Two Immediate Threats to Contemporary Liturgics

The liturgy wars seem to have heated up again in, of all places, Charlotte, North Carolina. The liturgical ruminations of Bishop Michael Martin began ostensibly as the implementation of restrictions on the celebration of the Usus antiquior (the Traditional Latin Mass, or TLM) but quickly accelerated into broader attack (according to a leaked document he had planned to present to parishes in his diocese) on arguably discretionary items in the Novus Ordo Missae, such as whether priests can say certain prayers while vesting and whether candles should be placed on/around/alongside altars.

Let me be candid, for colleague and critic. I do not attend the TLM and have no particular interest in its restoration. That said, I do believe there are legitimate criticisms of the reformed liturgy that grew out of the Second Vatican Council (or, more often, how that liturgy has been implemented), and voicing them does not equal a rejection of the council’s legitimacy.

Rather than dive into the minutiae of this controversy, I want to address two broad criticisms about liturgical studies as they have been practiced since the council. These criticisms pertain to the methodology of liturgical studies. An honest Church — certainly the “Church of dialogue,” about which we’ve heard so much — ought to be able to discuss them without polemics or attribution of false motives to the critics who raise them. Those two criticisms regard how liturgical studies uses history and canon law. They are tied together by an undercurrent: how liturgical studies fails to use theology.

History — specifically, a “return to the sources” — was one of the driving forces behind the 20th-century liturgical renewal. According to many drivers of liturgical reform preceding and during Vatican II, the Church’s liturgy had become disconnected from its historical roots. Ressourcement aimed at recovering those ancient traditions and tended to privilege the Church of the first five centuries as the normative model for liturgy.

Students of history, however, know that history is never quite that simple. Getting to the facts themselves can often be a challenge. The thing about “history” is that it is often still being uncovered. Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls between 1946 and 1956 turned biblical studies on its head. My point is that even the “facts” of history often require provisional humility, a certain readiness to admit that “based on what we know — because we don’t know what we don’t know — X seems to have been the case.”

If even facts sometimes demand a certain tentativeness, how we interpret those facts requires even greater reserve. Admitting that we don’t know what we don’t know means we might also be ignorant of the motives behind why X was done the way it was. Yet there then often follows the temptation to fill in the gap by projecting modern agendas onto the past. We might suggest this is the case, for example, regarding claims about postures for receiving Communion in the early Church and whether — in line with some contemporary preferences — they necessarily meant the early Church was endorsing the “dignity” of the “common priesthood of the faithful.” Such “history” seems not unlike the backward operation of biblical proof-texting: Instead of being certain of what the text means and adapting ourselves to it, we decide what it means and find textual “evidence” to support our contention.

But the problems with history in liturgical studies do not end there.

Why this quasi-sacralization of the rituals of the first five centuries? Yes, there were normative practices in the ancient Church and, when we find them across various liturgical usages, they provide persuasive arguments for the Church’s liturgical self-understanding. But the Holy Spirit did not take a vacation after the Council of Chalcedon. The Church is a living entity, not a museum. And there is no place in which the Church is more alive than in her liturgy, the enlivening principle of which is the Holy Spirit. So, why the bias in many liturgical circles against “medieval developments” or “Tridentine additions”? If the Church is alive in history, why do we act as if liturgical developments subsequent to the first five centuries are somehow tainted and must “justify” themselves against the Ecclesia quinque saeculis? Do we really think the Holy Spirit doesn’t inspire later liturgical development?

Take worship of the Eucharist outside the Mass. Yes, the central act of the Church is the celebration of the Eucharist, but as long as that priority is recognized, what is wrong with subsequent developments in eucharistic liturgical practices, such as exposition and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, eucharistic processions, and so on? Yes, Jansenist scrupulosity may have led some people to be satisfied with “take and look” in lieu of “take and eat.” But any sober assessment of the world in which we live would indicate that Jansenist scrupulosity is hardly a contemporary spiritual threat. When imbalance sets into a devotion, we should fix the imbalance, not claim the devotion itself is the imbalance. Yet there are still many liturgists who, when writing about worship of the Eucharist outside the Mass, express an almost palpably jaundiced attitude, as if the very existence of such devotions a priori represents detraction from the centrality of the Mass. Why is it not legitimate to ask whether such attitudes are more representative of those liturgists’ seeming inability to hold two complementary ideas together simultaneously, rather than an objective deficiency in later eucharistic devotional practices themselves?

We saw something of this kind of ahistorical fixation on time not long ago in biblical studies. Yes, the biblical scholar must know the Sitz-im-Leben of biblical material, which includes language studies and awareness of the culture of the times in which a biblical book was written. But the Bible is not a dead manuscript. Its meaning was not fossilized in the first century, to be admired like a fly in amber. God continues to speak through His Word, and recent biblical scholarship has broken from its desiccated model, prevalent from the 1970s to the 1990s, of the “historical-critical” method, which, in practice, turned lots of people away from Scripture.

Fixation on the liturgical practices of the Church in the first five centuries often overlooks the historical conditions of those times, which shaped those practices then but are wholly inapplicable now. Let me provide an example. There was a period during the 1980s when it was in vogue not to schedule time for the Sacrament of Reconciliation during the Paschal Triduum. When asked for justification, some liturgists invoked the “first five centuries” paradigm. According to them, in the ancient Church, reconciliation of penitents was completed by the bishop on the morning of Holy Thursday. That model, they argued, should be carried over to today.

Well, no. For one thing, the manner of celebrating reconciliation in antiquity was far different from today. Canonical penance, in which one carries out one’s penance prior to absolution by a bishop, is light years different from auricular confession in which absolution is given by a priest on the pledge of penance subsequently to be performed by the penitent. Pretending 1985 Minneapolis was 285 Milan presupposes a very creative imagination.

Which brings us to the problem of theology in history.

When I taught basic liturgy to seminarians in the 1990s, I encountered resistance from some theology professors on my faculty who seemed to imagine liturgy as rubrics/canonical studies, supplemented by history, but with very little strict theology. Today, the converse obtains. I recently saw a social-media post suggesting liturgy is just the window dressing for historical sacramental theology. All I can say is my approach to teaching liturgy was the polar opposite of such caricatures. If it is true that lex orandi, lex credendi, then we also should examine the Church’s faith and her theological expression, seeing how (and how well) her liturgy embodies it. That involves the sacraments and the history of rites — but not just those things.

An example: The Church’s faith, expressed in her liturgy, is that God “has sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” Christ’s Paschal Mystery — including His Resurrection and subsequent empowering of His Apostles to carry on His ministry of reconciliation — makes forgiveness of sins possible. Reckoning with the truths of the Paschal Triduum also confronts the sinner with the most profound reasons for his repentance. Set against these perspectives, would good theology (and, therefore, good liturgy) conclude that we should not make the Sacrament of Reconciliation available during the Paschal Triduum, because, in a very different era, Ambrose of Milan didn’t do things that way?

Tying (and evaluating) Church history together over the ages in which the Spirit has been active argues for the vigorous application of a hermeneutic of continuity. By identifying what is essential — theologically essential, not historically embodied — in the Church’s faith and practices, we have a far more reliable criterion for discerning the continuity of liturgical practices than merely asking, “Does it look like what happened in the first five centuries?” We also have a criterion that does not look with a jaundiced eye on legitimate developments subsequent to those first five centuries.

What does that say about the future? Like the obsession with “the Church of the first five centuries,” there is a similar fetish to crystallize concrete liturgical patterns that emerged, mostly in the late 1960s, as part of the implementation of the council’s liturgical reforms, as if they were also touchstone norms by which to judge all subsequent developments.

Let’s look back at that history. As a result of an exclusionary focus on “celebrating the Eucharist,” worship of the Eucharist outside the Mass declined in the 1970s and 1980s. Exposition and benediction went into eclipse. Adoration became infrequent. Practices like perpetual adoration virtually disappeared.

Starting in the 1990s, however, a new generation began to ask, “What of our tradition has been lost?” Parishes began restoring adoration. Many set aside particular days during the week for extended exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Younger priests rediscovered the Corpus Christi procession, not just around the nave and transept but on public streets.

By what criterion shall we evaluate these developments? Do we look backward, to their decline right after the council, and pronounce their recovery a “contamination” of contemporary liturgy by the past? Or do we look forward, convinced that the Holy Spirit has also been active in the Church these past 50 years, and that their recovery represents a wise stewardship of things old and new that fit together complementarily in the renewed liturgy and represent a wise course correction? Do we judge 2025 by 1965, or 1965 by 2025?

This entire approach is driven by the theological fact that the Spirit of Christ remains in His Church until the end of time, continuing to guide her in every age, amid the unfolding of history to a deeper faith and liturgy, in preparation for the eschatological liturgy of Heaven. This is not to say there are not norms, that we are in a “living Church” in which diametrical opposites of previous teaching can suddenly be “discerned” or even “revealed.” No — we accept that the canon is closed and there is a certain normativity to the early Church. But that normativity provides us with theological principles, not mere historical examples, of what is essential to the Church’s faith, principles that allow us to determine whether subsequent historical examples — medieval, Tridentine, or modern — stand in continuity with that faith.

The other threat to good liturgical studies is the continuing close association of liturgy with canon law. Indeed, that association is sometimes bizarre, but it does exist and often exercises a baneful influence.

Pope Francis often was wont to criticize “clericalism” in the Church. But his clerical strawman was often quite selective. He called “backward-looking” and “rigid” traditional Catholics who argued that some contemporary rituals lack a sense of holiness, and he thought such traditionalists required correction by motu proprio. At the same time, among Francis’s defenders, a bizarre kind of ultramontanism arose, as if suddenly Roma locuta, causa finita est applied in practice to Francis and in an inflationary way to all manner and levels of his teaching, discipline, and remarks. It was as if, to them, liturgical changes of course dictated by motu proprios or, worse, episcopal letters had no aroma of “clericalism.”

This double standard regarding “clericalism” was scored a quarter century ago by Aidan Nichols, O.P., in his book Christendom Awake: On Re-energizing the Church in Culture. Fr. Nichols observed that the clericalist priest who in 1965 insisted everybody do X because that is how the “tradition” (i.e., what he knew) had it was no different than the same man who in 1970 berated those who still objected to what he used to do but, in keeping with the times, now doesn’t do. What joined them was the common thread: “Father X said….”

I do not deny that there is a need for liturgical order. Nor do I deny that the bishop is responsible for the proper liturgical order of his diocese. That said, I do challenge selective liturgical-oversight supervision; the ordinary who is exercised about communicants wanting to kneel — arguably liturgical adiaphora under universal norms — cannot be blasé or even merely silent about Eucharistic Prayer by improvisation, which potentially threatens the validity of the Eucharistic celebration itself.

Nor can such liturgical supervision be a patchwork of demanding obedience grounded in disobedience. A bishop who insists that communicants who do not want to receive the Eucharist from an extraordinary minister nevertheless do so cannot ignore the fact that ecclesiastical norms provide for limited use of extraordinary ministers, such as when exigent circumstances render ordinary ministers unavailable. Exigent circumstances do not arise every Sunday morning at 10 AM. The bishop who is ready to call out communicants for bypassing the extraordinary minister cannot ignore that his allowing the proliferation of extraordinary ministers runs against the Church’s written norms about their use — norms not negated by how long they are disobeyed or because Bishop X says “it’s OK.” Why would that not represent “clericalism”?

Which, of course, brings us back to the relationship of canon law to theology. Let me be blunt. Canon law is at the service of good theology, not vice versa. Canonical decrees might mitigate ecclesiastical sanctions or penalties, but they do not make good theology. That Christ ascended on the 40th day after His Resurrection, and that He instructed His Apostles “to wait” for an indeterminate period (that became nine days, arguably the Church’s first “novena”) for the coming of the Holy Spirit, is not changed by the canonical fiat that transfers the Ascension as a feast of precept. Why is that history — millennia old — not binding but changeable by canonical fiat?

When a bishop approves the mass proliferation of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, thereby violating the letter if not the spirit of universal Church norms governing their limitation, does his canonical decree make it all better? That decision does not repeal the universal norms, nor should it be deemed to bind the faithful in conscience to believe that the bishop’s preference for the “common priesthood” of his distribution team trumps the faithful’s insight into the priority of the ordained ordinary minister in that task.

Paradoxically, many of the same bishops who enact canonical rules, ostensibly in the name of a selective liturgical discipline, also advocate for a Church of “dialogue” and “accompaniment,” even “synodality.” On what basis do they determine that there is a growing sense among the faithful that, say, kneeling for Communion, perhaps at an altar rail, is invalid, and that their sense alone is valid? This would require the bishop, acting in his role as teacher, to determine the faith in an orthodox manner — a task that cannot be selective or ignore some abuses. This will be a difficult question. Its historical dimension I have already tackled. Its answer cannot be primarily the refuge of canonical fiat: “Because I said so.” If it is, then let’s at least be honest enough to say that part out loud.

Yes, there will be arguments that bishops, who are responsible for the liturgy in their dioceses, will have to hear and which they should hear before they decide. Some of those debates represent how the faithful discern God’s call today, being stewards of things old and new (cf. Mt. 13:51-52). Some result from ambiguous language and/or tenuous compromises that Vatican II cobbled together. Still others come from implementation practices that, vis-à-vis the council’s teaching, might be thought of as being as tenuously connected as a bureaucrat’s attaching regulations to a congressional law. Take a few examples from the Charlotte controversy. Is the “fully conscious participation” of the faithful in the Mass really at stake in the placement of candles? Or in whether a crucifix is upright or flat on the altar? When the Second Vatican Council spoke about “the common priesthood of the faithful” — the same council that also distinguished the common from the ordained priesthood “in essence” and not just by “degree” (cf. Lumen Gentium, no. 10) — did it intend to force bishops to have laypersons distribute Communion? If it didn’t, then why force the issue — except to prove that you can canonically do it? Is there really anything in Vatican II that priests who choose to use the old vesting prayers while preparing for Mass undermine? If not, then why actively prohibit it — except to generate the headline: “Bishop Says: ‘Don’t Pray!’”

St. Augustine reminded us, “in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” That counsel requires, first of all, a noninflated understanding of “essentials,” especially one not grounded in theological interpretation, much less in canonical command. Our Augustinian Pope might find in the Doctor of Hippo’s advice a useful approach to calm roiled liturgical waters.

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