Leadership

On Sundays, we are currently reading from St Paul’s 1^st letter to the Corinthians.

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; 6there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. (12:4-5)

This is a splendid passage, one that is easy very familiar and, therefore, easy to read without necessarily reflecting on the implications of its message. “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” I believe that one of the great challenges of implementing the Second Vatican Council is that of calling forth, nurturing and promoting the gifts of the Spirit.

When I look at the leadership of our church, I think we have a long way to go. Our present leadership structure looks like this:

Cardinals: 118 electors, 5 under 60 years of age, 39 in their 60’s, 74 in their 70”s (92 retired, 80 to 98 years of age) 

Archbishops: 715 active

Bishops: 2736 active

Curial Congregations: 7 cardinals 65 – 69, 2 73, 74

Roman Tribunals: 3 cardinals, 64, 71, 74 years of age

Pontifical Councils: 8 cardinals and archbishops in their 60’s, 4 in their 70’s

Roman Offices: 3 cardinals - 69, 69, 78 years of age

Institutes of the Curia: 1 bishop, 3 priests - 47, 56, 68, 70 years of age

Pontifical Commissions: 3 cardinals, 2 archbishops – 65-70 years of age

Interdicasterial Commissions: 5 cardinals, 65 – 78 years of age

Commissions: 6 cardinals, 3 bishops, 1 priest – 62- 73 years of age, 1 layman, head of Swiss Guard, 40 years of age

Other Institutions of the Holy See:  2 cardinals, 7 bishops, 5 priests,  60 – 75 years of age, 2 laymen, 60, 65

 

All of the above except for three laymen are celibate male clergy

 

Vatican City State: 2 cardinals, 1 bishop, 5 priests, age 49 - 56, 10 laymen age 50 – 73

Pontifical Academies: 1 bishop, 3 priests  62 – 75 years of age, 5 laymen 57 to 83 years of age, 1 laywoman age 74

Pontifical Universities: 1 bishop, 17 priests, 1 Religious woman, 1 layman

Educational Institutes: 1 bishop, 2 priests, 47 – 71 years of age

Apostolic Nunciatures: 180 archbishops, 51 to 73 years of age

Apostolic Delegates: 12 archbishops, 53 to 70 years of age

Representatives of the Holy See: 10 bishops, 6 priests- 50 to 73 years of age, 1 layman 69

Of the over 3600 people in major leadership positions in the Roman Catholic Church all are celibate male clerics except for 10 laymen, 1 laywoman, 1 woman religious; no one is under 47 years of age and most are in their mid-fifties to 80 years of age. Does this give sufficient witness to the gifts of the Spirit?

 

Hanukkah

Jews are currently celebrating the festival of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, which is an eight-day holiday commemorating the rededication of the (Second) Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE.

Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar.

 The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a nine-branched Menorah or Hanukiah, one additional light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on the final night. The typical Menorah consists of eight branches with an additional raised branch (a shamash) which is used to the Hanukkah lights which cannot be used for this purpose. When lighting the Hanukkah light, the following prayer is said: "Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, Who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time..."

First and Second Maccabees recount the purification and rededication of the Temple. The miracle of the one-day supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days is first described in the Talmud, written about 600 years after the events described in the books of Maccabees. After the forces of Antiochus IV had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, with only enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. When they used this, it burned for eight days, the time it needed to have new oil pressed and readied.

Centralization

In his book, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Father Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) lists “The problem of centralism in the Church” as one of the concrete problems the Council faced. He went on to write that the “problem of papal centralism is readily understandable to everyone.”


The Council’s response to this problem was an effort to develop the notion of Episcopal collegiality with a degree of autonomy of bodies of bishops, usually in the form of national conferences.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (#36-39) states that:

It is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, (i.e. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established.) to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used; their decrees are to be approved, that is, confirmed, by the Apostolic See. And, whenever it seems to be called for, this authority is to consult with bishops of neighboring regions which have the same language.

Translations from the Latin text into the mother tongue intended for use in the liturgy must be approved by the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned above.

Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples' way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.

Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics.

Within the limits set by the typical editions of the liturgical books, it shall be for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, to specify adaptations, especially in the case of the administration of the sacraments, the sacramentals, processions, liturgical language, sacred music, and the arts, but according to the fundamental norms laid down in this Constitution.

Father Ratzinger describes this as “an especially important development” in “the decentralization of the liturgical decision-making… the formulation of liturgical laws for their own regions is now, within limits, the responsibility of the various conferences of bishops. And this is not by delegation from the Holy See, but by virtue of their own independent authority. This decision makes it possible to restore to the liturgy that catholicity which the Church fathers saw symbolized in Psalm 44 – the bride in her many colored raiment.”

The importance of this decentralization was illustrated by Archbishop Eugene D’Souza of Nagpur, India, who stated that “the marriage rite as it now stands is completely unintelligible to many of our Catholic people living in rural areas…. For example, since a ring means nothing at all to some of our people, a dish called the ‘thalee’ is handed by the husband to the wife.” In other places the ends of a woman’s sari and a man’s dhoti are tied together in a knot as a sign of the marriage contract.

However, the hopes of the Council have not been realized. In 1991, when the bishops of the United States approved a new lectionary for use in the celebration of Mass, it was forwarded to the Congregation for Divine Worship which confirmed it. That confirmation, however, was revoked by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of that Congregation, established a seven man working group to revise the lectionary. Of those seven, one had a graduate degree in Scripture and two were not native English-speakers.

Now, word comes from Rome that the Congregation for Divine Worship is being reorganized with an added office for liturgical music, art and architecture. This office is charged with providing guidelines to ensure that hymns sung during Mass and the structure of new churches corresponds to the mystery being celebrated.

Many years ago, I celebrated morning Mass in the Cathedral of Nairobi. When I placed the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle after distributing Communion, I was struck by the large Celtic cross on the door of the tabernacle. I am concerned that a small committee in Rome will have little understanding of the music and architectural traditions of the non-European church.

After all, there was a pope who wanted to paint out the Last Judgment that Michelangelo had painted in the Sistine Chapel.

Pius Parsch

Another of the important forrunners of the liturgical reform of the Council was Pius Parsch, a Benedictine monk in the Austrian monastery of Klosterneuberg. He served as a chaplain in the First World War and observed the soldiers’ lack of understanding of the Mass. He became convinced that the Bible should be the people’s book and the liturgy the people’s work.

To this end he established a publishing center, Popular Liturgical Apostolate, to assist people with interior and exterior participation in the liturgy. He suggested some reforms that might encourage these goals, such as great emphasis on the Mass as a meal (perhaps using leavened bread), the reintroduction of communion from the cup, communion from hosts consecrated at each Mass. He was an early advocate of increased use of the vernacular which resulted in a partially vernacular Ritual for Austria in 1935 and an expanded one for Germany in 1950. As early as 1934, he pointed to the restoration of the Easter Vigil to its proper nighttime celebration, reform that Pope Pius XII included in his revision of the Holy Week liturgy.

In 1922, Parsch published a booklet on commentary on the Sunday Masses which grew into a five volume work entitled, The Church’s Year of Grace. (I have this set in my personal library and continue to consult it.)

He believed in the centrality of the parish in the Church’s renewal. “the center, the source, the focus of this growing parish communion will always be the altar, the Eucharistic-sacrifice-banquet.” To further this, he developed a combination of two forms of participation already in use, the dialogue Mass and hymn singing in the vernacular which maximized congregational participation. (In my time in the minor seminary in the late fifties, we employed these two practices, but never together, only on separate days, three days with dialogue and one day with hymns.)

Historical Research

One of the important areas that laid the groundwork for the Conciliar decree on the liturgy was historical research into the early development of the Mass. One of the outstanding scholars in the field was the Jesuit, Father Joseph Jungmann. He taught catechetics, pastoral theology and liturgy from 1925 to 1963 – with the exception of the seven years, 1938-1945, when the Nazis closed the theology department – at the University of Innsbruck.

In the late 1950’s Fr. Jungmann was regarded as the outstanding liturgical scholar in the German speaking world. In 1960 he was named to the conciliar preparatory commission and then served as a peritus (theologian) during the Council and as a consultor for the Councilium, the body entrusted with the implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy.

Jungmann authored over 300 books and articles. It was during the academic exile that Hitler imposed, that he wrote his two volume history of the Mass, later published in a one volume English edition as “The Mass of the Roman Rite.” This work has been acclaimed as the one work more than any other single book that prepared the way for the Conciliar reform of the liturgy.

The work of Fr. Jungmann and other historians of the liturgy enabled the Fathers of the Council to evaluate the liturgy in the light of its historical development.

Women

It can be challenging to realize the state of the Church fifty years ago. For example, Father Hermann Schmidt, SJ, professor at the Gregorian University who served as a consultant to the council’s preparatory commission on the liturgy spoke at a press conference. Asked about the role of women, he said that council Fathers could draw up norms permitting greater participation by women in the liturgical life of the Church, such as authorizing women’s choirs, noting that the current norms stressed the desirability of male choirs.

Logistics

For the opening session of the Second Vatican Council, the entry procession of abbots general, superiors general, bishops, cardinals and patriarchs took a couple of hours. The Council was an immense project. Between 2100 and 2200 bishops met in the working session of Vatican II. In addition there were some 500 theologians, guests from other Christian Churches, secretaries, ushers, technicians, and assorted support staff. Seating, sound, coffee bars, toilets all had to be put in place. The cost, just for outfitting St. Peter’s Basilica was a million (1962) dollars.

However, the logistics were not simply physical. There was the challenge of organizing a decision making meeting of over 2000 members. By comparison the United Nations General Assembly has 193 members and the United States Congress, 435. The Vatican had no prior experience to call upon; the previous council was a hundred years prior and had a mere 750 participants.

Pope John had established a preparatory commission which had developed a set of documents for the bishops to consider and vote on. The expectation of those in Rome was that the bishops would accept what was presented to them and go home. The Roman Diocesan Synod that Pope John had called for at the same time that he announced the Council generally followed that pattern

If the Council fathers had followed this path, meeting logistics may not have become an issue. However, the morning the Council met for its first working session, it became clear that the gathered bishops intended to engage in serious and open debate.