Loony Liturgy: Screwing up the Sign of Peace part 1: Around the World!

How many ways can you ruin a kiss? Or a handshake? Or a warm embrace?

Plenty, if you're a priest who doesn't keep up with the latest in the General Instructions!

The "Sign of Peace" was added to the Mass during the reforms that came out of Vatican II. The idea is simple. There are many ways that we recognize Christ at Mass. He is found in the Holy Word of Scripture; he is represented by his ordained minister, the priest; he is found in the Eucharistic elements; and he is found in each of us.

The Tridentine Mass recognized only the vertical elements of our relationship to Christ -- those that related us to him in his Divinity. Christ as Word, Sacrament and sacred minister fit that bill. But what about the horizontal dimension of our relationship to Christ -- the "me and you" version? The Sign of Peace was supposed to highlight (if only or a moment) that horizontal element.

Good call, Eminences!

But for the last 40 years, priests have done everything they can to screw up the Sign. Here are a couple of the classic ways:

The Speed Demon
Let's face it, it takes more than 10 seconds to greet all the people around you, especially if you attend Mass as a family. So when the priest intones "Let us offer one another a sign of Peace. Lamb of God..." then you are stuck. Do you stop shaking hands with those around you? What if you haven't Peaced your spouse yet?

You have the awkward choice of either cutting off the Peace, or of embracing people during the Distribution Rite (the Lamb of God) itself Not pretty. Mosty people choose to finish the Peace, but it is awkward!

Around the World!
The Sign of Peace is just that -- a sign. It's supposed to symbolize a greater reality. Giving the peace to those immediately around us stands for our desire (and duty) to give peace to all people.

So when the priest says, "Let us offer each other a sign of peace," he doesn't necessarily mean all the others. But occassionally, especially in small groups, that's what you get -- a "sign" that goes on and on until everyone has "peaced" everyone else. It's the kind of thing that gives liturgists fits: a part of Mass that inexplicably gets blown up or chopped down out of proportion to the rest of the Mass.

But in the grand scheme of things, it's the least of my worries.

A variation on this is the congregation that "does its business" while the presider who struts around shaking hands like a selectman on election day. What does it mean, one wonders, when the priest offers the peace to a few people in the front pews, but to no one else? Or to those along the middle aisle? If you're going to shake hands with some, why not all?

It all sounds silly and nitpicky until you relize that the Mass is like the hula -- every motion has a meaning. Mess with the motion and you mess with the meaning.

Pray tell, Father (who presides at Mass in persona Christi):When "Christ" leaves the sanctuary to shake the hands of a few fo the faithful, what is the message? I hope it's more than, "Im the priest! I can do what I want! Watch me as I loooove the people!"

Sunday Reflection: The One who spoke, “not as the scribes”

Jesus today enters a synagogue, where he teaches “as one having authority and not as the scribes.” Though the gospel reading focuses today on the how people welcomed this, to some it was threatening. For one to speak “as the scribes” was to speak as a scholar – being careful of one’s sources, getting the footnotes right, anxious not to exceed the word of Scripture or of traditional interpretation. To speak as a scribe meant (with no ill intent) to convert God’s living word into a fossil, depriving it of its full meaning and import. To speak with authority, then, was to speak as a self-confident source of interpretation. It was to recognize in God’s word not a dead text to be exhibited with a curator’s care, but a living reality that continued to be expressed in the lives of its hearers. Jesus Christ, himself the pre-existing eternal Word of God, was -- in a synagogue in Capernaum – exercising both his right and his very being in the act of speaking the living word of God to God’s own people.

The reaction was electric. At least some saw Jesus as exhibiting God’s living presence. To this, they were irresistibly attracted. They recognized not just someone who knew the Scriptures backward and forward, but could plumb its depths and return with pearls of wisdom and value.

But for every one who yearned for Christ’s word, there were those who saw it as a threat. To interpret God’s word meant challenging the authority of previous interpreters. It meant finding in God’s word the simple message that might be simplistic -- or wrong. It means dismantling a system of beliefs, rituals and power that has given the community cohesion and meaning, and even its salvation. To be an innovator in this culture was not a value, but dangerous. God himself gave us the Law; he that would reshape it cannot be tolerated.

But Jesus was no mere innovator. As the Incarnate Word, he spoke himself, which gave his utterances the force of authority. As the human Jesus of Nazareth, however he gave himself into the power of his hearers. Whether to heed him or hound him, the Word gave himself into our power.

That choice is still ours to make today.
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Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, you who are the very Word of God, guide us as we listen to your word. May we be more than mere slaves to ancient texts and age-old interpretations, but see these anew by measuring them against the path of love, truth and light that you blazed for us. May our lives be your authoritative word to the world in which we live. May others see your words in the words we speak and your acts in the actions we perform. In your name we pray.

Amen.

Hokey Homiletics: The Violated Voicemail

It seems there's an edition to this section every week. This week, the homilist reported on a voice mail he received from a couple of "Hockey Dads". The story wasn't clear, but it seems that these Dads wanted to get their kids out of some obligation -- whether it was Mass or Religious Ed we were not told -- in order to see a "motivational speaker". I'm guessing the speaker was the kid from BU who was paralyzed a few years ago while playing the sport he loved. The fathers even offered to donate money to the Church or parochial school if they could be released from their obligation.

In any case, the homilist made it clear that the real motivational speaker was the one who speaks to us in his Word every Sunday: Christ.

I'm not arguing with that. I also don't like the idea that fathers would try to buy out of their religious obligations. And there are very many options for attending Mass that it's rarely necessary to miss Mass altogether.

But is there any justification in breaking a confidence made to a priest via a private phone call? Did the priest even call the fathers back to offer them advice on meeting their obligation? Or to tell them he did not have the authority to release them from it? We were not told.

There is something untoward in the spectacle of a man telling his flock that he broke one societal principle (maintaining confidentiality) in order to boast of upholding another -- holding a Catholic to his obligations.

The (fictitious) story of “O”

I’ve been following the aftermath of the revelation that author Jonathan Frey -- whose supposed Memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” was showcased on Oprah” –faked important sections of his book. Yesterday, Oprah had Frey back on the show again to denounce him on camera and try to regain the aura of infallibility she evidently thinks she has with the viewing public.


Jonathan Frey in Oprah's studio woodshed

I was struck by a number of interesting issues that emerged from this:
1) Why would Frey have subjected himself to what he must have known would be a public whipping? Was he that repentant for what he had done? Was he in denial? Or was this a choreographed apology?
2) Oprah lost points in my book for pinning the blame entirely on Frey. Is she so naïve to think that authors don’t lie or embellish? Did her own staff miss important red flags about the veracity of the book? Will she do anything to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
3) For all her folksiness, Oprah is a commodity with a corporate image to protect. Yesterday’s flogging was about damage control. No different from Tylenol, Coca-Cola or Pepsodent.

If I had to put money on the most likely scenario, I’d say there was some level of collusion between Oprah and Frey. Before the revelations, she may have given a wink to the book’s wild assertions. She’s been around, after all, and should be able to spot howlers when she sees them. More probably, though, she persuaded or coerced Frey to appear on her show again. How much money would saving her image be worth to her? Was Frey less a villain than a willing and handsomely-paid “victim”?

A Swing to Truth
On the other hand, there’s something positive came from this experience. The recent years have seen a decline in the ability or desire of people to stand up for or believe in objective truth. We try to be tolerant of each other’s faith, for instance, but this can easily slip into a feeling that all faiths are somehow the same – each telling its own version of the truth. Intelligent Design advocates battle evolutionists on this ground, hoping that their version of the truth (however baseless) will be allowed to stand along the version of the truth offered by science. On the talk shows, truth is the position that talks the loudest and prevails, regardless of its agreement with the supposed principles of the speakers or with the evidence.

But objective truth exists, however poorly we discern it. The truths of Christianity, in fact, completely lose their power if divorced from objective truth. Tell me that Christ is God incarnate -- who lived, died and rose on my behalf -- and I am obliged and willing to follow and emulate him. Tell me it’s a lie or a myth and I lose interest completely.

This week’s “Story of ‘O” is a good sign that we are swinging away from a culture moving away from objective truth – where memoirs can be inventions and the line between fiction and non-fiction ceases to matter or even be evident.

Reflection on the call of the Apostles, according to Mark

Last week, J the B called Jesus "the Lamb of God" and prompted disciples to follow Jesus. The way Mark tells the same story, there's no lamb, only fish.

The first reading is the section of the book of Jonah in which the runaway prophet finally reaches his objective, the great Assyrian city of Nineveh, and is a wild success. All that running away, weathering God's storm and being swallowed by the fish was for nothing. He gives one speech and the Ninevites see the evil of their ways and repent. Talk about "Mission accomplished!"

In the gospels, Jesus walks by the shore and cherry-picks Andrew and Simon and the Zebedee bros -- James and John -- from the fish trade. "I'll make you fishers of men!" J exclaims, which might have read less as high holiness than low (even lame!) comedy in 1st century Galilee.

What ties the first reading together with the gospel is the idea of people being pulled out of their comfiort zones by a special call of God. Jonah was called to preach to the baddest folks on the planet; the disciples were called to abandon their livelihoods to follow an unknown preacher. But the stories are tied together by contrast as well as similarity. Jonah tried to flee the call. He literally fled in the opposite direction -- west to Tarshish rather than East to Nineveh. The disciples, OTOH, dropped everything immediately. Not a word. No complaints. No explanations. You might want to allow for a little poetic license on Mark's part in telling the story. But still, it's striking that Andrew, et al, are shown responding with eagerness and even reckless abandon to follow Christ. While Zebedee is portrayed as having hired men to help with the fishing, the disciples did had families to feed. There's a "crazy go nuts!" aspect to their reaction. Was this something they had prepared for? Were they just waiting for the right time and the right person? Was it just a matter of triggering their Messiah Contingency Plan?

In any event, they went. They left the comfort of their small lives by the sea, which would have been the safe, predictable and utterly without effect. They instead embarked on a perilous journey with no known outcome except the hope that God would somehow make it all come out right.
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Let us pray.

Lord, we like safety and easy choices. We like to stay with the tried and true and hate to set out into the unknown. Yet you are the Greatest Unknown there is to know. To know you is to journey away from the predictable, the comfortable and the wordly rewarding. Give us the strength to start the journey as did your Son's first disciples. Give us the courage to accept the inevitablity of the journey, as did Jonah. May we strike out into new territories of compassion, patience, risk, service and suffering for your sake, adding bricks to your kingdom and souls to your heart. In the most holy name of Jesus, your Son, we pray.

Amen.

Hokey Homiletics: the Hostile Homilist

Is it because they tend to live alone? Because they have no one to kick their butts when they say mean or appalling things? Whatever the reason, priests can be brutal and insulting when they give homilies.

Tonight, the choir was unusually lame. The lone guitarist played only 2/3 of the chords. For the Gospel acclamation, the choir was trying to sing one of those unsingable church camp Alleluias that probably knocked 'em dead at Steubenville East, but plops at regular Church. So, to start the gospel reading, Fr B chastises the congregation. "I thought I was going to sing a solo up there! Since none of you were singing." Not that he was signing either.

Thanks, Father. Nothing like laying the blame on the People of God for failing to sing along with embarrasing and unsignable music!

After the reading, Fr. B started his sermon by complaining about the "breaking news" reports he got while working on his computer. Seem that a whale was stranded in the Thames and the news bureaus were giving updates on when it swam in, when it swam out and when it died.

"Who cares?" shouted Fr B.

Hey. I know the news media can fixate on idiotic things, but should I turn off my compassion for animals as a result? And if I had spent my afternoon anxiously following the story of the Thames whale, I would have been pretty cheesed off.

Fr B then got on the back of some acquaintances who were talking about reality TV shows. "You want reality?" says Fr B, "then look at the reality that's going on right here!"

Pardon me, Your Pomposity, but is anything you do like?

Not to mention that none of this railing at the foibles of modern society had anything to do with the point of the sermon or with the readings.

I've taken to closing my eyes and bowing my head during sermons, not out of any sense of reverence toward the homilist, but out of a desire to prevent my flinching from being obvious to the rest of the congregation. It's like curling in on myself to avoid getting sucker punched.

Do they teach this in semninary? Or are these guys really this hostile?

We Are Welcome!

Some priests and theologians get cranky (justifiably) about songs that sing about heresy. Marty Haugen's "Canticle of the Sun," according to a professor of mine, once had lyrics that would have fit right into ancient Egyptian sun worship: "Praise to the sun!" rather than "Praise for the sun," as St. Francis had written.

That bugs me, but frankly, I won't mistake Catholic worship for pantheism anytime soon.

What does bug me is when the Church sings, with a straight face, praises to its tolerance and inclusivity. This past Sunday, we sang Marty's "All Are Welcome," whose first stanza goes like this:

Let us build a house where love can dwell
And all can safely live.
A place where saints and children tell
How hearts learn to forgive.

And on and on in this vein.

When I think of how many people are actually excluded from the welcome of the Church, I blanch. So, I suggest we sing along these lines:

Let us hide here from reality
And all who might disagree
With the least thing that dear Father says
Or who hate his homily
Do not dare approach the table
If you're gay or divorcee
If you live in sin with one another,

We are welcome! We are welcome!
We are welcome, but not thee!

Sunday Reflection:The call of the Apostles, according to John

There's a lot of humor in Scripture, which we miss because we're so busy trying to take it seriously. Today's gospel is a case in point.

John the Baptist is busy doing his thing by the Jordan -- baptizing people, scolding the scholarly and legal communities and rippin' Herod a new one. He sees Jesus coming toward him and launches into a big speech about how Jesus ranks before him and will baptize with the Holy Spirit, and how John saw a dove come from the sky and float above him.

And then, according to the gospel, an amazing thng happens: nothing! Nobody makes a move to follow or even greet this supposedly amazing person!

Luckily for the Church, Jesus happened to be in the area again the next day. John sees him again and gets a little more specific. "Behold! The Lamb of God!" You'd have to be an idiot to miss the point, especially two days in a row, so two of John's disciples take off after Jesus. Only, they're not exactly sure what they're supposed to do. Do they talk to him? Ask him questions? Just watch him and hope for the best?

It's Jesus who breaks the ice. "What are you looking for?" he asks. For all he knows, they could be robbers or mental cases. And here's where the unintentional humor comes in. The two disciples (we later learn one of them was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother) haven't got their act together yet. What do you say to the guy who has been fingered as the Messiah by a person of integrity and authority like J the B? "So...," they start, "Rabbi...so...where are you staying?"

It's the equivalent of meeting the pope and saying, "So, your Holiness, nice weather we're having!" or "Well, then! How was the traffic on the way from the airport?"

But Jesus is terrific. "Come and see!" he says. And on this note of awkward discomfort on the part of the questioners and undeserved kindness on the part of the responder, the ministry of Jesus takes off.

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At a loss for words, we raise our voices in prayer to God. What prayer form should we use? The Rosary? The Lord's Prayer? The spiritual exercises of someone or other? This church? That church? Unsure of how to begin or continue our personal journeys of faith, we fall back on familiar cliches and behavior patterns, embarrassed that we are so damned shallow and that (for all our education and experience) we have no profundity of spirit or greatness of heart.

And as with his disciples, Jesus answers the badly-formed questions we ask, inviting us deeper into his life, preparing us for the next stupid question and the next, until we are inextricably bound into his life and following him in spite of ourselves.

Amen.

Book Review: "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracey Kidder

Paul Farmer -- The very picture of sainthood



MBM is the story of Paul Farmer, legendary lecturer and epidemiologist, and a devoted and perceptive doctor who works among the poorest of the poor in Haiti and elsewhere. Farmer is one of those annoying people who eschews protocol and social niceties in order to keep his patients alive. He will “borrow” medicines from wealthy hospitals for use in his clinic. He will literally walk miles up steep mountains to make sure that his TB patients are taking all his medicines. This is not out of a desire to be nice, but because he knows that a missed dose can mean that a treatable disease will become one imperious to medicine and cut a wider swath of death.

Farmer is a proponent of Archbishop’s Oscar Romero’s brand of liberation theology which sees Christ in the suffering of the poor and works for better lives for them. While Farmer’s actions are based in this theological insight, they are practiced in the shacks of Haiti, the favelas of Peru, the streets of Boston and the prisons of Moscow—anywhere that drug-resistant forms of TB and other diseases have a stranglehold on communities.

Paul Farmer is a saint – the kind of eccentric, dedicated lunatic who brings God’s healing and compassion to the poor. He is no respecter of men, but a person whose theory comes from the streets, not from textbooks.

I would steer you toward the book or an unabridged CD, if there is one. The abridged version skimps on some of the most colorful stories and leaves out much of Farmer’s theological grounding, which is a vital layer of his personality.

Book Review: "Jesus Did It Anyway" by Dr. Kent M. Keith

Not a lot to say? Keith wrote this book anyway.


According to author Dr. Kent M. Keith, he wrote the Paradoxical Commandments 30 years ago when he was 19. Somehow, they got around, and were quoted (without attribution) in devotional books and posters, even ending up in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. Keith didn’t see a penny for his work, and claims not to mind.

Now, Keith has packaged and expanded his earlier work with “Jesus Did It Anyway.” I’m sympathetic with the plight of a person whose one great contribution ends up being exploited by others, but I found the book disappointing. The best parts of it were the sayings themselves, which took the form, “The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.” But Keith’s expansions are not terribly inspiring. They consist mainly of lightly paraphrased scriptural stories plus a few personal stories. Aside from the paradoxical commandments themselves, Keith’s insights are clichéd and dull. It was easy to skip large sections of the book without missing anything. Hence, the disappointment.

Though this book is inspiring in its own way, if you’re looking for something deep or original, you ought to look elsewhere.

The Pope's New Hat

I dunno. The new Pope just doesn't have the theatrical chops of the old one. Even in sickness, JP2 had a lot on the ball when it came to visuals. The new pope isn't cutting it, style-wise, yet. And at age 79, I don't expect him to develop any taste or charsima anytime soon. The latest example came from an audience around Christmastime. Here's a not-so-bad photo of his excursion:


The Pope was riding around St. Peter's Sqaure in the popemobile, with a red cap and white furlined red cap, much like that worn here by Pope Benedict XIV, who reigned in the middle of the 18th century, just before the American revolution.

Now here is a guy who could wear a hat! He looked like he'd knock your block off if you said anything funny about it.

I saw the outfit on ABC or CNN around Christmas, which made the media folks assume the pope was trying to look like Santa. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But whatever he was doing, it didn't work. Interestingly, it took massive Google and Yahoo searches to scare up the single example shown here. Maybe that's no accident. I'd burn any picture that made me look that goofy.

Aside from the yarmulke-like skullcap (official name: "zucchetto") and bishop's mitre, I don't know what this pope could wear without looking silly and self-conscious. Suggestions, anyone?

Limbo go boom!

Looks like limbo will soon go the way of the hoop skirt and the hula hoop.

A panel of theologians, set up by the former pontiff John Paul II, is studying what to do about Limbo. Never officially a Church teaching, in the same way as the Resurrection of Christ or the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Limbo nonetheless figured heavily in the beliefs of Catholics for perhaps centuries. Catholic mothers, especially, were terrified about the prospect that their children would die without baptism and be sent to Limbo. Though Limbo was a "happy" state, thanks to the harsh and inflexible mercy of the Almighty it did not include sharing in the Beatific Vision. Only the baptized got that.

Limbo as a concept was made necessary by the idiotic equation of salvation with Christian baptism. Without baptism, non-Christians and those born prior to Christ's salvific death were in peril of damnation. The Church, realizing the incompatibility of such a view with the message of a loving God, couldn't rightly send these innocents to Hell. But, rules were rules, and only the baptized got to Heaven. So, the Church invented the limbus patrum ("Limbo of the Fathers") and Children's Limbo to allow for pious unbaptized pre-Christians and unbaptized children to go somewhere after death other than Hell. While this was a compassionate response of sorts, it did involve the Church in creating, out of whole cloth, a cosmic reality found neither in the Bible nor in Tradition.

Limbo, it turns out, could never be forever.

While ditching Limbo is welcome (if horribly overdue) one wonders whether the Church will address the anxiety and dread it caused millions of parents of the centuries, who were certain that their children would be denied Heaven. Perhaps some of these suffered lifelong grief and terror for their own souls if they were the least bit guilty for their child's late baptism.

One also has to wonder whether the Church will ask Catholic hospitals to calm down about the need to baptize every infant in danger of death. Surely, if Limbo does not exist and the innocent are in Heaven, nurses and chaplains can put away their Holy Water and put their trust in God.