Free-Lance Liturgists

The violation of liturgical norms is an offense against the rights of
the faithful and the communion of the universal Church.

For the past several weeks, since moving my family across the state, I have been attending daily Mass at a little Benedictine abbey in a neighboring town. It is a lovely place, set in the New England hills, and during these past few weeks of October, with the foliage at its most spectacular, the view across the valley is breathtaking.

But of course it is not the scenery that draws me to this little chapel. Nor is there any great music or architecture to entice me. No; I love the abbey simply because the monks celebrate the liturgy with great reverence. Here there is never a hint of liturgical abuse.

Is it too much for a simple layman to ask that, in any ordinary parish, the Mass should be celebrated according to the norms set forth by the Church? Really—honestly—that is all I am asking. I would love to find a parish where the architecture is Romanesque and the chant is Gregorian. But I will settle for a simple Mass, in a plain building, with no music at all—provided that there are also no abuses.

Abuse is the norm

Over the course of the past 25 years I have lived in seven different towns, in five different American dioceses, and I have worshipped with some regularity at 15 different parishes. In every one of those parishes, without exceptions, I saw clear violations of the Church’s liturgical norms. In most cases, the violations were both flagrant and frequent.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should explain that the above count does not include the many different parishes where I have attended Mass only a few times, while passing through town. Nor does it include the various oratories, chaplaincies, and religious houses which I have sought out precisely because I knew the liturgy would be celebrated with reverence there.)

Every active lay Catholic can tell his own “horror stories” about grotesque liturgical abuses. But here I do not intend to call attention to the occasional scandalous offenses. Rather, my focus is on the ubiquitous minor transgressions: the deliberate changes in the language of prayers or biblical readings; the calculated omission of rubrics and gestures; the illicit use of lay people in ministerial roles. Let’s face it: at least in the United States today, abuse of the liturgical norms is the norm. The parish where Mass is celebrated in careful accordance with the Instruction from the Roman Missal is the exception, not the rule.

When rules are routinely ignored—in a church or a school, a family or a state—they lose their force. If every motorist on the highway breaks the speed limit with impunity, then there really is no speed limit, and that highway is a very dangerous place. If every pastor and priest decides for himself how he will go about celebrating Mass, then in practice there is no single ritual that could be universally recognized as the Novus Ordo Mass of the Roman rite.

A modest proposal

Some years ago, our friend Ralph McInerny advanced the modest proposal that theologians who dissent from the established teachings of the Church should identify themselves as “free-lance” theologians rather than “Catholic” theologians. In that way, McInerny explained, the theologians could avoid the criticism that they were misleading their students by pretending to represent the Catholic Church. No one could possibly be misled, he reasoned, by a theologian who admitted that he was engaged in a free-lance activity.

By the same logic, I propose that pastors who do not intend to follow the Instructions in the Roman Missal should advertise themselves as “free-lance” liturgists. If a pious Catholic sees that he can attend a “free-lance” liturgy at a given parish on Sunday morning, he has been adequately warned, and he cannot legitimately protest any liturgical oddities that he might encounter.

As an alternative, pastors might follow the example of some Eastern Catholic churches. Outside the front door of a Byzantine-rite parish church, one often sees the notice that “the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” will be celebrated there on Sunday. If a Roman-rite parish were to post a schedule for “the Liturgy of Father Bob,” it would be doing a real service for those of us who willingly go the extra mile to find the authentic liturgy of the universal Church.

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