CNS
VIEW FROM THE PEW
We’ve just accepted so many changes in the way we live since March 2020 that you wonder if we’ll ever get back to comfortable, convivial, to communal, not to mention safe and civil. Much as I don’t agree with the rebels who toss the masks and mash together in crowds, I can sure relate to wanting to be back in a familiar life.
There’s no place where I’m more unsettled by change than in church.
Are you still reaching toward the holy water font when you enter the door? The little shallow bowl fixtures have been dismantled or in grander venues, pools have been drained. The centuries-old symbol and ritual of our shared faith has been replaced by a jug of hand sanitizer giving the opposite message, be separate to be safe.
Little did I know that cutting-edge technology has been deployed to maintain this ancient tradition! Msgr. Gary Secor told me that the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace is one of the island churches now outfitted with motion-activated dispensers of holy water.
“The ritual of dipping into holy water and making the sign of the cross called us to remember our baptism,” said Msgr. Secor, diocesan vicar general. “The best reminder is when the baptismal font is at the entrance of the church, a reminder of our entrance into the faith.”
My parish church, like many others, was remodeled decades ago to implement liturgical changes made by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. One legacy of that re-do is a movable baptismal font that is positioned near the altar.
“Significant furnishings such as the altar and pulpit are not to be moved around, and the same goes for the font,” said Father Secor. “The church is a sacred space, not a hall.”
I asked: are we likely to see this ancient religious ritual lost because of public health concerns. The vicar general and Father Alfred Omar Guerrero, director of the diocesan Office of Worship, told me not to worry.
“Enterprising marketers came up with these dispensers but it’s not going to be forever,” said Father Guerrero. “Other dioceses have gone back to the font, back to normal. What the pandemic has taught us is it is important to keep them cleaned often.”
Flowing from the rock
“Water has a long association with God’s saving deeds,” wrote Father David O’Connor, a historian at St. Mary Basilica in Natchez, Miss., in an online article on “history and usage of holy water.” He referred to the Old Testament stories of God parting the Red Sea as a passage for the Hebrew people to escape from slavery in Egypt and providing water flowing from a rock in the desert as Moses led them to their promised land.
The early church leaders brought their Jewish faith practices of ritually cleansing themselves before entering the Temple in Jerusalem. That prefigured Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan river, Father O’Connor wrote, an event we will celebrate Jan. 9.
We watch the priest ritually wash his hands at every Mass, praying, “wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin,” from Psalm 50. Even if we’re not dipping, we’ll still be sprinkled with holy water at liturgical occasions during the year. And, you know, you don’t need the water to make the sign of the cross.
Father Guerrero said the frequent use of hand sanitizer at the altar during this period of extreme precautions has led to a joke among priests — “Where are the prayers for that?!”
Another old Catholic ritual that very few churchgoers even use anymore is to genuflect, bending a knee on entering a pew. People have kind of lost track of what it was all about, an act of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament present in the tabernacle. “The practice fell off because so many post-Vatican II churches have separate chapels where the tabernacle holds the Blessed Sacrament,” said Msgr. Secor. “Even in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, the tabernacle is not in the church, which is vast, but in a separate church.”
Stepping out of church into the public arena, I was thinking how ironic it is that genuflecting has become a ritual of protest, a political statement, which you are most likely to see at a sports event. “Taking a knee.” Just look what our religion has contributed to our culture.
And that led me to ponder another ritual that our parents and grandparents knew but is seldom used in modern churches. Like water in a pandemic, lighting votive candles is a custom abandoned largely because of safety concerns.
One of my chores in grade school, probably a ploy to impress Sister or Father, was to replace used candles, banks of them which were lit before the statues of Mary and Joseph by devout people petitioning for personal help or praying for the dead. It was such a pain to scrape dribbled wax and pry out the little metal tab left at the bottom of each glass holder. I was such a saint to do this and delay heading for home at the end of the school day. I was not, however, trusted to empty the coin box in which people paid for lighting up their intentions.
My cynical question was whether the ritual might have ended because enlightened theology rethought the message of putting a price tag on prayer.
‘An insurance thing’
“It’s an insurance thing,” said Father Guerrero. Churches removed the decks of candles, a potential costly fire hazard, a target for mischief in a building left open to all comers all day. However, lighting votive candles is still a thing in some Catholic churches around the world and people do have statues and candles in their homes.
Safety within the church building is a concern in my parish each Christmas because the nativity scene with large images of the Holy Family and the first visitors to the Bethlehem stable is an attraction. Devout people use it as the setting for a family portrait. But the infant in the manger is small and portable and has been the target of thieves. So that led to a new ritual at the last Mass on Christmas Day with the priest processing down the aisle, holding the statue of Baby Jesus aloft, to place it in the manger. Someone will remove it after each Mass to thwart thieves but the empty crib is a little distressing.
Lighting candles, like taking a knee, has also become a popular cultural practice. Alas, we see it happening in the worst circumstances, at the scene of a crime or accident that took someone’s life. How many times in the past year did we see banks of candles and flowers left by strangers and mourners at a place of pain and sorrow.
The use of candles and the idea of bringing light as a religious practice is one Christians share with so many other faith traditions. A light is always kept burning in Jewish temples and synagogues where the Scriptures, the Torah, is kept. Candles are the focus as Jews celebrate Hanukkah each December, marking a miracle when the ancient Hebrews reclaimed their temple in Jerusalem from conquerors who defiled it; they found a tiny bit of consecrated oil left and it kept a lamp alight for eight days.
On New Year’s Day, Buddhists visit temples to remember the dead and light candles to bring good luck and happiness as they reflect on correcting what was wrong last year.
I suppose you could say that Buddhists also share our affinity for water use; cleaning house is also a New Year tradition, symbolically sweeping away what was bad in the departing year.
There are fewer laypeople with a role in the liturgy these days; eucharistic ministers are not needed because Communion in both species of bread and wine has been suspended. Although drinking from the same cup is currently avoided as a potential public health hazard, it is not a permanent change, said Father Guerrero.
“We are not going to change in sharing the cup,” he said. With it, we relive the Last Supper when Jesus passed the chalice to his disciples saying, “Take and drink.” The fear of transmitting the deadly virus is grounds to be cautious. But the ability to receive the Holy Eucharist in both bread and wine species was denied to Roman Catholic laypeople for centuries, until the Second Vatican Council restored it. I can’t wait until we share the cup again.
Father Guerrero is on Bishop Larry Silva’s COVID-19 task force of health professionals and other laypeople, which has presented priests and parishes with requirements and guidelines throughout two years of shutdowns and limited openings.
Needing permission
Beyond responding to the emergency we’re in, this is not a church that embraces change easily. Msgr. Secor said, “There are documents about the architecture of churches. Any renovation of the church must have permission from the diocese commission. A pastor needs permission to make changes so you don’t have a whim of a pastor saddling a parish with things.”
He said modern technology confronted religious tradition when the cathedral was renovated in recent years. “It turned out the sound system wasn’t updated, so in doing that they needed to install acoustical panels on the walls. Their placement had to be planned so as not to cover up little gold crosses which were embedded in the walls when the building was consecrated. They are important, this is sacred space.”
We may think of our church as unchanging, but it has adapted to our times and leaders and theologians have analyzed and emphasized different beliefs and practices down through the centuries.
The Second Vatican Council brought us many changes that we’ve had more than 50 years to adapt to. Young people can’t imagine what it was like when the consecration of the bread and wine was nearly a secret ritual with the priest at a high altar in an alcove with his back to the congregation. He and the altar servers prayed in Latin while we followed silently looking at the English translation in our missal. We let the choir do the singing.
There are still traditionalists who miss the old way. Their struggles against Pope Francis are covered in Catholic media. One story recently appeared in the local daily newspaper, reflecting that the politics in the church can be just as contentious as in our government.
One small example of change that I’m still grappling with was a rewrite of our Mass language, aiming for a more literal translation of Latin wording into English. It was imposed in 2008 but I still have to look in the book when we recite the Nicene Creed because “consubstantial with the Father” and “incarnate of the Virgin Mary” don’t roll easily off my tongue.
I take comfort in the words of Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author: “I believe, happily, that God hears everyone’s prayers, whether they’re in conversational language, elevated speech, through tears or through laughter, or even in the midst of dewfall.”
