Writing in the Chicago Catholic (Sept. 3, linked below), Cardinal Blase Cupich tries to distinguish between “tradition” and “traditionalism,” invoking Ss. Vincent of Lérins and John Henry Newman on development of doctrine to make his case for Vatican II’s reform of the liturgy. He’s concerned that “traditionalism” is obscuring the Council’s emphasis on the “active participation” of the faithful in a liturgy marked by “noble simplicity.”

As I have repeatedly said, I am not a partisan of the Traditional Latin Mass. I do not attend it. But I see a huge problem in letting the question of how to interact with the Church’s liturgical tradition be refracted primarily through the Novus Ordo/Usus Antiquior lens. That issue would exist independently of the Traditional Latin Mass question.

I neither expect nor would want the Novus Ordo to go away. But accepting the Novus Ordo does not mean I see no problems with it or with the efforts of those who, supposedly differentiating “tradition” from “traditionalism,” paint their critiques with a broad brush. It is not an article of faith — even in Vatican II — to say everything the implementation commissions did in the Council’s name was a brilliant and proper execution of the Conciliar texts and its Fathers’ vision.

In his essay, Cardinal Cupich tells us that the liturgy was marred by accretions detracting from its “noble simplicity” and participation of the faithful, especially during the “Carolingian” (7^th-9^th century) and Baroque periods. Inasmuch as the “Carolingian” period generally is thought to have begun in the mid-8^th century, I’m not sure where Cardinal Cupich spent half of that historical period. But I come back to a question I recently raised in these pages (here), i.e., the concept of history.

Again, why are the first five centuries some magic, time-bound liturgical era? I recognize the normativity of the Church’s earliest experience of liturgy and the desirability of returning to the sources. At the same time, I question the theology of history and time undergirding this exclusive preoccupation with the Ecclesia quinque saeculis.

Did the Holy Spirit not lead the Church after AD 499? Was He absent until 1965? Or did He lead the Church into temptation in the Carolingian court, where the “noble simplicity” of the liturgy was marred by court ritual? Was Providence inactive? Cupich says the liturgy was “obscured by a series of adaptations and influences that reflected the church’s expanding relationship with secular power and society.” Well, that raises the ecclesiastical history stakes beyond liturgical history. Was the Church’s relationship to the “secular power and society” wrongly directed for a thousand years? Should the Church have left the West to founder without civil leadership? Or should it have retreated to the sacristy once Charlemagne came along (and not contested Caesars Big and Little wanting to appoint bishops)?

But the most basic question remains: Why would the Holy Spirit have allowed the Church’s most fundamental and constitutive act — her liturgy — to be so mired down for 1,500 years? Or maybe this whole way of looking at history is flawed?

Cardinal Cupich criticizes the Baroque as inimical to the liturgical “aesthetic” of  “noble simplicity.” Perhaps we should follow the feet of the sensus fidelium to see what they tell us? Can he explain why people travel the world to pray in Baroque and Gothic cathedrals? Why people are attached to the “Polish cathedral”-style churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago? Have you heard of people flocking en masse to the multifunctional Our Lady of the Reformed Taco Bell?

No, neither have I.

Yes, there may have been liturgical accretions worthy of removal. But Cardinal Cupich never provides a hermeneutic by which to distinguish “noble simplicity” from “cheap and tacky.” (For more on this, see here.) And the answer cannot simply be: whatever the incumbent bishop says. Especially not in a “dialogical,” “synodal” Church where “clericalism” is to be suppressed.

Speaking of examples of supposed liturgical “accretions,” if you listened to the liturgical experts at the time of Vatican II, Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon) should be gone. (See here.) It was their whipping boy for everything deformed and distorted with the liturgy. Any impartial reading of the “leading lights” of the reform were sure it would disappear. Except it hasn’t. Even in the Novus Ordo. In some dioceses, it’s resurgent.

Why? Pure canonical positivism? Because Pope Paul VI let it stay there? No doubt Bugnini et al. would have eliminated the Roman Canon if they could have… but they couldn’t. The idea of multiple canons to pick and choose from was considered radical enough. Pope Paul VI would never have allowed Eucharistic Prayer I to be suppressed outright. So, did all the “accretions” and “duplications” arguably in Eucharistic Prayer I suddenly cease being “accretions” and “duplications”? Or, maybe they weren’t so bad after all? The point is: They can’t have changed their spots or their impact solely because of a canonical decision, unless you believe that the Holy Spirit voices His Will primarily through episcopal rescripts. And if canonical prescriptions function as the locus theologicus for good liturgy, then explain how many parishes liberally and openly ignore Vatican norms aimed at restraining the proliferation of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist every Sunday… and few bishops say anything about it. Isn’t that interfering with proper order in the liturgy? Or does local ordinaries’ silence perform a canonical sanatio in radice that legitimates the violation?

If the Roman liturgy was so weighed down for so long by imperial barnacles, how does one explain the spiritual nurture Catholics undoubtedly gained from it during those long dark centuries? Were they spiritually succored? Or do today’s liturgists think they were suckered? Was it all the worst of ex opere operato theology — God provided despite what man did to the liturgy? Wow.

Let’s pull this thread further. If, despite their impaired “active participation” those Catholics found spiritual sustenance, then one needs to explain how the average Catholic seemed more “active” then than now, measured at least by church attendance. Being at Mass, after all, seems the minimum prerequisite to “active” participation. Today, perhaps 10% of Catholics regularly meet the Commandment’s obligation of weekly Mass, a figure that would have scandalized bishops in the “bad old days.” So, were they so “bad”?

Yes, Vatican II was absolutely correct in accentuating the faithful’s “active and conscious participation” in the liturgy, but what exactly that means is again not always clear. Let’s pose some questions to see how that lack of clarity muddles what should be a debate that we engage directly, resolve, and move beyond. Do we have “better” active participation these days when most Catholics ignore their domenical precept duty? Is “active and conscious participation” manifest in almost ubiquitous frequent Communion joined to infrequent Confession? For argument’s sake: Can “active and conscious participation” only happen from a versus populum posture? If so, are Eastern Christians less actively and consciously participants in the liturgy because most of it takes place behind the iconostasis, a screen? Have the Eastern Churches therefore not implemented Vatican II? Does anybody really believe our Eastern Christian brothers in communion with Rome live a less active liturgical life than we Latin Catholics do?

Finally, let me raise something I think may be a problematic corollary to the “active” participation focus. Growing up in the 1970s as the Roman rite changed, I remember the complaint voiced in various quarters that I thought then — and now — was an excuse for dropping out of going to Mass: “I don’t get anything out of it.” Should we ask ourselves whether the emphasis on “active” subtly fuels that shift in focus from God to me, so that “active participation” means at least to some people “what I get out of it?” In noting this, I do not reject Vatican II’s focus on “active participation” in the liturgy. I do ask, however, whether a one-sided emphasis on it might wrongly encourage a shift in the liturgy away from focus on the Lord who, in the end, “has no need of our praise; our desire to thank You is itself Your gift.”

I do not seek to be polemical, but I do recognize that the liturgical reforms of Vatican II cannot be pronounced unalloyed successes. Engaging that truth and moving towards that open discussion about the good and the rest would be a more fruitful and pastoral activity than fighting straw men of “traditionalism.”

Again, I bear no torch for pushing the Traditional Latin Mass. Neither, however, will I pretend that everything done in the name of Vatican II either represented the Council nor has borne the test of time. Vatican II (Lumen gentium, 37, Apostolicam actuositatem, 24) also endorses the laity telling our bishops what we need (and don’t) in the Church: consider these thoughts offered in that spirit.

[A link to Cardinal Cupich’s September 3 Chicago Catholic is here.]