Todd Flowerday

What if you held a liturgy war …

… and nobody showed up? A number of bishops played hooky from the USCCB’s June meeting in Orlando. A vote on the new Proper of Seasons, the part of the Roman Missal that includes prayers for the opening rite, gifts, and post-communion, didn’t get the required two-thirds approval. There was a vote to bypass the whole ICEL translation if that chunk of Missal didn’t get enough yes votes. If that happens, the bishops will need to prepare their own translation.

ICEL has been less receptive to the bishops’ input, supposedly because of new curial guidelines that must be observed. Who knows how much of this is prelatial pride or political machination? Whatever the reasons, people are getting tired of making the liturgy an ideological battleground.

I’m more interested in the working paper for the October synod on the word of God. The section entitled “The Word of God and the Eucharist” expresses concern that the word-sacrament connection could be clearer in Catholic liturgy. Maybe the whole USCCB discussion on Latin loyalty is woefully misplaced. The real issue is to make that pastoral connection in order to increase the assembly’s openness and responsiveness to the word at worship. Consider this section:

Oftentimes, the Liturgy of the Word is not sufficiently prepared or is not properly linked to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. An intimate bond exists between the Word and the Eucharist as seen in scriptural testimony (cf. John 6), confirmed by the Fathers of the Church and reasserted by the Second Vatican Council. In this regard, the Church’s great Tradition has many significant expressions which can serve as examples: “Corpus Christi intelligitur etiam Scriptura Dei” (“The Divine Scriptures are also considered the Body of Christ”), and “Ego Corpus Iesu Evangelium puto” (“I consider the Gospel to be the Body of Christ”).

If this intimate bond exists, then why are Roman Rite Catholics stuck with a one-year set of prayers when we have a three-year lectionary? I suppose in the present climate it would be too much to ask to salvage what we can from the Latin prayers and compose new, poetic prayers in the vernacular that harmonize with the Scripture readings at Mass.

Oh wait. We had that in the preparation of Roman Missal II, which all the English-speaking bishops approved but the curia vetoed. Meanwhile we’re still stuck with 1975 sacramentaries.

Some people oversimplify the argument as a clash between Bishop Donald“Dumb It Down” Trautman versus ICEL’s Father Bruce “Exalted Language” Harbert. The fact is that both the English first edition translations from the early 1970s and the Latin edition of the Roman Missal are inadequate for the modern Roman Rite. We’ve waited almost 40 years for a good Roman Missal.Does anybody see the point in rushing to get anything done now? ML 

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