“We don’t need any more refugees from the Bogus Disordo.” That was my friend Andrew’s response when I told him that our family is becoming Melkite. As you can probably guess, Andrew is a hardcore Latin-Masser. So was I, for my first ten years as a Catholic. And for what it’s worth, I still prefer the Latin Mass to the Novus Ordo. One thing has definitely changed, though: I’m not quite so afraid of the “Spirit of Vatican II.”
Take, for instance, a new essay in America that has been making the rounds. In it, Fr. Kevin Irwin argues that we ought to understand the Mass as a corporate act—that the laity are an essential part in the Holy Sacrifice. He cites the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium as saying,
The baptized and the ordained “offer” the Mass “each in that way that is proper to [themselves].” This explains why the Roman Canon has always used “we offer” (offerimus) to refer to the action of the Mass, not “I offer” on behalf of the laity.
We should note that many progressive Catholics are opposed to private Masses on principle. They don’t believe that priests should offer the Holy Sacrifice except in the presence of laymen.
Of course, this is all part of progressives’ wider obsession with “lay participation” in the Mass, and in the Church more widely. It explains everything about the modern Church—from the use of the vernacular in the Mass, to all that call-and-response in the Novus Ordo, to the three laywomen serving in Pope Francis’ CDF.
Some conservatives believe this opposition stems from a desire to de-emphasize the sacrificial nature of the Mass and to downplay Christ’s priesthood more generally. And, in many cases, I’m sure that’s true! All the same, it strikes me that “private Divine Liturgies” never evolved in the Eastern churches—neither Catholic nor Orthodox. And that’s not a quirk of history. Rather, it runs counter to the Eastern understanding of worship. As the Melkite prayer book explains,
The word “Liturgy” is the name given to the public act of the solemn corporate worship of God by the priestly society of Christians, the Body of Christ. As members of Christ, they share in His priesthood. They must, then, share also in His prayer and immolation. The Liturgy is the common action of the people of God, with and through their priests—with and through the High Priest, the Man-God, Jesus Christ.
This is why laymen chant during Divine Liturgy as much (if not more than) the priest. It’s also why Eastern churches have always preferred to worship in the vernacular.
Our prayer book also quotes St. John Chrysostom, who was rather in favor of “lay participation”:
We are all one body. We differ only as one member may differ from another; and, therefore, we should not cast all upon the priests, but we should all be involved in the care of the whole Church as one body.
I love that.
Now, I also love Evelyn Waugh’s defense of the Tridentine Low Mass:
I am old now but when I was young I was received into the Church. I was not at all attracted by the splendor of her great ceremonies—which the Protestants could well counterfeit. Of the extraneous attractions of the Church which most drew me was the spectacle of the priest and his server at low Mass, stumping up to the altar without a glance to discover how many or how few he had in his congregation; a craftsman and his apprentice; a man with a job which he alone was qualified to do. That is the Mass I have grown to know and love.
And I love that the Catholic Church makes room for both—the solemn beauty of the Latin Mass and the beautiful chaos of the Divine Liturgy.
What I’m not so fond of is the Western liturgists’ attempts to (re)incorporate this “lay participation” into the Roman Rite, which has been underway since Vatican II. Somehow it lacks both the spontaneity and the beauty of Eastern liturgy. It’s more boring and yet also less reverent. Now, why is that? Is the language inferior? What about the chant-tones? Or is it simply the absence of a “culture of participation” in the Western Church? I have no idea. And, in a sense, it doesn’t matter.
