Some years ago when I was on the faculty of the Catholic Theological Union at Chicago and had done a fair amount of research and writing about issues relating to women in the Church I received a call from a bishop in the Midwest. The bishop asked if I would spend a day with all the bishops and major superiors of his state, helping them to reflect on the topic “Women: What Are We Afraid Of?” I was intrigued by the topic and happy to accept his request. We chatted a bit more and then hung up. About ten minutes later it hit me! I hadn’t asked: who is the “we”? The bishops? The major superiors? Rome? Ordinary believers? Women? The day of reflection would take a very different turn depending on the answer to that question. It matters where you stand and what you see from that vantage point.

I was reminded of that experience as I first heard about and then read the latest document from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome, an Instruction entitled Redemptionis Sacramentum. The subtitle of the document, “On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist” suggests, accurately, that the text is largely devoted to liturgical abuses, and they are of three types: sacrilegious matters, grave matters and other abuses. The text is oddly reminiscent of the state of liturgical instruction prior to Vatican Council II when a priest was schooled not in liturgy but in rubrics and, prior to ordination, learned the more than 600 ways it was possible to commit sin while—as we called it then—“saying Mass.”

Issues of sacrilege and validity aside, Redemptionis Sacramentum speaks of everything from suitable vesture to flagons of wine, from proper ways to receive communion to the proper order of reception (ministers first), from approved Eucharistic Prayers to appropriate times to welcome the ministry of the laity (when the ordained are not available). Furthermore, and perhaps most perplexing of all, the entire assembly have been deputed as liturgical police, urged to report abuses to the local Ordinary or, if necessary, to the Apostolic See.

Just as I puzzled over the “we,” I now puzzle over the “abuses” which have been singled out for our attention. Abuses, I ask, to whom? Whether, for example, a priest wears his stole under (correct) or on top of his chasuble has never been one of my preoccupations at the liturgy. Nor has it contributed to or distracted from the depth of prayer of the assembly. It seems to me that the issue with regard to vesture is whether or not it makes the presider a transparent leader who has “put on Christ.”

But there are some abuses overlooked by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments that I would like to name from my vantage point in the assembly. I would, furthermore, gladly report them to my local Ordinary if I thought it might make a difference in the quality of the liturgical prayer life of this or any local Church.

These “abuses” include the following: lack of reverence among the ministers; neglect of hospitality; an absence of adequate spaces of silence to interiorize what has been said and done; perfunctory gestures and any sense of haste; ministers that do not sing or pay attention to the readers but appear only to come alive when they are performing; homilies that are ill-prepared, banal, self-referential, and badly delivered thus depriving the assembly of the Word of God; the absence of any human relationship between the assembly and the presider in this single act of prayer and praise; the proclamation of the Eucharistic Prayer that does not sound like the presider has ever prayed the prayer before, or has said the words to the point of ennui, or simply does not sound like he means it; a multiplication of symbols, cups on the altar for example, that vitiates the power of a central symbol, and, in this regard, a multiplication of concelebrants that obscures the reality that Jesus Christ is the one and only leader of prayer; competing and even escalating “signs of reverence” before communion as if approaching the altar in procession, participating in the communion hymn, and cupping ones hands “as a throne” were not adequate signs of a receptive interior disposition; liturgical spaces that have not been even minimally remodeled to serve the revised rites of Vatican II; making the reception of communion a political football; and the total neglect of ongoing formation of the baptized in understanding the mysteries we celebrate in the presence of the God of Mystery.

Add to these “abuses”—and let me say parenthetically how surprising it is to find a document even using that word when it has such a different currency in this country’s pedophilia aftermath—the additional corrections and cautions when a community gathers in the absence of a priest because of the increasing shortage of clergy. When no priest or deacon is present, no one person may be called presider nor assume the leadership of prayer but parts must be divvied up lest the faithful be confused, but confused about what? A community deprived of the eucharist must also now be denied coherent leadership and, absent a specific mandate from the local Ordinary, denied preaching after the readings.

Further indignities await us. A new edition of the Roman Missal translated on the principle that it must be “as literal as possible” is just around the corner. It employs, by all advance accounts, an arcane latinate hybrid language which is virtually guaranteed to satisfy no one and will be far more disruptive to the community’s prayer than the current confusion about when to stand at the end of the preparation of the altar and the gifts or when to kneel before communion.

For years I taught the Worship Practica courses, among them, the class affectionately called the “How to Say Mass Class.” I am more aware than most of liturgical rubrics and I believe in a carefully ordered celebration, surely not as an end in itself but for the sake of the community’s prayer. One learns the rubrics in order never to have to think about them but to be able to lead the assembly into a depth of prayer and praise. That’s what is urgently needed – experiences where we gather to worship and come away nourished at the table of God’s word and at the Supper of the Lord, experiences of touching the divine, experiences of being sent from the table, alive to the implications of what we have done for the life of the world.

It matters where you stand and what you see from that vantage point. I suspect if the assembly were invited to reflect on “certain matters to be observed or to be avoided” in the Church’s liturgical prayer in preparation for another instruction from the Congregation for Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, there might be a groundswell for a very different approach, namely, how to help us all pray more deeply and live from day to day what we gather at the Table to celebrate.

For this, let us pray to the Lord.


Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ
Provincial
Society of the Sacred Heart

Former Professor of Word and Worship
Catholic Theological Union at Chicago