The comments on my previous post (trying to give some theoretical structure to the notion of how new customs arise in liturgical practice) mostly focused on canon law and its implications. This suggests to me that we are, as a body, much more interested in how to regulate liturgical adaptation than we are in where it comes from. Let me clarify a bit: when I wrote that post I was doing description. We may not like the fact that new elements arise within the liturgy in these ways, but we know, not only historically but also transculturally, that this is what people do with liturgy. In cultures that are dominated by oral rather than written tradition, which was true of Roman Catholicism up until the 13th century, even the “ritual experts” (those whose job it was to do the ritual and interpret it for the community) felt free to adapt rituals to the complex necessities of the moment (this is still done in certain rituals, such as reconciliation and exorcism).
One way of seeing the canon law paragraphs on the question, and similar official language (this kind of regulation exists in most cultural communities, though the form it takes and its degree of acceptance of ritual messiness is different) regarding custom, is it provides a way of handling this complex fact about human ritual practice. In other ways, the development of custom in the sphere of ritual and liturgy is a bit like a prolific vine, and the purpose of official engagement with that vine is to cut it back. We might even see them, helpfully, as opposed “sides” that together hold the ritual life of the community, preventing it from devolving either into chaos or into stasis. I often find myself thinking about my own response to such regulation as expressing, alternately, my fear of chaos or of stasis, as much as any ideological support or opposition. “Why do I feel so threatened or so supportive?” is often worth asking.
In the Christian tradition, the community engages in discourse and debate around its new customs (yes, since the New Testament). Here are a few, non-exhaustive principles for such debate:
- The community, together with its authorities, are involved in judging the custom. Authoritative figures like bishops are part of, but not the whole of, the community’s judgment. It is completely possible for bishops to spend several centuries arguing against a local custom, only to give in at last because the thing won’t die. This is not an abridgment of bishops’ authority but the very essence of it: they are the shepherds of the people, not absolute rulers. It is also totally possible for the more conservative party (often, but not always the authorities) to win, and a practice to die out: again, this is part of the normal discernment process of history. None of us has absolute knowledge of the tradition.
- The process of judging the tradition takes place in practice as well as in communication. Laypeople, historically, don’t generally have access to theological education (today there are a lot of exceptions). Their role in the development of custom has generally been in practice: they do, and evaluate, do, and evaluate (often the evaluation is implicit: some of the couples attending the wedding think, “hey, I’d like to do that at my own wedding,” while some think, “well, that was awkward”). On the other hand, ritual experts tend to evaluate with written and oral discourse (like we’re doing here). The two kinds of judgment, in the long term, operate in a complementary fashion.
- The community relies on the norm of scripture. Obviously interpreting scripture is a difficult task, but we can see this happening even in the comments on the last two posts. How does the practice interact with the proclamation of the Gospel in the wedding? More broadly, how does it relate to scriptural principles?
- The community relies on the norm of history. “We’ve never done it that way” isn’t felt to be an absolute prohibition, obviously, or nothing would ever alter, but it does go a fair way towards making people suspicious (again, this is visible in the comment threads). This in fact is one of the reasons that transferring a practice from another liturgical rite is “easier” than importing it from outside the liturgy. Reviving older historical practices is also preferred to inventing new ones, as we can see in the liturgical reforms.
- The community relies on the norms of theology. Every evaluation of a practice requires an interpretation: I can’t know whether this thing is good or bad until I know what it means. Theology (especially, but not only, liturgical theology) is the interpretation of practices. To take just one example, again from the comments on the wedding mandatum, one person argued that the mandatum was inappropriate because it excluded the clergy, relying on (but not stating) a particular ecclesiology that takes the clergy to be a representative of the institutional church. It’s a quite reasonable interpretation. Another commenter replied to point out that the couple themselves are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage in Roman liturgical tradition (not so with many Eastern Christianities), and so (again, implicitly) their washing one another’s feet already includes a potent (perhaps the most potent) ecclesiological symbol. Another quite reasonable interpretation; these are the sorts of discussions the community constituted by the church would take into consideration as they evaluated the rite.
- The practice is altered by the process of judging it. In the example just above, if the community consensus tends towards the first model (as it almost certainly would, hypothetically, if footwashing arose in an Eastern Rite), the rite might gradually begin with having a priest or deacon wash the couple’s feet. If the second one took over, perhaps the couple would end up by washing the clergy’s feet! Right now what we are seeing (judging by the video) is instead something like a “domestic church” interpretation, where the domestic church constituted by the couple and their immediate families are sanctified by mutual service. But in any case the questions being asked in the comments that run something like, “suppose this is being done: is this the best place, time, way to do it?” are making these kinds of judgment calls. (For example: “it’s domestic and personal, so it should be done privately” is an interpretation and evaluation that come with a recommended alteration; “it’s a witness to the community of Christian love, so it belongs in the rite” is another that comes with a contrary recommendation.)
- The process of judging the practice takes time. This should be obvious by the complexity of the principles above; I would say thirty years is an absolute minimum, probably suggested by the difficulty of documenting more than thirty years out in some mission areas. In the meantime, though, the process of evaluation, and the disputes and debates it entails, will necessarily continue, and I don’t think it’s cause for any alarm. I do think it’s important to keep the conversation civil, of course.
- (*new and improved!*) The process of evaluation never ends. (I am obliged to Mike Joncas for reminding me of this below.) Even after a practice has become custom – indeed, even if it has become universal liturgical law – it is still subject to the process of evaluation by the church community (although the suspicion described above will usually no longer apply). Sometimes the situation around a practice changes so much that the practice itself begins to “fail to mean,” and the community will often respond, formally or informally, by eliminating or changing the practice itself.
I didn’t look up commenters to credit them for this post – sorry, but there were too many. I thank everyone that has contributed to unpacking and provided examples of interpretation and evaluation. We still haven’t talked about mass media, but perhaps I’ll post another thread for that.
Please leave a reply.