June 19, 2008

The Catholic Counterrevolution

Interesting piece in Newsweek about the role Pope Benedict XVI has had on the Mass.  In particular, Benedict has allowed for the Latin mass again.  The Latin mass was pretty much driven out of the Church in the years following Vatican II.  Benedict was a reformer, but found himself turned off by the aggressive reform efforts that took place after Vatican II, he and others who agreed started to informally band together to try and rein in the reformers.  I found this interesting, this was their big wake-up call,

Seeing a Gregorian chant CD from an obscure Spanish monastery rise to the top of the pop charts in the 1990s, they wondered why much of the church had abandoned one of Catholicism's classic musical forms.


For those who may have forgotten, or were in elementary school like me, they're talking about Chant, a Gregorian chant album which went triple platinum in 1994.  I hope Gregorian chants make a comeback, not everyone's favorite, I know, but I like it.  To me, that's what a Catholic Church is supposed to sound like. 

This rang out for me,

Finding congregations that seemed more interested in self-affirmation than worship, and priests given to making their personalities the center of the liturgical action, they asked whether the rush to create a kind of sacred circle in which the priest faces the people over the eucharistic "table" might have something to do with the problem.


Those are two huge reasons that I'm not nearly as active in the church as I used to be, particularly the latter.  The church I used to go regularly had a priest like this, and I can tell you that his boorish self-aggrandizement really began to grate on me over time, to the point where I just quit going to mass at all.  

The article goes on to say that much of the Catholic Church had been making a counterrevolution of its own, reining in the more radical reformists, and restoring a more traditional mass on a local level.  I saw this to some extent with the self aggrandizing priest I talk about above, when he first started there, he tried to ditch a lot of little things a priest normally does in a traditional mass, but was strongly opposed and he made some significant concessions to the parish, which was stunning given his near-Bill O'Reilly sized ego. 

Benedict, by his reforms is encouraging that sort of reining in of priests.  My hope is that the effort is successful, while I do think that the more reform style works for some, I don't care for it.  I do think there is room for both in the Church though, with strengths and weaknesses in both.  I actually think it'd help draw in potential new members, particularly younger people.  I'm terrible with foreign language, but I'd be ready to give learning some Latin a shot if a local priest brings the Latin mass back. 

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