Saturday 26 November 2011

How can we respond to the arrival of this text?

Over these weeks when the new Mass text has begun to be used, so many of my contacts in the Roman Catholic church have said: "I don't like it but what's the point in reacting? Its here."  Talking with them has led me to make three responses.  I invite ideas about what else should be on this list, but my three are:
  1. To write to the Bishops.  The problems associated with the text must be named, and somehow reactions expressed, not suppressed.
  2. To explore the website "What If We Just Said Wait?" It has important essays, a huge number of comments raising issues, and also invites people to respond to a survey about their experience of Mass with the new Missal.
  3. To reflect on my feelings about this - what provokes my anger and frustration?  Are my feelings because I am being challenged or because deep down I might dislike change? What, of that which really matters to me, is not in this Mass text?

I'll attempt to summarise my own reflection. I noticed the contrast with how I reacted to the study days, liturgies, and books that did open me to new possibilities in the 1970's and 1980's - I saw new depths, new possibilities to enter into the  mysteries (as something to be explored, but never fully grasped) of being alive, of God, of the Church, of the Universe.  My heart beat faster, and I was drawn into these mysteries. This week I reopened the book "Our Faith Story", by Patrick Purnell S.J., and had the same reaction once again.  Yet when I read this Mass text, and now when I hear it, I feel sad and depressed.  It is as if it shrinks my spirit, that had been so energised in the past. I need to continue to discern about this reaction, but it is not one that resonates with what I am told about this text - that it will deepen my faith.

A major source of frustration is that the language of the Mass text now says too much - in effect it tells me how to feel as well as how to pray.  Something simpler, less heavy handed, would let me bring my relationship with God into the prayer, not limit me to that of he who made the final changes to the text. On the occasions when I understand what is being said, I keep thinking "no, that's not how I want to be with God".  Extracts from the new texts are shown alongside the never-used 1998 translation,  here    These 1998 prayers are advances on what we had until recent months; to me they are a delight.  They evoked prayerful response within me, and it seems a tragedy that we will not use that 1998 text. Yet I read about how the new texts will help us to pray more deeply!!

We are told by the Bishops to get used to the new text. That is patronising nonsense. It is as if the pilgrim people have been given boots two sizes too small and told to get used to them. These boots only point us backwards towards so many limitations that we had left behind in every important area of being Catholic, for in this Mass text and in its communication to us:


  • God is  made to seem remote. That is an Old Testament image. Is this due to a  misrepresentation of transcendence as meaning not "beyond our grasp and words" but "distant and in Heaven"?
  • Jesus' teaching by his life and word is not sufficiently apparent in so many important ways, despite the claim that the text achieves an enhanced closeness to the scripture. I contend that Scripture is being invoked to justify a more limited view of God, Christ, Church and Mass than is actually consistent with the Gospels:
    • Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom that is among us - both transcendent and immanent - with a God who is in intimate personal relationship.
    • Jesus vented anger at religious powers that made obstacles between people and God, and who failed to respond to the invitation to that intimacy. (See the Gospels we have been reading, while this new text is being introduced in Scotland since September!!)
    • Jesus delighted in simple straight-forward prayer and  in communication that used language, philosophy and images that made sense to the people of His time - how else could they become engaged with His message?! Indeed, how else could he have expressed it? I didn't understand the convoluted prayers used today,  week 1 of Advent, with their strange phrasing and structure, even though I thought I was prepared for them and am relatively academic. (Inspiring 1998 prayers for this Sunday are here.) Too many mental somersaults are needed: in the Eucharistic prayer, many really means all; "with your spirit" means, well, it depends which commentary you read; some other prayers sound pious but are too convoluted to ever have been tested.
    • The earthiness of Christ's presence is not accepted, so cups become chalices and simple greetings are not recognised as expressing His blessing through us.
    • An example of the selectivity in use of the Scripture that is used: many people (including me) find John 10:10, "I came that you might have life and have it to the full" to be a key text, but it is not heard anywhere in the new (or previous) Mass prayers that I know of. Someone in nervous tones recently said to me how important this verse was to him, but did I think the Church really thought that?  Did I think that  he was allowed to think it? He thought he was on the edge, or beyond, what was permitted because of what he heard in the Mass.
    • The new text has accentuated the stress on sins,  not on the life that is on offer from Jesus - it often seems to miss the essence of being Christian.  Of course we have to recognise and confess our sins, and sinfulness - but in a context that is simply and clearly that of God's acceptance, love and initiative. I do not see this context clearly enough in the new Mass text. Jesus scandalised the religious powers because he spent time with the broken, the sinners and the marginalised; yet we are told to be good so that we can meet Jesus and merit eternal life!  In Baptism we are born again into Christ, whose Spirit is within us, yearning to be expressed - so what is going on when we say we are not worthy  to receive Christ?! We are receiving what we already are - the Body of Christ, and in so doing, we pray that we might live like it. Instead we have the centurion's prayer (discussed here, with a different view!) and, for example, the collect to Advent week 1. In the latter, with its  "we" and "they," I can't locate myself in the prayer; it does not make sense to me. This is in the text that we are repeatedly told has been prepared by so many experts - but maybe this indicates some confusion with the 1998 text.
  • The Church
    • Bishops, in the communication of this text have written  "the Church asks us to accept the text"... No, Bishops, you and the Curia ask the English-speaking members of the Church to accept it. 
    • Is the process that generated the mass text legitimate? I don't know, but the Bishops (despite the visible efforts of a minority) failed to defend subsidiarity or collegiality as the text was generated; the current changes do not build on Vatican II (see anopther blog post).
    • In the presentation of this Mass text the laity are too often portrayed as mere consumers of the clergy's ministry.
    • We should now be using inclusive language.
    • The text reasserts unnecessary divisions from other Christian denominations - the ecumenically agreed texts are discarded. May they be one, by joining us, seems once more to be the theme.
    • The tradition is not being used in a balanced way - but a distorted rose tinted view of 60 years ago seems to be driving what is happening.
    • Forcing uniformity is divisive - it exerts stresses that are wrong and diminishes vitality. That is being done with this text. Diversity in the Mass (so liturgies are suited to the people present) would not be divisive. Diversity is a sign of creativity and of the work of the Spirit.  Automata, all doing the same thing, are not.
  • What it is to be human is represented in individualistic and dualistic body/spirit-soul terms - and healing is for the soul, unlike in the gospels when it is for people. Our goal should be transformation of ourselves (so "I" becomes "we", and we change the world for the better). To live without sin and say pious sounding  prayers seems the extent of the aspiration I hear in this Mass text. 
    I wish that was an exhaustive list of the issues needing to be raised and explored. It isn't. See some of the links in the blog's static page of related quotes and links and the comments of so many people here.
      As regards my reflection on my feelings about this text: I wanted changes from the text we had been using (as did those who had written them, and those who generated the 1998 text).  I mourn the lost possibilities.  I am angry that many people will suffer by facing new obstructions to finding God in their lives.  It seems to me that  the Curia/Vatican (not sure which) wants us to have a God who is remote, and a Babel tower to reach Him, staffed by their clergy and under their control.   The level of effort and the huge expense of changing the text could have achieved so much and it diverts so much energy from what we should be about.  One conclusion is that reflecting on my reaction, and its contrast with that which did deepen my life in the past,  has led me to revisit all those ideas I met since the Second Vatican Council, with awareness that I need to be rooted ever more deeply in them, and value and commit to them even more - regardless of the stance of Bishops and Curia.

      The curious thing that I am noticing is that as people realise that the Mass, and Catholic parishes,  now fail to express the spirituality they had discovered in these last decades from within the Church, so they are seeking other communities in which this growth can continue. Small groups have always been vital, but this is even more so now as the Mass takes it current course and connects less with life beyond itself.  There could well be a groundswell of interfaith, and ecumenical groups involving Catholics.  This will build Christian unity (with all the diversity we should already be enjoying) from the grassroots. Yet I hope those who, like me, do now also look beyond the Roman Catholic church for faith community will also keep a foot strongly in the Roman Catholic camp. An anxiety that I have is that we are intended to leave, to allow the Church to be made in the image in the mind of the Curia; they have for now put our bus into reverse and I fear that those who had been  trying to go ahead are intended to fall off the front.  I'm feeling stubborn, my last finger is holding firm as I cling on until this reversing bus meets the Holy Spirit, and something as unexpected as Vatican II happens.

      A quote referred to by  Bishop Kevin Dowling, in an article reflecting on the Church,  is an encouragement:

        “Over the Pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one’s own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official Church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism”.
      (Joseph Ratzinger in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II,Vol. V., pg. 134 (Ed) H. Vorgrimler, New York, Herder and Herder, 1967).

      (The latest edit to this post was made on 21 March 2012.)

      2 comments:

      Anonymous said...

      thank you for being so honest and explaining the issues clearly.

      Anonymous said...

      It is such a relief to read what you have written as you sum up so well what I feel about it all. I came into the Roman Catholic church many years ago on the wave of post Vatican II enthusiasm and hope but it seems such a different church now. I have felt very disillusioned, frustrated and saddened by all this and the general direction the curia seem to be trying to take us.