Cozzens: Eucharistic Congress aims for liturgical unity

Ahead of the National Eucharistic Congress, Bishop Andrew Cozzens talks liturgy.

As organizers make their final preparations for the National Eucharistic Congress next week in Indianapolis, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, chair of the Congress board, hopes the 5-day event will be an experience of renewal, hope, and unity for the Church in the United States.

Religious prepare to present the gifts during a May 19 opening liturgy for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, California. Credit: JD Flynn/Pillar Media.

While he prepared to head to Indiana ahead of the event, Cozzens talked with The Pillar about his belief that the Eucharistic Congress can promote liturgical unity among U.S. Catholics.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Aiming for liturgical unity is a tricky thing. 

The Eucharistic Congress and the Eucharist exist in the context of the Eucharistic liturgy, the source and summit of our faith. 

How do you begin to plan for liturgies that will give good ordered worship to God, and be accessible and meaningful to Catholics who come from different walks of life and different experiences?

We were attentive to this need from the beginning, because as is in our mission statement for the Eucharistic Revival and the Congress, we want it to be about unity. We want to have an experience of unity. 

As we were discerning if we should even have a national Eucharistic Congress, it was important to all of us that the Church in the United States needs a moment of unity, and we wanted to be able to do that. 

It's easy to see that we live in a very divided world, and that division, which is so present in our culture, is also dramatically affecting life in the Catholic Church. And if that's the case, then that division is also going to hit at the heart of our life in the Church, which is the Eucharistic liturgy. 

I always used to laugh in the seminary, where we'd have the biggest arguments among seminarians about the liturgy. In one sense, I suppose it's not bad because that conveys that this is so important to all of us! 

For the Congress, we began by putting together a committee of people with different experiences. Some people had experience planning big liturgies, some people had experience in diocesan liturgies, or were members of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions — that sort of thing.

We tried to put together a committee of people that would help us to do the liturgy in a way that would be unifying. 

I also worked with the board of the Congress, and others to ask: “What's the tone that we want to set with our liturgical life?” 

We want it to be an uplifting tone. We want it to be a transcendent tone. And we want it to be an experience of the best of Catholic worship, without being seen as exclusively representative of one aspect of Catholic worship in the country. 

The challenge is that everyone has different ideas about what makes “good” liturgy, and about how to observe even the rubrics of the Mass. 

There are choices that you have to make about music, and Mass settings, and antiphons, and so many other things. What's the process for weighing all of that?

The process was both listening to our liturgical committee, and getting a sense from the bishops. 

This is a bishop-sponsored, so at times there was pastoral direction that I had to give, given my sense of where the bishops are, and where the Church in the United States is, on liturgical questions. 

Of course, I have my own personal preferences for what I would want to see [in the liturgy], but we wanted to plan something that all the bishops would experience as central Church liturgy, and good Church liturgy. 

So, for example, with the point you made, we're going to do the antiphons, but we're going to do them in English. And of course, just from the nature of the liturgy itself, the liturgy is supposed to be sung. So we're going to try to do that as best we can.

It seems the goal of unity will be a kind of unity-in-diversity, because there are two Eastern Catholic liturgies on the schedule, and there are — within the bounds of Traditionis custodes — Traditional Latin Masses on the schedule. And I suspect even the English language Ordinary Form Masses will take on different flavors — I heard that one will have a gospel choir, for example. 

Is the hope that people will be able to experience things they haven't experienced before, or more that a broad range of people will be able experience things that are familiar to them?

I hope it is a little bit of both — that they will experience things they haven't experienced before and that they will also experience things that might be familiar to them. 

The beauty is that we also have other para-liturgies as well: we have adoration, and that's a devotional exercise, and there's a lot more freedom for what kind of expression you can have in that devotion, and so we will use that freedom. 

But you're right, the music at the various liturgies will be some attempt to give exposure to things people haven't seen. 

Maybe a lot of people don't come from a place where they chant the antiphons at Mass — but we'll also have, as you said, a gospel choir at times, and other choirs which might represent what is closer to some people's experience. 

I specifically wanted the Eastern liturgies to be present in a prominent way, and I really pushed to have one of them done in the stadium. 

Originally, we had hoped to be able to do a Ukrainian Catholic liturgy in the stadium. Part of the reason I wanted to do that was for Ukraine, frankly — just to hold up the suffering Church. 

But it proved to be too difficult, because of the way that the Ukrainian Catholics distribute Holy Communion, to do in a stadium. 

So then we went with the largest of the Eastern Catholic Church, which is the Syro-Malabar, even though they're not the largest in the United States. And the liturgy of the Syro-Malabars is also similar enough, but also different enough that I think it will provide a new and positive experience for people. 

It's going to be great to have the Syro-Malabar Catholics, who are largely from India, there to celebrate with us.

And I do hope that can help us get beyond some of our liturgy wars, which are so painful for us as bishops. For example, the Syro-Malabar liturgy is offered ad orientem, right? It's [offered] facing God. And of course, we know there's been a liturgy war about that — but we want to show the Church that there is, within our very history, legitimate diversity in our traditions. 

And it's okay that we have legitimate diversity today in the way that we do the Roman Rite, as long as it's legitimate diversity, right?

We want people to have that experience at the Congress. From the beginning, we wanted this to be an experience of the universal Church, and we really tried to reach out to invite people in different cultures. 

Bishop, in a post Traditionis custodes context, choosing to have two Masses in the Extraordinary Form at the Congress is noteworthy. 

What was the process for deciding that? Was there a consultation? 

There were lots of requests from people who wanted to come [to the Congress], and who said that given the diversity with Eastern liturgies, it might seem odd not to have this option too.

And then there was the Divine Providence that within walking distance from the convention center, there is a personal parish which, completely within the bounds of Traditionis custodes, is able to offer the sacraments there, by the permission of the Archbishop of Indianapolis, and the Archbishop of Indianapolis is on the board of directors of the Congress. 

And so we had this request, and I brought it to the Congress’ board. Of course, they were aware this could be seen in political or controversial terms, which is not at all the way we intend it. 

It is intended in the sense of unity, I think that's the way the Congress board saw it. There are five bishops on that board, and they come from all over the country and they have lots of experience. They were in favor of us offering this option, especially because we could do it within Traditionis custodes, at a place where it is normally offered. 

And then it just seemed natural that since most Masses at the Congress are being offered by bishops, that we also invite a bishop to preside at at least one of those Masses. 

Let's say that I'm at the Congress and I want to go to Holy Qurbana , or I want to go to the Ukrainian liturgy, or I want to go to the Extraordinary Form. If I'm someone who has not gone to those liturgies, and I don't really know what participation will look like, how can I prepare? 

Will there be some kind of catechesis before, or some way for participants to know how to most fully engage with unfamiliar liturgy?

Yes, there will be worship guides that are handed out at the smaller venues where we have smaller — like 4,000 people! — liturgies. There will be worship aids that are handed out, and a brief explanation just right before Mass about how to follow along, how to participate. 

In the stadium Mass on Saturday, there'll be an explanation beforehand, and all the parts of the Mass will be put up on the screens so that everybody can participate. Those [Eastern] Masses will be done completely in English, which their rubrics allow, even though they sometimes do them in other languages. 

It's kind of funny, I was with a couple of priests this week who are going to the Congress and they got their concelebration instructions, and the instructions for how to concelebrate the Holy Qurbana were a little concerning to them. 

They're like: “Oh my God, this is really complex! I’ve got to put my hands up and down. And there's a long phrase you say, before giving Holy Communion…”

I said: “Don't worry, it'll all be clear when we are there. We will have little cards to help people distribute Holy Communion, those kinds of things will all be given.” 

So we're going to try to make it as user friendly as possible. 

But it's also a beautiful thing to enter into the mystery of the liturgy when I don't know every detail of what's going on, but I do fundamentally know what's going on, because the liturgy in whatever tradition, in whatever language, is fundamentally the same structure. 

And I can experience that even if I don't follow it word for word.

You mentioned concelebration. I suspect some priests might be excited to concelebrate those liturgies that they wouldn't otherwise encounter, but others might not be so sure. 

Have you seen much interest in them from priest participants?

We did ask priests and bishops to pre-register, but I don't know the exact numbers. I can imagine there's going to be both reactions, right? 

One one hand: “Oh gosh, I don't want to go to that, I don’t know what I'm doing.”

On the other: “Oh, that's going to be really cool. I want to see it.” 

So I would imagine priests and bishops are going to have both reactions.

How would you encourage people — priests and laity — who might be uncertain about going to these liturgies they haven’t been a part of before? 

Or a priest who's uncertain about concelebrating something he doesn't have any experience with?

I would say it's worth getting over the nervousness about it, and entering into the experience of the prayer, because all of these liturgies have such deep traditions. 

If you've been to an Eastern rite liturgy, you experience a different way to view the mysteries that we know so familiarly in a different language, to speak about those mysteries even in English. 

It's a different way of speaking about the beauty of the mysteries, and it's profoundly enriching to be able to participate in them.

In terms of para-liturgical devotion, it seems like the Eucharistic procession planned for  Saturday during the Congress could be an extraordinary event.

Yeah, it could be. 

I'm praying for cool weather, because it’s in Indianapolis in July, and we don't have a backup plan if the weather's too bad! But, yes, it's going to be amazing. 

It's going to be the whole Church, in order, with the Lord, doing what a procession is, which is imitating our path to heaven. 

I have told the bishops I want them there in their choir cassocks, but I, of course, told them if they thought it was too hot or too difficult to travel with that they could wear an alb and stole. 

But the idea is to really have a kind of picture of the whole Church, so you'll see all the various orders of the Church. Certainly the Knights of Columbus will be there in force, and the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Knights of Malta, and all the various orders of the Church — of course the religious orders will be there in force, and then thousands and thousands of lay people.

So I think this could be the biggest event of the Congress. We could have well over 50,000 people processing through the streets of Indianapolis. 

To me, it's one of the most exciting moments. 

Partially because of what we've all felt as we've done these pilgrimages across the country. 

It's a combination of an opportunity to show the Lord you love Him, in a really simple but beautiful way —  to walk and sing and to sing songs of love to the Lord. But it's also a real sense of life as a pilgrimage, and that we are on a procession, we're headed someplace. 

There was a great line that was used by Bishop Arthur Kennedy for the day of recollection in June for the bishops, where he talked about the difference between a procession and a parade. 

He drew from Flannery O’Conner and said basically that a procession has a meaning beyond itself and it's pointed somewhere and it's leading us all somewhere. A parade is just for its own show. 

This is going to be a procession, not a parade. We're not here to put on a show. We want to announce to the world the love that we have for Jesus, and we do that by a procession, but we're actually showing that we're headed somewhere, and we're inviting the world to join us.

What do you hope the Lord will do over the course of these days?

I hope there's an explosion of grace around the country. I just hope that there's an explosion of grace. One of the scripture passages that I have had in my heart since the beginning of this is “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” 

I just sense that the Holy Spirit is about some work in our country, and the Eucharistic Revival and Eucharistic Congress are a small part of that — I think an important part of that. 

We're not going to know the fruits of this really for decades, but I think the fruits will be profound. I really hope that the fruits of this movement continue and that the 10th National Eucharistic Congress is not the last.

I think it's become a moment of unity for the Church and also a profound way for the Church to be renewed interiorly and gain or regain missionary zeal.

In places that haven't done pilgrimages or processions in a long time, will they get out the canopy and the monstrance and do it again next summer? 

Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. 

Just this year, in my own diocese I went up to Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, which is 40 miles south of Canada, They hadn't had a Eucharistic procession for who knows how long, but they did have one this year and the people loved it, and there were all kinds of young families there.

There are these critics who have said that this Congress is triumphalism writ large. That this is more of a parade, so to speak. 

What would you say to people who look at the Eucharistic Congress and think that's the case?

I'd say to read Pope Francis’ address to the organizers of the Congress that he gave a year ago. Because Pope Francis let his heart show, and can see that this is evangelizing — if you read him closely, Pope Francis understands the role that devotion plays in the strengthening and renewal of the Church. 

And he understands devotion, which is kindled through events like this. Devotion — meaning love — has profound effects, and they're not of this world. Devotion has profound effects on the Church being outward facing, towards the world. 

I think anybody who comes to the National Eucharistic Congress will see the missionary impulse that we're trying to show and reveal to the Church in the United States. We want this to be a part of the movement from “maintenance” to “mission” that the Church has been trying to do now for several years and needs to continue to try to do so. 

I think if you actually look at the event, you see beyond any kind of false narrative. What you see is the goodness of devotion and love that actually can help renew the Church. 

I think we've seen that with the pilgrimages too; people have found them to be so refreshing, spiritually refreshing, and that's strengthening people in profound ways. So I think you'll see it in the fruit.