Holy, Wise Patriarchs of the Catholic Church in the USA 1970-2022

Remembering the life and mission, this week, of David L. Schindler, the defining Patriarch of the Catholic Church of the USA of my adulthood (1970-2022), has led me to ponder: who are the decisive Patriarchs, Doctors, Fathers of my time? Who has affirmed, protected, modeled, and acclaimed our faith in our time with  paternal authority, clarity, certainty, intensity, vigor and efficacy? My list:  

(Don't get nervous, dear Reader, there are no women here; but a separate list is forthcoming. I keep men and women in distinct arenas, just like in swimming, track, wrestling and ice hockey.)

 1.  David L. Schindler. The American "communio" family he fathered flourishes in the Washington D.C. at the Institute and Journal with a breathtaking richness of erudition, holiness, and contagious- mimetic spiritual-intellectual synergy in the tradition of John Paul, Benedict and Balthasar.. 

2.  Cardinal Avery Dulles. Unequaled for the breath, depth, clarity and Catholic fidelity of his learning, he was a humble, gentle, shy man who started no school of his own. In the 1970s-80s he stood virtually alone against theological fashion in his allegiance to the Church. He influenced many by his teaching and writing. In the Evangelical-Catholic dialogue, as well as his challenge to the Dallas Charter on behalf of priests, he passed his cloak on to Monsignor Tom Guarino of Seton Hall.

3.  Ralph Martin and leaders of the Charismatic Renewal. This is a personal, subjective preference of mine since I was so influenced by this movement. Martin, was, of course, one of many influential leaders under the influence of the Holy Spirit: Steve Clark, the Ranaghans, Fr. Michael Scanlon, Fr. Jim Ferry of NJ, Cardinal Suenens, and theologians Fr. Francis Martin, Fr. George Montague and countless others. Martin is distinctive in his move beyond the renewal into an aggressive evangelical mission, a practical theology of the saints, and his articulation of a classic Evangelical-Catholic theology that is John-Paul-friendly but with a sharper edge.

4. Giuseppe Gennarini. With his wife Claudia,  Giuseppe brought the Neocatechumenal Way to the United States and has guided it's growth with a sage, firm, unwavering, wise hand.

5. Gil Baile. In his magnificent God's Gamble, this brilliant lawyer-turned-theologian synthesizes insights from the three most innovative, significant Catholic minds of the 20th century: his mentor Rene Girard, John Paul and Balthasar.

6. Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete. An influential leader of Communion and Liberation in the USSA, he is a delightful genius, eccentric, maverick, and influential disciple of Monsignor Giussani. 

7.  Paul Vitz and Fr. Benedict Groeschel. In distinctive ways, these two Catholic psychologists enriched our faith with the best findings of that science.

8. Bishop Barron, Archbishop Chaput, and Cardinals O'Connor, Burke and George. The most intelligent, clear, orthodox voices of the American hierarchy of the last half century.

9. Neuhaus, Novak, Weigel, Reno and "Neo-Conservative" leaders associated with First Things, as well as Fr. Fessio S.J. of Ignatius Press, Robert Royal of The Catholic Thing, Raymond Arroyo of EWTN and that school of mainstream American Catholic conservatism. While I share Schindler's reservations about their positive evaluation of American culture and capitalism, their thinking was always incisive, Catholicly orthodox, powerfully influential, erudite, and defiant of the dominant cultural liberalism.

10. Scott Hahn has drawn a remarkable legion of Evangelicals into the Church and developed a theology that is profoundly scriptural and Catholic. His is a distinctive contribution.

 Special Mention

Currently we are witnessing the emergence of a younger generation of Catholic thinkers and activists, critical of the entire "liberal order" and articulating a refreshingly new vision that is economically populist (pro-labor, pro-New-Deal) and culturally conservative. They represent a variety of views and are called post-liberals, national conservatives, integralists, the New Right, and others. Examples: Douthat, Ahmari, Vance, Dineen, Pecknold, Vermule, Waldstein, D.C. Schindler, and others. They are too new and young to be full fledged patriarchs but they are most promising.

Roy K. is probably not Catholic and I know little about him except that by founding Sexaholics Anonymous (S.A.) in the 1980s he did for sex addicts what Bill W. and Doctor Bob did in the 1930s for alcoholics: offered a program of connection, accountability and recovery from isolation, shame and compulsivity. It mirrors the demanding, ennobling, "high bar" sexual ethos of the Church. Would that this hopeful program was known and available to the generation of predator priests who violated the young and ravaged our Church just as it was beginning. It is a promising path now for a younger generation plagued by pornography.

Finally I must honor, closer to home, men who mentored me personally and lived as patriarchs in a modest, local manner. My Dad, Ray Laracy, a tremendous father and role model. Pat Williams, mentor/friend in my college years ,librarian, autodidact, prize fighter, marine, family man, catechist. Ivan Illich who gave me a vision of Catholicism as mystical, radical, iconoclastic, creative, countercultural, erudite, sophisticated and yet deeply traditional. John Rapinich, contemplative and artist, my best friend and little-big-brother. Jesuit spiritual guides Joe Whelan, Neil Dougherty, John Wrynn. My "big-brother" friends Brother Ray Murphy and Meryl Jacobson.

We are blessed to stand on the shoulders of giants! 

David L. Schindler 1943-2022

"David Schindler was a big man. Big in body, strength and stamina. Big in intellect, heart and soul." My recall of the first words in the remembrance by David C. Schindler of his father at the repast 12/2/22. 

Magnanimity is one of my favorite words: rarely used, vastly underrated. From the Latin it means "Great in Spirit." It indicates qualities of heart, intellect and will including: generosity, extravagance, heroism, fortitude, perseverance, zeal, ferocity, courage. Its disuse may be due to its rarity in a culture of bourgeois mediocrity. On my top ten list of the most magnanimous people I have personally known, David Schindler is probably number one.

Without using the word, his son David described in just such terms: greatness of heart and mind. He was obsessed with the wonder of God and all that comes from his creating hands. He had a childlike wonder before the Creator and all of creation. And he elicited that from all who associate him. How could such a big man be so small as awe-filled, grateful, receptive, innocent, simple, joyful?

He embodied the reality of magnanimity as synonymous, mysteriously, with humility. The contrary of inflated egoism, it is awe before God, the True-Good-Beautiful, justice, freedom, faith and truth. It is a forgetfulness of self in wonder before what is presented. Everyone at the funeral...friend, student, colleague...repeated: "He valued me so...ME!"  He was friend and collaborator to Ratzinger, John Paul, Balthasar, De Lubac...the greatest intellects of our age. He was in their league. But, as someone (his son?) commented: "At a conference, he would prefer a conversation with the most shy student to one with the celebrity lecturer." A friend said "He gave me to myself in so many ways."

I knew him  personally through my son and daughter. Spoke with him a handful of times. But whenever he saw my daughter he would ask for her parents. I was important to him...yes little old me! Mind-boggling!

 I started reading Communio, his journal, almost 40 years ago. It became my primary intellectual and spiritual sustenance. He became my mentor in channeling to me John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar and the very best of contemporary Catholicism. He is, for me, the singular American Catholic Patriarch of our time.

At a lecture some years ago in NYC he was introduced by Lorenzo Albacete (a peer in brilliance, holiness and charm) as "a friend of the Trinity."  That struck me: That is what I want to be: a friend of the Trinity! He presented what he had received from Ratzinger as the three foundations for a good social order: the sacredness of every human life, reverence for marriage and the family, and openness to the Transcendent and human freedom. That has remained with me as the core of my political creed.

Three specific theological themes co-inhered and resonated through his thought.

1. Generosity of God and all of Being. He was a mystic, in a brilliant but down-to-earth way. He was madly in love with God and all that is Good-True-Beautiful...even in the face of sin and evil...in all its extravagance, serendipity, drama, lucidity, and splendor.

2. Receptivity...active, participative receptivity...as our engagement in freedom with God and all the Good that surges in and around us. He properly, classically, subordinated the active to the contemplative. (Which was the heart of his profound critique of America as a late-Protestant, Enlightenment culture desperate for Catholic realities of authority, contemplation, worship, sacrament, Mary, dogmatic clarity and certainty, the evangelical life, and Christ in his whole body. He took his Catholicism thick, undiluted, passionate, joyous, exultant!,)

3. Truth and Love as co-inhering and informing each other. Firmly, fiercely he renounced Modernity's false dichotomy of subjectivity (love as feeling) and objectivity (empirical science as model of truth), the first hyper-feminized and the second over-masculinized. Rather, he saw at the heart of Creation a Logos, the form of Christ, that is at once Good and True and Beautiful.

In our time, his voice was exceptional and extraordinary: virile, fatherly, firm, clear, certain, authoritative, decisive. Like St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, the apostles-doctors-fathers-martyrs, he exemplified masculinity as gentle strength and strong gentleness. 

I was sad to know that in his last months, tormented by dementia, he was vulnerable to anger. I did not see him this way. But I learned otherwise at the funeral. Father Fessio S.J., celebrant and homilist, his friend since youth in a Jesuit seminary, remembered him as a strong, forceful competitor on the basketball court.  That same ferocity, he said, informed his work, thought and entire life. His son saw him as a fighter: his nickname in high school was "Dukes." When he would learn from my daughter that my son, his student, was teaching at a Catholic university but without permanency, he would become surprisingly angry.

No doubt there was a human weakness here. More substantially, however, his was a holy wrath against falsehood. When I learned of his anger I realized why I loved his thought so much. He was academic, metaphysical, clear, and flawlessly free of petty emotionalism. But he was always fighting...against falsehood and for truth. He was a Warrior! At the highest level of abstraction and the deepest place of insight, with tenderness but fire, he fiercely affirmed the Truth and passionately attacked falsehood. 

Refreshingly, surprisingly, Fr. Fessio in his homily said: "We are not here to canonize him." Rather we were gathered in prayer and hope. "Dare we hope?" he asked, echoing their mentor Balthasar. But ending the sermon he lost his composure (as did I and probably hundreds in the pews) as he imagined his basketball adversary before the Lord saying: "I ran the good race! I fought the good fight!" And Jesus responding "Enter, good and faithful servant, into the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of time."

His collaborator (and peer in theological brilliance) Fr. Paolo Prosperi reflected at the repast: "He was more than an academic master, although he was that. There are many of those. But what he did was start something here. Something very unusual." He did not elaborate. I understood him completely. Around this Institute and journal he gathered an extraordinary "Communio" of learning, prayer, holiness, delightful eccentricity, beauty, and extravagant generosity. I know of no comparable communion in prayer and erudition. His collaborators rival and stimulate each other in erudition, prayer, and peculiarity of charm. A tremendous joy for me has been to be part of this, although from a distance, and even more to see my son study there and my daughter now teach there. 

One of his closest partners in mission is Fr. Antonio Lopez. He is dear to me as "Co-Padrino": as he has been spiritual mentor for my daughter in her evangelical vocation and intellectual director of my son's doctoral dissertation. When I saw him momentarily at the repast I suddenly said: "This is a great day. In salvation history." I laughed at myself. Everyone just looked at me. It sounded so funny. No one talks that way. But in my college years, "salvation history" was a buzz word in fashionable renewal theology. It sounded funny, but I meant it. The passing of David L. Schindler is a great day in salvation history. What an inexpressible joy for me to be there at a magnificent funeral mass. To be gathered in a repast with an extraordinary group of people. To glance around at scholars, families and little children running around! To feel the life: vibrant, hopeful, joyous!

May this marvelous, magnificent, magnanimous man rejoice in his reward. 

And may we receive, enrich and share the legacy he left us! 

 

A Modest Proposal to our Bishops for the Eucharistic Revival (and to my Teen Grandchildren, Letter 18)

LET US INFLAME OUR LOVE FOR CHRIST PRESENT...HUMBLY, QUIETLY, FAITHFULLY, POWERFULLY, PATIENTLY, TENDERLY, PASSIONATELY, COVERTLY, LONGINGLY, HOPEFULLY...IN THE SMALL, WHITE HOST IN THE TABERNACLES OF OUR CHURCHES!

(What follows is a contribution to the three-year Eucharistic Revival just initiated by our bishops.)

Amazing: the Catholic reality is that Jesus our Lord is really, literally, physically present to us in every Catholic church and chapel...as he was on earth for those 33 years. Really! Literally! Actually!

I am not kidding!  I am not being poetic or symbolic or metaphorical! I am serious. I am prosaic, factual, straightforward about this!

I did not think this up. This is what the Bridegroom has revealed to his Bride, the Church.

No other faith, religion or denomination has such a scandalously corporeal, graphic, intimate, enduring, and endearing presence of the Divine! Incarnate!  Contrast the richness and variety of our sacramental, iconic Churches with those of Protestants, Jews, Muslims: bare, boring, iconoclastic, stark, lonely, Their environments testify to the Transcendent in a negative way, by an absence, by a deprivation. Their worship tends to the cognitive, deliberative, verbal but lacks the Catholic traditions of the contemplative mystical, artistic. Our churches witness to a God present really to us in the beauty and splendor of icons, paintings, stain glass windows, statues, stations of the cross, Mary and Joseph and all the saints, and an intoxicating richness and variety of imagery.

The actual body of Jesus of Nazareth is risen, ascended and glorified for ever in heaven. But that very same, exact body is present in every consecrated host. I cannot explain this.

When we receive Holy Communion we take on a union with this Body and ourselves become, by analogy, ourselves...personally and communally...the Body of Christ, our Head.

Yes, we the Church are the Body of Christ. But here and now on earth we and I are not the Body of Christ in the exact way that Jesus himself is his body in heaven and on earth in the Eucharist. When I walk into a Catholic Church, I look immediately for the tabernacle with the red vigil light near by...and I genuflect. I do not genuflect to you when I see you. You do not genuflect to me when you see me. 

In the stupidity, silliness, inebriation, delusions, irreverence, apostacy, arrogance, narcissism, and superficiality of the years after the Council, perhaps no Catholic loss was as great as our ignorance, disbelief and indifference to our Lord present to us in every tabernacle. This was not caused by the council documents. It was a perfect storm...a tornado within a hurricane with a tsunami and an earthquake...of diabolical, worldly and fleshly forces. It was a contempt for God present among us. And a collapse into bourgeois consumerism, careerism, scientism, secularism, relativism and spiritual anomie. It was an accommodation to a decadent late-Protestant Americanism as moralistic, deistic therapy.

I invite you, dear reader, to pause for a second from reading. Where is the Catholic tabernacle that is closest to you? A parish? A Catholic institution? Make a quiet, gentle act of praise. Of thanksgiving. Of contrition. Of contemplation in rest. Of resolve to love our Lord in this incarnation.

Our Lord loves us simply, gently, tenderly in the Host. It is so simple for us to love Him back. When we pass a Church, we make the sign of the cross. From time to time we think of his presence near us, and pray to him. If a Church is open, we stop by...even for two minutes...and look to him. Adore him. Petition him. And move on with our lives. Much better for those two minutes. 

For me the defining tragedy of the recent pandemic was the closing of the Churches. (Second place would be the closing of schools.) It was an act of weakness by our bishops. An act of infidelity to our Lord in the tabernacle. It was, from a Catholic perspective, ludicrous: we were together in supermarkets, liquor stores, factories, airports, malls,and BLM demonstrations... but we had to lock up our Churches. In buildings that hold hundreds of people we could have social-distanced 60 feet from each other. This indifference to the Eucharistic presence is breath-taking!

My primary critique of the Neocatechumenal Way is the disconnect between their rite and the on-going presence in the tabernacle. The loaf that they consume is clearly not capable of preservation in the manner of the small host. So there is no organic connection between the event of the Eucharist and the ongoing presence. These two absolutely belong to each other; to separate them is an immense impoverishment. Young people growing up in this context will lack a connection to the Tabernacle, the parish as place, the Church beyond this movement, and the Eucharist as banquet-Word-sacrifice-perpetual presence. The directive of the Vatican that they periodically refrain from their communal celebrations to join the mainstream parish Eucharist has been systematically ignored. Big mistake! It is something that will eventually be addressed. My expectation is that with the increased number of Neocat priests, who pledge dual allegiance to this way and to the hierarchical Church, as well as the eventual demise of Kiko himself, there will be an eventual shift of authority from the lay catechists to the ordained clergy. And so, a reconciliation between their rite, the broader Church, and ordinary Eucharistic piety. 

In the flux, fluidity, uncertainty and insecurity of late-modernity, where do we find stability? In Christ! Who is present to us always and everywhere: in the communion of faith, hope and love: in the sacramental economy; in every act of mercy and compassion, contrition, gratitude, forgiveness; in the Nazareth-like normality of prayerful family life; in the clarity and certainty of infallible, doctrinal Truth; in the holiness of the saints; in the beauty of art and indeed of all creation; in the religious life and the hierarchy. 

But all of that was not enough...not enough for the extravagant Trinity. They desired something more intimate, enduring, tender, corporeal, conjugal, dependable, sturdy, steadfast. And so, Christ abides for us, even after the Event of the Eucharist, in the Tabernacle!

The Mystery: To the natural eye so quiet, small, inert. Indwelling those molecules: an INFINITE AND ETERNAL EVENT of love...explosive, compassionate, tender, kind, dramatic, magnanimous, pure Love! Christ everlastingly loving and being loved by the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and incorporating us. The sacrifice of Calvary evermore re-enacted, but now free of violence, blood, and sin.

I invite you, again, dear reader, to pause from reading and thinking and direct the glance of your heart, intellect and will to the Eucharistic presence in the tabernacle closest to you. Let us together give thanks for this incomparable, inexpressible Gift!

The Eucharistic Revival proposed here is simple. No activism, No bureaucracy, No  meetings, No expenditure of time or money, and (Mother of God protect us! Saints preserve us!) NO SYNODALITY!☝☝☝😁😀😀💓💓💓🙏🙏🙏🙋🙋🙋

Simply:  Pause from time to time and pray, as with an aspiration, to the nearest tabernacle. Try to arrive five minutes early and stay five minutes afterwards for mass. Preach about the Eucharistic presence. Keep silence in Church: all conversations take place outside. Keep the Churches open; if necessary, employ a guardian to watch. Make frequent, short or long, visits. Make the sign of the cross on passing a Church. Have holy hours, benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, adoration. Share all this with your family and friends. Glancing to the Permanent Presence, cultivate silence, receptivity, serenity, gratitude, admiration, adoration, longing, sobriety, stability.

It is good to end this in prayer. Glancing to the nearest Tabernacle, we pray:

For your presence with us, always, tenderly, generously.....We adore you O Lord!

For your stability, humility, dependability, magnanimity, gentleness.....We adore you O Lord!

For the Holy Sacrifice of the mass, our communities and families of faith, the Catholic Church, the sacramental life, the forgiveness of sins, the clarity and certainty of your Revelation, for your living and infallible Word, for our parishes and renewal movements, for the priesthood and religious life.....We adore you, O Lord!

Come Holy Spirit! Abide in our hearts, minds, wills, spirits, bodies! Inflame in us tender, reverent love for our Savior in his Eucharistic Presence!    Amen!

 

A Modest 5-point Proposal to the Latin Mass Community (5 of 5)

 1. Intensify your prayers for Pope Francis and especially the bishops/priests most hostile to your liturgy. Enhance ands express your esteem and affection for them even as you correctly retain your intellectual judgment. Your intellect is strong in Truth; your heart can grow stronger in love.

2. Clearly affirm your acceptance of the Novus Ordo as normative, of the authority of this pope, of the divine inspiration of the Vatican Council. Restrain one another in speech that can be heard as resentful, polarizing and disrespectful, especially in social media and public discourse, even in the face of official persecution.

3. Continue your generosity, which is obvious, including financially. Perhaps each community might take on a specific action of mercy: visiting those sick, in prison or homebound; catechizing youth; mentoring young men; feeding the hungry; giving retreats.

4. Participate joyfully in normal parish life including the Novus Ordo and especially daily mass. Share your love for the Eucharist especially in adoration and holy hours.

5. Consider celebrating some or all of the Easter rituals with the broader parish in the Novus Ordo as an act of humility on behalf of Church unity.

I offer this in fraternal affection and esteem. Your love and devotion to the Eucharist of the centuries is a precious and necessary gift for the Church.  Your witness is at times blurred by resentment, anxiety, defensiveness, and pride. You are, as a group, intelligent, creative, dynamic, fervent, devout...often in eccentric, delightful ways.  May our Lord bless you and your families in your Eucharistic devotion. And the Church through your witness.

A Modest 5-point Proposal to Kiko and Companions (4 of 5)

1. Stop referring to your program as "THE Way."  Instead you can say "our way" or "the neo-way" or "our path." Be humble: your itinerary is not THE way. It is a way. It is one way within the one Church. Jesus is The Way. And the Catholic Church is The way to full communion with Jesus.

2. Celebrate your Eucharists every other Saturday instead of every week. On the alternate weeks attend an ordinary parish Sunday mass. With this you strengthen your bond with the broader Church. You properly defer to the parish Novus Ordo mass as the normative Eucharist of the one-holy-catholic-apostolic Church.

3. Once monthly cancel your celebration of the Word and participate in some alternative (preferably) Catholic spiritual event: daily mass, novena, retreat, holy hour, men or women's support group, 12-step program such as AA or Alanon or SA (Sexaholics Anonymous). This will overcome a certain narrowness into a more catholic Catholicism.

4. Celebrate Easter Vigil and Holy Saturday Eucharist with the entire parish. You might extend and enrich your celebration into the night with readings, echoes, songs that further develop these memories of our salvation.

5. Have each maturing community, at an appropriate time (after passing a scrutiny?), accept together a small corporal or spiritual project of Mercy. This could be: visiting the sick, or in prison or in nursing homes; catechizing; assisting a Catholic school; giving retreats; mentoring youngsters; supporting single mothers; distributing food or meals to the poor; helping those who clutter and horde to regain order and peace; and countless others.

These practices will purify, strengthen and deepen your Way. They will countervail the pronounced "cult-like" propensities of your program. They will restrain your inordinate centripetal dynamism and enhance your centrifugal energies. They will deepen your Catholicism and enrich the broader Church and community.

I offer this proposal with fraternal affection, admiration and some jealousy: yours is the most dynamic, militant, and promising of all the lay renewal movements in the Church and I wish I could have remained myself as a journeyer in your way.

Catholic Eucharist as The Banquet of Friendship? (3 of 5)

Since the Council 50 years ago, I for one have been conflicted about the emergence of a model of the Eucharist as a Passover-type meal that ignores or denies the "temple" aspects of holy sacrifice and abiding Divine Presence. 

This model emerged strongly after the Council but is not an expression of the actual decrees. It moves decisively away from a temple model of ritualism, sacrifice, formality, solemnity, fasting, elaborate artistry, restrain and humility before the Holy and Sacred.

It replaces such for the informality, intimacy, personalism, authenticity, interaction, spontaneity, and subjective expressiveness of the Eucharist as a remembrance of the Last Supper, a relaxed, affectionate communion of Jesus with his disciples, in  accord with Jewish practice and memory.

It takes place outside of a sacred place (Church or chapel), in a living room, or outdoors, or an activity center. It is largely stripped of the accoutrements of worship. It is relaxed, affectionate, intimate, humorous, spontaneous. It involves personal witnesses about God's grace or confessions of personal weakness and need for such. It is engaging.

On the positive side, such a model is experientially rich and enjoyable, personal, non-threatening, exhilarating, interactional, delightful and meaningful. It is not boring, mechanical, formal, alienating.

On the negative side it is casual, normal, and lacking in protocols of reverence and solemnity before the Sacred. It can degenerate and become superficial, sentimental, emotional, ephemeral and monotonous in its own way.  

At its worst, it resembles the surrounding culture of subjectivity, narcissism, encounter-sensitivity groups, emotivism, therapy, consumerism and bourgeois indulgence. For example, communion might be offered to all participants, including non-Catholics, without regard to their preparedness...doctrinally, morally, psychologically...for the sacrament. After the service, the Sacred Hosts that are not consumed might be treated as unconsecrated hosts, sacrilegiously.

It is a break with Catholic tradition of many centuries. It may reject the ordinary Catholic mass as formalistic, monotonous, inauthentic. Implicitly or explicitly, it may seek to retrieve an ideal of the early Church liturgies as Passover meals, unencumbered by alien associations with temple, ritual, sacrifice, formality and solemnity. It may reflect the reformer's temptation: in the zeal to purify a contemptable Church, there is an "originalist" return to a pre-Constantinian Church of simplicity prior to the descent of the Catholic Church into power, ritual, and prestige. In this it can harbor a disgust for the actual, concrete, institutional Church of recent centuries.

However, I cannot deny that this celebration deeply, beautifully impacts many people, in many situations. I have seen this at our class reunions, retreats, family and friend gatherings, and most pronouncedly in the Neocatechumenal Way. Oftentimes those far from the Church participate and are deeply touched by a sense of God's love. This cannot be bad, can it?

The resolution to my ambivalence and conflict? I have come to see that these must be pleasing to God as they touch people so deeply. But in the right order. Specifically, the Eucharist as Word and Banquet cannot entirely detach from the Liturgy as Sacrifice and Abiding Presence. Indeed, the power, depth and beauty of these celebrations draws mysteriously from the communion with the broader, normal, parochial Church.  Protocols must be respected. Non-Catholics or those who have rejected Catholic practice cannot be reverently given Communion. The Host that is not consumed must be properly reverenced as the body of Christ. A tone of reverence and solemnity must prevail, although informally.

This Eucharist as Banquet, as Last Super, is not the normative liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is an outflow, a development, an extraordinary expression. It is an outreach. It flows out of and back to the ordinary parish mass as Word, Meal, Sacrifice and Presence. 

It is an expression of God's extravagant love. As such it flows out of and back into the more normal, even mundane parish Church building as "Temple of Worship." 

The Novus Ordo and the Latin Mass (2 of 5)

The Novus Ordo of the Vatican Council is in organic, substantial continuity with the Latin Mass of Trent and Gregory the Great and generations prior to that. The inner form or substance of the mass was preserved, but accidents were changed. The intention of the Council Fathers was to enhance participation by the laity, remove accretions that had become distracting, and unveil more transparently the simple, ancient, continuing shape of the Liturgy. The change was more like a haircut or a makeover, rather than a heart transplant or gender transition. Extremists among traditionalists and progressives see a rupture, a substantial change, and therefore disparage one or the other as a defective form. An authentic Catholic view affirms both/and, not either/or.

The Novus Ordo is now the authentic, normative rite of the Latin Church. For over 1,000 years the Latin mass was such. It remains a valid, authentic rite. It has not been cast aside or invalidated. It is now secondary and subordinate to the new rite. It remains.

The liturgical instructions of the Council were inspired by the Holy Spirit and protective of the integrity of the Eucharist. But this rite, while divinely inspired, is a human endeavor, therefore finite, limited, prone to weakness, imbalance, and misuse. It is not above criticism. I will offer two such critiques, along with a countervailing appreciation of the more traditional rite: loss of reverence and excessive verbosity. 

Loss of Reverence and Solemnity.  In making the liturgy more accessible, normal, and understandable, the Church risked the loss of reverence and solemnity. This loss became far greater than anyone could have anticipated. This was not the work of the Council documents. Rather these teaching were voiced to a Church that was rapidly and catastrophically assimilating itself to a world that was at that very second falling off the cliff into bourgeois secularism, consumerism, materialism, technocracy, relativism and Godlessness. 

The awe, silence, fasting, confessing, genuflecting, restraint, and sense of sacredness that had been handed down by almost a hundred generations of priests, parents, ascetics, mystics, hermits, missionaries and catechists disappeared...in a split second. It was an instantaneous change! A catastrophe! A monumental victory for Satan!

Excessive Verbosity.  Related to the loss of reverence is the imbalanced reliance on verbal, deliberative discourse and a displacement of more solemn modes of contemplation and worship including silence, fasting, ritualistic actions, iconography, non-intelligible song and worship. In the new rite, we are listening to someone speaking, in English, usually the priest, from start to finish. The words never top. We never get a break to rest our discursive intellect and surrender to contemplative rest. Too many words! Contrast this to the Latin mass! An unknown language that can be accessed by a missal but allows the mind to rest and ruminate, while smelling the incense, and glancing around at icons, statues stations of the cross, and stained glass windows. Likewise, in a good charismatic mass, there are periods of silence and waiting for the Word, prophetic deliverances, and the praying in tongues which resembles Latin in that it is an non-intelligible discourse which relaxes the cognitive brain and allows more meditative, poetic and mystical ruminations. 

Ironically, the new rite is over-focused on the priest celebrant and his words. For sure the Latin mass is clerical, but the actual personality, articulation and viewpoints of the priest were hidden by a richness of ritual that led the worshipers beyond his person into the Holy. The celebrants person disappeared behind an elaborate ritual. The new rite lends itself to an unfortunate clerical narcissism as the stripped down rite can lend the celebrant to see himself as center of attention: his humor, stories, insight and erudition. It leads to a more tedious, toxic clericalism.

Renewing our liturgy, "opening the doors to the world," at the very moment of radical secularization created a perfect storm of flattening, sentimentality, superficiality, verbosity, and monotony that pervades our liturgical life. The rite is not itself defective. But it has no defense against trivialization as it is so porous  and non-resistant to the surrounding culture of hostility. 

In this environment, the Latin Mass offers an antidote. It obscures the personality of the celebrant, it highlights the solemnity around the holy sacrifice and the real presence, it enhances worship by silence, genuflecting, iconography, chant, visual stimulation of servers bowing and gesturing around the altar, "ad orientem" posture of priest-with-people. This ancient rite is a perfect antidote to the superficiality, trivialization and middle class mediocrity to which the new rite is vulnerable.

The policy of Benedict was wise as well as kind and unifying: retain both rites. Let them both flourish. Let them mutually enrich each other: the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative .Live and let live!

The policy of Francis is narrow and imprudent, as well as vicious and polarizing. 

The old and the new belong to each other; as do memory and hope; tradition and creativity; fluidity and stability; past, present and future. A more generous and appreciative embrace of the Latin mass will only enrich the Novus Ordo.