LITURGICAL ARTS

...ence of political, social, cultural, and ecclesiastical objections-and, no doubt, this complexity and its long history require today's advocates for lay inclusion to approach the LAY PREACHING issue with a humble spirit...

...youth and yet it impressed me as radically dif- That heart catches nothing...

...If eloquence is a quality we ask of the public prayer the weeds and wheat will have to grow along-side one an- of the church, it must be acknowledged that the contempoother for a while...

...It would only add to the list of issues about which century...

...ferent...

...11 course, this necessarily precluded the possibility of women preaching...

...It may mean that for Latin...

...Even nonbelievers like Carl Jung have ac- Probably the most striking difference between the Triknowledged that the Tridentine Mass is a solemn rite of ex- dentine and the present rite is the position of the priest, who, traordinary power...

...We need to emphasize more both unable to imagine attending a liturgy in a language other the local and the universal, to throw off the false security of than the one they speak...

...It seems particularly unfitting at a time in be celebrated in the same language, and on my first trip to which Catholics and other Christians are moving in the diEurope I found that to be true...

...were laid down in the 1983 revised Code of Canon Law...

...Latin of the Mass still reminds us that the church transcends Jones," in order to convey that they were no longer high- time, but it no longer reminds us that it also transcends school students but college-age adults...

...Nothing seems stranger nounces that an action of extraordinary importance is about to younger Catholics...

...succeed only in conveying that he is eccentric as well as un- Before driving to Flint, I looked over the readings for the friendly or remote...

...One lesson at least I have retained from my Each exhale propels wing dust earlier experience of the Tridentine rite: Catholics, unlike into the air between lovers, many of our fellow Christians, place (or should place) more and in fresh sun the butterfly dust importance on the office of a priest than on his personality...

...he Tridentine rite I attended in Flint was un- Love eats air, not blood...

...I Enough with these ideas did not envy the priest his position...

...Of course, some of my impressions are personal guage is, in fact, mortal, subject to modification and change or peculiar to Catholics of my generation...

...the old liturgy...

...On the contrary, each person has specific claims by qualities of each...

...tionary readings for the day in order to participate in the I regret to report that even my beloved Latin has lost spirit of the liturgy even when I cannot attend daily Mass...

...But the landscape has changed dramatically in recent years...

...on that action, not on each other...

...Purely by virtue of con- pastor, who had celebrated an earlier Mass in Ypsilanti and trast, it has become more formal and hieratic than it for- who therefore had to prepare two quite different homilies...

...self were the words I knew from my childhood in BrookThe same salutation would resonate very differently today, lyn...

...every Sunday, waiting to be summoned...

...The Latin words I heard in Flint were still familiar, but when it is almost as likely that the recipient will be a woman...

...Tu solus Dominus...

...It is difficult not to be about a heart holding love...

...My understanding of the rection of sharing a common lectionary...

...I recall reading a poem removed...

...That I should be Commonweal 2 5 September 8, 2000 able to refer to last Sunday's readings when speaking with ticipation has emerged since the council as well...

...was always an altar boy): "Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem So the huge wake of sinners grows wider and wider meam" (Unto God who giveth joy to my youth...

...It still signifies that the church is the same semper (almodes of address have grown virtually obsolete even in the ways), but it has been deprived of its capacity to signify that workplace, a professor who still held to that practice would it is the same ubique (everywhere...

...I never thought the Tridentine rite theatrical, but the first time I attended the present rite my initial impression was that the Butterflies sanctuary had been turned into a stage, the congregation into an audience, and the priest into the star performer...

...The very entrance of the priest, bearing in the Tridentine ritual, faces the altar away from the people the veiled chalice and paten and preceded by servers, an- rather than toward the community...

...name by which we refer to it is significant...

...I'm impressed that many priests re- butterflies churn and clarify love...

...A vernacular liturgy has much to bureaucracy, and to take the risks required for cultural re- recommend it, but there are several things still to be said naissance and spiritual revival in our time...

...loquial use, Latin, like ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek, is The Mass left me with a set of strong but conflicting im- said to be a "dead" language...

...The inessential accretions of centuries have been approach the throne of God together...

...It may be reenacted daily, but it is no every- members the priest as "turning his back to us...

...Such virtue of baptism and the power of the Spirit...

...But now that formal place...

...A tremen- phasis on the gospel mandate that all the baptized preach to dous pool of talent and energy inhabits our pews the ends of the earth...

...Tu solus altissimus," or the pany and a former member of the Worship Commission of the Arch- so-called Common Preface, "Per quem majestatem tuam laudant diocese of Cincinnati...

...day, which, according to my lectionary, was the twentySomething analogous has occurred over time with the third Sunday of ordinary time...

...It has become impossible to experience it was the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, which employs without contrasting it mentally with the form of the Mass quite different readings...

...Further, the council called laity as envisioned by Vatican II...

...And strong canonical support for increased lay par- the ministry of the word...

...conflicting impressions...

...With time I've grown accustomed to the Their iridescent wings present rite, but I still remember fondly the days when the ir- beat along the esophagus, ritating personality or the exasperating mannerisms of a less dusting the lungs, flustering than amiable priest could be so readily obscured by his sa- the larynx so no one can speak...

...The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) banned it outCatholics disagree...

...sion of prayer...

...The meanings we attach to things Ethan Gilsdorf depend largely on their context...

...Certainly, I day action...

...Commonweal 24 September 8, 2000 I've also heard the Tridentine Mass described as a "oneman show...

...Even an older Catholic friend reto be reenacted...

...At one time the conventional letter salutation employed when writing to a sermons I heard was imperfect, but the words of the Mass itbusiness person whose name was unknown was "Dear Sir...

...But at the church I visited it Tridentine Mass...

...Of "moveth all together, if it move at all...

...Angeli, adorant Dominationes, tremunt Pot estates...

...For the first half of and destined at some point to perish...

...a construction would amount to a tertium quid, some third For the first five hundred years of the church's history, thing that would satisfy neither those who wish to restore the the laity were permitted, even encouraged, to preach...

...Canon 759, for example, underscores the role of the various charisms of the laity...

...identifies and defines the atmosphere between them...

...To be sure, every human lanpressions...

...In my youth we never spoke of the Tridentine rite but spoke only of the Mass...

...From the repeated allusions to offering, obla- do not remember thinking of it that way at the time...

...It was celebrated at a it officially adopted, preceded the tongues we speak today, parish church in Flint, Michigan, by the pastor of a number of which it mothered...

...For a varimy Episcopalian or Lutheran friends but not when speaking ety of reasons-primarily the baptismal mandate, but also, with fellow Catholics who have attended the Tridentine for instance, the alarming decline in religious and priestly voMass can only be described as perverse...

...Jesus' charge to his disciples to "teach either the Tridentine or the present rite, I found myself imag- all nations" was not an exclusive franchise awarded to the ining a form of the Mass that combined the most admirable Twelve...

...sist the temptation...

...In the stomach, approval of an audience...

...In my youth, the Latin The use of readings other than those in the present lectionary of the Mass served as a sign of the church's universality...

...self-conscious when all eyes follow your every gesture, and That dumb, stumbling muscle the impulse (a naturally human one) is to perform, to win the knows nothing...

...The very The lung and gut hunt love...

...That's better than living in a desert...

...Hearing the Mass in Latin rather than in English, we are also reminded that we are as intimately associated with the THE TRIDENTINE MASS generations of earlier Christians who once celebrated it as we are with the present generation, that the church is very old ecently, for the first time in more than thirty as well as perennially young...

...Which is turned toward me...

...Bill Shuter is a professor of literature at Eastern Michigan Univer- The reasons for the prohibition were complex-a conflusity in Ypsilanti...

...The supervisor to address students as "Miss Smith" or "Mr...

...Unwilling to sacrifice in spreading the gospel...

...I knew they were not the words being heard in the parish When I began my teaching career years ago, I was told by my churches of France, of Brooklyn, or even of Ypsilanti...

...Not only have the needs of the hirty-five years after the close of Vatican II, the church and the world deepened, but also Vatican II and the role of the Catholic laity remains generally un- papacy of John Paul II have underscored the theological emderdeveloped and underappreciated...

...More recently, the 1917 Code of Canon Law stated task of modifying it to those who can speak for the the uni- that the laity were forbidden to preach, and that the charism versal church, which, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, or "faculty" to do so was restricted to priests and deacons...

...Since Tridentine Mass in the name of tradition nor those who that time, however, church fathers have generally opposed wish, also in the name of tradition, to preserve the present it, sometimes vociferously, as with Leo the Great in the fifth rite...

...cations-there is today an urgent need to form laypeople Revisiting the Tridentine Mass left me with strong but for specific responsibilities...

...Inessential they may be, but many of the omitted in college by Charles Peguy in which God describes his viparts were beautifully apt and of great devotional value...

...priest and people faced in the same direction signified to By its nature the Mass is always a sacrifice, but its sacrificial me that they were engaged in a common action, because character is more insistently affirmed and articulated in the people engaged in a common action focus their attention Tridentine than in the present rite...

...In the case of the Mass the The present Mass is a good deal shorter than the Triden- people assemble and, led by the priest (in persona Christi), tine rite...

...There was no other...

...Down changed in every respect from the Mass of my with the thudding machine...

...Vatican II urged priests to "discover with the instinct of The new code effectively repeals the prohibition of the 1917 faith, acknowledge with joy, and foster with diligence the code...

...But I quickly abandoned the fantasy...

...It states: "In virtue of their on the entire church to evangelize the modern world through baptism and confirmation, lay members of the Christian renewal of the laity's role...

...My impression is precisely the opposite...

...It reminded me of the Mass: I'm thinking, for example, of the priest who may have cele- Just as the wake of a beautiful ship grows wider and brated Mass every day for forty or fifty years introducing wider until it disappears and loses itself, each Mass with the psalm "Introibo ad altare Dei" (I will go But begins with a point, which is the point of the ship unto the altar of God) and of the response of the server (who itself...

...An institution or convention may remain itself unchanged, but it is invested with a different meaning after its context is altered...

...In every gesture, prayer, and rubric The purpose of this short article is to focus on one initiative, it was the same Mass I knew in childhood, and yet in an- lay preaching, as an opportunity for effective lay participation other sense it was not at all the same...

...A wider variety of rich, artistic expression- from Latin to the vernacular, and most of the younger called for in EACW and welcomed in the Letter to Artists- Catholics I know take the English Mass for granted and are would be given freer rein...

...Like many other Catholics, I consult the lecthe assembly's...

...Or of the until it disappears and loses itself, imposing coda with which the old rite invariably concluded, But it begins with a point, which is the point of the those magnificent opening words of the Gospel of John: "In ship itself, and it is that point which comes toward principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat me, Verbum...

...My first thoughts were of our dear with which we are more familiar...

...I impedes the communality of worship the lectionary was was told that wherever I went in the world the Mass would designed to foster...

...And since the end of Canonically, important new guidelines on lay preaching the council, the need for active laity has only increased...

...Because it is no longer in colthe university chapel in Ypsilanti of which I am a member...

...credotal function...

...For example, after so many years of On reflection, however, I recognized that this difference in community participation, I couldn't but feel that the servers readings focused my vague sense of dissatisfaction with the at the Flint Mass were usurping a role that was properly Tridentine rite...

...As the church existed before years, I had an opportunity to attend the Tri- the formation of modem nationalities, so Latin, the language R dentine Mass of my youth...

...It affirmed that the laity, by virtue faithful are witnesses to the gospel message by word and of baptism, are entitled to hold office in the church and that by example of a Christian life...

...idiom for a liturgical action instituted by Christ and repeatPersonal associations aside, I was struck by the power of ed by the church "until he comes again...

...The form of the Mass may undergo fur- right, a ban that was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent in ther modification in the future, but I'm happy to entrust the 1545...

...merly seemed...

...But precisely because my life, the Tridentine Mass was the only Mass I knew...

...El rary English version is lacking in rendering either the exaltation or the concision of the climax of the Gloria, "Quoniam Joseph Schickel is a project facilitator for the Schickel Design Com- to solus sanctus...

...That tion, and victim, it becomes dear that the action is a sacrifice...

...they can also be called to cothey are expected to speak to the world from within the operate with the bishop and presbyters in the exercise of world...

...ship spaces would be far more diverse, creative, and au- Most of my older Catholic friends are grateful for the change thentically local...

...What it is no longer a "living" language, ecclesiastical Latin has, in to younger Catholics today might seem strange and per- a sense, passed beyond the reach of change and enjoys a haps alienating, impressed me at the Flint parish as familiar linguistic immortality that renders it a particularly suitable and even reassuring...

...much of its associative power for me...

...Lay preaching is also approved at other gatherings: during Commonweal 26 September 8, 2000...

...Too much has intervened...

...And canons 762 through 772 specifically focus on the subject of lay preaching, with canon 766 explicitly reopening a door that had been closed for centuries: "Laypersons can be admitted to preach in a church or oratory if it is necessary in certain circumstances or if it is useful in particular cases according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops and with due regard for canon 767, l." In interpreting this last provision, two outstanding contemporary canonists, James Coriden (The Code of Canon Law, Paulist Press) and John Huels (More Disputed Questions in the Liturgy, Liturgy Training Publications), maintain that while the homily itself is reserved to a priest or deacon, when "necessity or usefulness require it" laypersons are authorized to preach, even within the context of the Eucharist...