DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
Me 'n Cardinal
Arinze -
4 December 2003
Rather to my surprise this
appears to be a developing correspondence between Cardinal Arinze and
myself. For those who wish to follow these exchanges in date order I shall
leave them in sequence - i.e 'Alive'
Newspaper Clipping 1st Letter to Cardinal
Arinze
Reply From
Cardinal Text
of Cardinal's Speech in Texas Acknowledgement
of Cardinal's Letter
Article:
"Forty Years of Vatican II Note
from the Cardinal Letter to him
dated 18th February 2004
Below: About a
Press Cutting - 4 December 2003
I noticed the press cutting below, pinned up in the porch
of our local church [Sorry about the quality of reproduction]. It
was obviously intended as a criticism of the plan to renovate St. Nicholas'
Church and make it more user friendly, with the altar more or less surrounded by
seating. The Cardinal appears to be critical of such developments in the
US.
I was pretty critical of our local
development on the grounds of cost (£750,000), telling my parish priest so and
producing a more modest plan that would have cost about £10,000, excluding
necessary fabric repairs.
My view is that we need a place to meet, and it should be
beautiful, but we needn't go overboard in a effort to please God. I reckon
He is not terribly impressed by costly structures, especially if they are empty,
like some of the wonderful mediaeval churches throughout Europe. There is
little doubt that He appreciates loving hearts more than magnificent temples.
On one point, however, I agree with my parish priest - the
Rev. Robert Fleck - the people should be able to gather together round the altar
table, so I am a bit critical of Cardinal Arinze's reported views, and I
expressed my criticisms in a letter that I
reproduce below.
Some might ask, "Who are you to write to a
Cardinal?"
The answer is, "I am a member of Christ's Body, the
Church, and my views may be just as valid, or even more so, than those of any
other member of the Church, regardless of eminence. Position is nothing.
Truth is everything."
[Sorry again about the reproduction quality of
the newspaper page below]
Below: Letter
to Cardinal Francis Arinze - 29
November 2003
  |
Saturday,
29November 2003
Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship,
Palazzo delle Congregazioni,
Piazza Pio XII, 10 – 00120
Vatican City State
email: cultdiv@ccdds.va
God lives in me and as I turn to my neighbour during the
Eucharist and wish him or her peace I affirm that all of us share in the inner
life of the Blessed Trinity, through the gift of faith and by eating the flesh
of Jesus and drinking His precious blood - the humanity and divinity of Christ
really and truly present under the appearance of bread and wine.
This is a vast mystery, but it is true, and I am aware of the
presence of Christ in each of my neighbours, gathered round the sacrificial
table, where the priest, another man being remade in the image of Christ, offers
this great sacrifice.
“There I am in the midst of them,” says our beloved Lord.
So, when I participate in this glorious moment there is no
division between my love for my neighbour and my love for Christ.
There is no emphasis on “horizontal attention to one another, rather
than vertical attention to God”*.
We are at one in our worship of almighty God in the Person of Jesus
Christ and recognise the unity of life that we share, human and divine
In a church where the seats surround the altar I am closer to
Christ physically when, through the repeated words of Christ, He becomes present
on the altar. I am also closer to
my neighbour, and psychologically I feel much closer to our risen Lord –
rather more so than I would if I were at the back of a long, narrow church.
We are indeed at a
banqueting table, even “in an amphitheatre” as you have stated*
(though it is not a word I would have used), for we share the same table that
was familiar to the Apostles, and we share in the greatest expression of love
that this world will ever witness, the physical death and resurrection of Our
Lord, recalled in this simple but dramatic service of remembrance – worthy of
the greatest amphitheatre this world might create.
If
we try to think of ‘God’, without referring to His revealed identity as the
Word of God , the Person of Christ, we create a mental abstraction, an unreality
– just as when we say we love God and do not in fact love our neighbour we
delude ourselves – tell ourselves and others a lie.
Your words, as reported in the press, tend to raise false
concerns about the focus of Mass – the Eucharist.
Members of the universal church have now participated in this service for
two millennia. Why?
Because Jesus, our Lord and saviour, is truly present, dimly perceived
perhaps but nevertheless there, in all His unseen Glory.
A great and holy priest will perhaps more fully express,
simply by his holiness, the wonder of Jesus really present.
But even in the worst cases the silence that descends at the moment of
consecration, and the proximity of our fellow worshippers gathered around the
table of Christ, reinforces our common belief in this great mystery.
Questions regarding ‘Vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ focus of
attention deal with abstract unreality.
Yours most sincerely,
Michael
O’Shea
PS:
I respect the
“Church’s long Latin heritage”*,
but I would prefer to sing God’s praises in a language I understand.
*
Newspaper Quotation of your words (November 2003)
See attached.
Below: Reply from Cardinal Arinze - Received 22nd December
Click here for full Text of the Cardinal's talk to the National Meeting of
Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, San Antonio, Texas,
8th October 2003
Below:
Letter to Cardinal - 22 December 2003
NOTE
to Readers:
I know that Yuri Gargarin did not land on the Moon. Allow a slight
latitude for modest creativity & heat of the moment composition.
Below:
Letter to Cardinal - 6 Jan. 2004
Below:
Article written as a result of this correspondence.
Forty Years Of Vatican II
A personal reflection by Catholic layman Michael O’Shea
- reporting on a recent keynote speech by Vatican Cardinal Francis Arinze.
The very best things are personal – between the lover and the beloved, the
creator and the created, writer and reader - between friends – so let me be
personal!
Back in 1957 I was 25, a young man freshly returned to the bosom of
mother church - the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church that is –
following a three year agnostic detour. I was still full of the tension of
enquiry, still seeking answers to questions about the inner nature of the God
who made me.
As a young adult with a renewed faith in the existence of
God, and the beginning of a love for a man who spoke with authority about the
nature of this awesome God, I needed to get to know him better. I had identified
Jesus as the person who had the information that I needed, as crucial to me as
water is to dry land.
Reading scripture on my own was part of the answer. But
something else was essential, and it turned out to be the Eucharist – or Mass,
as it was termed in those days.
As a former cradle Catholic I had imbibed an understanding of
the sequential logic of High Altar, upon which bread and wine would become the
Body and Blood of Christ, then the priest and behind him the people –
including the growing me, feeling a little bit excluded by the fact that the
priest, clad in a kind of holy sandwich board, had his back towards me - us. We
were all, nevertheless, facing towards the God who would become present at the
moment of consecration, mysterious, unseen, awesome and unknown, creator of the
universe. He was obviously worthy of veneration by an imperfect people, even if
we did not know much about Him.
Then, in emerging adulthood, I had found a man who said,
quite unambiguously and without any hint of madness or megalomania, "I am
the way, the truth and the life", who walked and talked with sinners,
sat at table with those who had began to believe he had the words of eternal
life, broke bread with them and ultimately revealed, during a final meal, the
meaning behind his strange and slightly off-putting statement that unless we ate
of his flesh and drank of his blood we would not have life within us.
"Yes" he said, "My flesh is food enough ….." and then, at
the conclusion of this particular meal, taking bread and wine, 'Take you and
eat, this is my body… Take you and drink, this is my blood. Do this in
remembrance of me."
So there we were two thousand years later doing just exactly
this. But it was inadequate. We had lost an intimacy with Christ. We were
treating him as God the Unknown, not as God the known through incarnation.
Friendship with Christ seemed impossible, frustrating.
My need was like an all-consuming thirst - weird, unless you
were, like me, a returning prodigal athirst for contact with the reality of the
risen and therefore even more mysterious Jesus.
I knew a little Latin, enough to understand the wonderful
economy of its structure, but in practical terms, because a mere 0.000006 % or
so of the world’s population spoke Latin, it was, effectively, a ‘dead’
language - scarcely the medium in which to conduct a lively and living liturgy;
and although Latin and English (my mother tongue) were printed side-by-side in
my daily missal I could not easily follow every nuance of the Eucharistic
celebration - and was distinctly underwhelmed by the argument that because of
this two-language missal I would be able to understand Mass in every country of
the world that I cared to visit.
So, for the next few years I found myself taut with prayer,
almost despairing. I needed to feel close to this newly discovered Christ. I
longed to experience a reflection of that familiarity and friendship he had
shown towards the people of his time.
Then suddenly, John XXIII, Bishop of Rome, first among
equals, called all the bishops of the church to a council meeting, and in 1963 I
found that I had not been alone in my prayer. The burden of my longing fell
away, and as I knelt in England’s Westminster Cathedral my heart became free.
I could breath. I could worship in mind and heart – without translation –
gathered with my brothers and sisters round the Eucharistic table!
This, of course, will mean little to those who do not believe
that Christ is God and that he is truly present at the moment of consecration in
the Mass, the Eucharistic Celebration.
However, forty years later, purely personally but in accord
with 1.4 billion fellow Catholics around the world, I am still a believer. I am
still free. I am free to be active in my local church, able to take part in the
wonderful Eucharistic celebration.
Christ is in my heart and my soul, and I and other ministers
of the Eucharist are able to bring the Bread of Life to sick and housebound
brothers and sisters, while as a minister of the Word I have the privilege of
reading portions of scripture in a language that all present understand.
"Christ himself speaks when the Holy Scriptures are read in church,"
states the first of the published documents to be produced by the Second Vatican
Council. Thus, when I read, I am overwhelmed by the thought that Jesus
uses my voice. I know by experience that he does.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for
Divine worship, reminds us in a keynote speech to American Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions meeting in Texas, towards the end of last year* that the great 5th
Century scholar St. Jerome proclaimed, "Ignorance of the Scriptures is
ignorance of Christ".
"If we reflect back to the past forty years, we see
how the renewed liturgical rites have been made much richer with biblical
texts," says Cardinal Arinze.
"In the Mass, the lectionary is so arranged as to cover
most of the Bible in a three-year Sunday reading and a two-year weekday lessons
programme.""…. In country after country, immense effort is
undertaken to provide the 
Christian
people with translations of the Bible."
As a commentator I would like to have been able to ask the
Cardinal why, other than the fact that printing had not been invented, had it
taken almost one thousand five hundred years before St. Jerome’s comment was
taken seriously enough for such translations to be made available?
Was it because most church leaders were content with Greek
and Latin versions of Scripture, and did not trust people to read it for
themselves – afraid of misinterpretation, despite St. Jerome’s powerful
admonition?
It would have been historically interesting and relative to
current Vatican attitudes had such a question been raised from the floor.
The cardinal’s review of liturgical developments since
Vatican II did, however, consider problems of accurate translation of scripture
and liturgy in many world languages.
"Sacrosanctum Concilium", the first
document to be promulgated as a result of Vatican II, "is very clear in its
principles and directives," the Cardinal recalled. "Even in the
liturgy the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do
not involve the faith or the good of the whole community. Rather she respects
and fosters the spiritual adornments and gifts of the various races and peoples.
Anything in their way of life that is not indissolubly bound up with
superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves
intact."
The cardinal also dealt with active participation by the
laity. "The increased participation
of the faithful by prayer and song, gesture and silence, in the Eucharist and
the other sacraments" is seen as a wonderful thing.
Bishops, priests and people, however, had to guard against
excesses and abuses he warned, such as "…. dances that offend against
good sense and do not help to raise people's mind to God, loquacious and
unnecessary commentaries, over-dosage singing monopolized by the choir which
allows no time for personal prayer, and the introduction of bizarre vestments
and unacceptable vessels for the Holy Eucharist."
Other practices that the cardinal criticised were "…exaggerated
autobiographical introduction and trite jokes" [by priests] " in …
misguided effort to warm the people up for
worship!" Such a priest ".. may not realize that he is now drawing
attention to himself instead of to God and the liturgical celebration of the day".
"It cannot be tolerated", he continues,
"that certain priests should take upon themselves the right to compose
Eucharistic Prayers or to substitute profane readings for texts from Sacred
Scripture. Initiatives of this sort … are in direct contradiction to
[liturgical reform], disfigure it and deprive the Christian people of the
genuine treasures of the liturgy of the Church"
There was no doubt, however, that the Vatican Council
directive has continued to sustain the Church along the paths of holiness for
fostering genuine liturgical life. This re-emphasizes why it is ever important
to see that the Council's genuine directives are followed.
Cardinal Arinze went on to criticise certain aspects of
church architecture, such as wholesale removal of altar rails and the
positioning of the altar in the middle of the sitting area of the people, and
the removal of all statues and sacred images.
"Before the hammer or compressor machine is applied to
objects that have touched the devotional sensitivity of the people for decades
or even centuries," he said, "those who have to take the decision
cannot avoid asking themselves whether there are reasons weighty enough to upset
so many people and ask the parish or diocese to pay for the exercise."
As one who had to kneel at altar rails, as a child,
with hands covered in case they came in contact with the consecrated host, I
might have debated this particular point with him, and while his alarm about
unnecessary destruction of church artefacts is totally justified I would have
had to clarify his concern about the position of the altar.
Cardinal Arinze then went on to insist that there should be a
clear distinction between priest and laity. All shared in the priesthood of
Christ, he said, but it was the specific role of the ordained priest to offer
the sacrifice of the Mass. A little bit unnecessary, I thought, to make this
point. No one, among Catholics I know, would ever dream of trying to celebrate
Mass without an ordained priest. But the cardinal has wider experience than I
about this, so I suppose it had to be said.
There were, however, great grounds for gratitude, he
continued, in "the increased participation of the faithful by prayer and
song, gesture and silence, in the Eucharist and the other sacraments." We
must thank God "for the radiant vitality of so many Christian communities,
a vitality drawn from the wellspring of the liturgy."
As a reporter who has personally benefited from the positive
changes flowing from Vatican II I can affirm the healthy vitality that exists in
all the parishes in which I have lived.
There is room for improvement of course.
Continuing in totally personal mode I have to say that it is
my experience that a minority of people have attempted to cling onto the Latin
Liturgy. These include at least one archbishop and a coterie of bishops, priests
and laymen who continue to mount rear-guard action against liturgy in the
vernacular, the mother tongue of each country. They ought to know better of
course, be a little more obedient to the collective will of the church - but I
suppose habit dies hard, and they are without doubt among those who value
uniformity and conformity as essential to world-wide Catholic identity. They
are, however, unlike the many people who, despite being faced with tremendous
problems of adaptation and initial confusion following Vatican II, have worked
ceaselessly to make effective the new order created by Council initiatives. I
sometimes think that the workload caused by John XXIII’s council is the only
reason he has not been canonised. Perhaps future generations will more readily
appreciate the wonderful, life-giving effects of his daring intervention. It
takes mighty courage to face and alter the practices of a thousand years and to
move three-quarters of a billion people (now more than a billion) to accept
massive changes. A totally admirable man.
On a minor but important point I would draw the attention of
the Cardinal to the many priests who, while restricting the length of their
Sunday homily fail to refer to the scriptural readings that have gone
beforehand. A wasted opportunity for clarification and sound teaching - though a
vast improvement upon the regular contribution of the holy old Canon in our
parish who, for example, fifty years ago spoke for ten minutes before
Mass, for 45 minutes during Mass, and normally for five minutes after
the "Missa est!" God save us from some of the clergy, though he was a
much loved parish priest! There is a great need for all priests to
undergo a rigorous, intensive and continuous course on the creation and delivery
of adequate and relevant homilies, providing real education and explanation
related to specific Scriptural texts. Moral exhortation is useful, inspirational
personal parables and stories less so, but neither can replace close examination
of the words of the Bible.
Who Should Say Mass?
I would also have liked the cardinal to have dwelt for a moment or two upon who
should say Mass. Should the position of celebrant not be open to duly
educated and ordained married priests – as was the practice during the first
one thousand three hundred years in the life of the Church?
Then there is the question of women priests? Why not? Did Our
Lady, Mother of Christ, not prove for all time that women can be trusted,
especially in her case by delivering God Incarnate to the world? Can not some of
her sisters also offer Christ to the world, or must they always be subject to a
static male exclusivity? No use recalling that Christ only recruited males as
His apostles! Was he not just accepting the cultural norms of the day, in His
time practising inculturation, or enculturation, i.e. "the adoption of the
behaviour patterns of the surrounding culture"?
It would take another John XXIII to implement such changes,
if they were felt appropriate by a majority of Bishops. The bishop of Rome, primus
inter pares, can never be a dictator. He would have to bring the vast
majority of fellow bishops along with him. Almost too much to hope for? Yes,
almost. It will take some time for a male hierarchy, caught up in a world
totally dedicated to the false premise of male superiority, to admit fully and
completely that all human beings are equal – different only in
biological function, but equally worthwhile and equally created in the image of
God.
Debates such as the above should certainly and cheerfully be
opened among bishops and clergy. They certainly occur among the laity, and to
avoid further embarrassment among succeeding generations our church leaders
should not insist upon the unsustainable, as their predecessors did when they
squashed the liberty of priests who promulgated the apparently heretical theory
that the sun did not circle the earth. Nor yet should they be forced to hastily
abandon embarrassing concepts such as the Canon Law that at one time stipulated
that men born out of wedlock could not be ordained to the priesthood.
As with everything else in the world of mankind there is
always a place in the Church for changed perceptions, as the light of revelation
dawns – except in unalterable theological truths such as the Incarnation,
Death and Resurrection of Jesus, His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the
Eternal Life that He offers, arising from His everlasting and eternal love for
mankind.
Ordinary commonsense and rationality, with a readiness to
accept truth, once it is proven to be true, is the guideline.
Would that we could understand the truth in all things.
_______________________________________________________________________
* Keynote speech to National Meeting of American Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions, San Antonio, Texas, 8th October 2003. [Text can be seen at www.o2c.org/textArinzeTalk.htm]
Ó Michael O’Shea, 36 High Street, Ardglass, Co.
Down BT30 7TU
Tel: 02844841436 [048 44841436 from the
Republic]
email: mike@o2c.org web: www.o2c.org
Note from the Cardinal - 11th February 2004
Letter to Cardinal Arinze - 18th February 2004
TOP
or to 'Alive'
Newspaper Clipping
1st Letter to Cardinal Arinze
Reply From Cardinal
Text of Cardinal's Speech in Texas
Acknowledgement of Cardinal's Letter
Article: "Forty Years of Vatican II
Note from the Cardinal
Letter to him dated 18th February 2004