Interesting podcast but yet again...I never hear any discussion (and not just by The Pillar but many a podcast or written article) about what seems to me to be THE core question when it comes to the "Liturgy wars". And it's this: do we profess and believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church through its leadership (Popes & Ecumenical Councils) as regards our mission and ministry for various periods of history? If so, then hasn't Vatican II's "Sacrosanctum Concilium" (and by extension its papally approved implementing documents) settled the issue for now? What ever happened to "Roma locuta est"?
It seems to me this is a question of laying down one's self and will in humility, faith and obedience to the Magisterium. Otherwise we run the risk of "building a Church and Liturgy in our image" which is horrible be it on the Left or the Right. And this agitation against our legit leaders might put us into the hearing og wise ol' Gamaliel's warning and we find ourselves fighting God and not men... This is a real danger if we stray from filial obedience to His Spirit-guided shepherds.
I’m not sure the Holy Spirit’s protection of SC applies “by extension” to the subsequent liturgical texts. So the real question is about how those texts derive from SC
It's also important to emphasize that the indefectibility of the Church which the Holy Spirit guarantees does not extend to the pastoral prudence of her governing decisions, nor even the opportunity of dogmatic definitions. The protection is absolute but it only exists within a very limited scope: the Church will never bind herself irrevocably to doctrinal error. Consequently, there's a lot of room to question governing decisions. Were they correct in the moment they were taken? Could they have been correct in themselves but not opportune? Do the circumstances which inform them still apply? Etc. And none of those questions is in any way disrespectful to the Holy Spirit.
True and false are not same category as better and worse. The Holy Spirit guarantees the car won’t break down. He gives us the freedom to chose whether we’re trading in for a Rolls-Royce or VW bus.
This was the most reasonable and comprehensive discussion I’ve heard on this topic, thank you!
Two things
1) Why are we not going back to the actual V2 docs? You know, the one that directs the Ordinary be in Latin and Gregorian chant and organ be given “pride of place”…and there being no mention of versus populum?
Thank you for sharing that article. Several times now someone has linked me to something written by Matthew Walther and I've come away thinking he must be the most valuable and incisive commentator on contemporary Catholic culture I could possibly ever find. I think this is the sign for me to finally subscribe to The Lamp..
Don't forget, the pre-Councilar church did not require the priest to face the apse. While it was commonplace for him to do so and the design of many altars made it necessary, as the example of Fr. Pius Parsch shows, where there was a free standing altar (increasingly common from the end of WWI forward), a celebrant was free to face the people and altar. Even today, a priest celebrating the old Latin Mass is free to face the people rather than the apse.
I am a convert to Rome from Anglicanism (classic liturgical Anglicanism - 1662 BCP preference - may I hear an ‘amen’ from any other converts?). The so called ‘spirit of Vatican 2’ is still alive in our parish musically (the music is dominated by St. Louis Jesuit jingles, and this has an outsized influence on the general approach to the liturgy, even if the priest is largely say the black do the red). So… As someone who has very intentionally stayed in our town parish despite a divergence on many points of liturgy, I appreciated this conversation very much. I feel the tension in relation to my pre-teen sons and our home catechesis and much of the spoken and sung catechesis which occurs liturgically in our town parish Sunday by Sunday. I love our parish priest and sense that the faith as expressed by the lay leadership is sincere. Our young new diocesan priests are generally from abroad, and anecdotally they too seem to trend more conservative liturgically. We are a poor and far flung diocese. I’ll tell you why we stay put (this may change if a future priest begins to preach blatant heresy with no disciplinary action or if people start dressing up in Lycra and waving banners)… I feel an inclination to be in solidarity with the countless souls down through the centuries who had no choice but to go to their village or town parish, despite perceived deficiencies in liturgy, pastoral care, preaching (if they perceived such deficiencies at all due to formation). Perhaps these souls never smiled in church, because in all their lives they’d never had a priest who smiled (mine, thankfully, smiles a lot). This sort of deficiency, and many more besides, must be healed and resolved by the Holy Ghost in this life or the next, or I have no hope for my innumerable deficiencies and blind-spots… I don’t want to judge church-hopping, and I may do such a thing in the end, but my concern is that I don’t trust my own judgement enough to know from what frying pan into which kettle I’m jumping… It’s all a mess. The Church is, as GKC illustrates, a carriage and four horses galloping at full-speed, barely staying on the road. Thus I tend to think week to week common life has always been gradations of mess, and I pray God’s mercy working in me and my family will overcome the definite and unavoidable negations from the glorious worship of the saints victorious which occur temporally in my town parish.
Finally, criticisms of E. Condon in relation to podcast hosting are unjust and unkind and should cease. Perhaps allow the Holy Ghost to use any number of other aspects of existence to pound humility into him for a while.
I wonder how often diocesean and parish boundaries are redrawn. We do not go to our territorial parish mainly because they have no Sunday Masses in English (I have yet to learn Spanish). The priests are meeting the needs of the the majority of the parishioners, as it is nestled in a predominantaly Hispanic area. The second reason we don't attend Mass there is it is harder to get to than the parish where we do attend Mass. I assume the parish boundaries were drawn before the major freeway next to our house was built. The freeway is very convenient for very many reasons, but it makes it harder to get places on the other side of it.
I will also note that the Diocese of Phoenix is actively building new churches, but not at the rate that people are moving out of the central part of the city. There are two parishes five minutes away from each other, one of which I go to and the other of which I work for, but they both are huge suburban parishes that serve huge swaths of the Diocese and are the most western in the metropolitan part of the city. The next closest church west of either of them is thirty minutes away.
Also, I love Ed. as host, too. It feels like an interview, in a good way. He gives the guest lots of space to explore ideas. There isn't as much banter, but shouldn't that make banter haters happy?
This topic comes up in discussions in my diocese with some frequency. The boundaries are very outdated. I would guess this is a common issue in the US. In some places, new parishes are being built; in some places parishes are merged together. Especially up in the Northeast, there is also the history of ethnic parishes, which had overlapping boundaries once upon a time. It probably would behoove most of us to redraw the boundaries, but that would take a lot of time, effort, and regional knowledge.
Also, I consider myself a banter enjoyer, but in limited doses. I love to hear two buddies goofing around, but sometimes the important conversation gets totally derailed.
Absolutely excellent podcast! Although I believe there is one elephant in the room that none have seen fit to address: the practice of moving priests every 6-10 years. It is a nearly universal practice in the Roman Church in the U.S. (I have no knowledge of other countries’ practices), and it seems to be a completely unexamined, but highly impactful practice that has deeply shaped our understanding of what a parish is, and should be.
I will go out on a limb and say that it has been the single most destructive factor in the efforts to build healthy Catholic parishes in this country. It has created a spiritual foster-care system, with all of the attendant dysfunction that we know transient or absentee fatherhood creates. How can any person—child or adult—mature in their faith, when their father figure (the one who is supposed to embody Christ in their lives) is gone, just when they’ve started to get to know them personally? This practice has also, I believe, perpetuated the abuse crisis for MUCH longer than it would have lasted, if abusive priests had had the consistent accountability that is only possible with long-term observation and relationships. (Not that dangerous priests should have been left in place, but that it would have been much easier to detect dangerous behaviors if they weren’t being constantly moved.) Until the practice of frequently moving pastors as a matter of routine (instead of on a case-by-case basis) is abolished, we can never consistently grow our parishes into the thriving communities of faith that they are meant to be.
Ditto for bishops. The story of the bishop who has to ask his aide “On which side of the barque does this priest sit?” when considering parish assignments gets to the heart of the issue. How can a bishop truly shepherd his diocese as a father when he is not familiar with the sons who are his priests?
You know it’s funny, Stephen’s point about bishops don’t see the average parish mass, which I read in his piece the other day, and how when the bishop comes that’s “mass with the bishop” which isn’t the same, strikes me anew because at first I agreed wholeheartedly.
But I’ve been thinking about how beautiful our parishes masses are and having been to confirmation mass for a number of years in a row now I realized, oh my, our masses with the bishop ARE exactly like our masses bc we ALWAYS do the fancy bits (children or adult schola, bits of Latin mass parts sprinkled in, incense and a phalanx of servers, albeit none gloved for miters and crosiers). We really are “this way” all of the time and wow if I didn’t already love our little parish enough, it just grew even more. And it’s not even tied to one priest bc it was this way thru two different pastors! (well scholars are new but organically new with natural changes in music personnel and volunteer then over etc).
Anyways just wanted to note that some folks “show for the bishop” is actually kind of accurate 😁
Yeahhhhhh this was dynamite. There are 5 things I want to say about what I heard in this podcast (which really jogged my thoughts) but I’ll just mention my biggest takeaway… I think bishops that micromanage liturgy do something that actually undermines the authority of [T]radition, which is… by changing and dictating liturgy, they change the faith. That’s not Catholic, by definition.
Territoriality literally cannot survive where the automobile rules. When it takes essentially zero effort—not time but effort—to go somewhere else, people will in fact go somewhere else when it suits them. Short of imposing canonical penalties for parish shopping, territoriality is a dead letter.
Territoriality literally cannot survive where the automobile rules. When it takes essentially zero effort—not time but effort—to go somewhere else, people will in fact go somewhere else when it suits them. Short of imposing canonical penalties for parish shopping, territoriality is a dead letter.
I'm far from an expert, so maybe I'm missing something re: this, though Catholic Answers linked me to Sanctissimam Eucharistiam (1957), which seems to direct that all tabernacles be affixed to the alter. I'm not sure of the context, though the story is always more complicated that it initially appears (in my experience =)).
Wonderful conversation; it really hit home for me! Born in 1970, I didn’t hear Latin or sacred music growing up. “Though the mountains may fall” and all that. And yes, we have many young priest friends who absolutely are what you describe: devout and adding incense and sacred music to their reverent liturgies. (I offer thanksgiving for our previous Archbishop who got the seminary back on track.) I avoid feeling bitter about what I missed in my formation… sometimes.
It's lovely having Ed host the podcast; some really good discussion this week. While I enjoy having them together quite a lot, there's surely room for both Ed-only and JD-only episodes in the mix.
The only issue worth mentioning is one that our genial co-founders have in common: the occasional slipping into fast, low muttering that's hard to understand. (A problem that is compounded when, as in this episode, the volume levels tend to differ greatly between the two speakers.)
Interesting podcast but yet again...I never hear any discussion (and not just by The Pillar but many a podcast or written article) about what seems to me to be THE core question when it comes to the "Liturgy wars". And it's this: do we profess and believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church through its leadership (Popes & Ecumenical Councils) as regards our mission and ministry for various periods of history? If so, then hasn't Vatican II's "Sacrosanctum Concilium" (and by extension its papally approved implementing documents) settled the issue for now? What ever happened to "Roma locuta est"?
It seems to me this is a question of laying down one's self and will in humility, faith and obedience to the Magisterium. Otherwise we run the risk of "building a Church and Liturgy in our image" which is horrible be it on the Left or the Right. And this agitation against our legit leaders might put us into the hearing og wise ol' Gamaliel's warning and we find ourselves fighting God and not men... This is a real danger if we stray from filial obedience to His Spirit-guided shepherds.
I’m not sure the Holy Spirit’s protection of SC applies “by extension” to the subsequent liturgical texts. So the real question is about how those texts derive from SC
It's also important to emphasize that the indefectibility of the Church which the Holy Spirit guarantees does not extend to the pastoral prudence of her governing decisions, nor even the opportunity of dogmatic definitions. The protection is absolute but it only exists within a very limited scope: the Church will never bind herself irrevocably to doctrinal error. Consequently, there's a lot of room to question governing decisions. Were they correct in the moment they were taken? Could they have been correct in themselves but not opportune? Do the circumstances which inform them still apply? Etc. And none of those questions is in any way disrespectful to the Holy Spirit.
True and false are not same category as better and worse. The Holy Spirit guarantees the car won’t break down. He gives us the freedom to chose whether we’re trading in for a Rolls-Royce or VW bus.
You can fit more people in the VW! ;)
This was the most reasonable and comprehensive discussion I’ve heard on this topic, thank you!
Two things
1) Why are we not going back to the actual V2 docs? You know, the one that directs the Ordinary be in Latin and Gregorian chant and organ be given “pride of place”…and there being no mention of versus populum?
2) This is has some good thoughts re territorial parishes https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-27/what-parishes-are
Thank you for sharing that article. Several times now someone has linked me to something written by Matthew Walther and I've come away thinking he must be the most valuable and incisive commentator on contemporary Catholic culture I could possibly ever find. I think this is the sign for me to finally subscribe to The Lamp..
Don't forget, the pre-Councilar church did not require the priest to face the apse. While it was commonplace for him to do so and the design of many altars made it necessary, as the example of Fr. Pius Parsch shows, where there was a free standing altar (increasingly common from the end of WWI forward), a celebrant was free to face the people and altar. Even today, a priest celebrating the old Latin Mass is free to face the people rather than the apse.
I am a convert to Rome from Anglicanism (classic liturgical Anglicanism - 1662 BCP preference - may I hear an ‘amen’ from any other converts?). The so called ‘spirit of Vatican 2’ is still alive in our parish musically (the music is dominated by St. Louis Jesuit jingles, and this has an outsized influence on the general approach to the liturgy, even if the priest is largely say the black do the red). So… As someone who has very intentionally stayed in our town parish despite a divergence on many points of liturgy, I appreciated this conversation very much. I feel the tension in relation to my pre-teen sons and our home catechesis and much of the spoken and sung catechesis which occurs liturgically in our town parish Sunday by Sunday. I love our parish priest and sense that the faith as expressed by the lay leadership is sincere. Our young new diocesan priests are generally from abroad, and anecdotally they too seem to trend more conservative liturgically. We are a poor and far flung diocese. I’ll tell you why we stay put (this may change if a future priest begins to preach blatant heresy with no disciplinary action or if people start dressing up in Lycra and waving banners)… I feel an inclination to be in solidarity with the countless souls down through the centuries who had no choice but to go to their village or town parish, despite perceived deficiencies in liturgy, pastoral care, preaching (if they perceived such deficiencies at all due to formation). Perhaps these souls never smiled in church, because in all their lives they’d never had a priest who smiled (mine, thankfully, smiles a lot). This sort of deficiency, and many more besides, must be healed and resolved by the Holy Ghost in this life or the next, or I have no hope for my innumerable deficiencies and blind-spots… I don’t want to judge church-hopping, and I may do such a thing in the end, but my concern is that I don’t trust my own judgement enough to know from what frying pan into which kettle I’m jumping… It’s all a mess. The Church is, as GKC illustrates, a carriage and four horses galloping at full-speed, barely staying on the road. Thus I tend to think week to week common life has always been gradations of mess, and I pray God’s mercy working in me and my family will overcome the definite and unavoidable negations from the glorious worship of the saints victorious which occur temporally in my town parish.
Finally, criticisms of E. Condon in relation to podcast hosting are unjust and unkind and should cease. Perhaps allow the Holy Ghost to use any number of other aspects of existence to pound humility into him for a while.
A belated Amen from your fellow Anglican convert!
I wonder how often diocesean and parish boundaries are redrawn. We do not go to our territorial parish mainly because they have no Sunday Masses in English (I have yet to learn Spanish). The priests are meeting the needs of the the majority of the parishioners, as it is nestled in a predominantaly Hispanic area. The second reason we don't attend Mass there is it is harder to get to than the parish where we do attend Mass. I assume the parish boundaries were drawn before the major freeway next to our house was built. The freeway is very convenient for very many reasons, but it makes it harder to get places on the other side of it.
I will also note that the Diocese of Phoenix is actively building new churches, but not at the rate that people are moving out of the central part of the city. There are two parishes five minutes away from each other, one of which I go to and the other of which I work for, but they both are huge suburban parishes that serve huge swaths of the Diocese and are the most western in the metropolitan part of the city. The next closest church west of either of them is thirty minutes away.
Also, I love Ed. as host, too. It feels like an interview, in a good way. He gives the guest lots of space to explore ideas. There isn't as much banter, but shouldn't that make banter haters happy?
This topic comes up in discussions in my diocese with some frequency. The boundaries are very outdated. I would guess this is a common issue in the US. In some places, new parishes are being built; in some places parishes are merged together. Especially up in the Northeast, there is also the history of ethnic parishes, which had overlapping boundaries once upon a time. It probably would behoove most of us to redraw the boundaries, but that would take a lot of time, effort, and regional knowledge.
Also, I consider myself a banter enjoyer, but in limited doses. I love to hear two buddies goofing around, but sometimes the important conversation gets totally derailed.
Absolutely excellent podcast! Although I believe there is one elephant in the room that none have seen fit to address: the practice of moving priests every 6-10 years. It is a nearly universal practice in the Roman Church in the U.S. (I have no knowledge of other countries’ practices), and it seems to be a completely unexamined, but highly impactful practice that has deeply shaped our understanding of what a parish is, and should be.
I will go out on a limb and say that it has been the single most destructive factor in the efforts to build healthy Catholic parishes in this country. It has created a spiritual foster-care system, with all of the attendant dysfunction that we know transient or absentee fatherhood creates. How can any person—child or adult—mature in their faith, when their father figure (the one who is supposed to embody Christ in their lives) is gone, just when they’ve started to get to know them personally? This practice has also, I believe, perpetuated the abuse crisis for MUCH longer than it would have lasted, if abusive priests had had the consistent accountability that is only possible with long-term observation and relationships. (Not that dangerous priests should have been left in place, but that it would have been much easier to detect dangerous behaviors if they weren’t being constantly moved.) Until the practice of frequently moving pastors as a matter of routine (instead of on a case-by-case basis) is abolished, we can never consistently grow our parishes into the thriving communities of faith that they are meant to be.
Ditto for bishops. The story of the bishop who has to ask his aide “On which side of the barque does this priest sit?” when considering parish assignments gets to the heart of the issue. How can a bishop truly shepherd his diocese as a father when he is not familiar with the sons who are his priests?
Agreed! Very well said! I’ve been saying the same thing for years! The expectation is that the “children” are “resilient” and will adapt.
You know it’s funny, Stephen’s point about bishops don’t see the average parish mass, which I read in his piece the other day, and how when the bishop comes that’s “mass with the bishop” which isn’t the same, strikes me anew because at first I agreed wholeheartedly.
But I’ve been thinking about how beautiful our parishes masses are and having been to confirmation mass for a number of years in a row now I realized, oh my, our masses with the bishop ARE exactly like our masses bc we ALWAYS do the fancy bits (children or adult schola, bits of Latin mass parts sprinkled in, incense and a phalanx of servers, albeit none gloved for miters and crosiers). We really are “this way” all of the time and wow if I didn’t already love our little parish enough, it just grew even more. And it’s not even tied to one priest bc it was this way thru two different pastors! (well scholars are new but organically new with natural changes in music personnel and volunteer then over etc).
Anyways just wanted to note that some folks “show for the bishop” is actually kind of accurate 😁
Yeahhhhhh this was dynamite. There are 5 things I want to say about what I heard in this podcast (which really jogged my thoughts) but I’ll just mention my biggest takeaway… I think bishops that micromanage liturgy do something that actually undermines the authority of [T]radition, which is… by changing and dictating liturgy, they change the faith. That’s not Catholic, by definition.
Territoriality literally cannot survive where the automobile rules. When it takes essentially zero effort—not time but effort—to go somewhere else, people will in fact go somewhere else when it suits them. Short of imposing canonical penalties for parish shopping, territoriality is a dead letter.
Territoriality literally cannot survive where the automobile rules. When it takes essentially zero effort—not time but effort—to go somewhere else, people will in fact go somewhere else when it suits them. Short of imposing canonical penalties for parish shopping, territoriality is a dead letter.
I'm far from an expert, so maybe I'm missing something re: this, though Catholic Answers linked me to Sanctissimam Eucharistiam (1957), which seems to direct that all tabernacles be affixed to the alter. I'm not sure of the context, though the story is always more complicated that it initially appears (in my experience =)).
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-apocalypse-facing-the-people
https://lms.org.uk/sanctissimam_eucharistiam
Wonderful conversation; it really hit home for me! Born in 1970, I didn’t hear Latin or sacred music growing up. “Though the mountains may fall” and all that. And yes, we have many young priest friends who absolutely are what you describe: devout and adding incense and sacred music to their reverent liturgies. (I offer thanksgiving for our previous Archbishop who got the seminary back on track.) I avoid feeling bitter about what I missed in my formation… sometimes.
It's lovely having Ed host the podcast; some really good discussion this week. While I enjoy having them together quite a lot, there's surely room for both Ed-only and JD-only episodes in the mix.
The only issue worth mentioning is one that our genial co-founders have in common: the occasional slipping into fast, low muttering that's hard to understand. (A problem that is compounded when, as in this episode, the volume levels tend to differ greatly between the two speakers.)