KEEN ANALYSIS . . . Sacramentalism used to be the thing, but in contemporary Catholicism it’s the person. We take our cue from Evangelical Protestantism, where grace (divine help) comes from praying with partners after service, as at Calvary Memorial in Oak Park, and not from the sacrament. Potential partners wait at the end of each service, usually couples. It's ministry up close and personal, to use last year's hot phrase.
Ritual was the medium in Catholicism, not one’s fellow worshipers. This was a major sticking point of the Reformation, as in whether the sinfulness of the minister affected a sacrament’s value. “Ex opere operato” was a key term, from or because of the thing done, vs. ex opere operantis, from or because of the one doing it.
It’s a 500-year-old or older divide. In bald terms, for the sake of argument, as it were, does it matter who administers the sacrament (who’s the minister) or does the sacrament carry its own weight? Fall on one side, you have something good anywhere, any time, any place. Fall on the other, it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.
Lacking ritual, you have something here today, gone tomorrow or next century. Lacking the personal, you have the unsalable, the unpersuasive. You always depend on people. But with ritual, you have what lasts, what relies less on performance by the minister. Do a good formula right, you’ve got it right.
But Catholic worship has gotten flaccid and informal, compared to 50 years ago. It features priest as performer, even showman, vs. priest as follower of ritual prescribed by the church as millennial institution.
GRACE MISSING . . . I have long suspected the younger priest lacks social graces more often than his elders. Even 20 years ago, at a parish meeting meant to organize a discussion or action group of some sort, the priest did not greet us as we arrived, shaking our hands and smiling. Rather, he said nothing but handed out name tags. There would be a time and place for greeting. In the ensuing discussion, he probed for our favorite things, meaning in a small group to have us open up our hopes and fears in a sort of instant intimacy according to an unnamed book of instructions on how to hold a meeting. He was not pleased when I gave jogging as my favorite thing; he knew I was declining to get all personal on a moment’s notice. Later, unfortunately, he joined the ranks of accused and left the ministry.
More recently, I have met new young pastors who seem intent on standing at several removes from parishioners. Twice I have felt that distancing and later discovered I was not the only one who felt it - each in the last five years. There’s a wariness that may be connected with the culture of accusation, which of course developed out of terrible behavior by too many priests. In these recent cases, there is a veneer of sociability and in one case a record of socialibility with selected parishioners at a previous posting.
But you can't discount that accusation business. Eleven years ago I quoted in my Bending the Rules, now Priests at Work, a vital, active youngish pastor who was waiting to be sued. He wasn't, but the climate is not salubrious. A veteran pastor told me recently that if he stands waiting for a light to change with school kids in tow, he feels watched. Talk about fallout.
posted by Jim Bowman @ 2/27/2005 09:16:00 PM
links to this post
