Kinsella says that his Liberation Theology views the Church as a template for how social revolution can be acheived in South America. He is sincere but personal spiritual experience is simply not the point for him. Kinsella probably views the Mass as folklore.
I did a little outsider research as to the movivation in Vat II for switching from Latin in the Mass to the vernacular. The feeling was that the Latin distanced the parishioner and hindered their participation in the Liturgy. (Note the unspoken assumption that the important part of the Liturgy is its intellectual content.) What they didn’t realize I think is that the Holy, the Sacred, is seperate from the mundane life. Removing the Sacred, Holy language removed the Mystery, for many the entire point of the procedure.
…that is one of several major Traditionalist talking points.
Another outsider question. If one is willing to admit that it’s not the intellectual content of the Liturgy that is important – I assume few parishioners can understand more than basic Latin – doesn’t the Trad viewpoint go a long way to portraying the liturgy as some kind of “magic spell”? Of course if you don’t say the spell right then the magic won’t work! It seems to me that if you acknowledge that understanding the words is important then you are already half-way to Vat II.
Something somewhat similiar happened in the Protestant evangelical church with the discontinuance of using the KJV. The “Trads” viewed the KJV’s antique cadences as part of its power. But because for fundamentalists the content is the most important thing they solved the problem by commissioning the NIV (the best selling Bible in the US of A) which solves most doctrinal problems by what can only be construed as deliberate mistranslation.
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There is still a fringe “KJV only” movement going strong but they are viewed by the majority as crazies. What a sad fate for the mighty KJV.
Of course if you don’t say the spell right then the magic won’t work! It seems to me that if you acknowledge that understanding the words is important then you are already half-way to Vat II.
Trads would say the words are important, but the congregation’s understanding those words is entirely secondary.
If you say the wrong words, for example, you don’t actually get transubstantiation. But the people don’t need to understand or even hear those words (in fact, the rubrics of the old mass specifically have the words of institution–the words that make transubstantiation happen–said in a low voice, so no one but the priest himself should hear them).
On the trad understanding of liturgy, the words (like everything else) are addressed from the Church–as an institution–to God. The people don’t need to understand. The people don’t even need to be there. In fact, even the priest only needs the most rudimentary understanding of what he is saying. It isn’t his prayer. It isn’t the individuals in the pew’s prayer. It is the Church’s prayer. And it is not addressed to us, but to God.
Those are two big questions.
what is being accomplished
The sacrifice is being accomplished. Jesus instituted the Eucharist and commanded his apostles to “do this in remembrance of me”. Jesus’ sacrifice is, at each Mass, offered again to the Father, and the graces He merited in his passion are poured out on the world. By receiving communion, the recipient participates in that sacrifice (much as the Jews when they ate the passover lamb) and of course, fulfills the condition Jesus laid out in Jn 6:54. But you don’t need anyone other than the priest to receive commion for the mass to release graces. (The whole idea of each mass pouring out grace is problematic. It only really makes sense if we think of graces as being quantifiable, but as soon as you start down that path you get absurdities. If the grace of a mass is infinite, why have more than one mass ever? If those graces are not infinite, why don’t priests say as many masses in a day as they can?)
How does the Church, as an institution, understand itself, both in its relation to God and to Church members?
The Church sees itself as a divinely founded institution (founded by Christ). It sees itself as headed by Christ, and led on Earth by his vicar, the pope. The Church on Earth is divinely guided by the Holy Spirit.
Bellarmine gives a classical definition of the Church, “the assembly of men gathered together in the profession of the same Christian faith and in the communion of the same sacraments under the rule of legitimate pastors, and particularly the Roman Pontiff.”
It might be important to note that the Church sees itself as included not only the living (the “Church Militant”), but also the saints in heaven (the Church Triumphant) and the faithful departed suffering in Purgatory (the Church Suffering). In fact, the Church even sees non-Catholic Christians as members of the Church: Once you are validly baptized, you are a member of the one Catholic Church, whether you know it or not, and whether you live like it or not, you are just in an imperfect communion with the visible Church. Cf. ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
As a lawyer, I appreciate the legal significance of various types of associations. I have handled two real estate transactions that involved churches as sellers. One was Catholic and the other was United Methodist. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but the processes of church approval, necessary for the transaction to be legally valid, were quite different. The Methodist deal did require approval of the local congregation, while the Catholic deal did not require any action by the local parish. A transaction involving a Southern Baptist church would require only local church approval pursuant to that local church’s governing documents. Of course real estate transactions are relatively mundane, but the various legal structures of the churches would be relevant to more significant matters relating to the obligations and rights of the churches, including the assertion of church members’ rights by the churches.
Moving back to the discussion at hand, what is the Biblical basis, if any, of the claim that a properly performed mass releases grace into the world?
what is the Biblical basis, if any, of the claim that a properly performed mass releases grace into the world?
Something that always made me uneasy about Catholic sacramental theology is that a *huge* part of it is fitting a theology to the Church’s historical practice. The thinking is, “The Church has done x, on a wide scale for an extended time. The Church is divinely guided, so it’s impossible God would let the Church do it wrong for so long. So that practice has to make sense.”
I think in this case it something like: Christ told us to celebrate the Eucharist. God predicted that there would be a perfect sacrifice offered continually (Mal. 1:11). The (Latin) church has historically celebrated mass daily. Therefore, there must be a reason to celebrate mass daily (and that reason needs to fit within a broader theological framework). Somehow bestowing grace was just a sort of a hand-wavy answer to that problem.
Thanks for answering my questions. I always appreciate the conversations between you, Stephen and Robert. You make me think about new things. As you can no doubt tell, I have close to zero background into Catholic practices, so this particular conversation has been enlightening.
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Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest known as “the father of liberation theology” and hailed as a “prophet of the poor”, has died in Lima at the age of 96.
Gutiérrez, a theologian and Dominican friar, was a celebrated – and sometimes controversial – proponent of the idea that the church needed to side with the poor and to fight to improve their lot.
Liberation theology, which emerged in the turbulent Latin America of the 1960s and 1970s, argued that the church had a duty to push for fundamental political and structural changes that would end poverty.
“Only authentic solidarity with the poor and a real protest against the poverty of our time can provide the concrete, vital context necessary for a theological discussion of poverty,” Gutiérrez wrote in his landmark 1971 book A Theology of Liberation.
Some movements and personalities are so redolent of the past that it is surprising to have them impinge upon present realities. “Liberation Theology”, like the 1960s “Death of God”, brings up a whole host of associations. I was young and first going to school in a time when the aftershocks of these movements were still being felt. What is truly sad is that the idea that the Church should privilege the poor and downtrodden is just as alien to contemporary America as it was to mid-20th century Latin America. Perhaps it’s even worse. In modern America being poor is considered a character flaw, a fundamental weakness of self.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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