Catholic Liturgy Caught Between Polemics About Differences and Embracing Diversity

Abstract

This chapter starts from the observation that in the Roman Catholic Church the liturgy has been quite a battlefield over the last decades. Many different opinions about it have been uttered, often loaded with affections and attachments to certain ritual forms and shapes. In addition, the liturgy has often been approached from various ideological angles, each one promoting the enhancement of the liturgical life of the faithful and the Church. Ironically, however, very few of these ideologies and opinions have done well to the liturgy itself, or even seriously listened to it. The fundamental reason for that is probably that, whereas ideological schemas tend to function on the basis of binary oppositions, the liturgy cannot be captured by any such dichotomy. Liturgy even invites to undermine binary thinking and reaches out to overcome the blind-sidedness and narrowmindedness that comes along with such schemas. Concretely, four such conceptual oppositions are discussed in this chapter: sacred and profane, liberal and conservative, hierarchical and democratic, and active and contemplative. The goal of disentangling the complexity of being caught in these oppositions is to demonstrate that liturgy does not fall prey to them but instead helps getting beyond them. Moreover, it is shown that liturgy has a unique theological potential not only to further but also to incorporate inclusion and diversity in the Church.

Introduction

During roughly the last twenty years, there have been fierce debates in the bosom of the Catholic Church about the liturgy and, as such, about the identity of the Roman rite. Sometimes these debates have even been characterized as ‘wars’,¹ which, despite being a grotesque exaggeration, indicates the intensity of the disagreement among different groups. Briefly put, polemics were—and are—conducted between two opposing camps. On the one hand, there are the so-called traditionalists who are attached to the classical Latin Mass and have serious doubts about the success of the comprehensive liturgical reforms issued in the wake of Vatican II. They doubt that these reforms have been good, given the impressive decline in the number of believers participating in Sunday Mass, particularly in Western Europe, and given the poor ceremonial or ritual quality of many celebrations. They even hold the official Church partly responsible for the current malaise, to the extent that she herself would have encouraged an encompassing desacralization of the rites. On the other hand, there are the passionate defenders of the liturgical reforms, for whom a return to Latin and a celebration with the presiding minister facing east would be nothing short of an abomination. They glorify creativity in liturgy and argue that responding to the needs and spheres of life of most people is the best guarantee of living up to the ideals of the Liturgical Movement, the pastoral orientations set by the Council, and even the gospel.

On both sides, theological errors are made, both in relation to the history and tradition of liturgy and with respect to the relationship between church and culture.² Simply put, it comes down to the fact that an understanding of the relationship between life and liturgy is best developed not according to a binary scheme but a nuanced and diversified assessment of the dynamics and complexity of that relationship. So the question is not for or against the Latin Mass or for or against contemporary culture, but rather: how can different expressions of the Church’s liturgy connect and respond to people’s lives, what drives them, their concerns, their ideas and their commitment to charity? In my opinion, this is neither possible by doubling down on the classical Latin Mass and therefore subscribing to the whole cultural, aesthetic, spiritual and theological ethos that comes along with it,³ nor by uncritically committing to a liturgy for which the ultimate touchstone is no other than the authenticity of personal experience as expressed in subjective preferences.

In what follows, an attempt is made to add some nuance to the debates. I argue that it is necessary to shift from an inward-looking to a mission-oriented church. Instead of continuing polemics about liturgical differences and trying to undergird them with theological theories and historical claims, it is better for the church and her liturgy to embrace diversity and to do that at different levels, not in spite of her liturgical tradition but because of it. This argument requires that, as a first step, some brief historical context is provided. As a second step, I intend to dismantle some of the conceptual binaries in which the debates about the liturgy of the Roman rite are entangled and to do some constructive proposals for the future.

A Very Short Historical Note

To understand liturgy in the 2020s, a recent historical context is needed. In the 1980s, the discussions with the followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre intensified, especially when the latter went so far as to ordain bishops without the approval of the highest ecclesiastical authority. Pope John Paul II promptly appointed a special commission in 1988 called Ecclesia Dei to ensure that contacts were maintained with Lefebvre’s Pius X fraternity, despite the excommunication of some leading figures. This commission was given the additional power to see how and under which conditions the traditional Latin Mass adherents could be catered to.

When Pope Benedict XVI issued the much-discussed motu proprio Summorum pontificum in 2007, one of the consequences was an expansion of the work of the Ecclesia Dei commission. Indeed, Summorum pontificum marked a substantial broadening of the possibilities for celebrating the Mass according to the 1962 missal, i.e., the last typical edition of the pre-Council missal. On the one hand, the 1962 missal was based entirely on the Missale Romanum of 1570, promulgated under Pope Pius V, but on the other hand, it had integrated the significant reforms of the Easter Vigil and Holy Week from the 1950s.⁴ Furthermore, the document spoke of an ordinary and extraordinary form or expression of one and the same rite, which corresponded to the celebration of the Eucharist according to the reformed missal—the third typical edition dates from 2000 with emendations from 2008—or that of 1962, respectively, but it at the same time underlined that the liturgical differences in no way implied doctrinal differences. What moved Benedict XVI to issue Summorum pontificum seems to have been a concern for the unity of the church, as is evident from the letter to the bishops which accompanied the motu proprio. Notwithstanding that intention, his decisions required clarification since many liturgists, canonists, and theologians, not to mention pastors, priests, and laypeople, found the distinction between the extraordinary and ordinary form of celebrating the liturgy at least somewhat surprising.⁵

Some of the necessary clarifications came in a subsequent document, Universae ecclesiae, a motu proprio again, which dates from 2011. Through this document, the possibilities of celebrating the classical, i.e., unreformed liturgy of the Roman rite, were not only perpetuated but even further expanded. For a growing conservative minority in the church, and certainly for the promoters of the so-called ‘reform of the reform’ movement who cherish a specific interpretation of the organic growth of the liturgy throughout the ages—implying that radical interventions to its development are unnatural and illegitimate initiatives⁶—these provisions were unequivocal statements of support for the course they believed should be taken in the liturgical field. They saw in them a confirmation of the highest authority of the church that the liturgy had been increasingly subject to decay since Vatican II, and of the opinion that the reforms of the liturgy had been of little benefit overall.

In the summer of 2021, Pope Francis dramatically and decisively scaled back the expansions of the Latin Mass which had been allowed under his predecessor. He did so again with a motu proprio, titled Traditionis custodes. The current pope’s decisions obligate bishops to closely supervise priests who celebrate the extraordinary form of the Eucharist, and to ensure that these priests both know Latin well and have a fine pastoral sensitivity. Moreover, it is no longer possible for parish communities to systematically celebrate Sunday Mass according to the 1962 missal. Undoubtedly these arrangements and regulations have a major impact on those groups of the Catholic faithful where the extraordinary form of the Roman rite was by now firmly established. Interestingly, the pope’s decisions are motivated by the same concern for the unity of the Church as his predecessor’s, although their content vastly differs.

Space for Liturgy Beyond Binaries

This last observation gives food for thought about the tension between unity and diversity in the Church’s life of faith and ongoing tensions between seeking consensus and being confronted with dissensus. How much diversity can one tolerate in terms of celebrating the faith? How far must the pursuit of uniformity extend before unity is at stake? And who or what determines the contours in which differences can continue to coexist without affecting a more fundamental unity? Without a doubt, liturgy is an interesting case study in this regard. For if one thing has become clear from the heated debates about the Roman rite in recent decades, it is that postulating and hardening opinions and waging the battle along sharply delineated ideological lines are fruitless. Whatever one’s sympathies may be, it is much more useful—and, in fact, necessary—to approach this whole matter according to a finely tuned hermeneutic of attachment, and thus to let affective levels of our humanity play a much more emphatic role than arguments and theories in discernment processes that aim at determining how best to celebrate the liturgy of Christians today.

In what follows, four conceptual oppositions are explored. The concepts mentioned are frequently at play in debates over liturgy, either explicitly or at a more implicit level. My purpose is to demonstrate that none of these conceptual oppositions aptly captures the liturgy itself, even if the concepts themselves reveal important things about it. Strangely enough, the liturgy is often the first victim of theological, ideological and pastoral controversies, when it becomes the object of an argument or the stake of a discussion. Therefore, the conceptual clarification I intend to develop is meant to liberate the liturgy from the ideological tangles in which it is so often wrapped.

Sacred Versus Profane

The contrast between the sacred and the profane became a popular topic in the fields of the philosophy of religion and religious studies in the course of the twentieth century. Rudolf Otto famously described the category of “das Heilige” (commonly translated as the holy) as something which both attracts and infuses fear. Among the concepts he used to grasp the dynamics of that tension were Latin ones, mysterium fascinans and mysterium tremendum.⁷ One could interpret and understand the notion of the profane along the lines of what Otto said about the sacred, by reversing it. That, at least, is a suggestion made by the Romanian scholar of the history and anthropology of religion Mircea Eliade, who explicitly refers to Otto at the outset of his work The Sacred and the Profane.⁸

Accordingly, the profane is where the forces of attraction and repulsion are much less vehement than in direct confrontation with the holy or even inexistent. Furthermore, the profane is neither capable of filling the human soul with a sense of awe, as the sacred does, nor can it infuse as much anxiety as the sacred does. The profane is the space of balance, even of rational control, whereas the holy is the space where irrational laws take over and sway one back and forth. Of course, the underlying idea is that one cannot stay all the time in the immediate atmosphere of the sacred, for that would be too intense to endure. It could, moreover, threaten the safe ground on which one’s existence rests. But neither can one always remain in the realm of the profane, for that would be endlessly boring.

Another way of explaining the contrast between the sacred and the profane refers to the etymology of the concepts, and to a certain spatial context. As many scholars have shown in different ways, the sacred evokes the idea of cutting off or splitting something, and thus of setting apart something. It thus upholds a separate space, where laws govern which are different from what is normal. The sacred does not really interact with the ordinary, it sets its own rules. The profane, by contrast, is an area in front of the temple where the influence of being in direct touch with the holy is no longer at play. The profane is where the sacred is not respected, it is indifferent to its bearings. So it seems that one can do there what one wants, albeit within the necessary moral constraints, of course.

When applied to the liturgy, the very idea of separation has something appealing, at least at first sight. Liturgy is the place where the rules of the ordinary are interrupted and replaced by another set of rules. It is a forum loaded with solemnity and protocol at the heart of religious gatherings. One’s attitude there is primarily one of reverence and of being taken up in a special atmosphere determined by an ‘otherness’ the strangeness of which can only be overcome, if at all, through a long process of initiation. Light and darkness are somewhat different from what one is used to, clothes are different (one rather speaks of vestments), the language and the music are other, the social interactions are different, etc. Scholars and other people in favor of the sacredness of liturgy underline and promote this difference, argue that it is a fundamental one, and evaluate a perceived loss of the sense for this difference as a bad evolution. They also tend to think that now is the time to stay strong and not to succumb to novelty. Anything which risks damaging the liturgy’s sacredness has to be resisted. Often they opine that the liturgy has fallen prey to different kinds of profanation. According to them, profane is precisely what the liturgy must not be.

The problem with framing the discussions about the present state of the liturgy along these lines is twofold. On the one hand, one has to say that those who argue in favor of the above analysis fail to take into account the honesty of the intentions of their opponents. It is generally not the case that these opponents deliberately want to harm the liturgical tradition or that they are not attached to forms of celebration and liturgical expression with true devotion and commitment. On the other hand, and more fundamentally, the liturgy itself cannot be adequately understood as somewhere on a spectrum between the opposite poles of sacred and profane. Liturgy is neither a goal nor a means of preserving (a sense of) sacredness among Christians. Liturgy even challenges certain presuppositions about sacredness and profanity, for Christians are ultimately not there to keep and watch over a cultic regime. Instead, they are called to bring God’s grace to all the corners of the earth, especially to those places where that is least evident, including the most profane and least holy ones.⁹

Liberal Versus Conservative

Another conceptual opposition often heard in debates about liturgy is the one between a liberal and conservative stance. Of course, this opposition is observed to play a prominent role in many discussions of the last couple of decades, primarily political ones. The parties in the debates are divided into the center, left-wing, and right-wing positions varying in fierceness, radicalness, and stubbornness. In Roman Catholicism, the difference between a liberal and a conservative position is additionally intertwined with the so-called majority and minority groups at the Second Vatican Council. The majority position at the Council welcomed the general course of the Church and supported its attempts at aggiornamento and, or through, ressourcement. It is commonly assumed that this position was characterized by moderate liberalism, meaning that there was openness to modern achievements as well as for the sociocultural environments in which they had come into being. The minority group, however, strongly disagreed with the new evolutions in Church and society and is supposed to hold on to an overall conservative position.

As the word itself indicates, conservatism means that one strives to keep everything as it is and that one is all but keen on making changes. Attempts at renewal are met with skepticism if not thwarted. Conservatives consider themselves as guards of the tradition and have a sharp awareness about the many benefits and values of traditions. Liberals, on the other hand, have a freer basic attitude towards things of the past. If traditions hamper personal development or have other nocuous effects or negative impact, they are inclined to deviate from the tradition. In other cases, they do not hesitate to modify it or even disregard it.

Problems are likely to arise when conservatives and liberals equally claim the foundations of the reasonableness with which things are discussed. It often occurs that the different camps refuse the rationality of the visions, the ideas and the arguments of the other. Accusations of irrationality fly back and forth, failing to recognize that what is at the heart of the discussion is not the correct way of looking at reality versus a demonstrably erroneous interpretation of it, but in fact a fundamentally different attitude towards what has been given and (what has to be) passed on. What is at stake is not so much knowledge but appreciation.

Applying the above analysis to the liturgical debates in Roman Catholicism is not difficult. Disagreements abide when questions are raised about whether or not to keep, e.g., a traditional ritual, to adapt it, or to simply no longer practice it. Things get worse if in these kinds of discussions cognitive claims take center stage, for it is not the case that these discussions can be solved by maintaining over against the other that one has a more accurate knowledge. Whether that epistemological claim concerns the correct interpretation of an element from the liturgical tradition or the right access to contemporary people’s minds is actually irrelevant. For in both cases, one assumes that one can have the one without the other. In other words, the conservative position, no less than the liberal one, falls into the trap of a certain exclusivism. In liturgy, it is never about a fixed traditional praxis only or about the contemporary critical consciousness detached from tradition only.

One of the greatest liturgical scholars of the twentieth century, the Benedictine monk and professor at Sant’Anselmo in Rome, Cipriano Vagaggini, had prophetically warned against two equal “enemies” of liturgy.¹⁰ On the one hand, Vagaggini held that developments in liturgical matters run ashore if and inasmuch as the liturgy is considered as a fixed and unchangeable object which has to be preserved against all odds. On the other hand, he reacted against a mere subjective attitude towards liturgy, as if it has to be adapted in accordance with the subjective preferences of individuals or (lobby) groups. Neither an objectifying nor a subjectivist attitude aptly grasps the dynamics of the Church’s liturgical life, which, according to Vagaggini, derives its vitality neither from history only nor from human interactions with it only, but from the economy of salvation and the paschal mystery as passed on through a fascinating whole of efficacious signs from generation to generation. The liturgy is not an ossified relic from the past which needs to stay identical in any circumstance. Nor is it a plaything of free choices, individual predilections, and mere opinions. In other words, it cannot be caught by the tentacles of either liberals or conservatives, even if they make so many efforts to make one believe they can.

Hierarchical Versus Democratic

A third opposition is constituted by a hierarchical versus a democratic approach. Like the previous one, this opposition has intriguing political undertones. A hierarchical approach to liturgy is associated with an autocratic model of governing, with little to no contribution from the people. Decisions about liturgy are taken without consultation and sometimes even without motivation. All of this differs from a democratic approach to liturgy. Choices pertaining to the liturgy are taken after due conversation and common reflection. Liturgy is not the sole business of a privileged class but the stake of the entire people of God. According to a democratic model, liturgy is not only for but also of all the baptized.

Underlying this opposition is a profound unease with a specific phenomenon with deep roots in the tradition of the Catholic Church, called clericalism. Clericalism refers to the clergy, a term denoting the celibate ordained men who, for centuries, have been in charge of the Church at all levels. Clerics have obtained leadership positions not only in the context of worship and the ‘administration’ of the sacraments—as it was called—but also in many different church-related societies, whether cultural, social, or nonprofit, and even in ecclesial tribunals with a high impact on people’s lives. It goes without saying that this massive engagement of clerics in crucial functions has to be assessed against what this implies in terms of power. Fortunately, research about power in pastoral relationships has been steadily growing over the past few decades.¹¹

With respect to liturgy, it matters at which level decisions are taken. It is possible that, at the local level of a parish or a religious community, decisions about liturgical celebrations are taken on the basis of common discernment and in an atmosphere of mutual understanding. That is ideally the case also at the level of diocesan and national liturgical commissions, although the truth is that, very often, it is the priests who always come out on top. Even if there must not necessarily be anything wrong with that per se, it does conform the idea that the liturgy is ultimately the clergy’s business. For they are not only the warrants of the Church’s hierarchy but also its very members. In practice, it turns out to be very difficult to move from a priest-centered liturgy towards a lay-centered liturgy. It is still not clear, neither in theology nor in magisterial teaching, what baptismal priesthood actually means in this context, even if there exists substantial literature about that.

Of course, at a more fundamental level than the one of a decision-making body, one could meaningfully argue that liturgy itself is not and cannot be democratic. As an organization or institution, the Church could certainly do better to implement not only democratic principles but also to embrace a more democratic spirit. But when it comes to its liturgical tradition(s), things are not so easy, for the liturgy as such can never be made the object of the will of a majority among the people or the subject of one or another voting mechanism. In a literal sense, moreover, liturgy is hierarchical indeed. It does preserve a sacramental (hiera) principle (archè) and thereby mediates the mysteries of salvation in such a way that any believer can share in them and benefit from them. This, however, is not to downplay the importance of (more) democracy in the Church; it just makes it clear that a fine discernment process is needed to determine the reach and possible outcomes of democratic procedures when it comes to liturgy.

In sum, if hierarchical means a purely top-down approach, a rigid attachment to rubrics, a refusal of honest communication, etc., it is not even corresponding to the nature of the liturgy itself. But if hierarchical is understood in a more profound theological sense, it reflects something fundamental about liturgy.

Active Versus Contemplative

A fourth and final conceptual opposition is between action and contemplation. The division here concerns the nature of the liturgy. Is liturgy itself above all action, or is it contemplation? And is it there primarily for action, or is it rather there for contemplation? Some scholars and theologians advance the idea that liturgy is the motor for Christians’ doings in the world. Others think its nature is betrayed if the Church’s mission agenda prevails. They ask the question of whether the liturgy should not be principally detached from any activism and remain in the spiritual area.

Behind these questions and discussions, one usually has to suspect diverging interpretations of what ‘active participation’ means. This renowned notion has a long history in the Liturgical Movement and played a key role in the discussions on liturgy before, during, and after Vatican II.¹² In the context of the present chapter, it is helpful to remind what the concept aimed at remedying. In the observation of many scholars and pastors, the faithful who ‘went to mass’ did not really ‘celebrate the Eucharist’ in the religious culture, which had grown in Catholicism roughly after the Council of Trent until the mid-twentieth century. They were occupied with private devotions, did not receive communion during the service, and hardly understood anything of the prayers because they were said in a language they did not speak. It dawned on the representatives of the Liturgical Movement that, because of these historical evolutions, the people were deprived of the spiritual wealth of the liturgy. And that was found to be a most regrettable and unjustifiable situation. As a consequence, many initiatives were taken to initiate the faithful in the liturgy through catechesis and other formation programs, but it was also thought that some changes to the liturgy of the mass itself were indispensable.

Most, if not all, of the changes to the Eucharistic celebration’s composition were meant to activate everyone participating. But it did not mean to henceforth assign a distinctive role in the ritual performance of the Eucharist, especially not if these roles blurred the distinctions between the priest-presider and laypersons. Active participation was an invitation for everyone, within their roles in the ritual, to engage with the content of what was being celebrated. The motivation to promote it did, ultimately, not depend on pastoral considerations about how to optimize people’s involvement but was profoundly theological. It is because the Eucharist, and in particular the gathering of Christians for the Eucharist on Sundays, is the heart of the life of faith as well as the consequence of one’s being baptized, that every member of the Body of Christ has to have equal access to its spiritual richness.

If one looks not only at the Eucharist but also at the liturgy in general from this perspective, it follows that an artificial discussion about action version contemplation makes little sense. Reducing the Eucharist to a means for Christian action in the world or reducing it to a mere function or occasion for contemplation are both grave theological mistakes. These thought patterns fail to do justice to the complexity of the Eucharist, which is so much more than a ritual sustaining the religious identity of a particular community.

Liturgy and Diversity

What the above analysis of conceptual and ideological tensions has demonstrated, is that contemporary discussions around liturgy cannot be reduced to simplistic schemas. The debates are not about respect or disrespect for tradition,¹³ about Latin or the vernacular languages, about allowing modernity or not, or about other individual topics. At a level beyond, below, or behind the polemics, the stakes of each of these discussions reveal a real difficulty of dealing with diversity.

Of course, diversity in the liturgy is multi-layered. There is diversity in terms of the places, locations, and times when liturgy is celebrated. There is a dazzling diversity of individual performances, for which there are numerous parameters and evaluation criteria. There is also a diversity of forms and shapes of the liturgy, which depends on (the details of) the scripts that are followed and their reception history. And last but not least, there is a diversity of Christian communities, their self-understanding and the ways in which they are composed. If all these instances of diversity are framed as differences, and if these differences are interpreted as problematic, it is evident that nothing but frustration and conflicts will arise. The liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, moreover, needs a certain degree of stability and sameness, if only for reasons of recognizability and accessibility.

To embrace diversity and to see its many appearances as opportunities instead of threats requires that one does not look at it from the standpoint of logic of difference. Such logic implies that one deals with a given subject matter as ‘this’ and thus ‘not that’. In other words, the elements or poles of a distinction are essentialized and opposed to what they are not. The consequence of such an approach is division because the possibilities of seeing connection and harmony beyond individual differences is undermined. The above conceptual and ideological binaries offer accurate examples of where such a logic of division may lead to. In none of these cases the liturgy qua liturgy was understood appropriately. The liturgy was reduced to something which has to be arranged from the perspective of conflicting views. None of these views sufficiently realized that the liturgy constitutes the Body of Christ and that the being “one,” “in Christ,” that is thereby established is fundamentally prior to any discussion about liturgy. The disadvantage of all these views was that they operate from intellectual schemas which do not originate in a profound reflection on the essence of the liturgy.

Such a reflection would come up with a vision which does not treat liturgical differences as a problem for which a solution has to be found, let alone that this solution lies in the outcome of power games of conflicting visions and the lobby groups defending them. The liturgy in and of itself embraces diversity, both at a fundamental level and in its many concrete instances. It brings together diverse people, diverse cultures, diverse languages and language games, it is performed at very diverse occasions and for diverse reasons, and it is celebrated according to diverse scripts, styles, and customs. And in a certain way, there has never been anything wrong with it. But, admittedly, there is a great variety in the ritual quality of celebrations, as a consequence of which many outsiders, as well as insiders, no longer feel attracted to regularly attend the worship services of Catholics. Therefore, serious efforts have to be made to enhance the sensory, musical, artistic, poetic, and ceremonial qualities of liturgical celebrations. This can only be done successfully, however, if one does not argue about differences, as they are rooted in particularisms, but if instead one wholeheartedly embraces liturgical diversity, as it is rooted in Christ’s universal call to holiness.