Pope Francis

In the image of God he created them …

by Ingrid Fischer
Albani Psalter (12th century), Mary Magdalene announces the resurrection of Christ to the disciples.

In the context of the annual celebration of Easter, we encounter some women who can be called “witnesses from the beginning”: Mary of Magdala – as in the Albani Psalter (12th century) pictured here – is the first to recognize the Risen Christ and deliver his message to the disciples (who, admittedly, do not believe her); the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well proclaims the Messiah in her village (some villagers believe her, others only after they have convinced themselves). And Martha – not unlike Peter (Mt 16:16) – confesses her friend Jesus “the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” (Jn 11:27). The historical impact of these women is short or non-existent, even today.

Not to diminish our Easter joy, but woman’s life in the church does not feel “redeemed” in every respect. There is too much hierarchical male dominance in the name of “divine right” and too little faithfulness to the biblical image of man, starting with the creation narratives up to Galatians 3:28.

The adoption of the respective current anthropologies has led to different ecclesiastical images of women that have one thing in common: What “being a woman” is has always been and still is decided by men in the Catholic Church – to the disadvantage of women.

From fluid transitions …

The ancient concept of gender thought of woman (including her sexual organs) as an unfinished “imperfect man.” Masculine and feminine did not denote biological differences, but rather characteristics and attitudes on a continuum between the poles of masculine-intellectual-strong and feminine-material/physical-weak. Women could find recognition by “masculinization,” while men could be “shamefully feminized.” Christian theologians from Origen to Thomas Aquinas have received and reflected on this image of women for over a millennium — perhaps one reason why, from ancient times, it was not necessary to argue specifically for the exclusion of women from the priesthood? The fact that women nevertheless served at the altars for centuries is shown by the repeatedly inculcated restrictions and prohibitions imposed by church authorities, which were often not enforced until much later.[1]

…to Cult purity

The Pauline “insignificance” of the sexes in Christ (Gal 3:28) turned into disdain, even contempt, especially for female sexuality. The late antique ideal of spiritualization in connection with cultic ideas of purity and sexual taboos was detrimental to women. As a periodically defiled and libidinous temptress, woman was incapable of liturgy. Only the “pure hands” of the supposedly asexual priest were allowed to touch the holy of holies.[2] Other effects of the menstrual taboo included: baptisms being postponed, church attendance being restricted, and the reception of communion being forbidden – even for women who had recently given birth. Even nuns were denied a view of the sanctuary during their menses.

The “essentially” different woman

The discovery of the “natural” biological otherness of women in the early modern period did not improve their situation. The new binary image of man merely transformed her previous deficits – feeling instead of understanding, devotion instead of leadership, etc. – into virtues and established them as female “essential characteristics.” The ecclesiastical ideal of the humble, pure, servant-obedient handmaiden of the Lord (or: of the lords?) was born from a male perspective: Mary-likeness instead of Christ-likeness is a topos that is still popular today.[3] How practical that such a strictly conceived complementarity also provides the (theologically untenable) “argument” that women cannot embody Christ in the ordained ministry for lack of “natural likeness” (!).

… and their “special” dignity

The social emancipation of women in the 20th century did not remain without effect on ecclesiastical thinking: John XXIII recognized that women “are demanding both in domestic and in public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons.“[4]

John Paul II, however, in his 1988 Apostolic Exhortation Mulieres dignitatem – which he characteristically understands as a “Marian Year meditation” – conferred special dignities on women. The pope attaches importance to their otherness: “The personal resources of femininity are certainly no less than the resources of masculinity: they are merely different” (MD 10). By defining “virginity and motherhood as two particular dimensions of the fulfillment of the female personality” he declares that “these two paths in the vocation of women as persons, explain and complete each other” (MD 17).  With the help of the Holy Spirit, women could realize that and “thus be disposed to making a ‘sincere gift of self’ to others thereby finding themselves” (MD 31). Male fantasies; once again, women’s rights are not general rights, but special rights! Most recently, Pope Francis, in his post-synodal letter Querida Amazonia (2020), hit the same narrow notch, dashing the hopes of Amazonian women. “Profoundly moved” by the testimony “of strong and generous women” he sums up: “Women make their contribution to the Church in a way that is properly theirs, by making present the tender strength of Mary, the Mother.”[5] The request for ordination of women deacons in a distressing pastoral situation went unheard.

One last Witness from the “Silent Church”

But there are Catholic ordained women priests. Following his motto, “Leadership is the granting of freedom” Bishop Felix M. Davidek ordained married men as bishops and women as priests in the Czech underground church during Communist rule, including his vicar general Ludmila Javorova. Attempts to positively involve the Vatican in advance had previously failed. Even before the fall of Communist states beginning in 1989, Davidek was defamed as mentally ill, then in 1996 ordained women were forbidden to exercise their ministry and were imposed the strictest silence. When the pressure from Rome on her sisters in priestly ministry became too great, Ludmila Javorova broke her silence and told her story.[6]

The conclusion? Whether “unworthy,” “equal in dignity,” “with special dignity,” or idealized into a devoted lover and bearer of a mission “of capital importance” … for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church,”[7] women remain “unequal” in the Catholic Church to this day. Could it be that this very injustice distorts the “true face” of the Church?

O Lord—how long?

[1] In fact, the sources are largely silent about the ordination of women to priestly ministry in the greater church; as things stand today, it seems unlikely.

[2] Comprehensive studies on this subject are fundamental works by Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter, Darmstadt 22000; and most recently Ders. Ehe, Liebe und Sexualität im Christentum. Von den Anfängen bis heute, Munich 2015; Church historian Hubertus Lutterbach sums up: “Ab dem vierten Jahrhundert setzte sich das Ideal der kultischen Reinheit massiv durch und umfasste alle Bereiche des Alltags.” From this, he says, a “leistungsorientierte Verzichtsspiritualität” developed among clerics: ” Je höher der Verzicht, umso höher das Maß an kultischen Reinheit.” See: https://bit.ly/38GAOIo (accessed Nov. 08, 2017); in Ders, Fatale Sakralität, in: HK 4/2020, 43-47 (here 43), he argues for “diese Entwicklung zurückzudrehen.“

[3] In an interview with AMERICA magazine (Nov. 28, 2022), Pope Francis has reaffirmed the traditional patrine principle (of ministry and therefore male) and the Marian (female) principle.

[4] John XXIII, Enzyklika Pacem in Terris (1963) 41.

[5] Francis, Postsynodales Schreiben Querida Amazonia (2020) 101.

[6] She received the Herbert Haag Award for Freedom and Humanity in the Church in 2011.

[7] John Paul II, Apostolisches Schreiben Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) zitiert in Nr. 3 aus der Erklärung der Kongregation für die Glaubenslehre Inter Insigniores (1976) 6.

From the Wires: U.S. Catholic Priests Are Increasingly Conservative as Faithful Grow More Liberal

by Editor

In December 2022, the Wall Street Journal ran a story under the headline “U.S. Catholic Priests Are Increasingly Conservative as Faithful Grow More Liberal: Almost half of young clergy in a survey disapprove of the liberalizing Pope Francis.” Citing ongoing research by the Austin Institute via the Survey of American Catholic Priests, the Journal reports:

younger Catholic priests and priests ordained in more recent years tend to be noticeably more conservative than older priests on a host of issues, including politics, theology and moral teaching.

In contrast to this, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found in 2021 that, among other figures,

thirty-five percent of millennial Catholics have considered leaving the church because of its teaching on LGBT issues.

Journal commentators attribute this divergence to a postmodern generation of priests “disillusioned with the ideas of progress and religious pluralism that found favor at Vatican II…more likely to stress the reinforcement of Catholic identity and the winning of converts.”

Most acutely to ecclesiastical life, the priestly generation gap extends to views on the current bishop of Rome:

Almost 80% of priests ordained before 1980 “approve strongly” of the current pontiff, compared with 20% of those ordained in 2010 or later, according to the 2021 survey. Nearly half of the younger priests disapprove of the pope, either “strongly” or “somewhat.”

Older priests may find this inconsistent with ordained life, seeing a generation of clergy “indoctrinated into total loyalty to the pope” who then “so easily dropped this loyalty when a new pope was elected…now they are only loyal to the pope if he agrees with them,” in the words of Rev. Thomas Reese, who was ordained in 1974.

In contrast, younger priests like Rev. Benjamin Petty (ordained 2019) maintain, “I didn’t become a priest because I wanted to be a culture warrior…I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get up in the pulpit and convince all these ’70s libs.’”

Pray Tell readers may wonder: what does such divergence mean for the celebration of the Liturgy in the coming years, not to mention the life and health of the Church?

Time and the Holy Spirit will tell.

From the Wires: The Church’s Authority to Revise and Suppress Preconciliar Rites

by Other Voices

Author David Gordon has blogged on church and liturgy at OnePeterFive and Church Militant. This piece is reprinted with the kind permission of Where Peter Is, where it was originally titled “Is It Time for the TLM to Go Away?”

Pope Francis is right: it is necessary to return to a single, unified Roman Rite and leave the “Traditional Latin Mass” in the past. And our personal liturgical preferences have absolutely no bearing on the matter. As conservatives have grown fond of saying, truth doesn’t care about your feelings.

We have it on the highest authority — that of Pope John XXIII — that the Church desired substantial reforms to ameliorate the “grave state of spiritual poverty” that plagued the 20th-century world, courtesy of a marauding secularism (see Humanae Salutis, §6). Answering the holy pontiff’s call to arms, the fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council made it clear in Sacrosanctum Concilium (by no accident the first document produced by the council) that the liturgy is to be adapted “more suitably to the needs of our own times” because it is “the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church” (§§1–2). To borrow the recent words of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, “The Council Fathers perceived the urgent need for a reform so that the truth of the Faith as celebrated might appear ever more in all its beauty” (Responsa ad Dubia on Certain Provisions of the Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes).

Reform of the Liturgy was Mandated by an Ecumenical Council

Ultimately, the princes of the Church, cum Petro et sub Petro, fashioned a mandate for carrying out the reform of the liturgy at Vatican II: (1) Revise liturgical texts and rites so that they express more clearly the holy things they signify; (2) revise and simplify the rite of Mass so that the nature and purpose of its parts are clear and so that devout and active participation is fostered; (3) nix elements that, through the years, were added with little advantage to the liturgy or that are redundant; (4) restore elements that “suffered injury through the accidents of history”; (5) open the “treasures of the Bible” more lavishly to edify the faithful; and (6) draw up a new rite for concelebration and incorporate it into the Pontifical and into the Roman Missal (Missale Romanum, §§3, 7–8, citing Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§21, 50–53, 58). And this mandate was approved by a crushing majority of the assembled bishops, with 2,147 voting in favor of it (including Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II after committing a schismatic act in 1988) and a mere 4 voting against it.

Contrary to the oft-repeated claims of certain traditionalist Catholic internet entertainers, the catalyst for such liturgical reforms was emphatically not sympathy for modernism, novelty, Freemasonry, or communism. Au contraire: The reforms ushered in by Vatican II were spurred on by a confluence of genuine pastoral need and legitimate and salutary progress in the liturgical sciences in the decades leading up to the council. To quote Pope Paul VI himself, “Ancient liturgical sources [were] discovered and published and at the same time liturgical formulas of the Oriental Church [became] better known” (Missale Romanum, §4). Accordingly, the Church desired that the doctrinal and spiritual riches of antiquity be “brought into the light to illumine and nourish the spirits and souls of Christians” instead of remaining “hidden in the darkness of the libraries” (ibid.). As the Sacred Congregation of Rites noted in Inter Oecumenici, “The Constitution on the Liturgy has as its objective not simply to change liturgical forms and texts but rather to bring to life the kind of formation of the faithful and ministry of pastors that will have their summit and source in the liturgy” (§5). The faithful were to be liberated from unduly passive roles as “strangers and silent spectators in the mystery of faith” and immersed in the sacred action “consciously” and “piously” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §48). This, of course, corresponds to the Church’s understanding that liturgy is “the privileged place for catechizing the People of God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1074). It’s clear then that the real impetus for the reforms was the Church’s desire to better sustain her children with the sumptuous fare of newly rediscovered liturgical praxis as antidote for the poison of a worldly and materialistic age.

Note well  — contra the recycled arguments and deficient scholarship of Vetus Ordo propagandists like Peter Kwasniewski  — that the Church, in union with the pope, enjoys the prerogative of altering discipline, including amending and refreshing the liturgy, to tailor it to the needs of the day. The First Vatican Council made this most explicit in its dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus, which stated:

The Roman Church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other Church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful … are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world (chapter 3, §2; emphasis added.)

Centuries before, the Council of Trent also recognized the Church’s broad authority over the liturgy and sacraments:

In the dispensation of the sacraments, the Church may, according to circumstances, times and places, determine or change whatever she may judge most expedient for the benefit of those receiving them or for the veneration of the sacraments; and this power has always been hers. The Apostle seems to have clearly intimated this when he said: Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of God (chapter 2, 21st session; emphasis added).

In a subsequent session, Trent reaffirmed the Church’s dominion over the rites, doxologies, and customs of the liturgy, and elaborated on the reasons the Barque of Peter has been entrusted with such a lofty mandate:

And whereas such is the nature of man, that, without external helps, he cannot easily be raised to the meditation of divine things; therefore has holy Mother Church instituted certain rites, to wit that certain things be pronounced in the mass in a low, and others in a louder, tone. She has likewise employed ceremonies, such as mystic benedictions, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things of this kind, derived from an apostolical discipline and tradition, whereby both the majesty of so great a sacrifice might be recommended, and the minds of the faithful be excited, by those visible signs of religion and piety, to the contemplation of those most sublime things which are hidden in this sacrifice (chapter 5, 22nd session, emphasis added).

It is therefore clear that the liturgical rites are governed by the Church herself, according to the circumstances, times, and needs of the faithful. Contrary to theories posited by radical traditionalists, this process is governed by Church authority; liturgical reforms are not unconsciously brought about by “natural” developments, nor are they slave to the insensate diktats of a linear process.

The proclamations of the foregoing ecumenical councils are reaffirmed by  — and integrate seamlessly with  — individual popes’ teachings on liturgical authority. Pope Pius IX, for instance, exhorted in Non Sine Gravissimo, “Those who glory in the title of Catholic must not only be united [to the pope] in matters of faith and dogmatic truth, but also be submissive to him in matters of liturgy and discipline.” Pope Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, similarly hailed the Church as “legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline” (§8). And in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei — in which he set forth the Church’s liturgical doctrine with previously unparalleled detail and sophistication — Pius XII echoed the understanding of his predecessors, teaching that the “organization, regulation and details” of the liturgy “cannot but be subject to Church authority” since “it is the priest chiefly who performs the sacred liturgy in the name of the Church” (§44). The pontiff would go on to expound,

From time immemorial the ecclesiastical hierarchy has exercised this right in matters liturgical. It has organized and regulated divine worship, enriching it constantly with new splendor and beauty, to the glory of God and the spiritual profit of Christians. What is more, it has not been slow — keeping the substance of the Mass and sacraments carefully intact — to modify what it deemed not altogether fitting, and to add what appeared more likely to increase the honor paid to Jesus Christ and the august Trinity, and to instruct and stimulate the Christian people to greater advantage (ibid., §49).

Pius XII also explained that changes can and should be made to liturgy to suit the exigencies of the times:

As circumstances and the needs of Christians warrant, public worship is organized, developed and enriched by new rites, ceremonies and regulations, always with the single end in view, that we may use these external signs to keep us alert, learn from them what distance we have come along the road, and by them be heartened to go on further with more eager step; for the effect will be more precious the warmer the affection which precedes it (ibid., §22; internal quotation marks omitted).

He continued, articulating the key principles involved in the legitimate development of Catholic liturgy: “The Church is without question a living organism, and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows, matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be safeguarded” (ibid., §59). Finally, Pius XII clarified who in the Church wields the power to amend the liturgy: “It follows from this that the Sovereign Pontiff alone enjoys the right to recognize and establish any practice touching the worship of God, to introduce and approve new rites, as also to modify those he judges to require modification” (ibid., §58, emphasis added).

These authoritative conciliar and papal teachings make it abundantly clear that the Church has the power to revise the Roman Missal, especially in light of the mandate devised at Vatican II. Pope Paul VI was well within his authority to promulgate and mandate the adoption of the Novus Ordo. There is simply no support in the Magisterium of the Church for Kwasniewski’s thesis that “ecclesiastical traditions, especially in regard to the ‘externals’ of the liturgy in its development over time, must be honored and preserved because they are intimately connected with the content and right practice of religion” (The Once and Future Roman Rite [Gastonia, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2022], 3). He’s essentially just making things up. Not only that, but Pius X flatly contradicted this thesis in Abhinc Duos Annos, when he called for the liturgical edifice to “appear purified of the imperfections brought by time, newly resplendent with dignity and fitting order” (emphasis added).

The Will of God

Some  — even those who would admit that the Church does have authority to bind and loose in matters pertaining to the liturgy  — may nevertheless question whether the liturgical reforms of Vatican II corresponded to the will of God. This too we must answer in the affirmative. The Church teaches that God himself guides and protects the workings of ecumenical councils, which exercise in a solemn way “the supreme power in the universal Church” (Lumen Gentium, §22). To this point, Pope Pius IX declared in his March 12, 1870 letter Dolendum Profecto that the “Ecumenical Council is governed by the Holy Spirit,” and reasoned that matters “which could be harmful to the Church” cannot be “imposed upon [Catholics’] faith” thereby. The First Vatican Council, in Dei Filius, likewise proclaimed that Christ stands by his beloved Bride, the Church, “assisting her when she teaches, blessing her in her labors and bringing her help when she is in danger,” and that this divine aid is palpable “most especially” in the fruits of ecumenical councils.

Perhaps Cardinal Joseph Hoeffner, when he was archbishop of Cologne, best captured the idea in a pastoral letter he penned in 1975: “Decisions [of general councils] concerning disciplinary and liturgical questions are also under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When the Apostles held their so-called apostolic council, they promulgated their disciplinary decisions with the solemn words: ‘The Holy Spirit and we have decided’” (quoted in James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead, The Pope, the Council, and the Mass [W. Hanover, MA: The Christopher Publishing House, 1982], 41). Because of this pneumatic patronage, it’s fair to say that the ecumenical council is “the most solemn expression of the … disciplinary life of the infallible Church of Christ on earth, ‘the pillar and mainstay of truth’” (John L. Murphy, The General Councils [Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1960], 3).

In fact, during a General Audience address delivered just days before the implementation of the reformed Missal, Pope Paul VI specifically reassured the faithful that God himself willed the liturgical reforms commended by Sacrosanctum: “It is Christ’s will, it is the breath of the Holy Spirit which calls the Church to make this change. A prophetic moment is occurring in the mystical body of Christ. … This moment is shaking the Church, arousing it, obliging it to renew the mysterious art of its prayer” (Changes in Mass for Greater Apostolate, §6). It is for this very reason that Pope Francis wrote in his Letter Accompanying Traditionis Custodes, “To doubt the Council is to doubt the intentions of those very Fathers who exercised their collegial power in a solemn manner … in an ecumenical council, and, in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church.”

Faithful Catholics must therefore accept with a meek and docile spirit the liturgical medicine that the Church, through recourse to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, has prescribed for them. And it’s clear what that medicine is — the New Order of the Mass. For this reason, on Oct. 28, 1974, the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship issued Conferentiarum Episcopalium, mandating the exclusive celebration of the Novus Ordo, as follows:

With regard to the Roman Missal: when an episcopal conference has determined that a vernacular version of the Roman Missal — or a part of it, such as the Order of Mass — must be used in its territory, from then on Mass may not be celebrated, whether in Latin or in the vernacular, save according to the rite of the Roman Missal promulgated by the authority of Paul VI on 7 April, 1969. [Emphasis added.]

Those false prophets and evangelical entrepreneurs who would thumb their noses at the conciliar reforms, who would impudently hold themselves out as the guardians of the “true Church,” who would, through runaway temerity, denigrate the Novus Ordo liturgy as some kind of innovation or imposter, ought to take to heart the words of Pius XII: “Private individuals … may not be left to decide for themselves in these holy and venerable matters [of liturgy], involving as they do the religious life of Christian society along with the exercise of the priesthood of Jesus Christ and worship of God … and with the salvation of souls” (Mediator Dei, §58). As Pope John Paul II noted, “Fidelity … implies the observance of the liturgical norms laid down by ecclesiastical Authority and therefore has nothing to do with … obstinately refusing to carry out what has been lawfully laid down and introduced into the sacred rites.”

Papal Accompaniment

I can hear the standard counterarguments now: What about Quattuor Abhinc Annos, Ecclesia Dei, and Summorum Pontificum (papal documents that sanctioned the celebration of the antecedent form)? What about the other steps John Paul II and Benedict XVI took to reverse course and make possible the continued celebration of the Tridentine Mass? Aren’t these indications that the Vetus Ordo is a perpetually viable liturgical option, even in the postconciliar era? Don’t these interventions definitively prove that the TLM should not go the way of the dodo? No — and here’s why not.

Quattuor Abhinc Annos, Ecclesia Dei, and Summorum Pontificum were essentially stopgap measures designed to extend an olive branch to Lefebvrists (along with the many poor souls they have hoodwinked or led astray) and those who were disenchanted with or jarred by the (admittedly abrupt) changes to Catholic worship that took place after Vatican II. All of these documents  — which are highly regarded and frequently cited by traditionalists as papal validation of their movement  — are really examples of papal “accompaniment,” a pastoral strategy that de-emphasizes bright-line rules in favor of meeting people where they are in the spiritual life to journey with them to truth. (The irony, of course, is that the notion of accompaniment is frequently the object of trad ire.) It would be incorrect to interpret these documents as reflections of a substantive shift in the disciplinary trajectory of the Church.

The indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos, issued by John Paul II’s Congregation of Divine Worship, made eminently clear that accompaniment was its raison d’etre. So while it’s a fact that the CDW supplied limited permission to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal for the benefit of Catholics attached to a liturgy that had shaped their culture and spirit, the congregation went on to stipulate that such permission was but a “concession” that reflects “the common Father’s solicitude for all his children.” And the CDW hastened to add that the concession “must be used in such a way as not to prejudice the faithful observance of the liturgical reform.” The CDW also made two very instructive demands: (1) It must be made “publicly clear beyond all ambiguity that such priests and their respective faithful in no way share the positions of those who call in question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970”; and (2) “such celebration must be made only for the benefit of those groups that request it” and only “in churches and oratories indicated by the bishop.” In other words, the indult was emphatically not to be received as a rollback of Vatican II, and it was not to be used as a tool to lure the faithful away from the Novus Ordo liturgy.

And while it’s true that four years later, in Ecclesia Dei, John Paul II wrote, “Respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See [in Quattuor Abhinc Annos],” in the very same section, he articulated the targeted reasoning behind his missive — to facilitate “full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, religious communities or individuals until now linked in various ways to the [Society of St. Pius X], who may wish to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church” (§6). So again, the pontiff was in no way engaging in broad-spectrum TLM advocacy; he was instead attempting to heal a schism in the Church. (Pope Francis later confirmed this in his Letter Accompanying Traditionis Custodes, wherein he specified, “The faculty — granted by the indult of the Congregation for Divine Worship in 1984 and confirmed by St. John Paul II in the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei in 1988 — was above all motivated by the desire to foster the healing of the schism with the movement of Mons. Lefebvre.”)

Benedict XVI, spurred on by a burgeoning pro-TLM movement, ventured further into the trenches of the liturgy wars. He clarified that his predecessor’s Latin Mass concessions were made with an eye to those who “clearly accepted” the Vatican II reforms but who “desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them,” in large part due to Novus Ordo “celebrations [that] were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal” (Letter to the Bishops of the World on Summorum Pontificum). And Benedict, seeing the noble intentions of the faithful seeking refuge in the Old Rite, desired to pick up where John Paul II left off and meet the disaffected sons and daughters of the Church with paternal clemency. As such, he issued Summorum Pontificum, permitting the celebration of the TLM as the “extraordinary form of the Church’s liturgy,” and replacing the conditions that formerly governed its use with a vastly liberalized framework.

Benedict predicated Summorum on two fundamental assumptions, and if these proved to be erroneous, the pastoral calculus at the motu proprio’s heart would be refuted. First, the pontiff believed that those who would avail themselves of the usus antiquior would be few and far between because “use of the old Missal presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language” and “neither of these is found very often” (Letter on Summorum). Second, he believed that allowing the TLM to coexist with the Novus Ordo would in no wise lead to a division in the Church’s rule of faith (ibid.). These expectations, it turns out, had little basis in reality — and Benedict understood this was a distinct possibility from the outset. This is precisely why he himself declared that if “serious difficulties come to light” and remain three years after Summorum, “ways to remedy them can be sought” (ibid.).

In the years following the promulgation of Summorum, it became readily apparent that far greater numbers of Catholics would opt to attend the TLM than Benedict had anticipated. In fact, the Vetus Ordo experienced what The New York Times characterized as a veritable “revival” and “resurgence.” USA Today likewise reported in 2015 that lay involvement with the Latin Mass was mushrooming “in all parts of the world.” One outlet observed that there is a “quickly growing number of TLM-only parishes” in America. And what’s particularly interesting is that young people have driven much of the growth in TLM attendance, with budding families and fresh converts to the Faith at the vanguard. “Wherever one looks,” First Things editor Matthew Schmitz once mused, “the kids are old rite.”

Catholic Factionalism

It also became increasingly clear that, contra the predictions of Benedict, allowing Catholics a “taster’s choice” between the TLM and Novus Ordo has abetted the ascendance of an unhealthy and spiritually hazardous factionalism. With the benefit of hindsight, I dare say that we should have seen this coming.

The liturgical reform was, according to John Paul II, the Second Vatican Council’s “first fruit,” which had been “prepared for by a great liturgical and pastoral movement (Vicesimus Quintus Annus, §1). As such, it was “a source of hope for the life and the renewal of the Church” and, essentially, the embodiment of the council’s “fundamental aim” of imparting increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful (ibid.). Hence, a practical rejection of Sacrosanctum Concilium is not only perilous in its own right; it also sets a septic precedent for calling into question the council’s substantive teachings, and indeed for applying to the council a generalized hermeneutic of suspicion.

This is not mere conjecture. Any moderately informed Catholic who has eyes and ears and a whisper of intellectual honesty has to admit that even within “mainstream” traditionalist Catholic communities, one will find a significant (but not overwhelming) bloc of churchgoers that is insolent towards and contemptuous of the doctrine and praxis put forth at Vatican II. The choreographed outrage and the “that’s not the case at my parish” gaslighting are not convincing anyone. In my own experience running in traditionalist circles and attending the Tridentine Mass in various parishes in several parts of the country, I’ve seen the hostility towards Vatican II and the Novus Ordo firsthand, and it appears to be far from an isolated phenomenon. I can either believe the gainsayers, or my own lying eyes and ears.

But don’t take my word for it. Go on a field trip to a traditionalist community and take in the conversations for yourself. You’ll almost invariably hear claims that Vatican II erred in teaching on, inter alia, religious liberty, on the Church of Christ “subsisting” in the Catholic Church, on ecumenism, on “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.” And many in attendance will sneer at the mere mention of the Novus Ordo. More and more commonly, one is even confronted with the ill-conceived boast that “if the Church clamps down on the TLM, I’ll simply turn to the Society of St. Pius X.” This spirit of defiance is a lurking menace in many of the haunts of the old guard and their new recruits.

It is difficult to take traditionalists seriously when they feign incredulity about such assertions, especially when blokes like Taylor Marshall (408,000 YouTube subscribers), Michael Matt (259,000 YouTube subscribers), and Kennedy Hall (24,000 YouTube subscribers) promote such views daily and malign Vatican II on their widely consumed podcasts. Where do people think the audience members of these theological provocateurs go to church — the local Jesuit spiritualism center? Only about 100,000 U.S. Catholics attend Latin Mass on a given Sunday. So it makes sense that if you tour any church with a strong TLM contingent, you’ll find non-negligible pockets of appreciation for the many pundits who promote open dissent against a valid ecumenical council of the Church.

Something had to be done

Given this state of affairs, which is a clear indication that the factual assumptions underlying Summorum were incorrect, of course Pope Francis saw fit to pen his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, rolling back Benedict’s TLM allowances. In fact, Pope Francis expressly connected the issuance of Traditionis to Benedict’s invitation to the bishops to assess the impact of Summorum three years after its publication, noting that “the results [of Summorum] have been carefully considered in the light of experience that has matured during these years” (¶3).

Specifically, Francis noted that his assessment of the state of the Church revealed how the concessions of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division” (Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the Whole World That Accompanies the Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes). The pontiff astutely gleaned — in keeping with the theological axiom that the law of prayer is the law of belief — that “ever more plain in the words and attitudes of many is the close connection between the choice of celebrations according to the liturgical books prior to Vatican Council II and the rejection of the Church and her institutions in the name of what is called the ‘true Church’” (ibid.). Elsewhere, Francis has pinpointed that the liturgy wars are a mere symptom of a greater “ecclesiological” problem, with which many of the faithful are presently grappling (Desiderio Desideravi, §31). And he’s cautioned that

It would be trivial to read the tensions, unfortunately present around the celebration, as a simple divergence between different tastes concerning a particular ritual form. … I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes the validity of the Council … and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium (ibid.).

In order to “press on ever more in the constant search for ecclesial communion,” Francis decreed the liturgical texts of the Novus Ordo “are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite” and that “previous norms, instructions, permissions, and customs that do not conform to the provisions of the present Motu Proprio are abrogated” (Traditionis, ¶4; Art. 1, 8).

In other words, Francis has made known his will as supreme pontiff that the Church “return to a unitary form of celebration” of the liturgy, to a “single and identical prayer,” as a tangible expression of her immanent unity (Letter Accompanying Traditionis Custodes). And this mindset is no papal novelty. Instead, it very much accords with the desires of Francis’ predecessors, namely Pius V, who, in the much-abused Quo Primum, wrote, “It is most becoming that there be in the Church … only one rite for the celebration of Mass.”

There’s no contending with a sitting pope’s express will regarding matters of liturgy or discipline; Pius XII made that point emphatically. So after the next steps that Rome takes to limit TLM attendance — and there will be further steps, if we take the Vatican council and reigning pope seriously, because the TLM is the “once and past Roman Rite” — spare us the canned umbrage and online polemics full of irresponsible claims that Francis hates Trads or tradition or Benedict or the TLM. He’s told us exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and his actions perfectly align with the mandates of Vatican II and the broader Petrine charge to maintain cohesion in the Church.

All there is left to do is say, “I submit, Holy Father.” If we’ve gotten to the point where we can’t say that, liturgy is the least of our problems.

Looking Through the Wrong End of the Telescope: Desiderio Desideravi and Pope Francis’ Ecclesial Vision

by Other Voices

by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin

Introduction

Advances in astrophysics over the past decades have resulted in previously unimaginable developments in the design of telescopes.  Land-based telescopes not only have spaced-based partners but are increasingly rendered to be of secondary import by developments such as the Hubble telescope and its big brother the James Webb array.  Leading up to these advances, traditional optical telescopes had been enhanced with lasers, coupled with spectroscopes, and redesigned with complex mirror segmentations.  Then there are the radio telescopes and even cosmic ray telescopes that look nothing like what most amateurs point toward the stars; they are surprisingly devoid of any image-forming optical system that have traditionally defined the very nature of a telescope!

Despite all of these advances, it yet seems appropriate to employ the most common and original form of the telescope as a metaphor for the process of interpreting a document such as Pope Francis’ Desiderio desideravi: On the Liturgical Formation of the People of God.  In particular, it is important to discern which lenses provide the richest harvest from this quite modest Apostolic Letter.  The lens you employ will determine, to a great extent, what conclusions one might draw from such a document.  Just as looking through the wrong end of a telescope can provide serious distortions and even polar opposite images, so too can a poorly refracted interpretation of Desiderio desideravi do the same.

In this venture, I am inspired by the paradigm-shifting work of Massimo Faggioli and his rereading of Sacrosanctum Concilium in True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (2012).  What Faggioli makes clear is that if we only read the liturgy constitution as a “liturgical document” in the strict sense, then we miss much of its import.  As Faggioli has demonstrated, this first document of Vatican II actually served as a kind of roadmap for the ensuing documents, highlighting key spiritual and ecclesial themes such as holiness and participation.  Furthermore, as John O’Malley has acutely understood, this document introduced an entirely new conciliar lexicon, no longer deploying juridical and condemnatory church-speak, but instead embracing a pastoral vernacular of care and beauty, contextualized in rich biblical imagery (see his What Happened at Vatican II, 2008).

Similarly, it strikes me as fruitful not only to read Desiderio desideravi as an instruction on the Church’s liturgy but to consider it more broadly as a liturgical refraction of Francis’ larger ecclesial agenda.  When considered, for example, through the lenses of some of the Pope’s more expansive teachings and emphases a richer theological vision emerges.  Thus, we will consider three themes of Francis as lenses for revisiting Desiderio desideravi: the theological anthropology that premiered in Evangelii gaudium, the integral ecology of Laudato si’, and the vision of synodality emerging in preparation for the 2023 Synod on that theme.

Theological anthropology and Evangelii Gaudium:

The theological anthropology embedded in Desiderio desideravi has much resonance with that which Pope Francis first sounded in Evangelii gaudium.  In his inaugural 2013 apostolic exhortation, Francis consistently emphasized the nature, significance and even primacy of humanity (no 55) for evangelization.  Evangelizers must be in dialogue with human experience (no. 133), and interreligious dialogue itself is first and foremost “a conversation about human existence” (no. 250).  Few places in Evangelii gaudium display this respectful approach to dialogue as much as no. 257 in which he considers those who do not consider themselves part of any religious tradition “precious allies” in upholding human dignity and the pursuit of justice.  This is a theological anthropology that is both positive and ethical.

One of the drumbeats that underscore Desiderio desideravi is the centrality of encounter.  The liturgy itself is a preeminent place of encounter with Christ and each other (nos. 10ff).  This encounter is an event that enables believers to become fully human and, in turn, “conceive of the human being as a person, open to a full relationship with God, with creation, and with one’s brothers and sisters” (no. 35).  The concreteness of this encounter-vision is affirmed in the parallel way this document underscores the incarnational nature of our faith and worship (e.g., no. 48).  The liturgy has an irrefutable concreteness about it, grounded in the incarnation, in which Christ “satisfies his own thirst for us” (no. 11) and, in turn, calls us to live in continuity with the Incarnation (no. 12) and live completely the liturgical action (no. 29).

This more positive theological anthropology, sounding throughout the documents of Vatican II – especially  Dignitatis humanae and Gaudium et spes – echoes through the Liturgy of Paul VI.  In contrast to a Tridentine Rite that consistently defined both the assembly and presider as sinners – ”Nobis quoque peccatoribus” – the reformed liturgy deems the faithful worthy to stand in God’s presence and serve: “nos dignos habuisti astare coram te et tibi ministrare.”  This stance in the liturgy of the church is, not surprisingly, also meant to be our missionary stance in the liturgy of the world: one of mercy and welcome rather than judgment and exclusion, where all are made in the image of God and worthy to stand on holy ground.

Laudato si’ and Integral ecology:

A second useful lens for considering Desiderio desideravi is that of Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for our common home, Laudato si’.  This magisterial encyclical enlightens many strands of Desiderio desideravi.  The incarnational and concrete emphases in this liturgical instruction find a much broader theological framework in the previous magisterial encyclical.  Consider, for example, how the language of beauty permeates both documents.  Most often, Desiderio desideravi employs the language of beauty in reference to the liturgical celebration itself (e.g., nos. 1, 10, 16, 22, 23).  Yet, it also echoes the broader themes of beauty on display throughout Laudato si’ in reference to creation, which reflects the infinite beauty of God (e.g., no. 243).

Francis’ emphasis that the beauty of the liturgy is not some search for a ritual aesthetic concerned with exteriors (no. 23) is well interpreted by Laudato si’ noting that care for creation is an “ethical and spiritual” journey.  Recognizing beauty in all of its cultural-contextual diversity and safeguarding such beauty requires the kind of generous theological anthropology previously highlighted in Pope Francis’ other teachings.  Only such will allow us not only to be observers but emissaries of beauty, deeply concerned with how authentic beauty concretely and incarnationally plays out in “people’s quality of life” (Laudato si’, no. 150).

Maybe most instructive from the lens of Laudato si’ is Pope Francis’ insight that ecology is not simply about halting global warming and insuring that all people have access to fresh drinking water.  Rather it requires an integrity based upon the notion of the common good.  An “integral ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good, a central and unifying principle of social ethics” (no. 156).  Considering the beauty of the liturgy and the need for a style of celebration that is truly “art” (i.e., ars celebrandi, Desiderio desideravi, nos. 50ff.) similarly requires a kind of liturgical ecology that is inseparable from the common good of the church and the world.  If the liturgy is the source and summit of the Church’s life (Sacrosanctum concilium, no. 10), then it is the preeminent articulation of our shared life and mission.  Thus, liturgical formation, at its core, is not simply about enacting a more robust or satisfying worship event, but rather nourishing the baptized to live their liturgical spirituality as missionary disciples (Evangelii gaudium, no. 24) in a world that yet thirsts for life-giving water in untold ways.

Synodality:

A third possible lens for reading Desiderio desideravi – the one I personally find the most compelling – is Francis’ emerging agenda regarding synodality.  While he has spoken about this in a variety of speeches, homilies, and writings, his vision of synodality finds its fullest official expression to date in the International Theological Commission’s “Synodality in the life and Mission of the Church” and the Preparatory document for the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, entitled “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission.”

These documents, which draw heavily upon Pope Francis’ teachings, emphasize that this expanding vision of synodality is not about governance but about a way of being together.  Synodality in the broadest sense is a spirituality, intent upon supplying every “institutional reality with a soul,” intent upon reshaping hearts for acquiring the affectus synodalis (“Synodality,” no. 109).  The constant theme of this spirituality is “journeying together.”  This journey is marked by three key characteristics – ones that are fundamentally linked in language, theology, and practice to the reformed liturgy: communion, participation, and mission.

The liturgical spirituality that Desiderio desideravi cultivates is reinforced, properly interpreted, and enhanced by Francis’ vision of this fresh way of being Church.  While synods of bishops were reestablished by Pope Paul VI in 1965, they were fundamentally hierarchical gatherings serving as consultative to the Pope.  For Francis, however, synodality embraces the entire people of God in spirit and in truth.  It is a way of being with each other in mutual respect in service of the Church and its mission to the world that the liturgy must reflect and rehearse.  This optic explodes collegiality beyond episcopal and clerical boundaries and respects the baptized and their unique sensus fidelium.

More explicitly than Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’, Francis unequivocally considers this newly invigorated vision of synodality as deeply rooted in Vatican II.  This “walking together,” as it is often characterized in the relevant documents, is a fresh blossoming of the communion ecclesiology that emerged from that Council.  It is a radical embrace of the call to dialogue so brilliantly articulated in Paul VI’s too often forgotten encyclical Ecclesiam suam, released in the midst of that Council. 

When one reads Desiderio desideravi through a synodal lens, it emerges as an ecclesial document in liturgical mode.  Its emphasis on embodiment, dialogue, relationality, encounter, incarnation, and beauty is a broader commentary on the nature of the church itself.  The refutation of clericalism – a common theme from Pope Francis – is undeniable here.  In that vein, the implicit and explicit rejection of Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Pope Benedict XVI and the parallel reaffirmations of Traditionis custodes (2021) found in this document are at their heart an enhanced vision of communion ecclesiology and a reaffirmation of the teachings of Vatican II.  Thus, Francis writes:

“It would be trivial to read the tensions, unfortunately present around the celebration, as a simple divergence between different tastes concerning a particular ritual form.  The problem is primarily ecclesiological.  I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes the validity of the Council – though it amazes me that a Catholic might presume not to do so – and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium” (Desiderio desideravi, no. 33)

Summary:

The reformed liturgy does not simply supply official texts and rubrics, but an ecclesial pathway for becoming the people of God faithfully and authentically.  The liturgy, in this sense, at its heart is a spiritual technology: rehearsing and nourishing the path to and through God’s reign marked by communion, participation, and mission.  In studying and implementing this document, therefore, it is essential that we do not corral it in some liturgical silo or refract it only through a worship lens, thus muting its reforming and ecclesial message.  While Desiderio desideravi can be useful in liturgical formation, its positive theological anthropology and strong creational/incarnational voice need to be joined with the synodal journey to enhance and encourage the yet unrealized vision of Vatican II in service of the missio Dei.  And to those who rightly critique the document for its paucity of pastoral directives about how to proceed with this intended formation, I would suggest that the plethora of such directives in Evangelii gaudium, Laudato si’ and the documents on synodality provide a cornucopia of ideas and pedagogies for enacting an authentic and integrative liturgical formation.

This post is based on a talk given to the Catholic Academy of Liturgy on January 5, 2023.

Amen Corner: The Fijian Meal Tradition

by Other Voices

Previously published in Worship 96 (October 2022).

The Fijian Meal Tradition:
An Invitation to Liturgical Inculturation
By Iosefo Lui and Carmel Pilcher

INTRODUCTION
The Fijian Islands are world renowned for their friendliness and generous hospitality to visitors. The locals are extremely gracious to any newcomer, most especially when it comes to sharing food. If one is walking by a family sharing a picnic in a park inevitably someone in the group will call out with the greeting, “Come and eat.” Commensality is characteristic of many societies but is a special characteristic of Fiji and the neighboring Pacific Islands.

A formal meeting or a catch-up with a friend will always include food.
No Fijian ever comes empty-handed to a gathering, and their offerings will be bountiful. The customary “bring a plate” in Western society could more accurately be described as “bring many plates” in Fiji—soqo. When the host provides an overabundance of food the guest is expected to come back for “seconds.” The host will typically urge everyone to “have some more.”

Whether a family gathering or a ceremonial meal commemorating a special event, meal sharing always includes a formal element, spoken or unspoken. Food is shared and so is time. Fijians joke that they live in their own “Pacific time.” Spending hours preparing a meal is only eclipsed by the time that participants will take to enjoy both the food and each other. Thomas O’Loughlin tells us that “societies express and define themselves by their meal practices.”(1) If this is so then Fijian society can be described as exceptionally hospitable, generous, and respectful of all persons, friend or stranger alike.

Fijian commensality extends to their religious faith. Catholics come to celebrate Eucharist, not only on Sundays, but often on weekdays. Baptisms, funerals and anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, all are celebrated in the context of Eucharist and continue with a shared meal. Conscious of Pope Francis’s call to Indigenous peoples to inculturate the liturgy, (2) we ask the question: could aspects of Fijian cultural meals be incorporated into the church’s eucharistic tradition? (3)

THE FIJIAN MEAL TRADITION
Indigenous Fijians have a long and rich cultural tradition surrounding meals. In the villages locals gather to eat twice a day—in the morning before working in the fields, and for the more important meal in the evening, when every person in the household is present, including the head of the family and the elders. (4) Seniority and gender determine the sitting arrangements around the ibe ni kana—eating mat. Elders and heads of households sit at the head or upper end of the circle facing the main entrance of the house, then the sons, in order of seniority. The women and girls sit at the other end so that they can serve the meal, which is placed in the center of the circle. While the women eat last, it is expected that those served first ensure enough food is left for all to eat.

When a family sits around the eating mat for an evening meal on any given day the participation of the whole family and the sense of presence to each other symbolizes unity, respect, and care for each other. Traditional meal sharing ex- tends beyond the family. The women always prepare more food than is needed to accommodate extra guests. It is customary that the head of the household invites anyone who passes by during mealtime to join the meal. Moreover, leftovers symbolise sautu—prosperity. Each family belongs to a clan or village. Whatever an individual or individual household does, for good or for ill, affects the whole village. If the family is divided or there is insufficient food to feed guests, not only is the family found wanting, but the reputation of the village is also at stake.

Ceremonial meals such as a wedding feast, a birthday, or a funeral, follow the pattern of a family meal, but with additional elements. When all the participants are gathered on the mat, magiti—a ritual presentation of food that might also include mats, kerosene, or even the most highly prized gift of all, the tabua, whale’s tooth—are ritually presented. Accompanying the magiti is vosa—a formal speech given by the matanivanua—a special clan of orators who act as spokespersons for the chief of the village. It is their role to acknowledge the occasion in the context of vanua (5)—the deep interconnectedness that indigenous Fijians experience not only with the land, the sea, and each other but, by extension, with all of creation.

In Fijian society the matanivanua, the orator, whose craft is passed from generation to generation through instruction and imitation, gives vosa, voice, to a word that embodies and brings to consciousness the strength and power of the vanua. The vosa always follows the same pattern, a threefold structure. It begins with au vura saka—an acknowledgement of the chief and people— before the central message is communicated, and always concludes with the words:

“Au tekivuna tiko mai vuna, vagauna taka tiko, me yaco yani sovuna, me savurogo I lomani vale.”

“I end the message, beginning from the roots to the stem, to the shoots, may the message find a hearing in the house.”

The participants then proclaim with one voice: “Io”—“yes,” followed by cobo—three hollow claps. Then follows another speech, ulivi ni vosa, that acknowledges reception of the message. To that speech the gathering responds, “Mana eiii dina”—“Amen—let it be.” (6)

In ancient Fijian tradition, customary rituals always culminated in the sharing of a meal, whether the occasion called for gratitude, reconciliation, or healing. With every first harvest of the land or catch from the sea, a meal was prepared and ceremonially given to the chief or to the priest with gratitude to persons, the land, and the gods who continued to provide them with bounty from generation to generation. Today vosa is offered to soldiers and people before they leave their home shores for duties across the seas, depart for boarding school, or visit another island—vanua. It belongs to a father when he addresses a member of the household to redress a wrong done, or for appreciation for a task fulfilled, and to a village when vanua is broken by deliberate acts of harm toward persons or a group or the land itself. Fijians continue to ritualize their belief and hope through commensality, in the past to the creator gods and, with the advent of Christianity, to the God of Jesus, confident that the creator God would continue to nourish the land and sea for the livelihood of the people. (7)

THE MEAL TRADITION OF JESUS
So many elements of Fijian meal sharing are comparable to Jesus’ own meal sharing recorded in the Scriptures. The lavish nature of a Fijian meal recalls
the wedding feast of Cana, where Jesus provided an abundance of wine for
the guests when the wine supply ran low, thus avoiding shame for the hosts. Fijian women who serve with love and care identify with the Christ who washed the disciples’ feet at the final supper before his death. Those friendships forged by Jesus at meals, particularly with the outcast and those needing forgiveness, reflect Fijian hospitality that welcomes the stranger without questioning status or background. The Fijian gathering around an eating mat arranged hierarchically but structurally a circle where those served first are mindful of all concurs with Paul’s challenge to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:17-33) that at the Lord’s Supper all are welcome and are to behave as one body in Christ. Scholars re- mind us that the banquet stories, often put onto the lips of Jesus, anticipate the Parousia. This could also be said of the long Fijian tradition of meal sharing.

SUNDAY EUCHARIST
Christians gather with each other on Sunday to commemorate the Lord’s Supper. With the same care taken to prepare their own meals, Fijian Catholics take time to prepare for Sunday Eucharist. They decorate the sanctuary space with beautiful flowers and special cloths, usually the color of the liturgical season. They also reflect on the Word of God each week with their own family and local parish sector. Fijians ensure that the music to be sung is the best it can be by regular practice. For a special celebration the choir might gather for weeks to practice the hymns for several hours each evening. The glorious Pacifican singing not only binds the liturgy together but lifts it to a higher plane, so that it brings about a sense of the divine in the present.

But when it comes to the prayers of the Eucharist, it is simply assumed that these belong to the ordained priest who will make his own choices and prepare his homily, generally without any connection to the peoples’ insights from their own Bible study, or even to the intentions of the universal prayer. There seems a clear demarcation in the minds of those who participate in the Lord’s Supper between what the priest prepares and does, and what “belongs” to the assembly. This is such a contrast with the Fijian meal tradition where, although people take on different tasks, there is a sense that everyone works together, and when the celebration takes place, it is one meal where each relates to the other, bonded in friendship through the common food that is shared.

A COVID INTERRUPTION
The gap between Fijian and church traditional meal sharing became clearer
in 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic. Fiji was in lockdown for seven continuous months to overcome the quick spread of the delta virus.
This had a serious effect on the society’s meal-sharing tradition. Not only was any form of gathering forbidden by the government, but domestic meals were limited to the food that was available. Rather than food in abundance, Fijian families who were struck by sickness and unemployment found they did not even have sufficient food each day. Many started growing crops, while others had to rely on the generosity of others. Food packages were delivered to the poor in villages. Sadly, despite restrictions in movement many caught the virus, and too many people died. Because people were unable to physically gather, all meal sharing ceased and no traditional rites could be performed.

Faith leaders responded to the closure of places of worship by providing alternatives. Catholics were able to access televised and livestreamed Masses led by priests from their homes. The livestreaming and recordings of the Eucharist served a pastoral need, as is evident by the many Catholics who tuned in daily for the celebration of the Eucharist. The eucharistic celebration followed the usual format, but with only the ordained and whoever else might be physically resident in his home celebrating. Meanwhile families gathered in their homes, around their technological device that was often surrounded by religious images. They sang the hymns and prayed the responses, albeit remotely. At the time of the usual Communion procession to the table, a prayer desiring spiritual communion was recited while the presider ate and drank alone.

Issues about virtual Mass have been addressed by many liturgical scholars. Here we wish only to comment on the eucharistic meal tradition as under- stood by Fijian Catholics. With the restrictions brought about by the government’s response to the pandemic, Fijians were quick to realize that without physical presence it was not possible to share a ceremonial meal. By contrast, those same people did not question virtually celebrating the Eucharist—also a meal—only expressing disappointment that they could not partake in Communion.

The church teaches that each Sunday an assembly of priestly people gathers
to be fed and nourished, both at the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist. Fijian worshipers did not seem to understand this clearly. Could including aspects of the rich heritage of Fijian meal sharing in eucharistic celebrations strengthen the Fijian consciousness to realize that the memorial meal is central to the celebration of the Eucharist?

A WAY FORWARD
Earlier we established that there are enough common elements between the two meal traditions to enter into a meaningful dialogue between the ancient cultural wisdom of Fijian commensality and the memorial meal of the Eucharist. So what might this look like?

Sitting on the floor is the Fijian gesture for respect. In village churches where most sit on mats during the celebration, the ritual meal of Eucharist would be visually strengthened if the presider and lector also sat on those same mats at low tables. Cloths that embellish the space, and vestments, could be tapa— traditionally made cloths with local earth-colored patterns—rather than the typical seasonally imported colored cloths of the Roman tradition.

The presentation of magiti is comparable to the bringing of gifts to the eucharistic table. While usually bread and wine and soli—monetary gifts—are presented, in addition, first fruits and other contributions including those ritually offered at a traditional ceremonial meal could be presented. They could be presented using the traditional gesture of outstretched hands and received in the usual Fijian manner—with the recipient clapping—cobo. It would help make the connection between the gifts brought to the table and the meal to be shared. Just as no Fijian considers eating alone, or from food prepared from another meal, so all share in communion with the body and blood of Christ’s sacrifice in communion at the table.

The presider, deacon, and lectors pray in God’s name and speak God’s Word. They are the matanivanua, the orators, at a celebration of the Eucharist in Fiji. (8) They too speak the vosa, giving voice to a word that embodies and brings to consciousness the strength and power of the vanua that connects all of creation in Christ, continuing the memory of the ancestors. Mindful of Pope Francis’s instruction that the homily is a dialogue (9) it would be possible to craft the homily with the threefold structure of the vosa of the matanivanua, the ulivi ni vosa, and the congregational responses, which would both make a direct connection with a Fijian ceremonial meal and also enhance conscious and active participation for the assembly. (10)

CONCLUSION 
The traditional meal sharing reflects how indigenous Fijians (11) view their society, and what it should be. A critical reflection of traditional societal meal sharing, including the way ancient ceremony has been moderated and adjusted over time to suit current situations seems opportune. This study would make it possible to identify Fijian values that are also Christian and that continue to be affirmed both ritually and symbolically at meals. The eucharistic meal celebrates the paschal mystery, a memorial meal of Christ’s selfless love. A catechesis of the eucharistic celebration based on the gospel meal tradition could assist Catholics to realize what it is that they do when they gather around the table of Eucharist as Christ’s priestly people on the Lord’s Day.

Inculturating the liturgy is a challenge to us all, but when embraced fully it can bring about genuine participation that flows into right living. A re-evaluation of traditional meal sharing can serve to restore cultural values, just as a deliberate attempt to bring into the Christian liturgy elements of Fijian meal sharing might provide a conscious eucharistic celebration that ensures the community that what is celebrated as a memorial of Christ’s meal tradition flows into everyday life.

———

1) Thomas O’Loughlin, The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings (London: T & T Clark, 2015), 86.

2) Pope Francis reminded the Amazonian church that “[t]he Second Vatican Council called for this effort to inculturate the liturgy amongst indigenous peoples.” Francis, Querida Amazonia 82, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost _exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20200202_querida -amazonia.html.

3) We are grateful for the valuable insights of Dr. Peter Loy Chong, the current archbishop of Suva, who both affirmed our conclusions and has already begun the process of implementing them.

4) Details concerning traditional Fijian meals are sourced from Asesela Ravuvu, The Fijian Way of Life: The Many Functions of Food (Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, USP, 1993).

5) For a Fijian understanding of vanua see Dr. Donato Kivi’s explanation in the previous essay in Worship: “The Pandemic Push for Inculturation,” Worship 96 (July 2022): 197.

6) We acknowledge Dr. Peter Loy Chong for this explanation and translation.

7) Ilaitia Tuwere, Vanua: Towards a Fijian Theology of Place (Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, USP, 2002), 173.

8) At a recent ordination in Suva, Archbishop Peter Loy Chong used the matanivanua as an analogy for the role of the deacon and a homilist.

9) Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 137, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en /apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii -gaudium.html.

10) Archbishop Peter Loy Chong is in the process of instructing his catechists to preach in the pattern of the matanivanua at a traditional meal when they lead services of Word and Communion in remote villages. Communicated by email: May 5, 2022.

11) While our discussion only focused on indigenous Fijians, Indo and Chinese Fijians (and others who call Fiji home) could bring their own traditional cultural values to enhance the liturgy.