Fiddling While Rome Burns

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry … but the U.S. Catholic bishops regularly provide ample reasons for both.

The latest has to do with the changes to the Roman missal – which includes the text and prayers used in the celebration of the Catholic Eucharist, or Mass, as it is commonly referred to. The new changes, the product of more than 30 years of labor, are “the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the Church permitted English in place of the Latin,” according to the New York Times.

You would think that an effort which took that long would produce a document that clarifies and smoothes over some of the admittedly rough spots of the texts and prayers translated in haste after Vatican II. Maybe even restore a bit of the poetry of the original. But, instead, the aim was to make the new translation closer to the Latin, which apparently Catholics who still haven’t gotten over the shocking changes of Vatican II are still yearning for.

Here is an example from the Nicene Creed, the profession of Christian faith, dating back to the early 4th century and used by several Christian denominations. Currently, the Catholic version of the following phrase now reads “Jesus Christ is…one in being with the Father.” But apparently that’s way too clear because it is being changed to “Jesus Christ is … consubstantial with the Father” to give it more of a Latinate flavor.

Similarly, the Confiteor, the public confession of sinfulness recited by the congregation at the beginning of Mass, now reads in part: “I confess … that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done and what I failed to do.” Nicely said, and it covers the waterfront for us sinners. But apparently it didn’t lean heavily enough on guilt and evoke the original Latin. So, now it will read…. “In what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” picking up on the “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

Who — supposedly in God’s name — came up with such nonsense, you might reasonably ask? Catholic bishops, of course, along with bishops from other English-speaking countries, who set up the commission that produced the changes. It figures.

Weeping or laughing yet? But, wait there’s more…. In the same edition of the New York Times, there’s an article about the U.S. bishops attacking Sister Elizabeth A Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham and respected author of several books on theology. The bishops say she challenges Church teaching in ways that are “beyond the pale.”

Sounds serious. Did she deny the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, or the Trinity? No, but just as impertinently, she along with many other theologians have dared to suggest that the exclusive use of male images in the Scripture and in the Catholic liturgy betrays the cultural bias of biblical scribes at the time, and this has contributed to the diminished role of women in Christianity, particularly in Roman Catholicism, ever since. The bishops scoff at this, saying that what the scribes have written, they have written. End of argument.

They, of course, live in mortal fear that any concessions along these lines might lead to the more open discussion of women priests, and they have already slammed the door on that issue. In dismissing it, their logic goes something along these lines — and I’m not joking: Jesus was a man, the apostles were men, ergo, all priests must be men.

So, what about God the Father? Is he Mother, too? Obviously not. If He is consubstantial with Jesus, he is obviously male. So, then how does He dress? In the simple attire that Jesus wore? Pin stripe suits? Wrangler jeans? Togas? Jockey shorts? No distinguishable male parts, you say? Then what makes Him male? It does beg the question, doesn’t it?

Silly and ridiculous? Of course, but such clerical idiocies invite parody and satire. Some things are too deep for tears.

Gerald E. Lavey