“For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.” — St. Irenaeus
How should Catholics pray?
On Notre Dame’s ‘Faith’ page, Notre Dame’s prayer is rightly advertised: “75+ priests serving as hall rectors, administrators, and professors,” “32 residence hall chapels,” and “200+ Masses celebrated weekly.” Masses are abundant, holy priests are everywhere, and opportunities to access the sacraments are plentiful. In this important sense, Notre Dame’s Catholicism is as alive as ever.
But Notre Dame has a liturgy problem.
This problem is a difficult one to analyze and discuss, largely because the men and women that make Notre Dame’s liturgies tick are good people. Some issues are easy enough to dissect, and the Rover’s reporting often focuses on these topics: pro-abortion speakers, drag shows, and Pride Masses clearly have no place on our campus. The Mass, which presents as sacrifice the “source and summit of the Christian faith,” is more important than all of these. Notre Dame boasts impressive Mass attendance, in part because of extra-liturgical initiatives which encourage dorm Mass attendance and foster community in post-Mass gatherings. These are laudable—thank God for reverent Masses, milkshakes, and for dorm Mass communities! But for all this, it’s far too easy to lose sight of the true center of Christian worship. How so?
At Notre Dame, the danger is anthropocentrism, and with such a danger it is easy to mistake the symptoms for the cause. This danger manifests as liturgical abuses—from the changing of the prayers of consecration, to the frequent disobeying of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal’s directives on extraordinary ministers and liturgical postures, to “lay preaching” by rectors and students, to extremely irreverent treatment of the Eucharist—but is not limited to them. These abuses are symptomatic of a generally anthropocentric approach to liturgy, wherein decisions about the Mass are made not on the basis of what is fitting for God, but what is desired by men.
Questions of liceity are simpler, and the Church’s answers to these demand our total obedience. Questions of fittingness within the bounds of the licit are much more complex. The liturgy is the Church’s public prayer, “an action of the whole Christ.” What does She tell us? What most fully accords to the richness of Her tradition? These questions afford an opportunity for liturgical excellence.
Undoubtedly, some students like hymns the USCCB has declared unfit for liturgy (six of which are in the newly purchased Gather IV hymnals), like holding hands around the altar during the Our Father and Consecration, and like standing or sitting throughout all of Mass. True, some students might feel uncomfortable with a liturgy that, per Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, preserved Latin language and gave Gregorian chant “pride of place” in the liturgy. Students like participating as extraordinary ministers—which Pope Saint John Paul II’s Redemptionis Sacramentum laments in contexts such as Notre Dame’s, and they like the use of pianos in liturgy—which Tra Le Sollecitudini explicitly forbids and Vatican II’s Musicam Sacram forbids by implication.
The orientation of the priest at Mass vividly illustrates this dilemma. Under the ad orientem posture, still assumed as normative in the language of the Roman Missal, the priest leads the people East in presenting the Eucharistic sacrifice, proceeding with them towards Christ’s triumphant return, traditionally in the East. Under the versus populum posture, the priest turns away from the tabernacle and faces the people. The versus populum posture is nowhere mandated by official liturgical books, and yet has become the nearly exclusive orientation at Notre Dame. Are we to march towards Christ or towards ourselves?
Ironically, those whose preference is for traditional liturgies are the only students largely not catered to; the Basilica includes little Latin in any of its liturgies, and never employs the ad orientem posture (which is present in three of the 200+ Masses weekly).
In St. Irenaeus’ second-century work Against Heresies, a maxim is established: “The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God.” God rejoices in our humanity, but our fullest humanity is found in union with Him. This maxim might be read liturgically, too. God delights in our worship of Him, in our vision of God, in the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the Holy Mass. Unfortunately we, especially in the case of liturgy, do not always know what is good for us. So we must look to Christ’s Church, to centuries of liturgical tradition, assuming always a posture of submissive humility, and asking always: What most suits His worship? How can we best obey His Church?
Father Joe Corpora, C.S.C. made a quip in a letter to the editor published by the Observer a few years ago, defending Dillon Hall’s weekly “Milkshake Mass”: “Years ago, there was a funny line about Notre Dame, known in many ways for its sports: ‘Liturgy is an indoor sport played at Notre Dame.’ Let our worship spaces all over campus be places where we welcome everyone as enthusiastically as we welcome fans in our athletic venues.”
Football is perhaps an apt analogy for Notre Dame’s liturgical anthropocentrism. At Notre Dame games, winning is one priority, but it is not the only priority: The fans count, too. So Notre Dame sells beer and pretzels, invites pilots to fly over the stadium, supports a marching band, and otherwise prioritizes both the team and its fans. In football games, this makes sense. Imagine a winning team without fans, or ideal conditions and an 0–12 season! Neither work.
At Notre Dame Masses, there is often a similar attempt. But it is incoherent. At any given Sunday Basilica Mass, to give an easy example, a churchgoer might hear vocalists, organ, piano, drums, or guitar. Genres might include Gregorian chant, hymns, gospel, polyphony, folk, baroque motets, mariachi, and modern compositions, to name a few. The result is musical whiplash, a bizarre and abhorrent medley of musical styles that jar even the deafest attendees. The implication is clear: There is no right musical style, so music must be made to suit everyone. The question of the fittingness of music for the Mass is almost unasked.
Some defend liturgical anthropocentrism at Notre Dame as a means of getting people in the door. This is not a liturgical position that holds up under much scrutiny; the logical conclusion of this approach in fireworks and karaoke machines is, for most at least, a step too far. But some attempts of this sort are less extreme and more dangerous. Hymns, prayers, or homilies which mention God’s justice, punishment, and final judgment might scare people off. So they are quietly done away with. God is quietly made therapeutic.
The scale of these compromises is far less important than the central question: What should our criterion for liturgical choices be?
Calling students to obedience and repentance is a great work of spiritual charity. This is Notre Dame’s opportunity. The stakes are simply too high to afford therapeutic liturgy, so high that Cardinal Ratzinger, in his The Spirit of the Liturgy, described such liturgies as “a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation … an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise.”
What can be done? As long as student voices are a priority, students’ practice of personal piety and student-led dorm initiatives can effect positive change. Liturgical practices should not be chosen because students want them; they should be chosen because they express the fullness of the Church’s worship. But if these practices are achieved through student activism, so be it.
The Notre Dame Liturgical Choir will perform Mozart’s Requiem at 9:30 a.m. in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on November 2, All Souls Day. Attendees who follow the text will find that Mozart’s music worships a God who is Love, but who also is Justice, and who demands nothing less of us than our entire selves. May this Mass serve to aid Notre Dame in fostering liturgies that prioritize His worship, not our desires; liturgies that are theocentric, not anthropocentric. In these lie the true fulfillment of the human person, a genuinely Catholic anthropology.
Kephas Olsson is a senior studying in the Program of Liberal Studies. Please send any questions or comments to kolsson@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Notre Dame Basilica
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