The same weekend, I was back in my hometown of Milwaukee. Among other things, I met up with some friends, a young married couple, visiting from Ireland. The husband, a medical doctor, hails from Ireland and the Mrs. from Milwaukee. As one would expect, they took a little holiday to bring their kids stateside for a visit with grandma and grandpa. Over some drinks at a local pub, the Church and the spiritual life surfaced as topics. My friends informed me that they recently attended Sunday Mass at a local Milwaukee parish. I knew right when they said "Saint Sebastian Parish" that the news about what happened there would not be good. You see, Saint Sebs. is known as an uber-liberal parish in the archdiocese. In fact, the pro-choice, Democratic mayor of the city is a favorite son. Bracing myself for the worst, they informed me that the organist/pianist gave the homily and sang a duet with his wife (I gather a ditty from "Fiddler on the Roof") and naturally, there was no kneeling during the Eucharistic Prayer. The parish is a basket case of liturgical craziness. Even the smooth, gentle cadences of an Irish accent relaying the events couldn't soften the blow.
(On a related note, not too long ago, I received a text from a friend, another MD living out in San Diego that read, "Today at Mass the priest high-5'd everyone as he walked down the aisle during the entrance hymn. It was showtime at the Apollo after that.")
What is going on at our Catholic parishes in this country?
While I applaud initiatives like a weekend-long Eucharistic Congress, and acknowledge that much good can come from it, to be blunt, every liturgy should be a "Eucharistic Congress" of sorts. The problem is that, for several decades now, too many bishops in the United States have conspicuously failed to uphold and defend an authentic liturgical culture, that should be, by definition, all about the Eucharist. Meanwhile pastors and "liturgical committees" have run amok, introducing all shades of bizarre innovations and abuses that result in a scandalous undermining and marginalizing of the Real Presence.
Many Catholics have no true understanding of the Church's teaching on the Eucharist because, week after week, year after year and parish to parish, the creeping aberrations in liturgy have long since become normative. As Catholics, it's as though we've had our memories wiped clean of what the liturgy actually is all about. We are already on the second generation that is being reared in a liturgical culture that is severely distorted and gravely detached from our ancient traditions. Liturgy has become less Eucharistic, less God-centric, less vertical, and more horizontal, narcissistic, soft sofa and Oprahfied. One weekend Eucharistic Congress, however well intentioned, organized and executed, cannot make up for the decades-long phenomenon of an entrenched, aberrant liturgical culture. That problem needs to be confronted and corrected. In his own day, Saint Thomas More offered sobering thoughts on the responsibilities of bishops:
Why do not bishops contemplate in this scene [the apostles sleeping in Garden of Gethsemane] their own somnolence? Since they have succeeded in the place of the apostles, would that they would reproduce their virtues just as eagerly as they embrace their authority and as faithfully as they display their sloth and sleepiness! For very many are sleepy and apathetic in sowing virtues among the people and maintaining the truth, while the enemies of Christ, in order to sow vices and uproot the faith (that is, insofar as they can, to seize Christ and cruelly crucify Him once again), are wide awake--so much wiser (as Christ says) are the sons of darkness in their generation than the sons of light.
In short, the priorities of bishops should be:
1. Insist on "by-the-book" liturgies throughout the dioceses, at every parish, and follow up to make sure that this is being carried out. Be deadly serious when addressing abuses and the priests guilty of committing them. Many faithful lay Catholics are absolutely fed up with the Oprahfication going on in the Church. Stop treating us like we're nuisances when we bring abuses to your attention. We work hard in the real world, and face a lot of garbage from secular society. We're loyal to the Church even when it's not popular, and even when her leaders publicly mess up in a major way. We deserve to experience a liturgy that does not patronize us or remind us of the silliness out there. And so we also deserve bishops who listen to us.
2. Encourage, rather, insist on a far and wide dissemination of the Old Form of the Mass at many more parishes than what is currently available to Catholics. The Holy Father clearly believes that we have much to learn from the usus antiquior.
3. Bishops need to take the lead when it comes to liturgy and not delegate to a committee. You're a successor to the Apostles. Lead!
4. Demand greater sacramental life at every parish, i.e., increase Confession times, encourage more frequent Confession, wider access to Eucharistic adoration. (Something encouraged by the Eucharistic Congress, I am told.)
5. Catechize, Catechize, Catechize.
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