CELEBRATING MASS
CELEBRATING MASS Fourteen reports from the pews Luke Timothy Johnson _9 Dennis M. Doyle _9 Bernard P. Prusak _9 Paul Elie Peggy Rosenthal ~ Lyn C. Isbell _9 Michael O. Garvey ~ Ralph Thibodeau ~...
...The Eucharist is reserved in a chapel at the front right...
...women tapping their hands on the altar to the beat of the choir band...
...Today, the missionary was the parish administrator, trying to convert a few dozen Americans to a faith deeper than what they came with...
...My children, having marched through crackers and ginger snaps, are now eating grapes...
...Don't you want to be first and best...
...Levi Strauss was here...
...The assembly's responses were strong and clear, and today it seemed as if virtually everyone was singing...
...But exactly how well and how faithfully are we doing the Eucharist...
...Portland, Oregon A little Catholic university chapel, all cedar and sunlight, amid a riot of rhododendrons...
...Their handshakes and greetings at the kiss of peace register as heartfelt...
...On this point, Dennis Burke, reporting from California, describes the actions of the celebrant: "There was no doubt about his belief in the Real Presence, but his behavior said to me, 'This is meal more than sacrifice...
...After the greeting, I urged people to raise their hands if there was an empty seat near them--the walls were already lined with standees...
...I thought of the woman dying of cancer whom I was going to visit in a few hours, and how her sufferings were what the first reading was about...
...This parish, however, has spent two hard years planning to renovate the church's interior...
...I went there seeking quiet prayer and reflection and wondered if that was any more likely to happen there than at Grand Central Station at rush hour...
...Angry parishioners, feeling thwarted in the process, have even aired their complaints in the local newspaper...
...We pray in silence for a time before dismissal, after which a burgeoning general chat dissolves our recollected silence...
...The song leader welcomes the people, nearly all white and elderly, scattered three and four to a pew throughout the church...
...The power and leadership entailed in service, he says, will make us suffer...
...Corpus Christi, Texas he cathedral of Corpus Christi, after surviving hurricanes and termites, stands sturdily on the high bluff overlooking Corpus Christi Bay...
...Rap music from a hyperamplified car stereo throbs on the street outside as the priest holds up a small loaf of bread and a ceramic cup filled with wine and utters the words of institution...
...Our pastor's repeated metaphor of "parish family" was enhanced by our visual surroundings: the Gothic carved wood Apostles joining us in the sanctuary, around the walls the extended family of stained-glass saints surrounding us in this 1910 church...
...My observation of the congregants at the 9:30 A.M...
...After the prayers of the faithful, several young men in cassocks did manage to take up the collection, and I couldn't help meanly wondering why the shortage had not included that ministry...
...They found that there is still a lot of stained glass and plaster statuary...
...Here in the place, new light is streaming," we began to sing, and off we went down the aisle, as I put aside any effort to find a better closing for the homily...
...There were no black suits in this congregation...
...Peggy Rosenthal is co-editor of Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry (Oxford University Press...
...much decent but little inspiring preaching...
...One day, this church had not been a church, just a cleared lot, stacks of bricks and stone, pledged human labor, and an aspiration: to plant Catholic Christianity in North America...
...With the exceptions of the Gospel reading and the recitation of the Our Father (during which we, including my own curmudgeonly self, join hands), we remain seated throughout the liturgy...
...As Elie suggests, generalizations often miss the essence of religious motivation and belief...
...Whereas my friends had fashioned a liturgy for themselves, those of us at the church in Chelsea that morning took the sacrament more or less as we found it...
...Admittedly, the web of relationships in our complex, mobile society differs from those of a village...
...He beamed encouragingly at the altar servers, especially the girl with Downs syndrome whom the parish has nurtured since infancy...
...georgetown.ed u The conference is open to present or former college or universi b, facub/or their spouses, and olhe~ b/smaal request...
...The liturgy has spaces for praying in silence and there is never any sense of haste, yet Mass takes only an hour...
...I can't say, although I would prefer a mix of the two...
...Mass only minutes before the cantor started rehearsing the assembly...
...There are about fifteen black people present (our socially and economically diverse neighborhood is 50 percent black) and a few Asians and Hispanics...
...On October 19, things at my parish went fairly right--which means, to my taste...
...In the final prayer, he improvises...
...There are perhaps 150 people at Christ the Teacher this morning, the great majority of them undergraduates, although it's an all-ages show, and from the balcony where I ride herd on my three small children, I see gray hair, white hair, green hair, blue hair, no hair...
...and then comes the Communion shuffle, the sharp smell of mediocre wine, dry crackers on tongues, another hymn, and the ranks of bowed, meditating heads, blessing and dismissal, another hymn, and then the organ groans awake and sends us out again into the light, where the phoebe is still keeping time, and for no reason, every reason, I am delighted, my pockets filled with grapes, my pinkies gripped by small boys, my morning mad with miracles...
...Richard and Margaret are Jewish...
...I could hear them already, telling each other that once upon a time, back when we were here, God lived in this place...
...I do know that we've shown up, we are trying to pray attentively together, and we are awaiting Jesus...
...The priest strode up the aisle and took a seat to the side...
...The parishioners of Saint Joan, though divided by language, listened, for the most part, to the same readings and recited the same prayers, each group with its own sense of devotion...
...Those efforts had been a success, by most reckonings...
...But I'm willing to forgive some bumbling at Mass because, really, we are all just bumbling toward the kingdom...
...There were no suits of any color...
...A beautifully modulated organ accompanied us twice and, along with the music selections, enhanced the sense of the sacred...
...There was no altar placed at the front of the sanctuary so that Mass could be offered by a priest facing the congregation...
...church orders of the third and fourth centuries also insisted that different genders, and thus families, sit apart...
...The music director is Chinese, and leads us from the People's Mass Book...
...He compared the disciples who were afraid to really understand Jesus' openness to suffering with the blindness and fear in his own/our lives as related to the poor and suffering...
...Among these was an observation that there was a shortage of readers and servers at this Mass, and a suggestion that perhaps some young men in the congregation might wish to consider this ministry...
...A single, sweet voice from the organist's loft resonated throughout the service, singing the hymns I've known and loved my whole life...
...The Gothic Revival chapel in which we were gathered has been completely redesigned in accord with liturgical practice after Vatican II...
...But all had come, and most did sing...
...The service began with an excellent organ prelude...
...I can't say our singing loosened the stained glass, but the people--many older, silvered, and bent--sang hard, for Catholics...
...The high marble pulpit is still used for the readings...
...I was even grateful, in a way I've learned from Dillard, for the disastrous homily given by a guest priest...
...An intimate friend of many present--conversant with and even participant in the joys, woes, follies, and triumphs of two generations of us--the priest is able to homilize compellingly about the subtle and lethal ways any of us can abandon the trail of our Lord to go whoring after status in the kingdom, and about the mercy which might inhere in our occluded perceptions of his grace...
...Mass begins, gently...
...The choir did well for amateurs...
...I liked their brief chanting of the Asperges me during the opening sprinkling rite...
...And I would have liked a few more ideas...
...When people clapped half-heartedly to the rhythm of a zippy alleluia, he chided them gently: "The clapping is new, but we have to grow...
...The music was magnificent, led by two highly professional ministers, Lee Gwozdz and Greg Labus, and the Pontifical Choir of about a hundred voices carrying the congregation along in the sung parts, all but the Creed and the Our Father...
...Then he crossed the sanctuary to read the Gospel...
...The Word and responsorials from the Scriptures were read by women and men...
...So, as is his custom, he invited those bringing up the gifts to set the table...
...He takes none of this for granted...
...Today the pastor is hoarse from the flu so the lay deacon preaches...
...Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon...
...And yet, it was as if they were San Rafael, California aint Rafael's, one of the original California missions, sits on a rise 200 yards above the main drag of American Graffiti and downtown San Rafael...
...Several men and women serve as eucharistic ministers, distributing both host and cup...
...What we have in the Gospel this morning, he concludes, is really a new vision of what we a r e - - and what we can become...
...I began vesting for the 11:00 a.M...
...better to keep in mind the implicit vulnerability of people caught in the act of prayer...
...and the words of the opening song played again in my ears, "...gather us in...
...For me the Mass was a means of palpable grace and reaffirmation of faith, in great part, I must confess, because of the extraordinary music...
...A support for my kneeler is missing...
...A sufficient pause followed so we could actually think about the questions...
...the tiny palm of a child's hand turned upward as she recited the Lord's Prayer...
...We, by contrast, were served by eight eucharistic ministers, both men and women...
...It offered the gospel injunction not to lord one's authority over others as a corrective to the notion of male leadership of wife and family...
...The Kyrie was sung in the Latin of the old Mass XVI, alternating between choir and congregation...
...It was Jewish, and it was not...
...A little shaky with the Gospel (Gentiles get confused with Galileans), he settles down to a thoughtful homily on the Christian life as a life of service (getting the point of the readings just fine), with specific reference to the parish's Vincent de Paul Society, AIDS ministry, and help to Atlanta's street people...
...The seminarian-in-residence gives the homily...
...Yet a third of the congregation is heaving or gone by the end of the final hymn...
...Commonweal | 7 January 30, 1998 ~ Minneapolis, Minnesota W hile visiting the Twin Cities, I worshiped in a suburban Minneapolis megachurch of 4,000 families where parishioners join at the rate of one family a day...
...In fact, it is surprising how little "high" or "low," "horizontal" or "vertical" figure in the quality of the liturgical experiences they report...
...I think God was pleased to hear our prayer...
...At the last Mass I'd lost track somehow and messed up part of the epiclesis, and so I was particularly attentive this time around...
...There are at least three mentally handicapped people in attendance, as well as several who are physically handicapped...
...For more information regarding these programs contact: Dean's Office, School of Religious Studies The Catholic University of America 113 Caldwcll Hall, Washington, DC 20064 202-319-5683...
...One reason is that Churchwell's preaching is humble and unadorned, rarely going past seven minutes but always worth hearing...
...Could I find shortcomings...
...Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., teaches at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago...
...he was raised Reform, she as an atheist...
...After thirty years of the "reformed" liturgy, have our understandings about the Eucharist shifted too far in a horizontal direction...
...Maybe he had another Mass to say in another parish...
...He spoke from the steps of the sanctuary, with the usual lapel mike...
...tribal binding is the clear theme of this Mass...
...The entire assembly then stood during the eucharistic prayer, singing the "Holy, Holy, Holy" and the Great Amen...
...The sun hasn't broken the morning's chill...
...After the closing song, everyone applauded...
...Everyone could look up, not into a hymnal...
...At the Lord's Prayer, however, he invites them to stand and join hands...
...9 Dayton, Ohio ~ - i C orpus Christi is a small and Spanish-style urban church...
...Gladioli and ferns decorate the altar...
...The claustrophobic feeling of the crowded room eased a bit as I dismissed seventy-five-plus kids to their own children's liturgy of the Word...
...I was satisfied with my homily, and I let go of any worry about how to wrap it up...
...Over Sunday breakfast, at the video art opening, or during the wedding in the rented space, the people who would come after us would try to know us through what they felt they lacked, through the vestiges of Catholicism still lingering on the premises...
...The liturgical coordinator, a young woman, greeted and welcomed us, announced the names of our readers, and encouraged us to turn and greet one another...
...So, now I was in a rush to get to the entrance as the cantor began going over the refrain to the responsorial psalm...
...From nearby Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, there are teachers, students, and administrators, some of their spouses and some of their kids...
...Inside: a small child with his right arm in the baptismal font up to his shoulder...
...I tried to imagine the old Church of the Guardian Angel deconsecrated, sold, and renovated--now Commonweal | 2 January 30, 1998 an art gallery, say, or a dozen apartments, each with a stained glass window in the breakfast nook...
...As we exchanged Commonweal | 3 January30, 1998 the words "The Body of Christ" and "Amen," and our Lord passed between our hands, our eyes met on what we both knew was the only plane that matters, where we are one Body...
...What would the future think of us then...
...We gathered for the earliest of three evening liturgies celebrated to meet the time preferences of students...
...I thought of the 166 or so of us here today, and how we would be made over into people of our time and place, all our particularities falling away with the flesh, our doubts and misgivings and mutinous impulses smoothed out into generalities about modern American Catholics...
...The altar-table, made of marble, has been moved forward, so that the front of the congregation wraps around it...
...He bases his reflections on the readings for the day, and he has intelligent things to say...
...Bernard P. Prusak teaches theology at Villanova...
...Commonweal | 9 January 30, 1998...
...Someone after 9 o'clock Mass had needed to talk over a crisis at home, and it took me a bit longer than I had anticipated to hear her out...
...The French Romanesque building is one of the few in Atlanta with any age, so it is a historical monument, beautifully maintained by the second collection...
...Service does not mean that I decide what you need and serve you, but that we mutually serve one another after asking what it is the other really needs...
...Their devotion was palpable...
...Because it did not employ the traditional cue, and because the sound system was either poor or poorly used, few said "Amen" at the conclusion of this prayer or any of the other prayers...
...The Mass is where heaven and earth touch, where God makes himself present to his people, as Peggy Rosenthal so aptly puts it, on the "only plane that matters, where we are one Body...
...The altar is in the center of the nave facing the people on three sides...
...The eucharistic ministers scramble to get the required number but administer both species to virtually all communicants with appropriate demeanor...
...I am here primarily because when he says the eucharistic prayer every syllable sounds as though understood and intended...
...Two altar girls accompanied him, and in his opening remarks he told the congregation that the servers were taking part in the liturgy for the first time...
...The main altar was the style of altar I grew up with, part of the east wall of the huge sanctuary, raised up five or six steps, and placed so that the celebrant's back is to the congregation...
...Many parishioners paused to bless themselves at the font, a large immersion pool near the entrance to the church...
...Second, the young priest celebrant was obviously invested in this liturgy, speaking and singing in a spirited way, making eye contact with all three sides...
...The remainder of the Liturgy of the Word "worked," by which I mean people seemed attentive, engaged, not restless...
...Three things struck me about Saint Rafael's...
...it's pumped...
...I must say the sermon, though heartfelt, was not tightly tied together: Stretching the Gospel theme of service to mean compassion was off-target and disconcerting...
...A new staff member at the house shyly announces that she has made some apple cobbler, and that there is fresh coffee brewing in the kitchen...
...And we usually start about fifteen minutes late...
...Dennis Burke is a writer living in Ross, California, just over the hill from San Rafael...
...He is a convert...
...is especially designed for practitioners in religious education and catechetics, emphasizing sacramental catechesis...
...Today, after the Communion reflection time, there is a crisp financial report from the parish council...
...Alone or in silent pairs, they enter the huge gray Gothic church for the 8 o'clock Mass at this suburban Chicago parish...
...Ten minutes later several groups are still conversing...
...In all of these things, I found the mystery of the sacrament that made this church alive and whole...
...Caesarius, the sixth-century bishop of Arles, complained that many left right after the homily...
...There was no chalice for the communicants...
...Today's presider was a religious-order priest who serves this community once or twice a month...
...A video monitor in the gathering space near the entrance scrolled through the events of the day and the week ahead-meetings for every conceivable ministry--testifying to high involvement in parish life and a huge outreach beyond its walls...
...The atmosphere is celebrative yet reverent...
...So I sat there, feeling myself somewhere in between the two...
...Their energy lifted me up...
...But having worked with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy for nineteen years, I would have appreciated some nod to the existence of a Sacramentary...
...Department o f Theology The M.Div...
...Proposals for papers should be sent to Professor Teresa Collett, South Texas College of Law, 1303 San Jacinto St., Houston, Texas, 77002-7000 e-mail: tcollett@stcl.ed u Commonweal | 5 January30, 1998 Sacrament, Lord Jesus," by William J. Marsh, whose Latin Masses and motets were very popular before the council...
...I had to put up with only one hymn I can't bear, "Here I am, Lord...
...The homily was a missed opportunity...
...The Gloria, also in Latin, was from the old Mass VIII, the Mass of the Angels, and was sung in its entirety by choir and congregation...
...Instrumental accompaniment for the hymns and responsorial psalms on this evening included guitars, piano, and organ...
...First, they take the liturgy seriously...
...on the Sunday after fall break, and students were still returning, but the pews, seating about 550, were filled...
...The liturgy has a sense of formality, yet is also familiar and friendly...
...We receive Communion together, under both kinds...
...Churchwell makes announcements, says prayers, and gives the blessing...
...We move briskly through prayers and announcements and close with a rousing "To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King...
...Everybody shook hands at the kiss of peace, some rather shyly, and we received the Eucharist under both species before Commonweal | 6 January30, 1998 we shared a sacred minute of silence...
...I'm not sure they're mine...
...Even when empty, the space is alive with images of the saints, from the Twelve Apostles to Saint Ambrose to Saint Gregory the Great...
...The Lord and his love are present among us...
...Guardian Angel, on Tenth Avenue at Twenty-first Street, is built like a fortress on the outside and a compact basilica within...
...Instead, the cantor would sing an Italian love song as well as some of the old blessings...
...Mark 10:35-45...
...Then the young music director led the congregation with a guitar and a clean, pleasing voice in a key we could sing...
...A stillness pervades the rest of the Mass...
...He thanks God "for our selves, for each other, for this parish, and for every single member of this parish...
...Many of those in attendance, my critics say, were distracted and probably did not get much out of it...
...But one day, as likely as not, this church would be a church no longer...
...Today the little boy and girl acolytes--in white robes and wooden crosses--are characteristically solemn and attentive, doing their business unobtrusively...
...But they are quietly harmonious, and the adaptations for the reformed liturgy have had to work around them, so that the simple wooden altar facing the people and the lector's podium seem part of a larger eclecticism...
...On the basis of what our correspondents found, we could not say that they have...
...I was grateful, too, for our pastor's eucharistic reverence as presider...
...Part of my brain was still revising the conclusion to my homily...
...Surely that would make this choir a veritable novena in every note...
...Gaithersburg, Maryland B wouldn't, and the rest was out of my hands...
...Be honest: Don't you wish for status among your peers...
...Opinions vary--wildly, and sometimes heatedly...
...A second priest appeared to assist, gesturing impatiently when we didn't fill in the empty places at the rail quickly enough...
...We sing: God is love, and all who live in love live in God...
...As the squeakiest wheel, it is the "horizontal" that gets most of the attention and much of the criticism...
...After the liturgical greeting and an informal word, the presider introduced the readings with two questions which became part of the penitential rite...
...Eucharist: At the moment of transformation the priest pauses for a tremulous instant, and the whole chapel is riveted and silent as he hoists I am who am aloft...
...On this Sunday the homily was directed explicitly to the men...
...There may have been a serious doubter or two at the Mass, but my guess is that most if not all believed in the Real Presence and found that belief nourished, as I did, by this liturgy...
...Though I'm frustrated that his pre-Vatican II conception of the Eucharist keeps our parish locked in an outmoded theology, his joy that Jesus is "truly present in the Holy Eucharist" (as he appends to some of the prayers) overflows into a genuine welcoming spirit...
...I found the amplification very poor, with too little treble for intelligible speech...
...But the church was surprisingly full for a Sunday evening at 7:00 o'clock...
...There was no doubt about his belief in the Real Presence, but his behavior said to me, "This is meal more than sacrifice...
...We have left behind other barriers: the Apostolic Tradition of the third century was adamant that men not give the kiss of peace to women, or vice versa...
...We make the sign of the cross together and recite the anciently prescribed words...
...The assembly sang well, perhaps because the lyrics were projected on two large screens...
...Columbia Road Health Services will receive our tithe this week," I announced...
...He speaks of how difficult it was to have faith even for those closest to Jesus, and of how faith remains difCommonweal | 0 January 30, 1998 ficult today...
...Father Lowery Ross, the celebrant, based his homily on the Gospel reading, to scold us a little bit about being selfish, like James and John...
...Even the banquet is a mystical action...
...I walk into the Atlanta sunshine, glad to have been part of a worship, both old and new, classic in its restraint yet giving life to all these various people it draws from every part of this most variegated city of the South...
...Just before the Eucharist began, the music group led a rehearsal of "Lead Me, Guide Me," an African-American hymn...
...Hebrews 4:1416...
...In an anecdotal, but we trust not an entirely idiosyncratic fashion, we think these brief but informed reflections will help us better understand what American Catholics believe today...
...Suppose someday there was no liturgy here...
...Its founders were Fathers Frederick Faber and John Henry Newman and the present church was completed in the late 1890s...
...We don't come here to be just head Catholics but heart Catholics...
...How many prayers had they lofted toward that ceiling, how many shouts and murmurs of praise and thanks and supplication...
...Nobody rehearses the congregation, and nobody here seems to miss the busywork of rehearsal and direction...
...It's a good song, they like it and know it well: "See in this space our fears and our dreamings...
...horizontal more than vertical.'" Similarly, Brian Doyle notes how the word "community" was repeated seven times by the priest at his Portland, Oregon, church, while Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., simply judges the Mass she attended "decidedly low church...
...the Agnus Dei, which came out, "Cordero de Dios," from the Misa Guadalupe by Joel Martinson, sung entirely in Spanish...
...During the Lord's Prayer, people throughout the church hold hands...
...In fact, I didn't even notice the words of the greeting...
...Choosing to read the Gospel option for Mission Sunday, he then performed a stand-up comedy monologue on his hilarious adventures with alligators and tarantulas in the Nicaraguan jungle...
...Several candidates for baptism rise to be blessed and to leave with the director of religious education for "breaking of the word...
...As I listened, I thought of all the homilies that had been given over the centuries so that this priest could stand before me today and give his...
...a fellow parishioner quickly explains why two hymnals hold it up...
...All offered greetings of peace, but with greater warmth evident among those who came as friends...
...Accomplished student musicians and singers drew the congregation into song...
...He will utter the word community seven times this morning, by my count...
...Our hunch is that the "vertical" or transcendent aspects of the Mass are more likely to be presumed than explicitly affirmed by most Catholics today...
...With at least 5,000 families in the parish, this grand Romanesque-style church has eight Sunday Masses, including two in Spanish...
...But no, this was a missionary priest come to give the homily...
...And I couldn't help but compare his style with that of a particularly pious priest in a parish nearby, who brings the canon to a halt and utters in a kind of hush: "This is my body," then holds the upraised host for long, mystical moments...
...This morning we gather as a faith community to broaden our vision," says the young priest...
...Rochester, New York lot would have to go wrong with the liturgy for a Mass not to make my Catholic faith a more compelling reality...
...Mass revealed an impressive devotion, so that any question of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist would have been an act of supererogation...
...paintings of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary...
...The pastor, an excellent liturgist and homilist, welcomes everyone and announces World Mission Sunday...
...Lyn C. Isbell teaches English in a Catholic hl'gh school in San Francisco...
...The homilist's delivery could use improvement, a point he has made himself in the past...
...Minutes later, the church was bursting with more than a thousand mostly young Hispanics...
...horizontal more than vertical...
...Third, the way the priest said the words of consecration implicitly emphasized the Last Supper over Calvary...
...Service begins at home and at work, but on World Mission Sunday we should also be mindful of our call to evangelize the larger world...
...So was Tommy Hilfiger...
...I'm not as tough as Dillard, so I was grateful this Sunday that the music was mostly congenial...
...He grimaces playfully...
...This is a usual Sunday...
...Why people go to church and what they get out of doing so are complicated questions...
...The noon English Mass was a staid and solemn affair, attended mostly by the neighborhood's graying Irish, Polish, German, and Italian parishioners...
...London, England ~ aybe it is not as important as we often think it is that the eucharistic liturgy be celebrated according to contemporary sensibilities and postcounciliar changes...
...The energy in the room escalated significantly as the children returned to their parents, the youngest ones clutching some sort of papers that their leader of prayer had evidently used in her homily...
...But there were seven or eight hundred people there--on a Sunday at seven in the evening...
...Is a first professional degree...
...He and his father, Jim Doyle, are the authors of Two Voices (Ligouri), a collection of their essays...
...Supposedly we were bound together by the liturgy, and bound back to the past...
...What had they prayed for...
...I listened carefully for those notes as I began singing Haugen's Mass of Creation...
...In a city divided along all these lines, it is healing just being here...
...20057-0998 or Fax: 202-6878000 or e-mail: kingt@gunet...
...and finally, the Communion hymn, sung by choir and congregation, "In This University Faculty for Life Ei&hth Annual Conference "Life and Learnin S VIII" June 5 and 6, 1998 Univer iLy of ToronLo The Conference i~ desisned to en~le facu]ty with pro-life conaern~ to deepen their under&anding "of" the life i~,~ue~ in {.heir poliLical, ~ocial, leg'al, ~ hisLorical, paycholo~cal, ethical, and reli~ou,~ dimen~ion...
...Alone or in silent pairs, they walk away from the church...
...V i l l a n o v a , Pennsylvania + + + + n undertaking this task I felt a kinship with Justin Martyr, the second-century apologist who described a Sunday assembly in his First Apology...
...The presider, Father Richard O'Leary, O.S.A., from campus ministry, homilized on the themes of suffering, compassion, and service which resonated in the readings and Gospel, making connections with the service projects for which many students had volunteered during the previous days of fall break...
...And how do Catholics of diverse theological and ecclesiological views understand what it is the Eucharist does...
...The architecture is New-World Spanish, appropriately, since the ethnic make-up of the city is now about 50 percent Mexican-American...
...Chicago, Illinois he morning is sunny but cold...
...After the homily, the celebrant made a few announcements...
...a great deal of singing, some of it fitful...
...The overall impression, though, is of a church filled with singing...
...but are joined only raggedly by the congregation today--this is a less-familiar version...
...In the living room, where a dozen folding chairs have been added to the furniture, we arrange ourselves around an end table which will be our altar...
...But they come alive as he points to good parents as common but powerful examples of suffering-servant leadership...
...The reverence indicated that those receiving did not consider Eucharist to be ordinary food...
...The priest, unassisted by servers, offered the opening prayers and read from the Old and New Testaments from a lectern facing the congregation...
...It was 6:00 P.M...
...If I were reviewing a theatrical event, I'd have to say it couldn't have been worse...
...when she started serving last year our hearts collectively melted...
...There is silence for a minute or two before we proclaim the mystery of faith...
...In the small tableau formed up in the sanctuary, holding hands with the song leader, piano player, lectors, and altar server, he is the only male...
...An improvised opening prayer came next...
...During the consecration, the tone shifts from celebrative to solemn...
...Jon Nilson teaches theology at Loyola University, Chicago...
...So, the 250 people--middle class, shop owners, contractors, retired--at the 9:00 A.M...
...In reading these liturgical critiques, it would be inappropriate to make any hard or fast judgments about the participants...
...I felt their prayerfulness, and I thrilled at the strength of their faith...
...Remarkably, the 1,650 seats filled up from front to back...
...with concentrations in Religion and Culture, Religious Education/Catechetics, Catholic Theological Tradition, and Spirituality prepares students for teaching and research in colleges and universities and for other forms of educational ministry in parishes, dioceses, and public service organizations...
...People are really singing today, I thought...
...Third time's a charm," I mused, feeling good that I'd given it my best shot...
...Care had been taken with inclusive language and in using a variety of metaphors for the name of God...
...James and John missed the point that in this life we are called to be servants...
...We were not passive observers but baptized concelebrants...
...Listening to the quick tempo and rich voices of the group, I remembered the hymnal from my Catholic school in Texas with the words of Saint Augustine on the cover reminding us that singing was like praying twice...
...These things are certainly important to me, but after my experience on October 19, ! have been questioning some of my assumptions...
...But, as Annie Dillard brilliantly dramatizes in her essay, "An Expedition to the Pole," personal taste is not what Mass is meant to serve...
...And I would stand in the nave, wine glass in hand like the microphone of a man making a documentary, and try to ask people about the past history of the place, the city's oldest synagogue and its first Reform temple...
...However, no attempt was made to tie it to the readings for the day...
...Over 90 percent of those in the front half of the church sing with pep, while under 10 percent in the rear half of the church sing at all...
...Many others have already gone over to the school building for coffee and doughnuts...
...People rehearsed willingly and then rose for the procession...
...The participation is excellent...
...and enough conflict among generations, immigrant groups, and ideological factions to keep sociologists employed for another millennium...
...As I broke the bread with the eucharistic ministers, I thought of the phrase in our parish's vision statement, "...broken we gather...
...One observation made by a number of contributors seems to merit some comment...
...They keep their coats on, just in case, and neither the spirited piano playing nor the enthusiastic song leader can draw a sound from them...
...He used a smooth, reverent, conversational tone not much different from the rest of the canon...
...So this Sunday, my Catholic faith became the most compelling reality at the moment when I received Communion from a fellow parishioner with whom I clash on every political issue of church or society...
...Luke Timothy Johnson teaches New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University...
...As usual, the congregation likewise attracted persons from the surrounding area, including a diversity of ages and families, which added the exuberance of small children to the assembly...
...Having joined his struggle to ours, he proclaimed the eucharistic prayer in the name of all...
...Dress varies from casual to semidressed-up...
...Saint Patrick and Saint Th6r~se of Lisieux...
...I notice that even my teen-agers seem to be listening...
...All joined hands for the Lord's Prayer...
...The pews are full, but not packed, with a mix of people of all ages, 280 altogether (our diocese requires an October count...
...Most of them do...
...Gather us in," we had just sung, and the Lord certainly was answering our prayers...
...October 19 was World Mission Sunday...
...still a good number of indifferent parishioners...
...About seventeen children and two catechists march off...
...Saint Joan's main sanctuary is a spectacular mosaic of marble and bronze...
...Although religious art fills the complex, there is none in the sanctuary space...
...Mass were among the religious elite...
...Were we some people just passing through, or a people with a faith being passed through us...
...I have been to Mass at the Oratory several times over the years--not because I admire either its architecture or its liturgies, but because I can reliably find my way there...
...Almost all of the worshippers receive Communion...
...He still gives thanks "for every single member...
...Brompton Oratory, as it is usually called, is an Italianate basilica, vast and ornate, easily seating 1,500...
...Despite the bouncy refrain, "All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place," they don't seem sure...
...Several members of my family who attended Mass with me have looked over this liturgical critique and say that, while no one sentence is false, the overall impression I give is idealized...
...But praying "forgive us...as we forgive," l thought: Am I any different...
...The nineteenth-century piety displayed by paintings and windows and statues, or by the marble high altar with gilded tabernacle would not be everyone's taste...
...On the left is a Mary chapel, with a simple icon portrayal...
...It has white walls, a white marble floor, and an abundance of light, even in the evening darkness...
...Commonweal 9 January 30, 1998 Atlanta, Georgia acred Heart Church is downtown, with the SunTrust bank on one side and a "businessmen's hotel" recently restored for urban housing on the other...
...The third-century Didascalia instructed the deacon to keep people from "whispering, falling asleep, or laughing...
...I was furious at his wrecking of the liturgy's spirit...
...That does not mean all analysis should be foregone...
...my body gets to church on time while my spirit lags behind...
...The assembly was there by choice and participated actively...
...Very few people leave immediately after Communion...
...Child's father turns and notices his son's oar in the water...
...My attention drifts even as I sing...
...The liturgy we attended couldn't, by my standards, have been more off-putting...
...degree with concentration in Hispanic ministry...
...all, apparently, are excited and stimulated by Mass...
...But, unlike Justin, I am not mounting a defense against the misconceptions of non-Christian Romans...
...Finally, what is most remarkable, and remarkably evident in the following pages, is how Catholics, despite their disputes and despite constantly falling short, continue to persevere, continue to "do this in memory of me...
...Other musical highlights included a thrilling rendition of the anthem--appropriate to the Gospel reading--'Seek to Serve," by composer Lloyd Pfautsch...
...The pastor then comes down from the altar to the center aisle...
...Amid a symphony of sights and sounds, I searched for the spirit of the liturgy and found it, not so much in the splendor of the altar nor even in the chimes at the consecration, but in the small details from both of the scenes I had witnessed: young men kneeling in their blue jeans and sneakers on the marble floor...
...South Bend, Indiana O n alternating Sundays, we go to Mass at the Holy Family Catholic Worker House in South Bend...
...Our fearless reporters went far and wide to get that story: from the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in London, where the liturgical reforms of Vatican II seem to be little more than a nasty rumor, to one of California's first Spanish mission churches, to the quiet of a Catholic Worker house in Notre Dame, Indiana, to a bustling "megachurch" in Minneapolis where high-tech visual aids keep the congregation singing while gazing heavenward...
...What then...
...In reflecting on how a Christian is The Catholic University o f America School o f Religious Studies Department o f Religion and Religious Education The M.A...
...In between readings, two parishioners lead the congregation in the responsorial psalm...
...father emits indescribable sound, carts boy off to dry pew...
...The Saint Joseph River Valley is astun with autumn, and, in observance of Notre Dame home-game football weekend rites, many of us have been together at parties last night, so our procession from the front porch, through an aromatic Commonweal | 4 January30, 1998 kitchen and dining room, is a confused, noisy, and meandering affair of gossip resumed, good-natured taunts exchanged, and adolescents exasperated...
...Only when Dillard imagines herself transformed into the most ridiculous member of her church's dreadful singing group can she join the wacky communal trip toward the Absolute...
...My only explanation for the low degree of churchedness is that Marin County is so beautiful that many believe they are already in paradise...
...My son, the football player, notices a teen-ager wearing a jacket from a rival high school...
...When I saw a man in cassock and surplice enter the sanctuary, I thought, "Ah ha, the server is running late...
...The people do join heartily in all verbal responses, the sung responsorial psalm and alleluia, as well as the hymns taken from the 1990 Collegeville Hymnal...
...202-319-4967 (fax) or cua-deansrs@cua.edu Commonweal | | January 30, 1998 called to be different in that regard, the homilist did not set himself above the community but acknowledged his own struggle, relating what the guests of Saint Francis Hospice in Philadelphia taught him about the presence of Christ, as he worked there with student volunteers...
...yet it gave me something concrete to forgive at the Lord's Prayer...
...a priest laying his hand on a child's head as he gave the host to the boy's father...
...Paul Elie is a frequent Commonweal contributor...
...I pictured men in black suits shaking their fists at the deity as the pogrom came...
...its purpose is to foster basic theological understanding and to develop initial pastoral competence for students preparing themselves for ministry...
...Because our motley congregation is diminutive and predictable, because most of the priests are also our friends, and because our venue is a medium-sized living room, the liturgical complexion, if that's the right phrase, usually combines familiarity and formality...
...My children, interested and hungry, eat crackers...
...I knew that some would be helped by what I had said and others Robert D. Duggan is pastor of Saint Rose of Lima Parish in Gaithersburg, Maryland...
...In hopes of making a contribution to this often contentious debate, Commonweal asked fourteen correspondents to report on their participation in a typical Sunday Eucharist, and we asked them all to report on one Sunday in particular: last October 19, Mission Sunday (the readings: Isaiah 53:4, 10-11...
...surely I can be as ridiculously maddening to others as the homilist was to me...
...A large crucifix looms prominently in the background...
...All but a handful will receive Communion...
...The old, high-ceilinged church (not the original mission church) has been nicely redone to accommodate the reforms of Vatican II...
...At the altar, the vested celebrant will nearly disappear into the jumble...
...He begins to reflect gently and conversationally on power, leadership, and service...
...The deacon invites all the young children of the parish to come forward to be blessed and sent off to an adjoining room for Liturgy of the Word...
...As more than one of our correspondents reminds us, however, it is not we who judge the liturgy, but the liturgy that judges us...
...Later in the week I checked at Westminster Cathedral in London and found that the placement of the altar was the same as it is in all American churches I have seen...
...I attend the 10:00 A.M...
...What this Mass has meant to them remains their secret...
...Spoken prayers were the element of the liturgy least attended to...
...I was in London at the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in Brompton Road, Kensington...
...Polls assessing Mass attendance and what Catholics believe about the Real Presence suggest some diminution of confidence, or at least some confusion, in the pews about the nature of the Eucharist...
...The bulletin said 166 people had come to Mass last Sunday, and there appeared to be about that many today...
...I liked the organist's perky improvised march as the children left, with the presider's blessing, for their own Liturgy of the Word...
...I suspect we heard the readings better because of this introduction...
...The great Gothic cathedrals in Paris and Chartres have also successfully adapted altar and sanctuary to the demands of the liturgical reforms...
...I could read about Jews of that time and place, but I would never really know what the people of that congregation had brought to synagogue each week--the particulars of their observance, the inward back-and-forth of their struggle to believe that God was just, that there was a God in the first place...
...The interior of the cathedral has preserved its colorful flavor: statues of Mary and Joseph, still in their niches, with their own altar...
...We received the Eucharist kneeling at an altar rail in exactly the way I remember doing in my childhood...
...New York, New York he Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, was also the day two friends of mine were married...
...Men--and the women and children with them-paid close attention...
...I remind him that here we are all one in Christ...
...The MR.E...
...Wondrously, everyone seemed to quiet down almost immediately, and a particularly good reader kept our attention fixed as she proclaimed the servant song of Isaiah...
...But the liturgy is meant to bind us to the future, too, in hope and expectation, the way my friends bound themselves together on their wedding day...
...An abrupt, mutual diffidence and the absence of musically gifted members preclude an opening hymn this morning, but there are some newcomers among us, and the murmured round of introductions initiated by our priest seems an appropriate replacement...
...Financial Aid and graduate housing near campus are available...
...both species) was reverent and included blessings for infants and small children...
...Homily: "Not the most flattering portrait of James and John, is it...
...The seven-minute Communion procession (real bread...
...We would dance to Western swing, eat slices of a wedding cake decorated like a mosaic...
...They take the lead in the ordinary (Kyrie, etc...
...I hardly knew any better the particular beliefs of the people with whom I had attended Mass in the morning...
...Ralph Thibodeau is professor emeritus of Music Literature and Western Humanities at Del Mar College...
...The announcement came: The Mass would be celebrated by the parish administrator...
...The twelve-member choir begins the entrance hymn as the pastor processes up the main aisle along with our permanent deacon, a seminarian-in-residence, two altar girls, and a lector...
...I thank God for my gift of experiencing reality in an idealized and glorified manner, and for the grace of this sacrament which nourishes my ability to do so...
...only fall-colored banners adorned the back wall...
...Both are delicious...
...Two Mexican families have been staying at the house, and they have joined us for the last couple of Masses, but today we are a middle-class, mostly Anglo group of some thirty folks...
...Fifteen minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge, Saint Rafael's is the principal church in Marin County, where only 31 percent of the people are churched...
...There were no individual greetings at the "Peace be with you...
...A faithful interpretation of the Word of God...
...The chapel's simple decoration will not send lovers of baroque into rapture, but I like it...
...Above it a ragged arrowhead of geese, southing...
...Father Churchwell is the pastor...
...The liturgy was decidedly low church...
...The little group in the pews near me might have been an entourage representing the church of the next century: a Hispanic mother and her two children, a young black woman who could have been a model, an aged Irishman in a windbreaker, a white nun in a black habit, and me, a sometime churchgoer, going to Bloomingdale's afterward to exchange a gift...
...Sunday Mass is most meaningful to me when I'm celebrating it with those I've stumbled along with--even crashed into--in our efforts to build the kingdom during the preceding week...
...Sounds: pants-legs scissoring toward Mass, small talk by the front door, chirping children, a metronomic phoebe, Bach's Organ Fugue in C Minor...
...At first his words are wispy, bloodless, remote from the din and dust of daily life...
...It had gone well at 7:30 A.M...
...Yet its pain can make us wise and compassionate, like Jesus the great high priest...
...then I explained that the organization provides services for the indigent of our area, and I urged people to make their own gift a sacrificial one, just as the parish itself sacrifices by tithing each week...
...All received the body of Christ...
...In a village in Sussex the following Sunday, the liturgy was similar to the beautiful, communal Eucharist in my home parish of Saint Agnes in San Francisco--to which I have gratefully returned...
...And it was most noticeably full of young men and women in their twenties, people in decidedly short supply at the Masses I usually attend...
...They shared the same wooden pews and absorbed the grandeur of the sanctuary...
...The evening ceremony threw the morning Mass into relief, and left me with a liturgical melancholy...
...Trained by Benedictines, he has a good liturgical presence, speaking the words of the liturgy slowly, carefully, and meaningfully...
...Everybody thought it was the perfect space...
...Then he moved through the opening prayers with dispatch...
...It feels catholic, this diversity...
...Mass, and was better at the 9, but I still didn't feel the close was strong...
...After the solemn cadences of Isaiah's suffering servant and Hebrews' great high priest comes the story of James and John, lobbying for promotion from "fisherman" to "Assistant Messiah," despite their lack of qualifications...
...Few left worship before the final hymn...
...They ask for prestige and power, and Christ rebukes them sharply, as he rebukes us, all these years later, as we itch for power, too...
...Our gathering did not have that problem...
...There are also young and old social workers, a high-school teacher, a video producer, a couple of longstanding friends of the house, and a couple of grandparents visiting from Tennessee...
...The prayers of the offertory and the consecration were audible because there were microphones on the altar, but the effect of the celebrant's being sixty feet away with his back turned to us was more painful to me than I ever would have guessed...
...We sing a good song...
...To my eyes, it is an ugly church even though it has lately been restored so that the gaudy marble, plaster, and paint look as good at they were ever meant to...
...Insofar as any participant-observer prays, I prayed, giving thanks for this young and vital face of the church...
...Behind the chapel a crowd of muscular old oak trees...
...Rumors of death of faith among youth greatly exaggerated, at least this morning...
...Imagine all the trouble that had been taken so that there might be a Roman Catholic church on the far edge of Chelsea...
...Many heads are bowed...
...most received Holy Communion...
...For Conference Information and Registration Material Write to UFL, 120 New North, Georgetown University, Washington D.C...
...The Communion hymn is one of my favorites: "We Hold the Death of the Lord Deep in Our Hearts...
...We're more like James and John than we like to admit, and as usual, Christ disturbs us...
...Before it a sea of fresh-cut grass, dotted with scrawny cherry trees, toddlers, dandelions...
...Dennis M. Doyle teaches theology at the University of Dayton...
...Certainly--but as Pope John XXIII noted in his speech opening Vatican II, the past is not perfection in comparison to our era...
...On leaving Mass, many conversations begin among small groups of people...
...A few people genuflect as they leave their pews...
...This crowd isn't dutiful...
...Crowded around a statue of Saint Joan in her armor at the front of the church, a youth choir, complete with an electric-guitar player, a percussionist, and a keyboard player, belted out lively Spanish hymns...
...Students may also obtain an M.Div...
...and a large mural of Christ the King and several saints in the apse...
...In the sanctuary were three altar boys and one girl...
...In imagining how the future will regard his desultory Manhattan congregation, Paul Elie issues a useful caution: "I thought of the 166 or so of us here today, and how we would be made over into people of our time and place, all our particularities falling away with the flesh, our doubts and misgivings and mutinous impulses smoothed out into generalities about modern American Catholics...
...He was joined during the liturgy by at least twenty others, women and men in equal number, all of whom appeared at ease in their ministries...
...The couple forbade any mention of God during the service...
...an old Hispanic woman making the sign of the cross four different ways across her wrinkled face, praising Christ in a whisper of Spanish...
...Michael O. Garvey is the author of Finding Fault (Thomas More...
...Did our correspondents' attendance at Mass on one typical Sunday make their faith more or less of a compelling reality in their lives...
...Now at the offertory, the children and their catechists return...
...Among the white majority of the congregation, many are of German descent...
...When she announces the first hymn, they stand dutifully but stolidly gaze forward...
...There were warm greetings of peace, a reaching out toward others at the Our Father, and mutual affection among families...
...Christ fires back classic Christly conundrum: he who wishes to be great must be a servant...
...Women and men assisted the presider in the preparation of the gifts...
...Like Jesus himself, the pastor doesn't sugarcoat it...
...Above all, how faithfully did the liturgy make Christ present to those in attendance...
...Do these subtle emphases impact beliefs in the reality of the Eucharist...
...It takes only a few seconds for a recollecting silence to dissolve the general chat, and we begin...
...On Mission Sunday last year, a priest working in Africa had come and given an expert homily on the need to spread the resources of the gospel worldwide...
...In the prayer of the faithful, the present and former guests of the house are remembered, as are two relatives dying of cancer and the victims and perpetrators of a recent round of driveby shootings in town...
...n a typical Sunday, Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Jackson Heights, Queens, is one of the busiest places in this bustling neighborhood of immigrants, old and new...
...Did everyone around me, particularly the males, sing...
...The small ceremonies (on other Sundays) of inducting new acolytes, commissioning catechists, and welcoming first communicants, are all simple and warm...
...I~ is covered with an embroidered cloth on which have been placed a thick yellow candle, an earthenware vase of wildflowers, and the missal...
...They decided to be married at a former synagogue on the Lower East Side, now the headquarters of a progressive art foundation, a crumbling building with a shaky tabernacle surviving at one end...
...My overwhelming impressions were of youth and energy--greeters at each entrance, the nursery filling rapidly, parishioners placing intentions in a basket which would be held aloft at the prayer of the faithful...
...There, in ordinary language, is the Paschal Mystery--in just thirteen minutes...
...A young woman smartly introduced the celebrant...
...in two separate spiritual worlds...
...But as I would discover, there is a strong sense of Christ's presence in the assembly itself...
...The homily about gospel service was developed in the context of the recent national gathering of Promise Keepers...
...Queens, New York 0 Elena Cabriel is a free-lance writer who lives in New York City...
...Inside, there is something everywhere for the eyes: statues, paintings, mosaics, stained glass windows, and mottled marble pillars...
...all but a handful will stay after Mass to chat in cheerful knots...
...The choir sings motets during the offertory collection and during the post-Communion meditation period...
...a majority took the cup...
...I'm not trying to make a case for inattention or lousy liturgy...
...the "cheap seats" in the addition allow only limited sight of the altar and three-sided assembly...
...I hope I may be forgiven: I was director in that same choir loft for ten years...
...The liturgy at Saint Philip Neri was certainly a "one-man show...
...Mass together with a full and diverse assembly: old people and young (lots of babies), black, Oriental, Hispanic--the Atlanta spectrum--also socioeconomically, from stylish Buckhead matrons to folks a step or so above the street...
...When or whether our reflex becomes fervor, I wouldn't presume to say...
...Before Mass, the pastor roamed throughout the assembly, chatting, receiving "news bulletins," embracing and being tackled by children...
...The church has a fine organ and a splendid organist...
...The well-trained choir is garbed in traditional choir robes...
...I noticed there were few black, Hispanic, or Asian parishioners--at least at this celebration...
...I joined the community assembling in Saint Thomas of Villanova chapel on the campus of Villanova University...
...CELEBRATING MASS Fourteen reports from the pews Luke Timothy Johnson _9 Dennis M. Doyle _9 Bernard P. Prusak _9 Paul Elie Peggy Rosenthal ~ Lyn C. Isbell _9 Michael O. Garvey ~ Ralph Thibodeau ~ Elena Cabriel ~ Dennis Burke Robert D. Duggan ~ Kathleen Hughes ~ Jon Nilson ~ Brian Doyle ++++++++ Introduction ++++++++ o a remarkable degree, Catholics of all stripes cherish the Mass, judging it the most important expression of their faith, the place where their religious identity continues to be forged in the most distinctive ways...
...The lector and the deacon proclaim the Scriptures loudly and clearly...
...At the elevation of the chalice, a man two pews in front of me strikes his breast...
...More sacrifice, more vertical, less horizontal...
...I also had to forgive, there, the irritating inattention of about a fifth of the congregation: those who drifted in late, who sat with dully blank faces, who didn't sing the hymns or Mass parts, despite the cantor's joyously energetic efforts to engage them...
...Nearly everyone in the church partook of the Eucharist, I thought with due solemnity, yet a feeling of intimacy...
...The Gospel, from Mark, is about the Apostles James and John, who itch for good seats in heaven and demand same of the Rabbi...
...My geographical parish is also where I choose to worship...
...The homily consisted of several amusing stories about life in Pakistan and East Africa and was not entirely without theological content...
...As familiar as the Mass was, I found it hard personally to connect to a priest who was himself a visitor and had to ask the congregation if there was to be a second offering, then apologized for rushing because he was due in a separate part of the church for another Mass...
...The homilies, the music, the quality of reverence exhibited, even the churches' architecture were all fair game for comment...
...Two other priests are robed and on the altar, and the whole crowd sings lustily, holds hands while chanting the Our Father, exchanges hearty handshakes of peace at startling length (one energetic boy making his way completely around the chapel...
...Still, the ways in which ecclesiology and theology shape each other are real, if subtle...
...The pastor does not try to whip up their energy nor urge the people to sing Commonweal | 8 January30, 1998 or respond louder...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 2
