by Kathleen Hughes, rscj

I looked up the previous recipients of the McManus award and realized I had learned something important from each one of them-some critical gift or piece of wisdom that has shaped me and may be helpful for all of us today to get through these challenging times. I'd like to share that wisdom with you and then tell you what I hope you have learned from me.

From Fred McManus I learned the virtue of hope. From the days he served as peritus at Vatican II, through the vicissitudes, the triumphs and, in these latter days, the tragedies of the work of ICEL and the renewal of the liturgy in general, Fred has never lost hope that we will achieve a renewed liturgy worthy of the God who gathers us.

Godfrey Diekmann was my mentor and friend and from him I learned great theological truths. Once in a restaurant he startled and silenced a good number of tables around us when he shouted: “It's not the resurrection dammit! It's the incarnation! We don't believe it…we don't believe we are invited to become the very life of God.” Then, without missing a beat, he commented on the seasonings in the soup, eating being another of his passions.

John Page is a man I count as friend, colleague and collaborator. For me John embodies the best of liturgical scholarship with his classical training and inexhaustible labor placed at the service of the reform, but even more, John taught me civility, a virtue in short supply both in our country these days and in many Church debates. And perhaps more astonishing then his persistent civility is John's unfailing charity.

Ade Bethune was a lover of life. One day I visited her at her home in Rhode Island and talked with her across her coffin, a pine box she used as a coffee table. She said that none of us is able to claim a proper reverence or devotion for the Eucharist unless we have first of all a proper reverence for food. From her I learned a passion for the sacramentality of all of life, and the need to give ourselves over to ordinary time, every minute of it subject to transformation.

Aidan Kavanagh had the great good sense to accept me into the doctoral program at Notre Dame, taking a chance on someone without the right entrance requirements or credentials. Aidan was a consummate teacher, whether in the classroom, on the lecture circuit or through his writings, and he made me want to teach well, to teach with both mind and heart, to help others see and love what I have seen and believed.

Gabe Huck, for all of us, embodies in one human heart the complete intermingling of liturgy and just living. From others on this list I learned a passion for this or that; from Gabe I learned the importance of being passionate, passionate for what you care for and work for, love and long for - no matter the personal cost.

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk taught me a lesson in pragmatism. When to our chagrin the Order of Christian Funerals did not receive the confirmation, but rather ten pages of critique from Rome, the archbishop's approach reminded me of that country western hit: “You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run!” In this instance, as in the numerous squabbles over translation on the floor of the U.S. Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Pilarczyk has been adept in the art of dialogue and compromise for the sake of a greater good.

My final predecessor is Bishop Donald Trautman, approachable in person, transparent in his speaking, and genuinely pastoral in his decision making. I guess what he has taught me most are the qualities of authentic pastoral leadership so necessary in today's Church.

Now it is my turn to offer a piece of wisdom. While I would love it if I thought I have given you hope, expounded theological truths, exercised civility and charity, lived a sacramental way of life, taught with mind and heart, acted passionately, developed the gift of dialogue and compromise, and exercised leadership with approachability and transparency, what I would really hope to be my legacy would be a gift for speaking the truth with love.

I'd like to illustrate that gift by a brief reflection on Redemptionis Sacramentum.

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. We-each of us-see different aspects of the truth. It matters where you stand.

I was reminded of that experience as I first read the 2004 Instruction from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments 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 mine 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 great High Priest and 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 ample 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 nearly universal 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 the pedophilia aftermath - add to these abuses 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 as well.

Further indignities await us. A new edition of the Ordo Missae, translated not on the principles of Comme le Prevoit, but of Liturgiam Authenticam, 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, a 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 again 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. This is what I see when I reflect on “certain matters to be observed or to be avoided” in the Church's liturgical prayer. I speak the truth to focus us on what truly matters: that our liturgical prayer be true and deep and that we live faithfully from day to day what we have gather at the Table to celebrate.

Thank you.

Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ