Another Admission Against Interest: “Loss of the Collective Memory of Rites”

In law, the term “admission against interest” refers to a statement made out of court by a party, which is regarded as true because it goes against that party’s own interest. Such a statement is regarded as truthful, and may be accepted as an exception to the hearsay rule, because the party would not have said it unless he believed it to be true. I recently highlighted an example of such a statement pertinent to matters liturgical, made by Abp Claudio Maniago, the president of the Centro Azione Liturgica (“Center for Liturgical Action”), an entity of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. In his closing discourse at the CAL’s annual “Liturgy Week” held at the end of August, His Excellency informed his listeners that “we still do not know how to celebrate in such a way as to bring forth the splendor of the liturgy.” (The closing Mass of the conference amply proved that how right he is about that.)

Today, another such statement, likewise pertinent to matters liturgical (and many other things, to be sure) has emanated from a much higher place, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. A new document entitled Venite ad me (“Come unto me”, from Matt. 11, 28) has just been published, with its explanatory subtitle “Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in the Change of Epoch.” (Assuming the Italian text to be the original, the official English version slightly bungles this as “in an Epochal Change”. The French, Spanish, Portuguese and German agree with the Italian.)

In paragraph 94, the last of five in the subsection on Liturgy, we read, “Especially in the West, there is a progressive loss of the collective memory of rites and ritual practices (my emphasis) in favor of a highly radical form of individualism; yet this does not eliminate the anthropological need for rituality, to which human beings have always responded in different ways. The Christian community grows and is built up through ritual practices, and in this regard, the Church’s rich spiritual heritage represents a precious and inexhaustible resource.”

This is an extraordinary admission, an acknowledgement that the post-Conciliar liturgical reform has completely failed to bring to the Church’s rites the “renewed vigor” which Sacrosanctum Concilium looked for, hoping that it would “meet the needs and circumstances of modern times.” Obviously, if it had succeeded in doing so, there would not be such a “progressive loss of the collective memory of rite and ritual practices.”

Even more extraordinary is the acknowledgement, not in complimentary terms, that this progressive loss of the collective memory of rites has been replaced by a highly radical individualism, since radical individualism is one of the foundational principles of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform. No prior historical Christian rite ever gave the individual priest and his chosen collaborators so much latitude to fill the liturgy with their individual ideas and creative choices, belying the very purpose of a rite. And of course, no prior reform of the liturgy ever canceled so many rites and ritual practices so long instilled in the life of the Christian community.

It is very encouraging, therefore, to read the last sentence of that paragraph, which states that “the Church’s rich spiritual heritage represents a precious and inexhaustible resource,” a statement which reminds us of some very wise and justly very famous words of Pope Benedict XVI: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.” Hopefully, this weekend’s Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage will inspire the Holy Father and his collaborators to recognize that that proper place is not in the dustbin of history.

A Catholic editorial cartoon from 1967, by which time, the fact had become too obvious to ignore that the Barque of the Church was shipping in some very rough seas. But since any and all course correction had been deemed unthinkable, the cartoonist therefore simply declared that “It’ll Make Port”; no need to ask difficult questions like “In what condition?” or “With how many of the passengers still on board?”