The "Breezeification" of the Liturgy: Why we need the Anglican Ordinariate
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July 20, 2020Perhaps the single most important change to the life of the Church brought about by Vatican II was the radical alteration of the Eucharistic Liturgy. The Sunday Eucharistic Liturgy was then, as it is now, the single most important place where Catholics of all stripes encounter their Church. And the importance of the Sunday Liturgy goes beyond the obvious fact that, in terms of sheer numbers, this is where most Catholics go to “be Catholic.” Vatican II describes the Eucharistic Liturgy as the “fount and apex” of the Christian spiritual life (LG 11). Furthermore, we must always remember that there was a liturgical life and tradition in the early Church long before there was a biblical canon and official creeds, and that it was the liturgical tradition that provided the measuring rod for how canon and creed developed. The old adage Lex orandi, lex credendi (loosely: the law of prayer guides the law of belief) captures this reality succinctly if not always clearly.
However, despite the theological gravitas imparted to the Liturgy by both the Tradition and Vatican II, there arose in the post-conciliar era a change in the overall perception of many Catholics, both among the laity and the clergy, as to what all of the new liturgical “reforms” were for. In short, the “reforms” came to be seen by millions of Catholics as a green light to make everything “new and improved” - - as if the liturgy were just another consumer product that needed constant repackaging. And how could that not have been the result when the Mass that had been in place for centuries was suddenly, at the stroke of a magical papal pen, altered so drastically and so fundamentally that the “new Mass” bore only a skeletal resemblance to the old, with the musculature and outward features taking on the appearance of an altogether new thing.
This is not an exaggeration. I lived through this transition in my youth and saw it through the eyes of a young boy. That is to say, I lived through it without a pre-set theological agenda and with the eyes of childhood innocence. The only “filter” I had was what my parents and friends in CCD thought of it. And the almost universal consensus was that the “new Mass” was not just new, but radically different in kind. To use the parlance of today we would say that our experience of the new Liturgy was one of “rupture.” You can spin it all you want folks theologically, but the experience of rupture predominated, with those who loved the old ways viewing it as a bridge too far and those who loved modernity viewing it as a bridge not far enough and in need of completion. Lex orandi, lex credendi came home to roost with a vengeance as the new Mass served as a catalyst for radical liturgical, and then doctrinal, innovation as the champions of change invoked the nebulous “spirit of Vatican II” as a license to race ahead on the speed-limitless autobahn of the ecclesiastical landscape. And all of this was accomplished with little blowback from the hierarchy since the post-conciliar spin masters were in charge of the Roman curia and in chanceries all across America.
Then came my teen years during the nineteen seventies in what I like to refer to as the “silly season” of liturgical chicanery that only reinforced the impression that the liturgy was a thoroughly human creation - - like a Play-Doh fun factory where you could schmeeze out different liturgical shapes at will depending on the mood of the priest. And when I entered the seminary in 1978 I was told by my Liturgy professor, in so many words, that liturgical rubrics were for narrow-minded legalists who like to “cling” to the past for comfort, much like a child grasping its Teddy Bear at night to ward off the bogeyman. The mantra was “onward to enculturation!” which was, as far as I could tell, just thinly-veiled code for “really bad liturgy.” Seminarians who objected to this reign of terror were denigrated with every formator's favorite descriptor for such reactionary miscreants: “rigid.”
Tradition minded seminarians feared this term more than any other since it usually betokened an imminent kick in the ass out the door. If you were lucky you were merely sent off for psychological evaluation at some Church sponsored reeducation camp. Sometimes you were allowed to switch dioceses which usually meant gravitating to the three or four bishops in the country who had not bought into the madness. Seminarians who offered-up incense to the gods of modernity were perfectly safe, even if they were demonstrable sexual deviants, leading to the time-bomb that has exploded over the past decades. Thus was the liturgy used to weed out the healthy seminarians and to create in the Church a critical mass of priestly weirdos, ne’er-do-wells, and sexual freaks.
(Side note: All of this has been amply documented in the excellent book by Michael Rose: “Goodbye Good men.” Some have called the accuracy of this book into question, but it does describe two incidents in a seminary I attended with great precision and so if I can extrapolate from such a small sample I would err on the side of saying his text is spot-on.)
The modus operandi for implementing the liturgical revolution with all of the latest “improvements” were the ubiquitous “liturgy workshops” run by thinly educated, and self-anointed, “liturgists” dressed in earth-toned leisure suits. (The male presenters were even more poorly dressed than that.) They presented themselves as “experts on liturgical renewal” but all they really were, it seems to me in hindsight, were Norman Lear type Jacobins who got a chill up their leg every time a Tabernacle was removed. Their mantra could have been “Tambourines not Tabernacles” as they lobbied for ever more cowbell to accompany the growing ranks of liturgical dancers leaping around the sanctuary in tights and ballet shoes with streamers trailing behind them (the female dancers were even worse). The puppets, clowns, Pier One pottery chalices, denim vestments, and lay Eucharistic ministers in shorts and flip-flops soon followed.
In order to avoid the charge that I am exaggerating the situation I want to say quite clearly two things. First, the things I have described were real - - I saw them myself - - and were not isolated to a few loony parishes in Milwaukee. This nonsense went on everywhere and was most pronounced wherever the gaggle of croissant and espresso liturgists were in full force. And it was all given the imprimatur of the hierarchy demonstrated by the fact that the worst abuses took place at major religious ed conferences, attended by leading bishops, without ecclesiastical censure. Indeed, about the only thing that could guarantee a censure was if a priest tried to incorporate elements of the old Mass into the new. In short, stories of the abuses that took place were not the fictitious fever-dreams of a few reactionary hysterics. These things happened. A lot. Full stop.
However, and second, it is nevertheless true, despite the ubiquitous outrages and abuses, that a lot of parishes did not succumb to most of this madness. Most parishes presented a largely “safe” and banal liturgy with awful music, anodyne homilies, and a mind-numbingly boring emphasis on the Mass as a “fellowship meal.” This was often not done deliberately but was the inevitable by-product of destroying the Church’s rich liturgical patrimony overnight with nothing of quality in the wings to replace it. Pastors did the best they could with the resources at hand and had little choice other than to adopt the suggestion of their music ministers to adopt the music of the St. Louis Jesuits, or the Monks of Weston Priory, or worse - - ugh - - Marty Haugen. The worst stupidities usually came from people who meant well, but who had learned at the latest liturgy workshop things like replacing the holy water with a cactus during Lent. Annoying yes, but not the stuff of outrage. The Church, after all, does not condemn stupidity, she merely frowns upon it.
Furthermore, thankfully, the silly season came to an end (coinciding with the election of John Paul II) and the large pockets of liturgical insanity began to shrink. But the damage had been done. To the question of “what are all these reforms for?” the answer was unambiguous: to render the Liturgy into something more plastic and fungible for the sake of making it user- friendly and “accessible” to “the people.” And despite the good-will that motivated much of the reform the sad fact is that the end result was indeed more outward “participation” in the liturgy, but accomplished in such a ham-handed way that any sense that the Liturgy was a Divine act rooted in the timeless, once for all, sacrifice of Christ on the cross, was largely eclipsed and lost in a mish-mash of horizontalist, “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” claptrap. Instead of a reinvigorated laity you got a bored laity, who aren’t fools, and who sensed that Transcendence was absent from these gatherings, who then left in droves, abandoning Sunday liturgy in favor of the golf course and the Mall. After all, “fellowship” can be found, and often in more fulfilling iterations, in many places other than Church.
NONE of this should be construed as my rejection of the Novus Ordo Mass or of the very real need for the liturgy to be reformed. I have participated in the new Mass when it was carried forward beautifully and with great reverence. And the traditional Latin Mass was often performed in a slip shod fashion that was an “abuse” in its own right. In particular, I support the move to have Mass in the vernacular with greater weight placed upon the Liturgy of the Word and more congregational responses. I support the reintroduction of the traditional Latin Mass but do not attend one myself, preferring to worship in my mother tongue with the prayers at the Altar said out loud for all to hear. Furthermore, I highly doubt that the vigor we see in the Churches of Africa and Asia would have happened without these reforms.
But something precious was lost in the translation. The move to the new Mass was abrupt and brusque. A fact that I think Pope Benedict understood as he sought to “reform the reform” as he introduced new measures to begin the long, slow, process of righting the liturgical ship. And for that he was vilified, proving that the silly season generation of unreconstructed post-Vatican II secularizers are still around.
One of those measures toward reform that Pope Benedict instituted is of great importance to me. My wife and I, though both cradle, Latin rite Catholics, have been attending for the past four years a Church of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, in Scranton, PA (St. Thomas More). Pope Benedict instituted the Ordinariate which allowed former Anglicans and Episcopalians to enter the Catholic Church while retaining, with some appropriate changes, their Anglican rite Liturgy. In short, the Liturgy is performed “Ad orientem” and we receive communion on the tongue, with intinction, kneeling at an altar rail. The language of the Liturgy is, of course, in English, but in a style of language that is elevated and poetic. Anglican plain chant is given pride of place accented by gorgeous hymns sung by the congregation aided by a skilled choir. And it doesn’t matter if there are 50 people at Mass or 500 … there are no Eucharistic ministers. Because it doesn’t hurt to wait a bit to receive Jesus.
Our pastor, Fr. Eric Bergman, a former Episcopalian priest from Bethlehem, PA, is married with ten children. I continue to support mandatory celibacy for Latin rite priests (as does the Ordinariate for all newly ordained men who are not already married Episcopalian priests seeking to convert.). But Fr. Bergman is the best pastor I have ever had and is a shining witness to orthodox Catholicism. And so I would be lying if I did not say that my experience in this parish has at least made me slightly more open to the possibility of a married clergy. But that is a debate for another day…
I bring up the Ordinariate, not just to highlight the beauty of its Liturgy, but to emphasize the fact that in my view this is very close to the Liturgy the Council Fathers had in mind as they sought to reform the Catholic Mass. It incorporates all of the reforms I think were necessary without the loss of Transcendence or Tradition. Indeed, in my opinion, and I say this without qualification, the Ordinariate Liturgy is closer to the traditional Catholic Mass than is the Novus Ordo.
I do not expect mass migrations of Catholics into Ordinariate parishes if for no other reason than the number of such parishes is very small and widely scattered. But it is my hope that as more traditional Catholics learn about it, they will see what I see and seek to find ways to incorporate elements of that liturgy into the Novus Ordo. It would not be difficult for bishops to support a return to Ad orientem worship and to reintroduce chant, altar rails, the reception of communion on the tongue while kneeling and so on. The only thing lacking is the will to do so, which saddens me deeply.
And I want to be clear: I am not advocating for the Ordinariate liturgy as a matter of preferred “taste” in liturgical style. That would be a repetition of the mistakes I outlined above that treat the liturgy as a fungible and consumeristic object. I am arguing instead that it is objectively superior to the Novus Ordo as it is currently construed. I am arguing that the Church ought to adopt many of the elements of this liturgy as a needed corrective. Sadly, there are few signs that this will happen as Pope Francis, though laudable in many ways (and yes, he is the real Pope), has reimpowered all of the wrong people in the Church. Pope Francis does seem well disposed to the Ordinariate, but as with so many other issues in the Church where he takes a more traditionalist view, he undermines his own stated positions by appointing bishops and Cardinals who manifestly disagree.
Allow me to conclude this long missive with an analogy. I remember the then not-so-famous Dolly Parton in the 70’s pitching Breeze laundry detergent on the Porter Wagoner show wherein she informed her viewers that in every box of Breeze there would be a sparkling new drinking glass. “But you cain’t buy ‘em,” she would say, “you can only git ‘em in boxes of Breeze.” By the end of the year my family had a set of those glasses. They were huge and broke easily so I imagined that at the Breeze company’s main underground compound there were a lot of congratulatory high-fives over how easily the bumpkins who watched the Porter Wagoner show could be fooled into buying crappy detergent for the sake of a cheap drinking glass, pitched by a faux blonde with grotesquely oversized bazooms. Ahhh Capitalism….
When I was in the seminary that commercial ran through my head like a meme as I witnessed, firsthand, the clerical culture of the Church engaging in what I called the “Breezeification of the Liturgy.” The music and “style” of the Liturgy was like that cheap detergent, lacking any internal merit of its own beyond the obvious (Breeze is a detergent after all, albeit a poor one, and the Novus Ordo is a valid Liturgy), all the while preaching to the faithful, (ceaselessly as if to convince themselves) that it really was “new and improved.” And if you were willing to purchase the product the Church was offering there was a “prize” to be had - - not the Eucharist - - but therapeutic self-fulfillment through contrived fellowship and the spiritual ethos of a lava lamp. It was a prize as cheap and tawdry as that awful set of glasses. All that was lacking was the faux blonde with the oversized bazooms. But hey, “God is doing a new thing” so maybe we will also get that someday….