I am friend to both the Latin Mass Community and the Neo-Catechumenal Way. I have enjoyed and admired their Eucharists and firmly believe the Church benefits from both expressions. They are polar opposites of each other; they represent in pure, absolute form the two poles that structure the Catholic Eucharist, sacrifice and meal.
The Latin Mass preserves strict continuity with the past in a temple-like cult of solemnity, sacrifice, silence, formality and tradition. The Neo-Catechumenal liturgy, by contrast, is a sharp rupture from the past, a deliberate disassociation from sacrifice and temple, and self-consciously a meal, as was the Last Supper and the Passover, or more accurately a Banquet, a heavenly banquet in which we already participate in Christ's Glory.
While they are polar opposites, they resemble each other in their Eucharistic intensity. They are exemplary! Both center their lives around Sunday liturgy. Both prepare assiduously: the Latin choir in their chant are marvelously prepared. The Neo-Cats work throughout the week: preparing the Word with exhortations, baking bread, gathering flowers and wine. Both dress respectfully, as for an important event. Such reverence contrasts with the casual, sandals-and-shorts-wearing informality now so normal at Sunday parish mass (especially where I live, at the Jersey shore!)
Both also, however, share a bad, non-Catholic propensity: to disparage the ordinary Catholic mass. This is a problem! For both!
In my devotion to the Eucharist, I am a no-frills, ordinary, simple, low-brow guy. I cherish the basics: we confess our sins, receive the Word, celebrate the sacrifice of Calvary, consume His body and blood. For me the Mass is the gift of Christ to his bride and the gift of our Mother to us. It is not for us to critique, nit-pick, or whine. The Eucharist is not some aesthetic or theological construct. It is a gift from heaven. If the Church directs us to wear pink to mass, we wear pink; to fast 12 hours, we fast 12 hours; to pat our head and rub our belly, we pat our head and rub our belly.
For sure we enhance our rites with beauty, music, protocols, homilies, art and so forth. Both these communities excel in this. But the basic form of the mass is given by the Church and that is, in its own modest way, perfect!
On things liturgical, I stand squarely with Ratzinger/Benedict. Not an academic liturgist, his entire work and life breathed the Eucharist...his choice of words, his style, his mannerism, his reticence. Everything!
He welcomed and encouraged the Latin Mass. Thereby he enriched the entire Church but also shepherded this group of sometimes finicky, difficult sheep. I strongly oppose Francis suppression of the rite: he impoverishes us all as he further alienates those who so love the Church and her legacy.
The Neo-Cats he disciplined, prudently and gently in my view. He directed them to participate once a month in the ordinary parish mass. He (through Cardinal Arinze) determined that they would receive the sacred species in the ordinary way, rather than passing the cup. These seem to me to be modest, prudent moves to bring the movement closer to the ordinary, hierarchical Church. The response has been strange. There was, immediately at the time, a letter expressing gratitude and total obedience. However, then they ignored the directives. The elderly Pope Benedict did not enforce the rule. Kiko apparently told a bishop that the resignation was a gift from our Blessed Mother because the implementation of the directive would have been catastrophic for their mission. Specifically, he alleges, the experience of the "heavenly Banquet" offered every Saturday evening was essential for their charism.
We see here a disparagement of the ordinary rite of the Eucharist and an inflated evaluation of the salvific significance of his novel adaptation of it. In other words, we hear the same contempt that can be heard in Latin circles and that has provoked such resentment from Francis.
In this time of Eucharistic Revival, I would exhort both groups to humble themselves in gratitude before the Novus Ordo in its modesty: neither temple solemnity nor heavenly banquet. I would invite the mainstream clergy to be welcoming of both groups. I would urge Pope Francis to relax his oppression of the trads. I would suggest that Kiko place more trust in the established Church and less confidence in his own program.
Above all we give thanks to Christ for his presence in every Eucharist!
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