The picture above shows Fr. Mathias Thelen of Encounter Ministries praying for someone  at a charismatic Catholic gathering in Ottawa in late August.

In writing for the Catholic papers, and coming in contact with all kinds of different communities within the Catholic Church, I have been greatly blessed by exposure to the many different charisms of diverse communities and apostolates in the Body of Christ.

I wish sometimes that all Catholics could have the same kind of exposure I have had.  There is all the diversity inside the Catholic Church that I had found in the Protestant world, though unified around the Pope.   Some communities are charismatic and favor contemporary worship songs, and experiences of the Holy Spirit.

Some are more traditional like our little parish in Ottawa.

Some communities are composed of social justice Catholics deeply committed to serving the poor and cleaning up the environment;  others stress an intellectual approach to studying doctrine and Church history;  and some communities cater to cradle Catholics who have grown accustomed to a certain way of doing things.

We have Catholics who are warm and loving but need to discipline their experience of the Holy Spirit with sound doctrine;  we have Catholics who are steeped in sound doctrine but come across as dry and perhaps need to experience God’s love in a more direct way in order to better share it;  we have Catholics who care so much about helping the poor that they forget to  keep Christ at the centre and risk becoming like any other NGO.

Where do we in the ordinariates stand and where do we need to grow spiritually?

Last June, Father John Zuhlsdorf posted on his blog a most interesting letter from a priest with a charismatic Catholic background on his experience going on the annual Chartres Pilgrimage last June and learning the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, aka the Traditional Latin Mass.

I only came across this post on Friday and found the letter and the discussion in the combox most interesting, given the experience many of us in the ordinariates have had with  with charismatic renewal and our own traditional Divine Worship.

The priest writes (with Father Z’s emphases and comments in brackets):

The great boon in celebrating the Extraordinary Form, for me, was mainly twofold.  First, there is something very liberating about incessantly asking the Lord for forgiveness as we do, in not only the Confiteor but also the many private prayers of the priest.  The Scripture became very true for me:  “Humiliamini in conspectu Domini, et exaltabit vos.”  Second–and I understand that some of your readership may differ from me here–as a Charismatic Catholic, I deeply, deeply appreciated the celebration of the Pentecost Octave, with the sevenfold Veni, Sancte Spiritus and the focus on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Epistle.  I’ll come right out and say it:  The “mutual enrichment” envisioned by Pope Benedict has come true in my own priesthood by the exchange between Traditionalism and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

Without abandoning the Ordinary Form, I confess that the older Missal and Breviary has enriched my priesthood in ways I had never imagined.  In fact, I found myself becoming more robustly priestly and fatherly.

[ NB] I also want to take a moment for public repentance.  Long ago, at a certain liberal seminary far, far away, I was indoctrinated with a disdain for, and even a mockery of, Traditional Catholics.  I jumped on the bandwagon for their supposed liturgical naivete and sanctimony.  I was convinced that they were backwards, habitually uncharitable, and elitist.  After being around 14,000 other Traditional Catholics and priests of more traditional religious congregations, I found them to be astonishingly affable, joyous, and genuine.  I was especially surprised to not have heard a single murmur against Pope Francis during the Chartres Pilgrimage.  So, to all of those Traditional Catholics I mocked in the past:  I am truly sorry.  I was wrong.  You are doing tremendous good for Christ and His Church.

Back in 2011,  Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa (shown above greeting Barb Reid, wife of Msgr. Carl Reid, now Ordinary of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia. at his diaconal ordination in 2013) assigned a priest from the Companions of the Cross, a relatively new charismatic order,  as our “mentor priest” while we underwent catechesis prior to our reception into the Catholic Church in April 2012.

After we became Catholic, during the time when our former clergy were awaiting ordination as Catholic priests, our mentor priest celebrated Mass for us, according to the now-replaced Anglican Use liturgy of the Book of Divine Worship.  When he couldn’t make it on a Sunday, he would get one of his brother priests, including the General Superior of the order, to celebrate it for us.

The General Superior so loved our Mass that he asked Msgr. Steenson for permission to celebrate it!   He loved the richness of the prayers.   All of the Companions, who were used to guitar masses and hands raised in worship, celebrated our Mass with reverence, ad orientem, and according to the rubrics.   It was such a great example of the treasures of our Anglican tradition being shared, as Pope Benedict XVI hoped they would be.  And we were blessed by the spontaneity and love of these priests, their freedom in Christ. Continue reading →

Br. John-Bede Pauley had an excellent response in the combox of yesterday’s post that I think warrants a post of its own.

In it, he helps us to better define our terms when we speak of low church and high church distinctions.  He writes:

Even if the best one can manage are what we call working definitions, an attempt to define the terms “High Church” and “Low Church” is necessary in these kinds of discussions, I think.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers the following definitions.

High Church: favoring especially in Anglican worship the sacerdotal, liturgical, ceremonial, and traditional elements in worship

Low Church: tending especially in Anglican worship to minimize emphasis on the priesthood, sacraments, and ceremonial in worship and often to emphasize evangelical principles.

To distill things down even further, the adjective “high” refers to a high—by which is meant a sacerdotal—view of the priesthood. The adjective “low” thus refers to a view of the clergy as not being primarily sacerdotal but more ministerial. (Low Church clergy tend to invest themselves more completely in their sermons than in other aspects of worship.)

Discussions quickly degenerate into confusion when the adjectives “high” and “low” are taken to mean distinctions on other levels. For example, an implicit assumption which often needs to be ferreted out and refuted is that “high”-vs.-”low” in the sacerdotal sense means “high”-vs.-“low” in the sense of socio-economic class, “high”-vs.-“low” in the sense of superior education, “high”-vs.-“low” in the sense of aesthetics, and so on. The High Church Tractarians moved into “low class” areas of London in the 19th century, for example, while the royal family (considered the pinnacle of the socio-economic strata) were “snake-belly low” in their Churchmanship. Disagree though I do with some of the writings of such Low Church and Puritan writers as Cranmer, John Milton, and the Wesley brothers, it would be folly to impugn their erudition and the “high” aesthetic standards they attained in their writings.

The references to “ceremonial” in the Merriam-Webster definitions make sense to me only if “ceremonial in worship” is never, but never, considered apart from the “high” (sacerdotal) view of the clergy and thus from all of the sacraments. Though respect for the sacraments means a healthy reverence for the traditions that have developed in celebrating them, many of us have experienced punctilious, fussy “sacristy rats” and self-described “High Church” aesthetes for whom the adjective “high” means something other than worshiping God in the beauty of holiness.

For this reason, I do not regard the Cistercians, for example, as low-church. (Peter Jesserer Smith does not actually say they are, though he mentions them along with “low-church Christians.”) As a former Cistercian (and as a Benedictine who is more latently Cistercian than my black habit indicates), I would suggest that the pared-down ceremonial of the Cistercian reforms was as “high” as anything Cluny was doing at the time. Indeed, one of the points of the Cistercian reform was to allow monks and nuns the time and space and silence to enter even more profoundly into the sacramental realities they were celebrating.

To get back to the original question about “attracting ‘low church’ folks,” my suggestion would be to focus on liturgy. But this would be liturgy that privileges that time and space and silence referred to above so that everyone participates in the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that liturgy actually is. Especially for smaller parishes and groups—i.e., parishes that simply don’t have much in the way of personnel and resources—this will often mean liturgies that are not “high” in the sense of elaborate ceremonial but are “high” in the sacramental sense of being more fully present to both word and sacrament.

This was basically the priority of the Oxford Movement. Newman, Keble, Pusey, and the others were not that interested in ceremonial as such. Keble and Pusey, who remained in the CofE as the Ritualist movement developed, were somewhat wary of the Ritualist project (though without condemning it). Though ritual and aesthetics have to flow from a solid sacramental theology, the sacerdotal/sacramental essence of the Oxford Movement—rather than privileging ritual and/or aesthetics—is why, I’m convinced, building beautiful parishes in poor areas of London naturally—or super-naturally—followed, as did missionary activity, as did the writing of excellent music, as did the publication of spiritual classics, as did the revival of religious orders in the CofE, and so on.

As I have written elsewhere, a focus on liturgy in the Anglican context necessarily includes a pastoral emphasis as well. It is for this reason that when preaching in the High Church tradition is done well and when the “fellowship” after liturgy is done well, they are integrally, symbiotically connected to liturgy.

Brother John-Bede Pauley, O.S.B.

As promised in yesterday’s post,  here’s an email conversation I had with Peter Jesserer Smith of St. Alban’s Catholic Church,  in Rochester, New York, on how one attracts those from low-church backgrounds.

Peter writes:

I’ve never been what you’d describe as “low church,” but I think it’s worth learning from and appropriating good ideas and insights from “low church” Christian communities about how to “do church.” My impression is that when you get down to brass tacks, the low church aesthetic is motivated by a sincere desire to encounter Jesus Christ. This might surprise people, but honestly there’s plenty of precedent for this Christian current: the early Cistercians embraced a church aesthetic that emphasized light and stripped-down simplicity. (Not everyone’s cup of tea in the Middle Ages, but it was nonetheless there). Both examples of low-church Christians and Cistercians may in part have been a reaction against Christian communities with a “high church” aesthetic where Christ seemed absent, or his absence seemed obscured by high church pageantry.

To me, it seems how you invite a person from a low church background into a “high church” Catholic community is to be sincere and authentic in high church worship that manifests the deep and abiding love of Christ. How you worship and prayer must show we are truly coming here to encounter God made manifest in Jesus, and not putting on a pleasing concert performance. People can tell if what you offer is a deep encounter with the Living God who is Love, because the liturgy will increase the love (agape) of the brethren for each other united with Christ the head. But people will conclude the high church liturgy is about showmanship if either clergy or people manifest contempt for the brother and his mistakes, or if it makes no difference in how they live out the Christian life through the week. Jesus meant what he said, and there is no way around it: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35). It’s important to remember that low church aesthetic is not immune to what it originally may have reacted against: people still may ask, “is this an really encounter with Jesus, or is this just a high quality show without Jesus?”

So, if you’re high church, and feeding people Jesus, they will get that. The worship in the “beauty of holiness” will speak to their senses, because Jesus is speaking. Because Jesus is attractive. Give them Jesus. In Word. In Sacrament. In Fellowship. 

The other reality is that a lot of “low church” groups are just doing church at subsidiary levels well. It’s nothing a Catholic church with “high church” worship cannot do. Parish priests just need to work with a core group of lay disciples, men and women, who will build the church throughout the week particularly through small gatherings of prayer and fellowship. For example, I’ve been intrigued by the “community groups” structure of one large Christian church in our area called Northridge Rochester. This church has a central campus, with three satellite locations — think of it as a kind of Protestant cathedral with three other branch churches — but they have dozens of small groups throughout the county (not just the immediate neighborhood) that the church’s members have formed. Even though the church is very large, it is these community groups that keep the experience of faith very personal and build relationships that are the bridge to inviting people to come to church and follow Jesus Christ.

Catholic churches and fellowships, esp. in the Ordianariate, could learn how to appropriate these ideas into their own context, particularly in the intervals between when their community meets. At St. Alban’s Catholic Church, we’re about to roll out our own take on Northridge Rochester’s community groups thanks to Flocknote. We’re smaller in numbers, so rather than have dedicated community groups, we’ll roll out in the next week or so a dedicated “St. Alban in the Community” Flocknote page / community board for St. Alban’s members to submit announcements for informal fellowship gatherings through the week, other Catholic activities, such as adoration, Mass, social ministry, etc. that our priest and parishioners are involved in. Parishioners who subscribe to the group will get an immediate heads up via text or email as they prefer.

We’ll see how it goes, but I think there’s real opportunity for Ordinariate communities to grow and for pre-Ordinariate Fellowships to establish themselves as it gives people an opportunity to see Jesus truly present and living among the members of this community. And when they experience Jesus among people, that will only solidify the connection to how they experience Jesus in an Ordinariate Catholic church’s worship.

Question for converts from “low-church” traditions that are now in the ordinariate:  What drew you to the ordinariate?  What is the secret sauce that makes a former Protestant with a low-church background become an ordinariate Catholic?

If the Second Vatican Council had not happened, there would be no ordinariates for Catholics of Anglican tradition.

Consequently, this post by Bishop Robert Barron on Reclaiming the Second Vatican Council  at Word on Fire is of crucial importance.

He explains two opposite reactions to the implementation of Vatican II, which Henri de Lubac called the implementation of a “para-council” that did not reflect the wishes of the Council fathers.

On the one hand, we have the so-called “liberal” Catholics who, under the auspices of the para-Council, encourage predominantly modernist and secular mentalities. There is a strong emphasis on the “pastoral” dimension of ministry while downplaying the intellectual and theological dimensions. Liturgy, from the para-Council view, is an anthropocentric enterprise where the gratification of the ego dictates the music, preaching, architecture, and celebration of the Eucharist. Social justice is reduced to a simple activism, which St. Teresa of Kolkata so often warned against. The Catholic identity of our schools and universities is repressed, leaving behind a shell of their former distinctiveness. As a result of these mindsets and practices, millions of Catholics have left the Church as she seemingly fades into the background of society, just another sentimental institution among others in the humdrum of civilization.

On the other hand, many “conservative” or “traditional” Catholics are in all-out rebellion against Vatican II, or more appropriately, what is falsely peddled as Vatican II. Witnessing the deterioration of solemnity, piety, catechesis, and beauty due to the para-Council, there is a temptation to “circle the wagons” and return to the tried and true infrastructures pre-Vatican II Catholicism. This regression is rooted in an admirable desire, even if its zeal is misplaced. Recognizing the steadfast doctrines, traditions, and practices of Trent, they hope to revive the past glory of the Church so she can reassert her unique presence in the world. This is verified by the growing number of young men and women who are opting for the Traditional Latin liturgy, seeing it in opposition to the liturgy of Vatican II.

Both of these competing poles are reactions to the para-Council, and each equally misunderstands the Second Vatican Council. The one side is told Vatican II opened the doors to a “new age” and “modern” theology that encourages a dismantling of the tired traditions and close-minded beliefs of the “pre-Vatican II” Church. The other is told Vatican II suppressed Latin and ad orientem, disavowed orthodox theology, and paved the way for the perversion of our religion. None of these claims are correct.

Many faithful Catholics are being attracted to the traditionalist critique because they see Vatican II used to justify modernism and progressivism, something they rightly reject.

As one theologian said to me a couple of years ago, when I was wrestling with these issues:  “It’s better to be a traditionalist than a modernist; but it’s best of all to be a continuist, a word I just made up.” Continue reading →

For those going to Rome for the canonization of John Henry Cardinal Newman, there’s a “Celebratory Symposium”  Newman the Prophet: a Saint for Our Times on Saturday Oct. 12 at the Angelicum that many ordinariate members are attending.  According to the event website:

With Contributions from…

Archbishop Bernard Longley

Archbishop Antony Fisher, O.P.

Sr. Catherine Joseph Droste, O.p.

Fr. Guy Nicholls, Cong Orat

Prof. Tracey Rowland

George Weigel

Thomas Farr

You can register here.