This is the great error of democracy. It values everyone's opinion equally. Opinion polls magnify this greatly. They tell you what people think without giving them a chance to consider for more than a few seconds. The reality is there are always some who think about these things all the time and they should have their opinion count for more.
Randy | 06.29.06 - 4:33 pm | #

Mark:

I hope that your defenses of yourself of late will not cause you to become entrenched in your lack of interest in matters of traditonal Catholic liturgy, art, and music.

I think that you - personally - would quickly learn exactly why people who are knowledgeable about these matters care about them so passionately. And that you would begin to care yourself. There are enormous and fascinating worlds that I hope you will not decline to explore now out of spite.
Daniel Mitsui | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 5:04 pm | #

I'm interested. What I am not is angry, bitter, on the edge of my seat, ready to condemn every bishop who doesn't do what I want, ready to lose my faith every time there's a new appointment to some obscure curial post, ready to despair when a comma isn't placed where I like it, ready to be outraged when a piece of art that doesn't strike me is installed in a chapel, ready to be put out, disgusted, complaining, and, best of all, ready to say "You may not care, but *I'm* standing with the Church!" if somebody doesn't share my passion for or against some point of liturgy, art, or music.

You may not realize it, Daniel, but it isn't just liturgical improvers who are a turnoff. Liturgical police also make it damn hard for normal people to worship with their endless carping complaints and their insistence that you should be as pissed as they are. I refuse to play the game and have my attention distracted from God either by the Improvers who are shouting "Hey! Look at me!" *or* by the terminally angry Police, who are shouting "Hey! Look at Them!" If the liturgy is celebrated reverently, I'm content. It takes a curious sort of mindset to equate contentment with spite.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 5:34 pm | #

If Tom didn't show up on liturgy threads over at Open Book and tsk-tsk the unwashed masses for their fastidious concerns about a 'lil ole thing like the Mass, usually by slaying a bug-eyed, GIRM-smacking straw man, it would be easier for me to see him as "level-headed" and possessing of common sense.
Rich Leonardi | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 5:47 pm | #

I think there are serious concerns about liturgy, art, music and architecture and there are times when the laity ought to stand up for them.

On the other hand, I go to mass to encounter Christ and that's what I try to focus on. Sure I find a mass irrevently celebrated distracting but I think one ought to be there for higher reasons and one ought to focus on the mass not the distractions.

Are things really as bad as Mark claims with outrage and "terminally angry Police" ?

God Bless
Chris Sullivan | 06.29.06 - 6:02 pm | #

My hope was apparently in vain.
Daniel Mitsui | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 6:30 pm | #

Rich:

I didn't "show up" on that liturgy thread at Open Book. My name was introduced there as part of Jeff's weird obsession with Mark's and my lack of interest in the liturgy wars.

Nor did I tsk-tsk the unwashed masses. I illustrated the absurdity of Jeff's implication that lack of interest in the liturgy wars bespeaks an un-Catholic attitude.

If it's straw men that bothers you, you might speak to Jeff about his repeated claims that Mark and I don't think the liturgy is important.

As for common sense, I am moderately better off than I was before, since this experience has taught me that a lot of people can't tell the difference between "I am not interested in" and "I think it's stupid to be interested in." Some of these people can't tell the difference no matter how many times it's pointed out to them.
Tom | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 6:44 pm | #

Chris:

Depends upon the circles you move in. Traditionalism might be a very minor movement in New Zealand.

At Blessed Sacrament in Seattle (Mark's parish and my former parish), the whole parish got to experience the viciousness that can be unleashed when the subject is the Traditional Mass. Since I've blogged about that before, I won't do so again here.

All I can say is that if Traditionalist Catholicism, as I experienced it at Blessed Sacrament or at St. Blog's was my first and only experience of the faith, I'd not be a Catholic today. I'd have run away upon first encounter and never found out my mistake.

In the hundreds of parishes in 70 dioceses that I've been to, among ordinary Catholics, the subject of liturgy rarely comes up. Rubrics and translations and vestments (as opposed to Eucharist adoration) just aren't the center of most Catholics' spiritual lives.

(If it were, believe me, I'd have heard about it by now. I done thousands of private interviews with Catholics at all levels. I get earfuls on a regular basis.)

On both the right and left, it is of intense interest to a fairly sophisticated, "uber-ecclesial" minority. But not to all, obviously.

I'm with Tom and John Henry Newman on this one:

"Let us aim at knowing when we understand a truth, and when we do not. When we do not, let us take it on faith, and let us profess to do so."

I don't have any natural affinity for ritual. No, that's not strong enough - I find ritual for its own sake intensely boring. (I was a contented Quaker) If the Mass were not a re-presentation of the redemptive self-offering of Christ, I wouldn't get it the time of day.

In the absense of any natural personal inclination, I accept, with faith and a basic docility of spirit, what the Church proposes. I seek to think with the Church and to worship with her.

But faithfulness and docility doesn't require me, as an individual, to even modest expertise in every area of her teaching and life: A few individuals are called to pursue fundamental theology, moral theology, or ecumenism or liturgical studies on the behalf of the whole church.

Neither my office or responsibility requires that I do so and my personal vocation makes it impossible.

The limitations of real life: those of time, opportunity, and the limitations imposed by responding to a very different, all-encompassing call (to say "yes" to one thing, you usually have to say "no" to many others) means that I will happily let other members of the Body handle the liturgy and ecumenism and moral theology etc.. It's not my job.

I have every confidence in the Holy Spirit working through the Church and through the Holy Father.
Sherry Weddell | 06.29.06 - 6:53 pm | #

Sherry,

Traditionalism may be small in New Zealand but I have Catholic friends very close to it. The SSPX here is based in my hometown of Wanganui.

They have some odd ideas (like JP2 might be a false Pope!) but I've never run into the bitterness and despair Mark speaks of.

Perhaps that kind of "digging into the trenches" and making enemies of those who disagree with us is more of a U.S. thing ? New Zealanders are pretty laid back and tolerant. The U.S. church appears to me to be very deeply and bitterly divided.

I think it's worth trying to understand the traditionalist argument. There is much truth in what they say.

But I take your point that there simply isn't time to follow up everything and one does need to focus on one's vocation and apostolate.

God Bless
Chris Sullivan | 06.29.06 - 7:38 pm | #