MARINIthe Priest March 2010
Back in January, the English translation of the lecture given by Mgr Guido Marini at the Rome Conference of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy was published widely on the internet. Fr McGavin, editor of "The Priest", the Journal of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy sent me the above file with Mgr Marini's lecture printed in the journal. You can read all the articles in the special March 2010 edition of "The Priest".
[The issue is copyright to Fr McGavin as the publisher for ACCC.]
5 comments:
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Thank you Father
Mgr. Marini’s lecture contains this sentence: “It seems that some individuals are truly partisan to a way of thinking that is justly and properly defined as an ideology, or rather a preconceived notion applied to the history of the Church, which has nothing to do with the true faith.” This is a good description of those like himself who want to undo the reforms that came from Vatican II (“undo” more accurately expresses their intentions than the tendentious and misleading “reform of the reform”) because they espouse ideologically a preconceived notion applied to the history of the Church, namely that the pre-Vatican II Church is a model in liturgy, devotion etc. that we need to get back to and that deviations from its practice are ipso facto to be deprecated. (Not that this is admitted openly, it is usually dressed up in hifalutin Vaticanspeak).
Following that sentence Mgr. Marini unwittingly demonstrates how ideological his position is, by positing belief in a rupture between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church which he seems to imagine pro-Vatican II reformers have fostered. But these temporal terms imply nothing about desirable continuity, they need refer only to distinctive characteristics such as every historical age is likely to have. Rhetoric about the so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” as against that of so-called discontinuity can be very disingenuous. The question always is, continuity with what precisely? It is not enough to say merely “tradition” or “the past,” especially when what is meant is some arbitrarily selected past age which is uncritically assumed to represent tradition tout court (usually it is the age of a generation or two ago, of which there is just sufficient memory alive to let one feel nostalgic about it and conveniently ignore its bad or unsatisfactory aspects).
Those who believe Vatican II was a great watershed in recent history did not want to set up a new Church of any kind, they merely wanted the Church to be what it truly and essentially is, and found the new spirit engendered by the Council was what is needed for it to be such and for it to be true to its call to mission in the world of today. Time and again in the documents the Council calls for this or that aspect of Church life to be reformed and renewed, not in order to introduce something new, but to bring out its true nature where this had become obscured or distorted, e.g. the liturgy as the work of the whole Church – hence the need for actuosa participatio of all the faithful - and indeed the Church itself as the whole people of God, united and one in their common baptism. In calling for reforms of this kind the Council is in continuity with the most ancient, most authentic and truest Tradition of the Church rooted in its faith in God and in Christ his Son. Throughout its history the Church has had to reform itself constantly and repeatedly in order to be in continuity with that Tradition because the particular traditions of one age or era so easily become divinized.
Particular traditions to which people become attached for various reasons, not always reasons of faith, often become distortions of true Tradition by exaggerating certain features of it, e.g. insisting that people receive communion kneeling on the tongue because only this posture is held to express genuine devotion or adoration. If some wish to adopt this posture, fine, let them, but do not ignore the way in which many will find it expresses a babyish and servile dependency at odds with the true faith. They cannot see it as appropriate to a God who shares himself with us totally and with unconditional generosity and wants us to enjoy union, communion with him, rather than merely adoring him with reverential awe.
It is characteristic of Marini’s ideology that he makes such presumptions as this, also that he ends his lecture with a reminiscence of hierarchisation by seeing a decisive role in reform of the liturgy for priests, but making no mention of anyone else who might be involved.
The change from seeing kneeling for Holy Communion as devotional to seeing it as "servile and babyish dependency" is a good example of the discontinuity or rupture of which Mgr Marini speaks.
It is also an example of how the role of the priest has been seen by some in a completely different manner. The devotional attitude of kneeling was and is seen as devotion to Christ in the Eucharist. To see kneeling as servile and babyish can only possibly make sense if it is seen as kneeling to the priest himself.
Nowhere does Marini simply appeal for a return to the past. To say that he does not do so openly but dresses it up in Vaticanspeak is simply a way of avoiding dealing with what he actually said in favour of accusing him of a general attitude which is a mere caricature of the idea of the hermeneutic of continuity - which is actually the Holy Father's idea, not Mgr Marini's or mine.
You have your timeline wrong, incidentally. The age of "a generation or two ago" is not the one which regards the period before Vatican II with nostalgia, but the period immediately after it.
Whoever originated the expression h. of c. the use of the term continuity often seems like special pleading, as if continuity per se were desirable. Continuity with what is bad or has died? The critical question is, continuity with what? (You did not address this, Fr. Finigan). Many think that Vatican II re-established continuity with the truest traditions of what the Church is. This led to changes in the Church's practice which may not all be good, but if every change is deplored because it ruptures one form of continuity nothing will ever change. The Church would be stuck in a time-warp and most likely wither and diminish.
Mgr. Marini is in any case quite selective in the continuity he wants. In a statement of 1980 Pope John noted that the practice of receiving communion in the hand had received the approval of the Apostolic See (not to speak of Cyril of Jerusalem). Marini would seem to think nothing of rupturing continuity with that part of the Church's tradition. Is he doing anything more than giving a spurious theological rationale for his own personal preferences?
I mentioned kneeling to receive communion on the tongue in relation to our understanding of God, not our attitude to priests.
I am happy if those who wish receive communion in this way, who like Latin, EF, eastward facing etc. are able to worship in their desired way. It has a certain beauty and it can help to re-sacralise worship today where that is needed. But most of the people of the Church have moved on from those older ways, and see this attachment as antiquarian nostalgia. I have found that older people who do remember the old dispensation are often the ones most strongly averse to its restoration. Those who cherish the vision of Vatican II have no desire to go back to the 1960s, but wish the Church today to recognise its constant need for reform and renewal - Ecclesia semper reformanda.
Pope Benedict spoke of "renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God."
Continuity as far as the Church is concerned means that we remain true to the teaching of Christ handed on to the apostles and that renewal and reform do not happen by creating a dichotomy as though everything before Vatican II was bad and everything after was good, nor by creating a "new mandate" for the Church. As Pope Benedict pointed out, nobody can have the power to issue such a mandate except Christ Himself.
The Church is semper reformanda but not by simply following the spirit of the age. Such an attitude has always ended in the need for a difficult and painful spiritual reform. As we see today.
The question of the "tradition" of Communion on the hand has been well dealt with by Bishop Schneider in his book "Dominus Est". The text of St Cyril of Jerusalem so often quoted in this context clearly indicates a much greater reverence for the Eucharist than is commonly shown in modern practice. The development of communion on the tongue, which may also have been in use at that time, obviously comes from such reverence and care for the smallest crumb of the sacred species.
If you feel that kneeling indicates a "babyish and servile" dependency before God, perhaps all we need to do is use less tendentious language. God asked us to become as little children, we are His servants, and we do actually depend on Him for our existence.
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