Donald Dwight Hook

Donald Dwight Hook, the author of many books and articles, is Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages (Linguistics and German) at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, and a pioneer in the new field of theolinguistics.

Making the Holy Mass a Generic Worship Service in a Generic Worship Space?

Every practicing Catholic in America has observed that formal worship in our churches has changed considerably in the past three or four decades. Since the rate of change shows no signs of slowing, the types of changes we are making to our worship must be all the more closely examined and their effects understood. Even small alterations may have serious consequences: A marksman aiming at a target may shift his aim by just a little - and thereby miss.
So we, as Catholic worshipers, must be sure what we are aiming at. If our aim is to make our Masses virtually indistinguishable from the generic services in some community church - to make the Mass into a cheerful Sunday hour of vague uplift - we are pointed in the right direction. Our current liturgical practices, if persisted in, should get us to that goal in ten years or so. It is time - and past time - to ask ourselves if that is what we want. With new and remodeled churches that look more like bus stations than houses of worship, with liturgical language and music that bespeak the banal and promote the prosaic, with Masses that are deformed into flatness rather than shaped to yield a taste of transcendent beauty, we American Catholics are well on our way to liturgical amorphousness. Shape
less, do-it-yourself liturgies will work insidiously to make our doctrines and articles of faith formless and self-serving as well. We should take the Catholic adage lex orandi, lex credendi (what you pray is what you believe) as an urgent warning.

This flood of changes is traced by some to the Second Vatican Council. But there is no compelling written evidence that Pope John XXIII and the 2,600 bishops who opened Vatican II in 1962, or the many bishops who served until the end of the ecumenical council in 1965, or any of Pope John's three successors, intended the liturgical course that has resulted in the nearly complete alteration of Catholic worship, the decline into liturgical looseness, and the concomitant abrasion of Catholic theology and ecclesiology. Who is responsible? I cannot treat that here. I do suggest that if this decay continues, we will have only ourselves to blame. For. the people of God, laity and clergy alike, have every right to protect their religious heritage within legitimate postconciliar guidelines, and no one has the right to effect such alterations in ritual, language, music, and architecture as may change doctrine.

Yet at the local level, in chanceries and rectories and parish offices and committee meetings, Catholics both clerical and lay are apparently granting themselves permission to emend and revamp all parts of our public worship. There are many worrisome aspects to this presumption, but not enough people seem to be worried. A few theolinguists have warned of the dangers of so-called inclusive language as promulgated by enthusiastic feminists and their followers. Perhaps because of a wish to be ecumenically inoffensive, hardly anyone has urged Catholics to take a lesson from the damage done in the Episcopal Church by ill-advised official changes in, and irresponsible ad hoc tampering with, prayer book language.

The political maxim "change the language and you can change minds" works for religious doctrine too. The terms "reborn," "new birth," and "born again" mean something different from the older, more accurate term "regeneration." "Inclusive," as in so-called inclusive language today, really connotes exclusivity: It means that no cultural or theological traditionalists are welcome, only persons who accept politically correct liturgies. The expressions "unity in diversity" and "diversity in unity" are code phrases for the exclusion of conservative or pro-Roman elements.
Language is a precision instrument, and tiny changes can alter meanings profoundly, even down to the placement of a comma. Is the proper English wording of the Nicene Creed "all that is seen and unseen" or "all that is, seen and unseen"? Such questions arise in all translation, and are particularly delicate in religious rites being translated into the vernacular. The questions must be investigated expertly and settled authoritatively. Success is no simple task, and contention is to be expected. Much has been written, for example, about the shortcomings of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy and its failure to secure competent linguistic help in translating crucial texts into English.

Not to be expected, however, and never permissible, are ad hoc alterations - by priests, lectors, and directors of liturgy or music - to the elements and words of the Mass, even if the alterations do not affect doctrine. Yet in America today these are scandalously common and frequent. No celebrant of old would have dared to tinker with the Latin Mass or invite his parishioners to do so; few of them would have known enough about Latin to do so anyway. (And the bishop would have had his head!) But with the widespread use of the vernacular we are witnessing a free-for-all of revisionism. Today Catholics at Mass are forced to endure and participate in all sorts of liturgical whimsy, blunder, and unauthorized change.

These willful alterations - several of which I discuss below - may not strike every Catholic in the pews as significant, since so much of our liturgy is now done in a seemingly casual and impromptu manner. That very casualness is part of what I want to caution us about. Our acts and words at Mass are tremendously significant, and we must pay close attention to what goes on. Join me for a moment at a typical weekend Mass.

When the priest and lectors and altar servers and extraordinary ministers and cross-bearer all finally gather near the vestibule, there will generally be no solemn sign - no thurifer or asperges - to start Mass off. The synthetic notes of the "gathering song" will signal the start of a casual amble up the aisle. From beneath the cassocks of the servers protrude the enormous white or variously colored basketball shoes that serve our adolescents as Sunday footwear.
Reaching his spot before the altar (now often called "the table"), the priest (now often called "the presider") begins not with the sign of the cross but with "Good morning, everybody." This may be because he feels jovial or because he feels awkward, but a secular greeting is jarring and out of place in our liturgy. The people politely or reflexively shout it back to him anyhow. (I've even heard "Good morning, folks," "Good morning, Father," at a Saturday evening service.)  Continuing in this extraliturgical down-home style, the "presider" may ramble into an extemporaneous little disquisition. It may be on the central theme of the Mass, or it may be on what happens to be on his mind that day - say, the weather, the Super Bowl, or the three-day weekend in honor of whatever or whomever. This opening sets the tone, a tone far removed from that of the solemn and exalted colloquy with which our Mass used to begin: Priest: I will go in unto the altar of God. People: Unto God, who gives joy to my youth (Psalm 42). The tone today is more like, "Hey, gang, let's do some liturgy."

Soon the lectors will rise to read. Correct pronunciation and intonation, appropriate retards and pauses, and even audibility may be lacking. Frequently it becomes evident that the reader does not understand the straightforward sense of a reading. Words and names come out twisted, biblical persons and places tie up the tongue, phrases and lines are mangled or even skipped.

Catholics shake their heads as they share stories of mishaps and enormities witnessed week after week.  There was the young man who read haltingly through an Epistle in which Paul speaks repeatedly about "offense" against God. The lad pronounced the word as if Paul were referring to the thing a football team does when it's not on defense; clearly his lectoral training had been confined to watching football on television. There was the lady leading the responsorial Psalm who, each time she encountered it, changed the scriptural formula "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" to "the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Rachel." There was the priest who confused the prophet Elijah with his successor Elisha, and then compounded the offense (not the offense) by pronouncing Elijah "Eliyah" and Elisha "Eleesha."

The Catholic who listens attentively will hear many a reading at Mass "improved" by the changing of words here and there for purposes of putative inclusivity or political correctness. "Brethren" will become "sisters and brothers." Such immortal lines as Jesus' "I will make you fishers of men" are likely to be neutered or inclusivized into grotesquery. This strictly uncanonical practice should be nipped in the bud by the pastor. But it seldom seems to be. Often enough it is the pastor himself who is rewriting the Scriptures. The lay readers may be dutifully reading what has been handed to them - not the Lectionary but a contraband page that was typed up in the rectory.

An acquaintance tells me he has been in a few parishes in which, when it is time for the Gospel, the priest does not read it but rather while threading his way among the potted plants arranged on the altar steps - "proclaims" it without using any printed matter. How admirable that a priest would commit the entire Gospel of the day to memory! But, of course, that is not what happens. These priests, sans Lectionary, deliver to the congregation not the Gospel text but a paraphrase of the text given in their own words.

What does this mean? The priest already has a spot in the Mass set aside for the giving of his paraphrase: That's in his homily. This much briefer spot is reserved for the sacred Evangelists to have their say. A "presider" who claims
both spots is, frankly, being a hog. These proclamations-without-notes can be skillful performances. But what do they signify? When a priest conflates his own words with the Gospel's words, does he convey that he has so deeply imbibed the Gospel that it is part of his very being? No. He conveys that he is no mere reader of the Gospel; rather, he is a performer, of whose repertoire the Gospel is a part. The universal Good News is reduced to being a portion of the local news - as edited by him. By apparently preferring his own compositions to those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, he calls into question not only his liturgical acumen and his literary taste but also his sense of history. He makes his parish parochial in the pejorative sense of that word.

Once upon a time, two thousand years ago, each local Christian community told itself its own set of stories about Jesus. That was the best they could do. Then the Church, divinely guided, spent several generations settling which tellings were canonical and which were not. (Out of dozens, only four made the cut.) The local priest today who concocts his own gospel may be presuming to embody the whole Christian tradition in his person, but his presumption is impertinent and insubordinate. Any enthusiast for Jesus may proclaim the Good News on the streetcorner in whatever words he wishes. An ordained Catholic priest offering the Mass, however, has other responsibilities.

The Liturgy of the Word should never be a platform for ad lib artists or tendentious revisionists. Nor - with all due respect to the laymen who faithfully serve as lectors in our parishes should the sacred readings be delivered by amateurs who are not properly trained and controlled.

Why?

The Mass is a drama in all its parts - in the introductory rite, the readings and prayers, the homily, the intercessions, the Creed, the presentation of the gifts, the Eucharistic Prayer, the Communion rite, and the dismissal. Precise, hallowed language is the thread that knits these sacred parts together. This means that priests and laity must enact with uniformity the canonically authorized texts and rites. Slipping in "inclusive" language, departing from verbatim delivery, and willfully inserting into the service strong elements of one's individual personality or one's own biases will damage the whole. Every part of Mass has an underlying message for any given day, and all parts must be conveyed to the people in as seamless a linguistic way as possible so that the message is perceived as having the stamp of God's Holy Catholic Church. To stamp the Mass with one's own personality, as celebrant or lector or extraordinary minister, is arrogance at best.

Willful alterations in the Liturgy of the Word are bad enough. But when we move to the central moment of our worship, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the taking of liberties is still more consequential. Typical enormities include omissions, additions, and rewordings. There are verbal quirks such as the trinitarian expression, "In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier," to replace "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The transparent intention is to avoid the use of any words that smack of masculinity. But this depersonalization and deconstruction of the Holy Trinity is unauthorized, unorthodox, and replete with doctrinal dangers (remember the Modalist heresy?).

All deacons and priests must keep in mind that to transmit the clarity and purity of the Church's message throughout the Mass is a solemn duty. To mislead or falsely persuade any listener is a grave dereliction. Some priests and deacons, in their zeal to communicate their personal opinions on matters of gender, culture, or ecclesiology, produce misinterpretations of Scripture or cause false blessings to be administered to the people of God. To do this is to treat the congregation not as the people of God at their worship but as a captive audience for a private agenda.
An acquaintance tells me of a "presider" at the Newman Hall near one of America's premier public universities who regularly alters the Eucharistic Prayer. All the standard versions of the Eucharistic Prayer speak of our sharing faith or growing in love "with John Paul our Pope, our Bishop, N., and [the rest of the faithfull." The priest in question, however, says the following: "with John Paul, the Bishop of Rome, our Bishop, N., and [so on]...." (My acquaintance adds that the pews hold no missals or missalettes - so there is no way for the ordinary worshiper to know if the priest is delivering the authentic text of the rite.) Similarly, a well-known monsignor has told this writer of hearing a celebrant alter the Eucharistic Prayer by saying "with John Paul, the successor of Peter, vicar of Rome...."
Clearly these illegitimate rewordings are slipped in for a purpose. What can that purpose be, if not to demote the Pontiff and downgrade the Holy See? If John Paul is just the bishop of a city in far-off Italy, then the papacy is all the easier to dismiss. Hijacking the Eucharistic Prayer and rewriting it to express one's private views on Petrine primacy evidently is allowed under the liturgical license that some of our liberal priests grant themselves.

Another acquaintance notes that his parish priest revises, ever so slightly, -the prayer after the Our Father. Instead of saying ."and protect us from all anxiety," he regularly says "and protect us from all needless anxiety." It is the small but persistent character of the emendation that so puzzles my friend. The Church has empowered the celebrant to ask God to protect us from anxiety. Has this priest decided that the Church has been hasty? Does he feel that some portion of anxiety is needful, even beneficial, for us? Perhaps a psychological case could be made for that belief But the Mass is not the place to assert it. A better case can be made for praying the prayer as written. (Certainly the anxiety felt by Catholics who have to listen to priests re-scripting the Mass falls into the "needless" category. Shouldn't this priest stop causing it?)

At the "Fraction Rite" (the breaking of the bread), the celebrant is to make a simple and beautiful announcement based on the words of John the Baptist: "This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...." And the people respond by echoing the words of the centurion at Capernaum: "Lord, I am not worthy...." An acquaintance tells me of a priest who instead announces, "We Catholic Christians believe many things, and among the things we believe is that this is really and truly our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...." Not only is this language chatty and subliturgical, it also compels the question: What kind of apologia is this? Or is it really an apology? Is this priest saying that Catholics believe a lot of odd things and this is one of them? Or is he implying that all Catholic beliefs, even minor ones, are on a par with belief in the Real Presence? Or is he clumsily reminding those present not to commune if they do not share this belief (if so, there must be a better way of making the point)? Whatever his intention may be, his revision is illadvised. It serves only to draw our attention to the priest and his preoccupations, just when attention should be fastened on the Lord and His Presence.

Sometimes casual lingo and casual action coalesce into outright disrespect for Christ's Presence in the Eucharist. I shall never forget the Mass at which the celebrant announced that there would be "two bread stations." If anyone should want "a sip of wine," he added, "help yourself from the chalice on the altar." Of course, that "bread" and "wine" had been transubstantiated, and so his reference to them as merely bread and wine minimized what occurs at the Consecration. But there's more: Before I reached the altar where the Chalice stood, a child communicant, too short to replace the Chalice carefully, spilled some of the Precious Blood. Given that no one seemed to be in charge, the woman just ahead of me wiped it up awkwardly with the purificator that lay alongside.

This had been the low point of liturgical malfeasance in my worshiping experience, and I sometimes told myself that surely it was an aberration. But a week before this writing I was present for the following episode in liturgical history. An altar server brought to the altar a wine cruet in which a cork(!) - as we began to deduce from the celebrant's wrestling and grunting - was stuck fast. Rather than sending the item back to the sacristy or the credence table to be dealt with by someone, rather than having a substitute brought out, the priest tugged and pulled on it at the altar. At length he asked the congregation, "Anybody have a corkscrew?" The answer being no, he took out his keys and poked at it. Finally the sexton rose, approached the altar, and with his pocketknife skewered the cork and popped it free. Brushing shreds of debris off the altar, the priest took a whiff of the wine and announced, "Whew! Smells like it came from the Rehoboth Canal."

Such disrespect in the performance of the sacred rites must surely lead to slack indifference toward or downright disbelief in the Real Presence. So say 1. Yet I can imagine someone responding to this catalogue of liturgical woes by saying that I am just a nitpicker. Maybe I am. But maybe I am because I know that a nit left unpicked will mature into a full-grown louse with a mean bite. (Let the Mystical Body be picked clean of nits, by all means!) A kindlier way of dismissing me would be to classify me as simply a stickler, a harper on details. Let me turn the charge around: Isn't it the liturgical liberals who are sticklers about detail? They insist on suppressing or changing the details of the Mass. Practitioners of revisionist liturgy evidently agree with me that a minor alteration in Mass can have a huge impact on Catholic faith. For it seems to be the very purpose of their alterations to embody and express in the Mass their alterations to that Faith.

Consider for a moment another detail, the sanctus bells. Those are the little bells that the server, kneeling, picks up and rings at the elevations of the Host and the Chalice. Recently I asked one of the priests at my parish why the servers were not ringing the sanctus bells. The priest replied that he disapproved of their use. I mentioned that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (109) says that sanctus bells are desirable in most circumstances. The priest informed me that he omits the sanctus bells at the Consecration because there is no special action at the Consecration, since Christ is present throughout the whole Mass. He added that he would ring bells at the Consecration if and when he could also "ring them at the reading of the Word." Here is an understanding of the theology of the Mass that is not the understanding of the Church, and it is expressed and promoted by manipulation of the details of the rite. A friend who is himself a priest said to me, "Ah, the bells. That's the first thing liberals want to get rid of The ringing bespeaks the mystery."

I would caution the liturgical revisionists as Hamlet cautioned Horatio: There are more things in the Mass than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Words and actions, bells, incense, music, chants, crucifixes, kneelers - none of these elements is superficial. They have grown from deep roots in Catholic theology and piety. They are full of meaning, and the dismissal or denaturing of them is equally full of meaning. We must be clear, as I said in the beginning, what meaning we intend our Masses to express.

Well, I invited you to a typical Sunday Mass with me and I have spent the whole time whispering my commentary in your ear. The Mass is ended. (Or, as I heard the presider put it once, "The Mass is ending.") Go in peace. Thanks be to God.

"Have a nice day, everybody." "You too, Father."

If the kneelers have been banished from the church, nobody stays to kneel in prayer after Mass. If the tabernacle has been shunted aside and genuflection has been obviated, people can more easily scamper out of the pews to their cars or to the doughnut-and-coffee hour - or they could if the priest and servers didn't clog the center aisle carrying the book and the cross back to the vestibule. As I heard a hastening Catholic mutter one Sunday, "Can't you walk any faster, Father?"

As Americans, we must be extra cautious not to let the decay of our secular life affect our religious life, for there is scarcely an area of secular life that is not dysfunctional. In intellectual life, we have aggressive relativism; in moral life, a "tolerance" that promotes every sort of perverse relationship; in social life, a shrug of the shoulders at serial cohabitation; in commercial life, a vapid consumerism abetted by the ubiquitous hypercommunication of dubious information; in civic life, a dreary sameness of highways and malls replacing neighborhoods and shops. How can the organically developed liturgical rites of a transcendent and authoritative religion preserve their majesty and integrity in a world that eschews organicity, recognizes no authority, and honors -no transcendence? Pragmatic and dumbed-down Americans are likely to expect the Mass to be as pedestrian as a display of soup cans and no more demanding than a weekday afternoon television talk-show. Believe me, our laissez-faire liturgical practices are getting us to that point fast.

As a former Episcopalian, I can remember the suspicion - even horror - that low churchmen felt at the high churchmen and their "smells and bells." As the Episcopal Church dumped much of its august ceremonial and language in favor of a "broad church" expression, it also jettisoned much doctrine. Lex orandi, lex credendi. A liturgy left up for grabs - prey to everything from the aggressive programs of revisionists to
the folksy blunders of the incompetent - will result in a faith left up for grabs.

The Catholic Faith, as expressed in the liturgy, requires that we adhere to canonically approved forms. Implicit is the recognition that as Catholics at worship we are not simply individuals expressing our various individual convictions. We are - both clergy and laity - a chorus of voices proclaiming liturgical and doctrinal harmony. Liturgy has a twofold quality, an outside and an inside; there is visible, sometimes tangible, action; and there is invisible, spiritual action. They are connected, and both are real, both are needed. And by the same token, our religious actions are social as well as personal. Our task at Mass is not to promote our own ideological eccentricities or project our own image but to soak up and then promulgate the Faith.

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