What makes liturgy ‘reverent’?
In the last issue of America, Rachel Lu and Matthew Cortese, S.J., reflected on how Catholics can make the liturgy more reverent. The two shared insights informed by their experiences of Masses celebrated in different traditions. Their thoughts, which took the first meeting of the Synod on Synodality as inspiration, drew dozens of reader comments.
I think both commentators would agree that a “bad” liturgy is a liturgy that is not reverent. All musical styles and any body postures can be done reverently or not. Reverence cannot be achieved by the choice of a particular type of music or a particular bodily posture when receiving Communion; it is an inner disposition that both Gregorian chant and the Dameans can elicit. I have been to both Latin Masses and “Dameans” Masses that have deadened me and others that have lifted me to the transcendent. I get concerned when anyone suggests that one “type” of liturgy is more reverent than another.
Diane Vella
I am concerned that “reverent liturgy” is inadvertently becoming the required steps that one must climb to reach God. I am troubled when I hear people say, “Mass is my opportunity to shut out the outside world and have my spiritual experience.” For these people, church has become the tower that must be climbed to find God. Reverent liturgy cannot and should not become a sorting mechanism on the stairway to heaven or hell. You are inadvertently creating a Tower of Babel.
Peter Arnez
One reason for the Vatican II reforms was to have the congregation participate in the liturgy rather than sit in the pews as passive spectators. Pre-Vatican II, the priest’s back was to us while he mumbled in Latin. Every now and then the people said a brief response like Et cum Spiritu tuo. Few knew Latin, but they had bilingual missals to read. So some read. Many women prayed the rosary during Mass. Many men dozed off.... The congregation was an audience watching a priest doing liturgy rather than participating. The music was mostly mediocre. Chant was rare—sometimes heard during a “high Mass.” My generation welcomed the changes.
Anne Chapman
In thinking about what we might “bring back,” we must be aware of why some things went away. There is a place for chant in our liturgy, and for the judicious use of Latin and other nonvernacular languages—if care is taken that the people sufficiently understand what they are praying. Some folks have an odd nostalgia for things they never experienced. If you’re not old enough to remember a “low Mass” muttered in Latin and completed in 20 minutes or less, I want to tell you—as someone who is old enough to remember that—there was nothing reverent about it.
Mike Houlihan
For over 40 years as a presider I have struggled over what constitutes reverence in liturgy. I have come to the conclusion that it has everything to do with the disposition of hearts: mine and those who gather with me to worship. Do those hearts know the Lord intimately or from a distance? Are they wrapped up in his infinite love or just longing to be? Beauty, if understood as transcendent (God’s view, not mine) will enhance our experience together in the multi-varied ways God reveals through this gathering. Our experience of the union will depend largely on our openness to all God calls us to in this moment of our worship and in the lives we continue when we part. Reverence would seem to be my willingness to enter into all God is already doing.
Father Patrick Michaels
As a retired priest, I have come to believe that authentic spirituality is fostered and fed by celebrating the liturgy as the church prescribes—nothing more, nothing less. The liturgy can cease to challenge and encourage true conversion when it is manipulated to mirror personal wants.
Father Karl Schilken
I can imagine some folks in medieval times were outraged by the use of newfangled polyphony—how profane!—rather than chant. Yet now beautiful polyphonic music is considered perfectly acceptable. And some of those “guitar Mass” songs of several decades past are now staples of the hymnal. If we focus on what is actually happening in the Mass, and less on the trappings that are not even central to the miracle in which we are participating, maybe we can worry less about whether we are participating in a “good” or a “bad” liturgy, much less whether we “like” the trappings of any particular Mass.
Mary Gallagher
