Driving yesterday with my wife I wondered quietly to myself which of the six Catholic paradigms (described in previous blog essay as Notre Dame Americanism, Charismatic Catholic, Neocatechumenal Way, Neoconservative, Ignatian Progressivism, Communion and Liberation) she fit. I realized she fit none, but clearly, passionately exemplified a seventh, more significant model: classic, late-Tridentine devotional Catholicism, centered in the Eucharist, Mary, the sacraments, devotions, prayer, and the saints.
This is the ethnic, working class faith of our mothers and fathers which surged powerfully in the Depression, War and postwar period 1945-65: Fulton Sheen, family rosary of Fr. Patrick Peyton, Bing Crosby priest movies, Holy Name parade, Rosary Altar society, reverence for priests and religious.
1. It finds its focus in the Eucharist understood as: a solemn, sacred, temple-like sacrifice of Calvary; the literal, corporal, abiding presence of Christ in the host; revered by silence, Latin, chant, incense, processions, holy hours, and more.
2. Second in significance is devotion to our Blessed Mother Mary, especially in the rosary and interest in her apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe and other.
3. Sacramental life: Sunday mass is an absolute; regular confession is normal.
4. Devotions: stations of cross, Sacred Heart, miraculous medal, novenas, parish missions, fascination with the saints and the supernatural.
5. Strict sexual ethos reserving such to marriage and esteem for religious and priests in their virginity/celibacy.
This hegemonic model suffered an immediate, severe decline immediately starting in 1965 with the problematic implementation the Council reforms and the cultural explosions of sexual liberation, civil rights, antiwar movement and related developments. Devotional Catholicism became unfashionable among Catholic intellectual elites as they gravitated to social justice, contraceptive sex, secularism, individualism and the therapeutic.
It did not disappear. It remained quietly as populist piety, largely in the laity: mothers teaching the rosary, faithful fathers, humble priests serving quietly. John Paul and Benedict maintained it in vigorous form as they renewed it in the genuine spirit of Vatican II.
It has been revived and is entirely compatible with renewal models such as Notre Dame, charismatic renewal, neoconservatism, and Communion and Liberation. (Not to mention TLM, homeschooling, the prolife movement, classical schools and the new and orthodox mostly small Catholic colleges.)
Contradictory of Progressive or Ignatian Model
It is contradictory of hard form sexual liberation in its cult of chastity and spousal fidelity. In the last half century since the Council, it has responded to cultural progressivism, which has been in part embraced by the "Ignatian" model, with clarity, depth and ferocity in the spousal mysticism and theology of the body of John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar and company.
In a diluted form, however, it continues to "sleep with" a softer form of progressivism. So we find Catholic devotion merged with a confused compassion for LGBTQ "victim identities" that leads to affirmation of unchastity in pride masses and gay blessings.
Dissonance with Neocatechumenal Way
A more nuanced dissonance operates between this traditional devotion and the Neocatechumenal Way. Both are impeccably orthodox in morals and faith; both rooted in the sacramental life; but they present quite distinctive Eucharistic spiritualities. Traditional Eucharistic devotion (more intensely in TLM) accentuates adoration, solemnity, silence, sacrifice of Calvary, and temple-like worship. The "matter" of the sacrament, the host, contrasts in its humility with the majesty of God. The Neocatechumenal Eucharist is a strong contrast: in tune with the liturgical renewal leading up to the Council, it moves away from a "temple model" to recover the Passover meal dimension.
Carmen Hernandez, cofounder with Kiko Arguello, at the beginnings (early 1960s), was studying theology and shaped this liturgy in accord with the fashion of the time. It has been approved and practiced for half a century and so is not heretical. Catechesis of the rite has tended to obscure if not deny the "sacrifice" dimension which so drastically separates the Catholic mass from Protestant versions. Properly understood, the two rites are not incompatible, but definitely in tension.
For example, traditional devotion emphasizes the enduring Divine presence in the host. Great effort is extended to protect and revere the Sacred Host. And so, there is a visceral horror to see the "loaf of bread" matter broken and shared and the cup of wine passed from hand to hand as at a banquet. My own sense (as a devotional Catholic) has been that this liturgy is a loss in liturgical depth. It contrasts with the broader catechetical program which is an awesome, passionate deepening of Catholicism. I may be wrong, but I credit Kiko with the positive and Carmen with the negative.
The distance between these forms is stronger than that between TLM and the Novus Ordo; but it is not unbridgeable. With so many young priests now coming from this Way, the hope is that clergy who are faithful to the broader Church and this model will reconcile them.
My own view is that the Novus Ordo...valid, authentic, ordinary form of Catholic worship...is itself a weak form: overly verbal, mundane, lacking in solemnity, silence, elegance, passion, aesthetics, and energy. It needs to be enriched by a broad, rich liturgical smorgasbord: TLM, Neocatechumenal, charismatic, solemn high masses, adoration, holy hours, processions, pilgrimages and other. In this manner, this "Way" will become an enrichment of the broader Church, not an alternative form.
Eucharistic Devotion: Small-c Catholic as Inclusive, Welcoming, Diverse
Such devotional Catholicism is porous, fluid and open to the True, the Good and the Beautiful where it is found in a wide variety of lifestyles. It can present as far right or left, but the underlying foundation brings the two together at the altar of worship and communion. So the average parish is embracive of a wide range of viewpoints in a pastoral prudence of moderation.
In the Catholic Worker of Day/Maurin we find such devotion wed with closeness to the poor, agrarianism, communitarianism, anarchism, pacifism, localism, and ideological rejection of the techno-bureaucracy. Eucharistic devotion brings no particular ideology, but it does draw us to love of the poor. So, most of our greatest saints and exemplars manifest both: Mother Teresa, Catherine Doherty, Madaleine DelBrell, Friars of the Renewal, Sisters of Life and other.
Such devotion flourishes even more on the other side of the spectrum where faith, family, nation, and traditions of freedom are synthesized: Opus Dei, EWTN, Regnum Christi, American Neoconservatism, homeschooling, and TLM.
The Eucharist is for the rich and the poor, the left and the right, and for everyone in between. In Eucharist (word means "thanksgiving") the Church holds all that is good, purifies and strengthens it.
No comments:
Post a Comment