CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D. www.CrossCurrents.us

Ready for “The Changes,” II?

It looks like “The Liturgy Wars” are upon us once again – and the timing couldn’t be worse.

By a vote of 173-29, the U.S. Bishops have yielded to pressure from the Vatican to conform to a 2001 directive ordering them to bring the English text of the Mass into closer line with the most recent (2000) edition of the Latin-language Roman Missal.

The bishops considered 100 amendments, rejected 60, but accepted 40 changes to the language of the Mass. This means that, sometime within the next two years or so, a new translation will be published that will change the way Catholics pray.

Those of us 50 and older can remember the last time this happened. Back then, the most common buzz word among Catholics was “The Changes.” Between 1965 and 1975, Catholics found themselves talking about “The Changes” the way the Irish talk about “The Troubles”!

We were talking about Vatican Council II, of course, which between 1962 and 1965 had legislated a series of reforms that literally changed the face of Catholicism around the globe. This included changes in the way Catholics prayed, the way they worshipped, the way they experienced the sacraments, and even the way they related to the institution of the Church itself. By the time the dust had settled in the late 1970s, Catholic life was dramatically different from the Church I had been born into 30 years before.

This was a new, almost unprecedented experience for Catholics. For centuries the Church had maintained traditions and practices that were not only uniform but to a great degree unchanging. When my grandparents died in the early 1960s, the Church looked, acted, and felt almost like exactly as it had when they were born in the late 19^th century – as it had for several generations before them. But the same was not true for my parents’ generation, nor for mine. Vatican II made sure that we witnessed almost constant change over a decade or more.

By the time my daughter was born in 1976, however, most of “The Changes” were in place, and the polarization of Catholic life was subsiding. People like me assumed my children would grow up in a post-conciliar Church that would be more stable and less volatile than what I had known. I never expected it to be as uniform as my grandparents’ Church, but I did expect that younger Catholics would experience a Church where “The Changes,” already well established, would now undergo a more gradual maturing process.

Now it looks as though we’re in for a sequel to “The Changes”! If this is true—if we are facing a repeat performance (though on a smaller scale) of our 1965-1975 experience—then we should at least make sure to take advantage of the lessons we learned back then. That way, we can avoid repeating the same mistakes.

What were those lessons that were so hard earned in that difficult period? I can think of at least four.

First, change always disrupts community and sometimes even polarizes it. Different people adapt differently whenever changes arrive. Some people embrace change automatically; others resist it just as automatically; still others need to be persuaded before they will accept it. Common sense says we are in for a period of disruption, perhaps even polarization, over these new changes.

Change eventually ceases to be controversial and becomes merely routine, of course –but what do we lose in the process? Generally speaking, we lose the people who were not persuaded to accept “The Changes.”

My fear this time around is: many of those people are young adults whose emotional attachment to Catholicism is already much weaker than their parents. Such Catholics may already feel like they’re on the margins of Catholic life. It may not take much pressure to push them away.

Second, specific changes may be either for better or for worse. Some Vatican II reforms were wildly successful, others brought mixed results, and still others flopped. What about these new changes?

They are being proposed as more faithful to the Latin text which is supposed to be their model. But as Erie’s Bishop Donald Troutman pointed out, a literal translation that is “too rigid” is not good enough for good Catholic worship:

Liturgical language must not just be faithful and accurate, but intelligible, proclaimable, dignified and reflective of the contemporary mainstream of the English language as spoken in the United States.

Indeed, if what the Church needed was simply a uniform text of the mass, then it should have stuck with Latin.

The decision of Vatican II to convert Catholic liturgy into local languages makes no sense unless we knowledge the truth about those languages: they’re not merely different words for the same things, they are different ways of expressing our experience.

There is no way that a liturgy celebrated in hundreds of languages can be expected to express our faith in one single form. In this sense, insisting on “closer to Latin” texts risks undoing the very purpose of vernacular liturgy. In fact, nearly all the new changes revert back to phrases Catholics used 40 years ago.

Third, the burden of change is going to fall, just as it did before, on local clergy and parish leaders. The acid test of any change, however brilliant or wise, is always successful implementation. This is precisely where much of Vatican II’s legacy continues to hang in doubt, because the job was dumped in the laps of local clergy who were unprepared for the task.

I have often called that generation of clergy “renewal’s most powerful victims”: only they could bring acceptance of “The Changes” to the parish level where the overwhelming majority of Catholics live their faith. But since they did not themselves understand “The Changes,” and since the seminary had never trained them to be change agents anyway, they found themselves caught in the crossfire between a visionary episcopate and a confused laity.

I wonder if things will go any better this time around. The morale of local parish leadership in many parts of the U.S. has been crushed by the sex abuse scandal; most local leaders have little confidence that the current changes reflect visionary wisdom; and ordinary Catholics are more distressed about the Church now than anytime in the last two generations. What’s to prevent local clergy from being caught in the crossfire all over again?

Fourth, in the Church as in life, timing is everything. The runaway success of The Da Vinci Code is strong evidence that Americans are desperately hungry for spiritual nourishment. It was not the pedestrian police chase or the tepid treasure hunt that drew tens of millions of readers to Dan Brown’s story—it was the underlying conspiracy plot portraying Catholicism living a lie. Millions loved the book’s message: the time has come to return to our faith’s true beginnings, give them rebirth, but do it better this time around!

But this idea of “rebirthing” Catholicism was precisely the vision that inspired John XXIII to call Vatican II. That vision produced a decade of euphoria among Catholics, however polarizing “The Changes” were. Dan Brown’s success proves unmistakably that such a vision remains inspiring to millions of people. But the sad fact is, the Catholic hierarchy has failed to inspire where Dan brown has succeeded.

This is the true challenge of our time: to retrieve the momentum of renewal, to restore the rebirthing agenda of Vatican II, to rescue its legacy from the fading memories of the aging generation of Vatican II Catholics. If we fail to do this, the publishing industry will continue to churn out pop distortions of Christian faith to attract the masses away from the Mass.

In times like these, with such a massive challenge facing our leaders, is a return to a more “Latin” English text really the kind of change we need? Is this the best our leaders can do?

Time will tell. For my part, I will be surprised if these changes do much good, but unsurprised if they do more than a little harm.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2006

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

http://www.CrossCurrents.us

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