The one who's absent in this mention of "liturgy wars" by Tom Roberts at NCR is Fr. Virgil Michel OSB. He was a monk from what is now the fastest disintegrating monastery in the world, whose metastasizing (cancer causing) and energetic presence in education, economics, liturgy and philosophy during the 20s until his death in 1938 had tremendous consequences which we still experience today every time we enter what can be described as a Gathering Space or Catholic Community, with an altar-nave and worship completely unrecognizable to most of history's Catholics.
What's never discussed in this line is the historical nature of this catastrophe and some of the players, like Liturgist Dom Beauduin. His American counterpart, Michel, whose own reforming tendencies sought to remedy something he alleged was lacking in Catholic doctrine for which both monks were willing to violate Church law regarding the celebration of the Mass. Fr. Michel utilized "dialogue Mass" formats to encourage active participation, and he did this knowing full well it was illicit, but his cause was more important, that of realizing the social dimensions of the Mass for social-justice.
The Mass became a backdrop for Michel's polemicism in favor of Marxist causes, but more importantly, his interest in turning the Mass into an expression of an unprecedented or lost social justice dimension. Not only did Michel favor wealth confiscation and nationalization, but he believed in disobeying rubrics and committed mortal sins. It's a mortal sin to deliberately confect an illicit sacrament, which he cynically did. Some may try to argue culpability and want to excuse Michel for his "social justice" concerns, but this boarders on credulity when Michel's real concern is revealed. Like Judas, he really coveted the money of others and hated any form of inequality, as he said, writing in Commonweal just before his death,
"What blasphemy! As if there were anything really Christian about our modern capitalism."
At the heart of this is a refusal to obey, coupled with the adulation of the laity with which he attempted to instill a false sense of liberty. It's no wonder that the religious community to which Michel belonged is rapidly dying of old age and irrelevance.
This attempt address a contemporary gap in the Church's teaching by something that had been lost was Michel's mania, and it's the battle cry of every reformer who wishes to raise an injustice real or imagined to the level of infallibility, to the point where the agenda overrides obedience. Fr. Virgil Michel sought to make the liturgy more relevant to modern people, and in so doing, he broke the rules and it is this pattern which remains today. Rules are broken for the higher agenda of a more democratic and socially aware Church, which simultaneously vitiates the importance of personal sin in favor of corporate sin. Father Virgil Michel set the stage for many of the abuses which came about in the Second Vatican Council, and Fr. Godfrey Diekman continued his mission.
As described by the late Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., one of 55 international liturgists who helped write the document, “It was a Magna Carta of the laity.” [Or is it really ecclesiastical liberals flattering unrepentant human nature?]
It might be reasonable to presume that with the world’s bishops and the pope signing off on liturgical reform, all would be set for the foreseeable future. But the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, a solemn pronouncement of the council, was also a political document. Its implications went far beyond what prayers people would say and when they would stand and kneel, or what motions a priest would make during the ritual.
The further-reaching implications had to do with ecclesiology, what kind of church we were becoming. It was clear in 1963 to then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger what was at stake with the newly affirmed document. In what appear approving tones, Ratzinger wrote of the “decentralization of liturgical decision-making.”
Suprisingly, Diekman felt things had gone too far, [and they had] but it's difficult to view his concern, since the results could have been foreseen, as they were, by men contemporary to himself and Fr. Michel who resisted their efforts at making an egalitarian and more participatory Mass, he writes according to Tom Roberts,
Yet it must be noted that even Diekmann, as early as 1993, voiced concern that “in the liturgical movement, we have lost the sense of mystery, of the sacred.” While rejecting such “false props” as Latin, he said that the prior 30 years had seen an overemphasis on God as immanent and loving, creating at times a “feel-good” religion. He recommended restoration of “kneeling, genuflecting, bowing or even lying prostrate on the floor” as gestures that express “making ourselves small before God.” [Even his concerns take the infantilistic language and imagery of the post-conciliar ICEL translations, and the sentimental folk music.]
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