment preparing, or haven’t been to confession in ten years, but they come to communion.

I remember finding (FAMILY COLUMN ALERT) a latex protective device still in its wrapper while I was cleaning the church after midnight Mass one year. I imagine it had been lost by some hopeful young fellow who had accompanied his beloved to midnight Mass. I imagine they both went to Holy Communion. I also imagine that he was disappointed when he realized that he couldn’t celebrate the birth of our Savior in the manner that he had been planning.

If that young Jewish woman previously mentioned had seen people kneeling quietly and waiting for something, she might have thought twice about getting in line. She might even have been intrigued. But what she saw was bunch of people standing in line to get something and she thought she might as well do the same. What is it but a little round matzoh looking thing? If this were an isolated instance I wouldn’t even mention it, but I have had repeated incidents of having to retrieve the host from someone who threw it on the ground or stuck it in a pocket. So get in line, and grab heaven! Even Pelagius would be horrified! Put back the boundary stones. They were there for a reason.

Next WEEK: MORE AGGIORNAMENTO SUCCESS STORIES

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 24

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 24

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

This morning I was at the gym going about in circles like a mind-numbed hamster, (Yes, the Rev. Know-it-all goes to the gym, even in his advanced age. When I was young we practiced harsh penances for the sake of eternal life. Now we go to the gym and submit ourselves to instruments of torture so that we won’t look so much like beached whales while sunning ourselves at the seaside. How culture has advanced!) As I plodded along past the television sets arranged so as to distract the penitents on the treadmills, I saw a news show featuring a perky bunch of dancers dressed as nuns singing invigorating Gospel Music. (Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel and Perky Make-Believe Nuns singing and dancing on the morning news. Sometimes the collapse of the civilization exceeds one’s power to comment.)

It all brought me back to the heady 60's when the spirit was a blowin’ all over this land. In the 1940's, Catholicism was the darling of Hollywood, that fountain head of American culture. Going My Way was a 1944 film, a light-hearted musical comedy about a young priest replacing an old curmudgeon pastor Fr. Bing Crosby, living the typical life and sings constantly. Next year, Fr. Crosby in the sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's is still singing and raising funds as he argues with Sister Ingrid Bergman as they both save a struggling school. The Bells of St. Mary’s was the highest-grossing picture of 1944. After a slew of Bible movies, 1959 gave us the Sound of Music, a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein with more singing religious, nuns this time.

Then in 1963 there was Lilies of the Field in which Sidney Poitier teaches German nuns to be more open minded. And also how to sing more modern music. Then things take an ominous turn. Change of Habit is a 1969 movie in which Dr. Elvis Presley falls in love with Sister Mary Tyler Moore while working in the inner city. Then we move on to the TV show, The Flying Nun, a sitcom placed in Puerto Rico in which Sister Sally Fields learns to fly using her traditional Ursuline habit. This disaster ran for three seasons beginning in 1967.

By 1992 we have Sister Act a film in which Sr. Whoopi Goldberg teaches nuns how to sing more relevant music. The Pope visits them, loves the music and the nuns begin recording careers. Hollywood Catholicism is at best a musical comedy, a kind of harmless joke. At worst it is a sinister cult as portrayed by movies like, Agnes of God about nuns killing babies, Elizabeth and its sequel, The DaVinci Code and the recent Showtime series The Borgias, among many more.

Nuns however, when they aren’t being sinister, sing gospel music which brings us back to the Perky Nun Singers who took me back fifty years to another television show and another perky nun, the original singing nun, Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile) when she appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 5, 1964 with her smash hit song, “Dominique”. We knew her as the singing nun.

Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers was born in 1933 in Belgium and joined a Dominican convent in 1959. She wrote songs and played the guitar at retreats for young girls and finally recorded an album, available for sale in the convent gift shop. In 1963, the single "Dominique" became an international hit. In 1967, Deckers left the convent and hit the road as Luc Dominique. In 1967, she recorded “Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill,” a joyous song of thanksgiving for artificial birth control. It was a flop and her career nosedived, despite the 1966 movie “The Singing Nun” starring Debbie Reynolds. Deckers called the film “fiction.”

Deckers opened a school for autistic children in Belgium. In 1975 Soeur Sourire moved in with Anna Pecher, her companion for the next ten years. In the late 70's, the Belgian government claimed that she owed $63,000 in back taxes for the royalties on her one hit song. Unable to meet her financial obligations, she and Pécher committed suicide together by an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol on March 29, 1985. She was 51. Her sad life somehow sums up the disaster that was the optimistic Catholicism lite of the 60's. A happy progressive Catholicism that cast off what it believed to be the shackles of the past only to find itself devoid of any depth, like a seed sown on rocky ground that the birds came and devoured. Jesus said:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

We tried to exchange the rock of Peter which is the rock of Calvary, the SACRIFICE of the Mass for something more pleasant, more in keeping with the times. The attempt has failed utterly.

The Second Vatican Council has not failed. It has not been fully implemented. The rebellion that used the Council as its cover has failed. Jesus said:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared”.(Matt13:24-50)

These were not just any weeds. These were “zizania” or lolium temulentum, to use its scientific name. It makes one feel drunk at first, but can cause death. Another name for it is “false wheat,” because until it is full grown it is indistinguishable from wheat. The meaning of the parable of the weeds and the wheat is that certain things mimic food, but are poison. What passed for liberation in the 60's turned out to be a kind of toxic drunkenness. It certainly killed Souer Sourire and I suspect that it killed the souls of many, many more. Perhaps it is time to quit insisting that the weeds are perfectly edible and to return to pure wheat, the Bread that came down from heaven.

SO, REV. KNOW IT ALL, CAN YOU TELL US WHAT WE SHOULD DO?


Next Week: A FEW SUGGESTIONS

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 23

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 23

OLD KING LOG
“Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”

Continued…….

There are two dimensions of church craft I think caused real trouble. First, remember in the Church of the 40's and 50's, there was a strange kind of legalism that asked how little was necessary rather than how much was possible. I remember great discussions of how far one could go before something was a sin. We think of corruption as something obvious. It is really very subtle. A whole branch of church craft seemed dedicated to helping people see their way past the rules.

The best of these theological church crafters did their finest work helping people to think their way around the Church’s prohibition of artificial birth control. Their disregard for the teaching authority of the Popes thus infected the world! There were saints and sinners, but worst of all you could be a very lukewarm church crafter. “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:16)

In the beginning of the sixties the great spitting out began. People left the convents and rectories by the busload. Many of the priests who prepared me for the priesthood left the priesthood even as they were teaching me. I remember the dean of our college gathering us all in the assembly hall to encourage us to get our teaching certificates. That way we would have a trade when the Catholic Church went belly up. There was, as I have pointed out, a great pressure to be a priest or nun. I suspect that a lot of people entered the religious life who would rather not have done so.

When Blessed Pope John XXIII opened up the windows, to use his phrase, a whole lot of people jumped out, and many of them got jobs working in the bureaucracy of religion, in the career field of, you guessed it, church craft. Some few remain in those positions today and they with their followers continue the deconstruction of Catholicism, making sure that hymn lyrics are politically correct and that programs are in place to eradicate the problems of the 50's and 60's. The theme song of the church crafters is “Sing a new church into being....male and female in God’s image, male and female, God’s delight.” I get tired just thinking about it.

The second, I have already called the “edifice complex.” As I have pointed out, in the 40' and 50's and perhaps earlier, certainly later, the good administrator was promoted. When an American pastor in the middle of the twentieth century talked about conversion he usually meant switching the boiler over from oil to natural gas. When first ordained I worked with a kind and holy priest who was denounced by his peers for allowing the Spanish charismatic groups to use his church. His accusers were progressives who hated the movement because they saw it as reactionary. Too much prayer. Not enough social justice. In the petition they sent to the bishop, the most damning charge was that he had let the buildings get run down!!!

Some bishops felt much more comfortable in a discussion with accountants and heating contractors than they did with theologians. One of the finest and kindest bishops I ever knew, who is now long dead, actually once said in response to a religious question, “Don’t ask me. I’m not much of a theologian.” This is certainly not true of all the bishops, but I suspect it was true of some. They were made to feel inadequate to the task by experts who were only too glad to tell them what to think and sweeping changes were made because, “Well, this is what the experts are telling us.” This is evident in the architecture of the time.

Experts decided that churches be trashed, and Communion rails were ripped out and Formica replaced marble. I know a contractor who told me once that his family had prospered first by pulling all the old stuff out, and then putting it all back in. They just had to wait until the next wave of experts weighed in. The bishops who had been so good with brick and mortar were made to feel absolutely unsure about the tradition of the Church. When they went to the council, they brought their “periti,” their theological experts with them and the council was thus called the council of the periti who after a couple martinis were happy to sing a new church into being. “His (Jesus’) disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him, and He said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.” (Matt.24:1-2) Or, in other words, “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”

Next Week “DOMINIQUE-a NIQUE-a NIQUE-a” and “GLORY BE TO GOD FOR THE GOLDEN PILL.” RELIGIOUS MUSIC IN THE SIXTIES”

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 22

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 22

OLD KING LOG
“Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”

The frogs were tired of their government. It was too old-fashioned, and so the cranes suggested they nominate a large log in the middle of the swamp to be their king. They would dress the log in royal robes so it could entertain them with the pomp and display of royalty and rule them in a way that made no demands.

Until now, the frogs had hidden themselves among the reeds and grasses, but now they had a new and more open government. How tame and peaceable Old King Log was! In a short time, the younger frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly about improvements the government should be making. The cranes had suggested such a king in the first place, and when the frogs had forgotten how to hide, the cranes gobbled up the poor frogs right and left. And the frogs soon saw what fools they had been.

A frog about to be devoured, wept and pleaded with the cranes, reminding them that they had been the proponents of this new government. To which the cranes responded, “You have what you asked for and so you have only yourselves to blame for your misfortunes.” And so the few frogs who still knew where to hide understood all the dangers that lurked in the swamp, even those dangers which seemed pleasant at the time, and they were better and wiser for the lesson. “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out!”

“Did you really mean what you wrote about motorcycles and pro-choice marches? How could you let things like that go on in your parish, Father, and still worse, how could the bishops and the pope let such things go on?”

You are not asking the right question. Better you should ask, “How could Almighty God let such things go if the Church is indeed His Church?”

There are two schools of thought at the present who say that God does not recognize the church whose pope is Benedict XVI, whose popes Pius XII and Blessed John XXIII and Venerable John Paul II also were. There are rebels on the right and rebels on the left. On one side, there are those who ordain women and on the other, those who ordain bishops both in defiance of the bishop of Rome. On one side, there are those who think the Church of Rome is outdated and, on the other side, those who think her throne is occupied by anti-popes. Some think the Second Vatican Council and its liturgy are heretical and some think that all councils before Vatican II have been superseded.

Both factions are, at heart, the same. They are rebels who have turned their backs on the Bride of Christ. They are both motivated by the same spirit though they come to seemingly different conclusions. “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you!” (1 Samuel 15:23.)

The radical traditionalist faction rejects the Second Vatican Council. They claim that the “new” Mass is, at best, corrupt, at worst, invalid. They somehow believe that the Holy Spirit has abandoned most of the members of the Church. The most radical among them are called “sede vacante” or “sedevacantists” (from Latin for “empty seat” referring to the teaching chair of St. Peter.) They claim to be the true Catholics, but are anything but Catholic in its fullest sense of “universal”.” They are a tiny faction who seem to think that the Holy Spirit has no power to protect the larger Church. They claim that the last valid pope was Pius XII. John the 23rd was invalidly elected, as have been all popes since.

Their reminiscences about the 1950's and the reign of Pius XII are flawed. They forget that the Liturgical renewal they so detest and the Biblical renewal were sponsored by Pius XII. The madness of the sixties and seventies were the fruit of the forties and fifties. The Church of the fifties, as I remember it, was “at the top of its game.” Soon after the Second World War, convents and seminaries were full to overflowing. The good pastor was defined by his skills as an administrator. We suffered from something called the “edifice complex.” The good pastor built new schools and new convents and churches and filled them with eager young candidates. The pressure to join the religious life was intense. If an eighth grade boy was in trouble with his teacher, all he had to say was, “Next year I’m going to enroll in the seminary high school.” Of the 50 plus boys in my eighth grade class, fully half went to the seminary. One was ordained.

When a boy got to the seminary, the pressure was really on. We didn’t live on campus. We went home at night like regular high school students, but regular stopped there. We were in school on Saturday and had Thursdays free. We were told this was the custom in Europe, but it was designed to “protect our vocation.” It was the duty of every parishioner to tell Monsignor at the rectory if they saw one of the seminarians in long conversation with a girl. Remember, these were 14 and 15 year-old boys! Leaving the seminary was a Herculean task. If one wanted to leave, it was necessary to have all your teachers sign a “pink slip” in order to have your credits transferred to another school. Each teacher gave you “the talk.”

“You would make such a fine priest! Why don’t you give it one more year?”

After facing three or four teachers, you gave up, threw the pink slip in the trash and told your girlfriend that you were going to stay in the seminary one more year, and no, you couldn’t take her to the junior prom. Maybe next year for the senior prom.

The pressure from outside was just as great. It was the dream of every pious mother on the south side of Frostbite Falls that, had she three sons, one would be the alderman, one would be the police or fire chief, and the gem in the crown, one would be Monsignor at St. Turalura’s down the street. Everyone was pulling for you. I remember a seminarian whose next door neighbor, a young girl, prayed two Rosaries a day for him, that he persevere in his vocation. When finally in the graduate school, he got up enough nerve to leave the seminary, the girl next door had a nervous breakdown. I remember going to the theology school on the monthly “visiting day” to see an older relative a few years ahead of me in seminary. He stood in his cassock at the door of the residence waiting for us. He had lost about 30 pounds and one eye was twitching. He told me later that he paced on the eve of his ordination wondering how he could get out of it. He had been an exemplary seminarian and did not long remain a priest.

At the same time, there was pressure from the inside in the opposite direction. It was hard to leave, but it was easy to be thrown out. There was strict demerit system and we all dreaded the words “Give me your demerit card.” It was always said with an icy tone of dispassionate justice. Something like Darth Vader, but more matter-of-fact. Then there were the academic demands. Every year, the bottom ten percent was routinely thrown out for grades, at least in the seminary I attended. If one had an obvious physical deformity there was simply no way to be welcome in our seminary. Let him go to a religious order. Perhaps they would take him In this incredible tug of was for what were essentially the souls of teenagers, the question was rarely asked, and then only by the pious few among the faculty, “Does this young man have a sincere calling from the Lord?” Some real saints were turned away from the seminary I attended. Some real (word deleted) excelled.

Then one day it all changed. There was going to be a council. It was like that scene in the “Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy inadvertently throws a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West and all her evil guards suddenly fall to their knees in thanksgiving for their freedom. Ding Dong the witch is dead! Catholicism was going to be fun! We would make up the rules as we went along. The same frightening disciplinarians suddenly became flower children. I remember a bunch of these old guys one year were dressed in cassocks and scowls and the next year they returned from a summer retreat sensitivity center at Big Sur, California wearing love beads and turtleneck sweaters. (I am not making any of this up.) A few of them started dating because the rule about celibacy was about to change. An older friend of mine went ahead with his ordination because he had been told by his teachers that celibacy would soon be abolished. One heard stories of some of the guys going on dates on the eve of their ordination.

Those in charge were not always different people. These were the same rigid disciplinarians that had controlled the seminary system and they were strangely rigid about change. The “new” became as rigorously enforced as the old had been. Young men were actually thrown out of the seminary for being “too pious.” My point is not that a new group had taken over the system. It was the same old crew. The pressure was off. The explosion was inevitable. The “spirit” of Vatican Two made everything acceptable for a little while, that is until the cranes started to devour the frogs. The attitude that makes the Gospel and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass a personal plaything did not spring into life full grown, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. It was there all the time.

To be continued...

A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 21

Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 21
 
IT’S ME, O LORD, STANDING IN THE NEED OF PRAYER
 
You have doubtlessly heard the saying that growing old is not for the timid. As I plunge into senescence (old age-hood) I can never remember whom I’ve told what. I’m sure you have heard me tell this story. One Sunday, many years ago, when I was still young and the Tridentine Mass was a rare thing, I felt much in the need of prayer. I had heard there was a Tridentine High Mass downtown and I thought that was just what I needed, the Mass of my youth with a glorious choir and clouds of incense. So, having finished my last Sunday Mass at 12:15, and driving in my accustomed manner (bat out of somewhere not good), I arrived 10 minutes late for the 12:30 PM Solemn High Mass at the Basilica of St. Antica. It was not High, nor was it Solemn! Some old fossil was mumbling into a wall in a language I could have understood, had I been able to hear him! No choirs, no incense, no stirring sermon. Just a quick Mass on a hot afternoon. 

I said to the Lord, “I am not having a very good experience of prayer, here, don’t ya know!”

And the little inner voice that is sometimes the Holy Spirit said, “Oh, you came for an experience? I thought you came to worship Me.”

Touché! At which point, I started to worship, at which point I  had an experience. I realized that the old priest at the altar was not responsible for my experience, and that I, as a congregant, was not required to have an experience. I was there to bow before the Lord and to offer Him my life. Those 20 minutes changed my life.

Some “liturgists” or “celebrants” or “presiders” or whatever we are calling them this month, think that their job is to provide an experience.  Asked, they would deny this, but it is nonetheless true. We roll our eyes and sneer at “bad liturgy.” What, pray tell, is bad liturgy?  Is it a Mass lacking the latest fashion, be it liturgical dance, or incense in Mexican bean pots? A Mass, perhaps,  at which the music is poorly performed, or the lighting is off or the acoustics are bad? Is it a bad liturgy in which the celebrant is cross-eyed, or has a distracting mannerism and does not harmonize with the edifice?  I remember a blushing bride who refused to allow a Vietnamese priest to celebrate her wedding Mass. She thought his heavy accent would ruin the wedding video. It mattered not that he was a living saint who had suffered in a concentration camp for his faith. It would have been bad liturgy. She was not interested in a Sacrament. She was interested in an inspiring photo-op.
 
God ceased to be worshiped when Luther decided that Mass is not a sacrifice, and taught that it was only a consolation and instruction. Instruction and consolation quickly become entertainment. The goal of the presider then becomes to create an experience. For us moderns, only experience is real. It’s only real if I feel it, thus the most important thing I can do at church is to feel something, and the most important thing I can do as a pastor is to help my parishioners to “really feel it.”  The great irony is that my attempt to create an experience militates against authentic experience. It is something manufactured. It is a poison that blocks and excludes nourishment. That’s how poison works. It takes the place of something the organism needs. Carbon monoxide substitutes for oxygen. When the real thing comes along, the body rejects it because the need has been filled. The body suffocates without ever feeling short of breath.
 
To be human is to worship. The ability to worship more than anything else sets us apart form all other beings. To know how small we are and that an infinite Creator  loves us and made us for Himself. To worship is to bow down, to prostrate oneself in both Greek and Hebrew (shachah and proskynein respectively). Why bow down? To bow down, to prostrate oneself makes one absolutely vulnerable. The police know this. “Get out of the car, lie flat on the ground and put your hands where can I see them.” (That is not worship per se, because at that moment I doubt that the officer loves us, no matter how friendly he or she may be.) That is what’s behind all the folding and  raising of hands, kneeling, genuflecting etc. It is about smallness and vulnerability.

Luther exchanged the congregant for God as the object of worship when he taught that Mass is not a sacrifice. Worship became entertainment, and exceptional Americans, who kneel to no one, took up the idea with enthusiasm and have foisted it on the whole world. Where worship ends, humanity dies, and we see a culture dying.
 
I have no objection to Mass facing the people, it’s just that it only works for a very holy priest and a very holy congregation. It is so tempting to play to the audience when being stared at by a thousand eyes. Most priests reading this must be insulted that I even imply that this might be true of them.

"But , Father, (and I include myself) if it is true that your religion is what you do when no one else is looking, is your celebration of the Mass an act of faith, or just an act? You may think that all your emoting is aimed at the Lord, but is that the way you say Mass when you are all by yourself, if you bother to say Mass when you are all by yourself?"

Mass facing the congregation, as I said is just fine for a very holy priest. It is also a swell place for a raging narcissist. (Though I have met some narcissists who do just fine with the glitz and glitter of the old Mass). Let us remember that the word hypocrite is just the common Greek word for stage actor. I suppose that my whole theme can be summed up simply. Stop the show and return to the sacrifice.

"So, Rev. Know it all, what would you do to make everything alright?"

That will have to wait for next week.
 
NEXT WEEK: CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?