A plea for the status quo?

JulieColl

Ross Douthat, that intrepid NY Times Catholic columnist, has an interesting article entitled: "Catholicism for the Time Being," in which he expresses his satisfaction with the current state of the Church, with "the characteristic post-Vatican II muddle", the comfortable middle between an aggressive restoration and an aggressive progressivism.

As we await news of the direction the Supreme Pontiff will take in his post-synodal exhortation, I guess some people are already getting nostalgic for the status quo ante bellum since they do not know what is coming in the near future.

As Ross explains, he prefers to remain in the current "theological-liturgical bricolage, between different eras in the church’s history … " and is perfectly okay with the typical package of St. Louis Jesuit music and casual Novus Ordo liturgy, which is significant since it makes me wonder if he imagines that someday soon even this will seem "old-fashioned" and retro. Does he assume that if Pope Francis abandons the middle and moves left, that Catholic liturgy will correspondingly adapt and devolve? That has been my question (and fear) all along too.

Chris Garton-Zavesky

If the adage "Lex orandi, lex credendi" is true, then changing the law of prayer can't help but change if the law of belief is actually going to change - in the act that, it seems, Pope Francis would cease to be pope.

Adam Wood

I'm sympathetic to his view, at least as I understand.

Douthat is strikes me as a faithful Catholic who cares about things like doctrine and orthodoxy, and also about the real spiritual lives of regular Catholics - the kind of people for whom "Be Not Afraid" is beloved devotional hymn, and who like to say rosaries in dreary modernist chapels.

I think he loves the church, and sees a certain kind of beauty in the organic mess of how things are, and I think he is concerned about top-down, elitist (leftist) desires to fix the church and make everyone fall in line with a particular version of new morality.

As to your fear, I think he fears that too.

I'm not certain it is founded, though.

The Holy Spirit will keep the church from heresy. Liberal and conservative bishops will continue to do whatever it is they do. People in pews will continue to love Latin Mass, or love the St. Louis Jesuits, or whatever wonderful or tacky thing they love.

The muddle will continue, as well as the grace and beauty.

M. Jackson Osborn

I haven't read Douthat. And Adam's thoughts on his motivations and loyalties may or may not be objectively true. But the concerns that Adam is led to give voice to are certainly valid and should be of concern to us all. The difficulty, of course, arises when people like us are trying to share the substance of our vocations and talents with those 'who like to say rosaries in dreary modernist chapels', and think that the likes of 'Be Not Afraid' are wrought from finest gold. Such people are generally immune (if not outright hostile) to anything that might distract from their myopic little worlds. And their myopic little worlds rarely are concerned with Pope Francis' vision. Which is a round-a-bout way of saying that these very ordinary Catholic sorts are not necessarily any more in step with Pope Francis' cares than others whom he more often scolds.

When I was choirmaster at a certain old Norman Gothic Dominican parish here in Houston, there was this dreary, horribly depressing room off the apse. It had one window which was covered by drapery which hardly let a ray of sunlight in. Flickering votive lights did their best to cast eerie dancing shadows about the dark, very dark, room, which was filled with those horrid old pastel painted plaster statues. There was a certain coterie of folk (mostly old women) who would spend who knows how much time in that room. The pastor, a well known Dominican preacher, called it the chamber of horrors, but wouldn't have dared alter it in any way.

JulieColl

Thanks so much for these very reassuring replies. It's difficult to imagine a Church without "a squishy middle", and maybe it's not possible as MJO said so well, and that "the muddle will continue," in Adam's comforting words, but I do find it somewhat alarming when someone as moderate as Ross Douthat talks about the possibility of it vanishing.

However, Bishop Schneider is warning that the door has already been kicked open: "The Final Report seems to leave the solution of the question of the admittance of the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion to local Church authorities: “accompaniment of the priests” and “orientations of the bishop.”

So, if the Final Report is left as-is---and even without an additional papal intervention---the stage may already be set for the devolution of doctrine and, in short order, the devolution and inculturation of Catholic liturgy.

Whether this will in fact occur, and how rapidly it will occur once the green light is officially given, is anybody's guess, but I fear it won't take long and may be already starting. I see already this morning the news that the USCCB is petitioning the Vatican for the “expansion of opportunities for Catholics and Lutherans to receive Holy Communion together"--- and this is to be done in the name of Pope Francis' strategem of "a culture of encounter." If, God forbid, decisions about the sacraments and the liturgy are to be delegated to the USCCB, I'm not optimistic about the result.

I hope I'm very wrong, but it could be a time is coming (or is already here) when the Bugnini reforms will be perceived as being too retro and not relevant to the culture and will be wiped away and a new liturgy devised to accompany the new doctrine. Everything will have to be NEW, NEW, NEW! Adelante! Forward, ever forward!

And the only other option will be traditional doctrine and praxis, so we'll all become either trads or Episcopalians. No safe middle ground anywhere---except the Anglican Ordinariate?

That is what I think Ross Douthat is feeling---that the centre cannot hold much longer. He, like all of us, is starting to feel the strain and see the little cracks appearing in the edifice.

CharlesW

I suppose being eastern gives me a different perspective on popes. They come, they go. I don't care. Other than the too brief time of Benedict XVI, most of the post V-2 popes have not been up to the demands of the office. Some were not seemingly clear on why they were there to begin with. The current one isn't any better. The western church has been a circular firing squad for some time and does too much navel gazing. I would look more eastward if the western church falls apart, but that is what I generally do anyway.

Liam

"Such people are generally immune (if not outright hostile) to anything that might distract from their myopic little worlds. "

True not only of "such people" as of people in general and in particular. We are more the same than different in that regard. Continuity in that.

I remember singing at the funeral of a friend's grandfather, in a small urban Italian church run by the Franciscans (I was relieved when I found out, after having sat in the organ loft with anxiety through part of the daily Mass in Italian that preceded the funeral, that the funeral would be in English). They had a chapel off the narthex: the walls were completely packed with very garish statues of myriad saints - in boxes that looked like coffins but weren't intended to be iconographically, because they were painted luridly bright colors (I think they may have been undertaker surplus, maybe from after the Spanish Flu epidemic). Definitely not my aesthetic preference, but I could readily extrapolate the love they inspired, so it's was all good.

Gothic art demonstrates how God makes a beautiful whole from ugly or at least ungainly parts. A very Catholic perspective to keep in mind when we encounter the ugly or ungainly - even within ourselves (especially, in fact).

rich_enough

Does he assume that if Pope Francis abandons the middle and moves left, that Catholic liturgy will correspondingly adapt and devolve? That has been my question (and fear) all along too.

Well, you could argue that the "middle" has moved "right" over the last decade or so, with a corresponding change in liturgy in many places, yet (and I think this is part of Douthat's point) that hasn't changed the muddled-middle mass at the Lourdes shrine much.

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