Selective in our scandals--part

As I noted in the first part of this essay, the clerical sexual abuse scandal which is commanding so much attention at present is far from being the only scandal in the Church. There are at least ten or twelve major areas of crisis in our Church�s life in this country; they have been crises for forty years, and never effectively addressed at all -- indeed, much energy has been expended in completely denying reality and depicting this as an age of renewal. In this series, I am focusing on one of those areas of crisis, one which should touch the lives of all Catholics -- the sacred liturgy, the worship of the Church. As I have listened to the stories of others and reflected on my own experiences, I have come to the conclusion that this problem is far deeper than can be fixed with a bit of tinkering.

There�s no point to starting with this or that aspect of the rite which might need changing. Something has gone astray in our fundamental attitude, our understanding of what we are doing as we worship. The problem shows itself frequently, and runs so deep that most people scarcely notice it at all. Funeral Masses offer a few good examples for consideration. In my parish, we have prepared a funeral liturgy preparation sheet, something short and practical which seeks to avoid certain problems. One of the things that sheet requests is that no eulogy be planned for the funeral Mass; we ask that it be done during the wake instead. It is remarkable how many people have a problem with this simple request.

In the course of my ministry, I have celebrated funeral Masses at which there were four separate eulogies. I have sat patiently as innumerable family members burst into tears and delivered a completely unintelligible discourse. I have listened to frequent references to the drinking, gambling, smoking habits of the departed. I have often heard people canonized even under the most dubious circumstances (�I know he wasn�t much for church or prayers or stuff like that but he really loved people and a party, and that�s what I think heaven is gonna be like,� said his girlfriend. His second wife was in the congregation). I remember the �karaoke eulogy,� when the son in law, who by no stretch of the imagination could be described as an intelligible public speaker, started inviting other family members up to the pulpit for a series of amateur eulogies. I have heard heresies uttered in eulogies (speculation about what sort of animal Uncle Sam will come back as; a serious, solemn statement about how all religions are equally valid). I have watched as a bereaved son used his eulogy to settle scores with the rest of his family, resulting, I was told, in a fistfight at the restaurant later.

But there is one thing that I should have heard in every eulogy I have ever sat through, yet actually have heard extremely rarely -- any kind of statement of faith in the merits of Jesus, in His Passion, Death and Resurrection. The whole heart of our Faith, the whole reason we were in church at all, went completely unmentioned in the overwhelming majority of these eulogies, which presumably were the things each eulogist most needed to say.The purpose of a Funeral Mass is the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the repose of the departed soul. It is the specific application of the fruits of Calvary to this individual departed Christian, the opportunity for the mourners to participate in the Eucharist and offer their communion for the departed. It�s about the Lord Jesus, the Resurrection, the means of grace and the hope of glory.

You�d never guess it from the eulogies through which I have sat. Liturgy has become entertainment; it is a sort of karaoke experience we put on ourselves, to suit the mood and needs of the moment. I have had people angry because I insisted that only sacred music be included in the liturgy (one angry woman wrote to the bishop because I would not permit the swing piece to which she had danced with her departed husband at their wedding reception forty years before). I have had families who assumed that this was the perfect occasion for seven year old children to lector; people who presented at the offertory of the Mass a basket of cheer (no, not detergent!) and expected that I would place it on the altar. I watched as the best friend of dear, departed �Bud,� in the pulpit, pulled out a can of beer and toasted Bud�s journey (and I must say that, having heard this eulogy, I was a bit apprehensive about Bud�s destination). I listened with astonishment as a family friend who was to have read from Saint Paul for the epistle mounted the pulpit to read an essay which I later discovered was by Kahil Gibran.

The notion is strange to people that secular show tunes should not be performed during worship. The idea seems odd to people that discourses which are irreligious if not heretical should not be delivered during the liturgy from the pulpit. It rarely seems to occur to people that, if they are going to get up and say what is in their hearts during a liturgy, it ought to have something to do with Jesus. Apparently, it strikes people as peculiar that I might think that a light-hearted character sketch portraying the dear departed as a boozy broad who loved her cards and swore like a sailor at tv game shows might best be delivered in the intimate family-cum-friends scene at the wake, rather than by the flickering light of the tabernacle lamp.This is not because they are malicious -- they rarely are -- or stupid. It is because, slowly but inexorably, our sense of reverence, of the sacred, has been eroded. Our focus on God, on His saving work in Christ, has been weakened. We�re often not worshipping at all -- we have lost the transcendent dimension of our worship, the sense of awe and wonder at the majesty of God. He�s become our buddy, and we�re really rapt in wonder at our wonderful selves anyway. The Liturgy has become the vehicle for our self-expression, a sort of consecated karaoke hour.

Oh, and, by the way -- for those who might be wondering, 'Well, why not just put a stop to these things when they happen,� it�s not quite that simple. A host of pastoral considerations might need to be reviewed, and that during a liturgy. There are times when one has to call a halt to the proceedings, but always that involves hurt feelings; often it is the case that it isn�t clear where we�re going when these scenes begin to unfold. And no priest wants to do harm unnecessarily. When one serves as a priest in a church in which bishops roll down the aisle smiling, wise-cracking and glad-handing people and kissing babies as though they are running for re-election, in which so many priests ad-lib their way through the liturgy as though it belonged to them... the sad truth is that a priest who offers Mass precisely as the Liturgy directs will be seen as eccentric, idiosyncratic nowdays. It has come to be the norm that priests will do with the liturgy what they please, so the priest who simply seeks to offer Mass as the Church directs will often be seen as personally �rigid� because this is the way he chooses to �do it.�

I walked into the cathedral of a West Coast city; it was the Noon Mass, and there was the priest celebrant with a guitar hanging over his chasuble. In a church in my own city, the First Holy Communion Mass procession was preceded by a dozen CCD teachers, each holding a bunch of brightly-colored helium balloons; the priest celebrant was walking at the head of the procession with the kids and acted as a kind of cheerleader for the singing by moving constantly up and down the aisle during Mass (Yes, I did say he was the celebrant). He also thoughtfully imparted general absolution during his homily so that everyone could come to Communion. The whole atmosphere of that First Communion liturgy, with this rotund seventy year old priest dancing up and down the aisle waving his arms at the kids, was indescribable; a carnival is done in better taste.

I am not denying that there was need forty years ago for liturgical renewal -- perfectly orthodox preconciliar scholars longed for it. I am not anxious to return to the days when a Funeral Mass was a Solemn High Mass, with parish priests functioning repeatedly as celebrant, deacon and subdeacon, no sermon, and no one receiving Communion but the priest (and the funeral cortege at the curb waiting for him to finish
breakfast afterwards so that he did not have to travel to the cemetery fasting). But there is something I am anxious for -- that we recapture the focus on the Lord Jesus, on His saving work in us as we celebrate the sacraments. I�m afraid this has often been lost among us. I was raised with the awareness that the Mass is the most sacred and precious thing God has given us, that every time we assist at Mass we are standing at the Foot of the Cross, that whether we�re at the Easter Vigil with all the stops pulled, or a quiet low Mass at 7AM on a Monday morning, heaven has opened and His graces are being poured out over us. What I�m getting now is the sense that the whole liturgical action is focused upon those of us who are present in this congregation, and that the liturgy is the convenient vehicle for our self-expression. Often, liturgical principles are violated if they conflict with what this gathered community, or its presider, wish to do, but I am not even addressing that. I�m dealing with the amazing phenomenon that, where once

Catholics came to the holy Mass with the awesome awareness that this was a sacred moment in which God Himself was working, today one typically finds an entirely community-centered mentality, in which, if the rite isn�t entertaining, it isn�t satisfying; where the choice of songs matters more than whether or not one is in a state of grace. Again, I must say, this is not necessarily malice at all. We have so dropped the ball on effective catechesis in our Church that whole communities of children grow up without the necessary foundation to understand how to approach the Eucharist, to live the Christian life.

As our bishops approach their June meeting, they and we must continue to focus on the appalling scandal of clerical sexual abuse; but we must not forget that this particular scandal does not stand in isolation. There are ten to twelve or more major areas of crisis in the life of our Church in this country. They have been crises for forty years. It is sad that those who govern the Church have chosen not to deal with these crises, and have often ignored faithful laity and priests who tried to raise these issues. An unprecedented media blitz precipitated our current awareness of the crisis regarding sexual abuse; I do not expect the New York Times ever to weigh in on the subject of lousy liturgy. But it is a shame, and a double shame that those responsible are not ashamed at all. The liturgy is �the source and summit of the Christian life,� the Second Vatican Council tells us. It is shameful that those responsible for it have so neglected it.

Email author: frwilson@cruxnews.com

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