Q. Rev. Stuflesser, you are new president of Societas Liturgica. Just what is that?
Societas is an international organization of liturgy scholars founded in 1967 in Driebergen in the Netherlands. Since the Second Vatican Council encouraged dialogue with other Christian churches in the decree on ecumenism “Unitatis redintegratio,” Societas strives to make this movement bear fruit in the field of liturgical studies. Every two years, scholars from all Christian traditions convene for large congresses. Interdenominational exchange and celebration of faith come to the fore. It is especially important to us as liturgists that we also pray and celebrate liturgy together. This takes places in the various Christian traditions that are represented in our organization.
Q. What priority is given to liturgy in various churches since the Second Vatican Council?
Stuflesser: Surprisingly, we Catholics sometimes take little note of what innovations there are in other places. To name one example: the liturgical renewal of the Second Vatican Council led to a reform of the liturgy not only within the Catholic church, but also in many other Christian churches. Just think of the lectionary ordering of reading, or that some Protestants traditions now have a eucharistic prayer printed in the liturgical books and no longer just the words of institution. Especially in the field of liturgy, we have strongly grown closer together in the last 50 years. That is certainly the fruit of very intensive exchange about liturgy and its theological meaning.
Q. The eucharist stands at the center of the liturgy in the Catholic church. But in the Protestant churches there are strongly divergent conceptions. Do you hope for greater unity even here in your work?
Stuflesser: I believe that great unity has already come about regarding our understanding of the eucharist. Of course we as liturgists are cognizant of research done in systematic theology. The Lima document of 1982, for example, is interesting in this regard, for it displays agreement in the understanding of baptism, eucharistic liturgy, and ministry across various Christian traditions. But at Societas we discuss much more the celebration of the liturgy itself, in order to develop a theology of the liturgy from this. For example, during our congresses we always celebrate a eucharist in the rite of the president currently in office. This one congress eucharist held during the congress week always puts a strong focus on the sacrament of the eucharist, and at the same time makes painfully real our separation at the Lord’s Supper. This is not a matter of practicing intercommunion, but rather – as much as is possible for us – consciously celebrating together in another tradition. We make use of the possibility of so-called pulpit exchange: thus at our congress in Quebec a Catholic priest preached at the Anglican celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This is expressly permitted in the Vatican’s ecumenical directory. So we attempt to exploit every possibility in our celebration. We still have a long road before us, but we’re going forward.
Q. So things are moving?
Stuflesser: By all means. We always start with the concrete liturgical fundamentals and look for the commonalities across traditions, and in fact they are numerous. Sacraments are consistently accompanied by explanatory-interpretive words. It is not enough to pour water over someone, but one must also say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Because this form of celebration and the understanding of baptism which comes to expression in it is common to many Christian churches, we are able to recognize baptism mutually. In the eucharistic prayer one sees that in all traditions it is not only a matter of reciting the words of institution; rather, these words are part of a larger prayer of petition and thanksgiving at the heart of the celebration of the eucharist, in which the words of institution are embedded. These words are spoken by a presider, i.e. an ordained official, commissioned by a community. If we are united about this, we have already taken a big step forward.
Q. The next congress in 2017 will take up sacraments. Can there be an ecumenical definition of the sacraments?
Stuflesser: That is a fascinating question. First, there is the already-mentioned Lima document. There is the declaration ratified in common by the Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany, “Doctrinal Condemnations – Church-Dividing” and there is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and these have received way too little attention. Against this background, in Societas we have already taken up concrete sacraments many times. So: what is eucharist? What is baptism? What does marriage mean? There are traditions, e.g. specific movements in the Anglican Church, who have difficulties even with the word “sacrament” and reject it as typically Catholic. In the same breath they would say that baptism and eucharist are basic and fundamental actions of the church. So the understanding is there, only the terminology differs. Despite this we must examine further what sacraments are in general. I think that in the Catholic Church it is a bit of a mouthful when we say that the church is the fundamental sacrament and Jesus Christ is the primordial sacrament. We must take care that this doesn’t become but a hollow formulation that we simply recite mindlessly, but rather, that we also give life to this.
Q. Have we Catholics possibly come to lack something in our understanding of the sacraments?
Stuflesser: Stated with all due respect, it strikes me that we oftentimes don’t examine to what extent the widely disseminated message is based upon the liturgy as celebrated. For example, we have dozens of textbooks on confirmation that denote it as the sacrament of adulthood and coming of age. But in the prayers of confirmation there is not one syllable about this. In the prayers, confirmation is the completion of baptism, pure and simple. If I realize this, then I would have to fashion confirmation catechesis for contemporary candidates differently. I would have to think, for example, about the order of the sacraments, as indeed Pope Benedict XVI has already proposed. If confirmation concludes initiation and is actually the prerequisite for being admitted to eucharist, then the order would have to be: baptism, confirmation – this is initiation – and then comes eucharist. As liturgist I wish that systematic theology would ask more concretely to what extent sacramental theology lets itself be bound to what we actually celebrate. I say this not least from a pastoral background. In fact, people who come to us in the church today encounter a rite entirely in its concrete actuality. They experience how a child is baptized, how people marry, or how a man is ordained a priest. What they experience determines their understanding of what the sacrament is. For this reason, the concrete form of celebration is so important.
Q. What is a good liturgy for you personally?
Stuflesser: I am very tied to the statements of the Second Vatican Council: for me there must be a certain simplicity and a clarity of structures. Superfluity that obstructs the meaning of what we celebrate is alien to me. The Second Vatican Council wished to move the faithful to active participation. They should not merely sit in the pews as silent spectators, but rather truly participate actively in the liturgy. A successful liturgy for me as precisely this: when Christian celebrate the heart of their faith communally and actively.
By Julia-Maria Lauer, tr. awr. Reprinted with permission from katholisch.de.
Martin Stuflesser, new president of Societas Liturgica, is professor of liturgy in the department of Catholic theology at the University of Wurzburg.
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