This editorial appeared in The Record in Australia on Wednesday, March 30, 2011.
The answer to the question in the headline above might appear to be ‘No’ after a statement issued on February 23rd by the National Council of Priests of Australia which raised the specter of at least some of its members boycotting the newly translated prayers of the Mass.
The statement, however, probably raised more questions about the NCPA (one of two organizations for priests in Australia) than it did about the actual translations themselves. The mention of boycotts by priests made it clear that the right of Catholic families to receive what the Church has to offer them in sacred liturgy had not been an issue of concern to any of those drafting the NCPA statement. This is a most revealing thing.
Among other concerns, the NCPA declared that either it or some of its members held were what it described as a lack of consultation with, presumably, its members. As a result, some had called for a boycott of the new translations which are expected to be introduced to Australian parishes sometime around Advent this year or early 2012. Reference was also made to “concerns” over “exclusive language” in the Eucharistic prayers, while the statement also called “for greater tolerance of people who find this new translation unacceptable.”
The statement quickly drew a response from Fr. Peter Williams, the executive secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Liturgy Commission, one of the key individuals charged by the Bishops with coordinating the introduction of the new prayers in Australia’s parishes. Fr. Williams pointed out that the NCPA stance risked creating liturgical anarchy in the Catholic Church in Australia. He was quite right.
It is, of course, quite understandable that priests and laity will have questions in their minds about introducing changes to the wording of prayers of the Mass and it is to be expected that the change to the new forms of wording will take a little getting used to. For almost every Mass-going Catholic, the Mass becomes, in an entirely positive sense, habitual from an early age. To break or change a habit is not usually regarded as an easy thing to do and it is therefore quite likely that when we all come to begin praying the new words of the Mass there will be, initially, some verbal tripping up that occurs in the pews and even from the sanctuary, purely out of habit.
But the statement issued by the NCPA executive is nothing to do with liturgical habits and whether these will be difficult to change and was threatening. It looks to have been formulated without any reference to the identity of baptized Catholics or consideration of what the Church is and how it is constituted. Among many interesting questions the NCPA should answer if it is to be honest with Catholics across Australia are the following:
If it is a fundamental principle of the Catholic Church that all Catholics, by virtue of their Baptismal grace, are full and equal members of the Church, it is also true that all Catholics have, at all times, the right to receive what the Church wishes to give them. By indicating it may support priests in boycotts, the NCPA now appears unable to deny that it or some of its members will effectively encourage a program of disenfranchising ordinary Catholics of their Baptismal rights to the best liturgy the Church can provide. And it can only be described as ironic that while on the one hand it raises “concerns” at what it describes as “exclusive language,” the NCPA appears to have no equal “concerns” at excluding Catholics from the liturgy which is theirs by right.
By beginning or supporting a campaign to oppose the introduction of the new translations, the NCPA now gives the impression of being prepared to deliberately place obstacles in the way of baptized Catholics and their families. If so, on what authority does it do so and and from whom did it receive the mandate for such a course? And, having flagged such possibilities, it is hard to see how the organization no longer appears to be able to avoid the criticism that it is lapsing into treating baptized Catholics in the pews as second-class citizens in their own churches. Is there one standard for members of the NCPA and quite another for ordinary Catholics?
Its protest at lack of consultation is remarkable. The new translations have been in preparation for at least 10 years and the NCPA has had more than enough time to set out objections for consideration. But perhaps most amazingly of all is the call for “tolerance of those who find the translations unacceptable,” somehow implying that those charged with the task of introducing them or those who wish to pray what the Church offers are intolerant or deficient, or both. But does tolerance only run in one direction – for the NCPA? Its statement’s assertion that “As in the past, individual priests will adapt and adopt styles to suit individual circumstances whilst being faithful to the key elements of the Eucharistic tradition in the Church” sounds much more like an intention to go ahead and do whatever it wants regardless of the will of the Church.
Accurate or not, the NCPA already has a fairly widespread reputation in Australia as being the most likely to accommodate an almost-anything-goes mentality in matters liturgical. If this perception is generally true, this would be regrettable. Liturgy is not a thing to be fooled with. But with this latest statement, an organization with such a potentially important role in the Church now appears to have entrenched itself more deeply into a right-wing and neo-clericalist ‘Father-knows-better-than-you-mere-Baptized’ approach it appears to be taking when it dismisses the rights of Catholics in the interests of its own often-outdated agendas straight out of the 1970s.
These are just a few of the reasonable questions that could be asked. Whether the organization’s executive is prepared to acknowledge that baptized Catholics have inalienable rights which are to be respected at all times is something many Catholics around the nation will watch with interest in the weeks and months to come.
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