Liturgical Profiling

It is easy to become arrogant when the quality of the style and practice of Roman Catholic liturgical celebration becomes a subject of discussion among folks like you and me.

A while back, I talked about "liturgical voyeurism"; now I want to rant on the even more revered custom of "liturgical profiling." This type of profiling goes a step further than voyeurism.

It doesn't stop with musical style criticism or homily depth-it categorizes by geography.

For example, two liturgical musicians in Chicago meet after a national convention in Philadelphia and the first words out of their mouths were, "Boring, boring, boring. Have you ever witnessed such boring celebrations?"

"Yes, across the border in New Jersey where parishes are so tasteless. Can you imagine?-they still sing John Michael Talbot."

"Well, what do you expect from New Jersey?"

Then there is the profiling done more succinctly with, "Well, the eastern seaboard still resists Vatican II. But what do you expect from foreign-born Irish clergy?"

Many years ago, one could make such a criticism with some foundation, but that was many years ago, and there is new generation of church leaders committed to making prayer central to their parishes and willing to spend money and time to achieve that goal.

They live in Greenwich, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; San Jose, California; and Palm Beach, California, to name just a few places.

Generalizations about New Jersey liturgy break down when one discovers that the liturgies at Catholic churches at the Jersey shore were not good examples of Catholic parish life.

Now, I'm not beating up New Jersey. I'm simply setting up a house of cards, not setting up a liturgical Inquisition.

I have good reason, too. In the past fourteen days, I worshiped at a temporary community in a metropolitan center in Philadelphia; I prayed, sang, and listened at a more permanent community in the eastern part of the state of Washington; I had a conversation with one of the heads in the bureaucracy of the American Church.

In the east, I experienced a church that wanted the best prayer experience that could be conjured up.

I sang and prayed in a church in the great Pacific Northwest whose clerical and lay leadership brought me to a new understanding of liturgy being the "source and summit."

Even the ecclesiastical honcho spoke with much passion about the need for strong and inspired musical leadership for good liturgical health.

All three examples and at least a thousand more substantiate my claim that liturgical profiling is not very convincing any more. The three characteristics were present in one way or another in each of the church experiences I described. There was no monopoly on good liturgy.

For every post-Neanderthal celebration in a suburb of Philadelphia, one can find three Vatican II loyalists in the neighboring towns celebrating in a manner and style that would have made the conciliar reformers proud.

Profiling is dissolving. The effects of the global church are being felt.

Quick, let's sing another South African chant in our suburban, white-bread church and listen to a representative from the shelterless center. Maybe then we will realize that you cannot categorize by geography and you cannot institutionalize ancient biases.

You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net