ARTICLES

Twister Liturgy

Are There Any Norms in the Diocese of Monterey?

By Eric Reslock

The Holy See's April 25 approval of the American revision of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), puts into effect the Church's latest prescriptions on the sacred liturgy. The prescriptions laid down with the participation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops differ in some ways with Monterey's Bishop Sylvester Ryan's truncated implementation of them in February. Since then, the variety of postures seen in the diocese's Masses has multiplied. And in some parishes, there is evidence that there is confusion about what people should be doing during Mass.

Bishop Ryan wrote an article in the February 2002 issue of his diocesan newspaper, The Observer, in which he announced his outline of the General Instruction before its approval from Rome. "Here is a summary of the specific instructions of the GIRM and the particular adaptations regarding our movements and postures in the celebration of the Eucharist," wrote Ryan. "We already follow most of these practices in the Diocese of Monterey. We need to understand their meaning and implement their practice." Specifically, Bishop Ryan asked that the laity in his diocese remain standing during the part of the Mass after the consecration, in which the priest says, "this is the Lamb of God." Moreover, he asked that Catholics remain standing after communion until the last person has received. Bishop Ryan said that the General Instruction "designates and empowers the diocesan bishop" to make such decisions about the liturgy.

Dr. Thomas Droleskey, publisher of Christ or Chaos, agrees with Bishop Ryan on this point. He cites paragraph 21 of the General Instruction, which states: "The purpose of this Institutio is to give the general guidelines for planning the Eucharistic celebration properly and to set forth the rules for arranging the individual forms of celebration." Drolesky said, "Paragraph 21 makes GIRM an essentially irrelevant document which can be rendered meaningless by the mere invocation by a bishop of concerns for local needs and customs."

Helen Hitchcock of Adoremus, the Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy, sees a purpose for bishops to have this prerogative. "Let's say you are saying Mass in the mud on a battlefield," she suggested. "There are all kinds of conditions in which it would be difficult for people to follow the rules. But, it would be against the spirit of reverence for the liturgy to forbid pious gestures unless there is a very good reason."

Some parts of Bishop Ryan's letter, entitled, "The Sign of Unity," have motivated petitions against the proposed changes. These all concern reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. The letter states, "At the conclusion of the singing or recitation of the Great Amen the assembly stands and remains standing until all the faithful have finished receiving Holy Communion." In the next sentence, Ryan writes, "at the June 2001 meeting of the United States Catholic Conference, the bishops passed a particular law that at the "This is the Lamb of God..." people would kneel, except in those dioceses where the bishop has chosen to follow the universal law of standing after the Great Amen until Communion is completed. As it has been our custom to follow this movement and posture we will not kneel at the "This is the Lamb of God."

The prohibition against kneeling during the "This is the Lamb of God" appears at odds with the spirit of the U.S. bishops' proposed adaptation, which states, "The faithful kneel after the Agnus Dei unless the diocesan bishop determines otherwise." The final draft approved by Rome adds this statement, "Where it is the custom that the people remain kneeling from the end of the Sanctus until the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and before Communion when the priest says Ecce Agnus Dei (This is the Lamb of God), this is laudably retained." The prescription to remain standing until the end of communion is also not found in the U.S. Bishops' revised Institutio. Neither was it proposed by the U.S. bishops in their November 21 list of changes to a draft of the document.

According to Ray Am Rhein, a parishioner at Our Lady Help of Christians in Watsonville, standing has not been the custom at his parish."We have always, up to now, knelt at the Ecce Agnes Dei and after Communion. Always," he said. Another parishioner who wants to remain unidentified said, "at our church, [our pastor] has told us that he would not correct us if we did not go along with what the bishop proposes as far as standing during communion." At Holy Cross in Monterey, a parishioner says that people are standing during the consecration and not being corrected.

The U.S. bishops' draft says, "In the dioceses of the United State of America, they should kneel beginning after the singing or recitation of the Sanctus until after the Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer, except when prevented on occasion by reasons of health, lack of space, the large number of people present or some other good reason." Another inconsistency in the Monterey diocese's compliance with the new norms is the difficulty with which parishioners of the new church of the "Resurrection Community" in Aptos can obey the norm to kneel because Bishop Ryan had the church built without kneelers.

Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, was asked by an unidentified American bishop if the Congregation, by the Institutio intended to prohibit the faithful from kneeling during any part of the Mass except during the consecration; that is, to prohibit the faithful from kneeling after the Agnus Dei and following the reception of Holy Communion. His response on November 7, 2000 was, "negative."

Another prescription from Bishop Ryan's February letter is his order that people shall "extend the hands in the same manner as the celebrant does, for the Our Father, the opening prayer, prayer over the gifts and the prayer after Communion." This too is not found in the U.S. bishops' document. Some believe this kind of posture has little basis in theology. Hitchcock said, "it is a liturgist innovation. This has been promoted because it fits into the idea that the laity are co-consecrators. This helps obliterate the distinction between clergy and the faithful."

Hitchcock wonders why Bishop Ryan is so avid in establishing unity of posture instead of unity of belief. She said, "Is this is a reaction to displays of too much piety? We haven't had that problem in 35 years. It seems arbitrary and excessive."

When asked if the bishop's February letter was binding, Sister Barbara Long, Monterey's diocesan liturgist, said, "we are just in the education process. We are working on matching up with what we are being presented with the revised Institutio."

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