Analysis
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
The Holy Spirit is calling the Church to a grand liturgical stocktaking that is causing headaches for hierarchy and deep-seated anxieties for liturgists and priests around Australia, but once they start using the new texts next year officials believe it will soon be a distant memory.
Last week Perth hosted the annual conference of the National Liturgical
Council, the arm of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference,
discussing the newly translated Roman Missal that will hit a pulpit
near you by Easter next year, if not a little later.
On day two of the conference, Mercy Sister Adele Howard unveiled the
incomplete but comprehensive and impressive resource to help parishes –
congregations, liturgists and priests alike – understand the changes
both individually and in the context of the continuum of liturgical
reform that is an ongoing process for the Church since its earliest
days.
It was in this context that, earlier that day, Archbishop Mark
Coleridge, 62, chair of the Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, gave a
vigorous address as the conference’s keynote speaker.
He has, by his own admission, shed much blood, sweat and tears as chair
of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy’s (ICEL)
Roman Missal Editorial Committee, along with hundreds of others
involved in the process. He addressed long-held myths about the aims of
Vatican II and the misinformed “bad press” regarding the 1570 Council
of Trent which had actually begun the current process of liturgical
renewal. “We are passing through a critical threshold moment in the
ongoing journey of liturgical renewal that traces its roots not just to
Vatican II but the Council of Trent,” he said.
He also addressed the motivations behind some of those who oppose the
translation process or those who accuse it of being non-consultative
and, most disturbingly for him – claim that the reforms to be
implemented somehow betray the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,
and, by implication, the Holy Spirit (see main story).
Those who should have known better have largely been responsible for
what he called “banal” liturgies in parishes that, he said, may as well
be in Latin for all the passion the congregations seem to sometimes
display.
Josephite Sr Carmel Pilcher, liturgy director of the Diocese of
Maitland-Newcastle, told The Record that it is likely all liturgists –
paid and volunteers – have some kind of qualification in theological or
liturgical studies.
The problem for Archbishop Coleridge, however, was whether the
formation given to liturgists in recent decades has been sufficient.
The “grand liturgical stocktaking”, he said, contains enormous
frustrations and creates a sense of grief as it “involves an honesty
that leads to the unsettling of appalling liturgical habits that have
taken root, not because of bad faith but because people were clueless,
including some who think they know a lot, including, dare I say,
priests”.
He also suggested seminary formation in this area during the
post-Vatican II reform period could have been better, citing the
liturgical training in his own time at Melbourne’s Corpus Christi
College as “nothing short of pathetic”.
Now things have changed. With today’s reforms, “we’re trying to ensure
that the worship of the Church has such power that it gives her the
energy to do what she’s supposed to be doing,” the prelate said.
“We need to keep in mind the purpose of liturgical renewal was not
interior decorating. It’s fascinating to me what liturgical studies
have sometimes involved. I now think they should involve a most
rigorous reading of texts, as I’ve been forced to do and have seen the
power of the productivity of the exercise.”
For the 200-odd liturgists at the conference from every diocese in
Australia, rural and city, it was transforming and liberating for some,
confronting and contentious for others. Priests admitted privately they
were deeply challenged; while others, including Bishops, asked The
Record for digital copies of the 66-minute speech to give to clergy in
their own dioceses.
Still, it may take time for the liturgists – many of whom are of the
Baby Boomer generation who instituted Vatican II’s reforms as they
understood them – to come around.
Fr Peter Williams, secretary of the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy
Commission, believes “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. That
is, once people start using it, they’ll quickly get used to it.
It got ugly for a while there, though.
As Sr Adele went through the resource currently being prepared for
distribution to Australian parishes, liturgists voiced their anger and
disapproval at parts of it – despite her making it clear that it was
only an incomplete version – and of the translation process overall.
At one point, responding to the protests, she called for the delegates
to ‘be kind to each other’ – especially to those who have worked hard
on the translation process and the resource to help the faithful
understand the changes.
Both Archbishop Coleridge and Fr Williams expected this. The prelate
admitted that the process, which started in 1988 when Pope John Paul II
urged Bishops’ conferences to evaluate translations of their liturgical
books, was fraught with the potential for conflict.
Fr Williams told The Record he’d become a “lightning rod” for complaints.
“There are people in this conference in the Baby Boomer generation who,
when they were younger, invested themselves in a project of liturgical
renewal, some of those people think that what is now happening is a
betrayal of where they’ve directed their life’s energies. So as they
move into the tail end of their life, some of them think that this is
undoing and somehow rejecting their work,” he told The Record.
Fr Williams believes this to be a misreading, as does Archbishop
Coleridge. In terms of the trajectory of a continuum, it’s in fact
another moment in a stage of liturgical renewal of Vatican Councils
“and in 20-30 years if I’m still alive there’ll probably be another
shift, and I’d hope I have the capacity not to think ‘my God, they’re
destroying everything I put my heart and soul into’ and that I’d have a
big enough mind to say ‘on the continuum, this is just another moment
in liturgical development’. It’s not the end,” he said.
The changing of hearts is already happening. Some liturgists have
privately revealed that while they’re not 100 per cent happy with the
reforms, they believe they can move forward with it. Fr Williams and Sr
Adele said that all involved need to move beyond themselves. Archbishop
Coleridge said that above all they need to move beyond politics and
ideology, or nothing will change.
“There are some things that I would’ve done differently had it been
mine, but it doesn’t belong to me or anyone else. It belongs to the
whole Church,” Fr Williams said.
Other signs of change were evident when ICEL executive secretary Mgr
Bruce Harbert went to a conference a year ago of the Federation of
Diocesan Liturgical Commissions in the US and noticed there was a
marked change in those people.
Fr Williams described their revelation thus:
“The train is leaving the station, and you’re either on the train or
you’re left standing on the platform. We’re reaching that point here. I
understand that people at this conference have expressed some angst,
anger and hurt, but the Church to which we belong is not a democracy;
has gone through a process and made a decision and this is what the
Church is going to give to us.”
It appears even to have changed the hearts of those involved in the
translation process, and those who worked on the resource, including by
interviewing Bishops and priests around the English-speaking world for
the video streaming sections.
Anne Walsh from Frayneworks, the company set up under the auspices of
the Mercy Sisters and which produced the resource, said “we’ve been
formed and informed” in the process.
Sr Adele said that “in the ’70s, we tried to deconstruct the liturgy to
make it easy, but I’ve come to an understanding … We need to have a
sense of the faith community that’s bigger than just me”.
Sr Adele added that the Baby Boomers also need to realise the
increasing need among today’s youth who seek truth and an authentic
sense of Catholicity, especially in the liturgy.
“Some of us who are perhaps a little older need to realise that we
won’t always be in the vanguard or forefront of change; that there are
new generations coming along with new approaches,” she said.
“The younger generation has new desires and hopes in the expression of
their faith, so we have to listen to what a lot of young people are
saying … they want a sense of the sacred and reflection, they want to
participate in a Eucharist that is prayerful and has those moments of
silence that are so hard to find in busy, crazy lives, and they seek
leadership in that from our Catholic community.”
Mgr Bruce Harbert, executive secretary of ICEL, told The Record that
the ideal outcome of these new texts is for people to have a stronger
sense of the presence of Christ in the liturgy, and that it would draw
them to the liturgy.
“The Mass is Christ’s presence in the world, and people come to Mass to
meet Christ, to meet God, and that would be my idea of the best
possible result,” he said.