DD PART VI

    DD PART VI

     This is the last installment in the series on Desiderio Desideravi. What I would like to do is describe the final vision of Pope Francis and add my perspective to it, with (perhaps) a few recommendations.
     The congregation (and even more, the presiding priest) is formed by the action of the Liturgy. The priest is “…not seated on a throne… He does not rob attention [to himself]…” (#60). Rather, the pope wants the Liturgy to be celebrated in such a way that (like all sacraments) it conveys the Presence it signifies. The goal is to shape priests and people to engage in the Liturgy in such a way that this regularly happens, rejecting calls for “the sense of mystery” and instead helps us to see and experience the “wonder and astonishment” that is there: “For this reason we cannot go back to that ritual form which the Council fathers…felt the need to reform, approving, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit…the principles from which was born the reform. …so that the Church may lift up, in the variety of so many languages, one and the same prayer capable of expressing her unity. As I have already written, I intend that this unity be re-established in the whole Church of the Roman Rite” #61).
My take-away on this document is that there is great need for a celebration of the Liturgy that is prayerful, reverent, expressive, and wondrously astonishing in what it actually is. Priests are largely responsible for their share in this. It’s why the priest who came to me to ask for help and advice on workshops for our clergy to achieve this, and why I pointed him to a nation-wide expert who could help us (our presbyterate listens better to experts from without).
For myself, I want to engage in a style of catechesis (partly in the context of RCIA and partly in the context of broader faith formation) that can lead to our being more sensitized to the beauty and wonder of what for too many of us has become rote, automatic, and disengaged. We can do this.
He also wishes that there be one form of the Roman Rite, not the two that (semi-legitimately) are allowed by various bishops at this point. On this note, I will make some enemies now, but I will say nothing that I have not said in different ways before.
The desire to return to the “Tridentine Mass” results in part from genuine frustration over sloppy liturgical celebrations, but more so it is the growth of a mis-placed nostalgia, marked with elements of elitism and narcissism. These are harsh words, but this is what I see. It is magic to think that there is a “sense of mystery”/wonder/astonishment only in a Latin Mass with the priest’s back to you, mumbling a language he doesn’t himself understand, while we in the pews quietly focus on our prayer books or Rosaries. If this is the “sense of mystery” that is desired, then go to your local Adoration chapel.
Worse, there is a sense of proto-schism in this desire, as I can see with those who advocate beatification of Abp Marcel Lefebvre, himself a full-blown schismatic who rejected not only the reformed Liturgy but also much of the rest of Vatican II’s doctrinal teachings. If folks want to beatify him (whatever in the world that could mean!), it’s clear that there’s a hidden agenda here: one that works against the unity that Pope Francis expressed in his letter (and which works against the desire of Jesus in His “Priestly Prayer for Unity” in John 17). There should be no place for any form of Liturgy other than that formally approved by the highest authority. The permission for the “Tridentine Mass” was granted in hopes of reconciling the schismatic Society of St Pius X; it has been co-opted by neo-conservatives in the foolish hopes that by returning to cassocks, fiddle-back chasubles and maniples, Latin, and a “back to the people” posture, we can somehow recreate Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in “Going My Way” and “The Bells of St Mary’s.” It can’t happen and it shouldn’t happen. Let’s go forward toward unity, not backward into sectarianism.

-Fr David