Writing columns is sometimes akin to dropping a message into a bottle and tossing it into the ocean. Whether one finds it, whether one reads it, and whether one gives it a thought after reading it is pretty much an unknown to the writer in most cases.
I read opinion columns constantly but rarely attempt to contact their authors — whether I agree or disagree strongly — so none of this is a surprise.
But my recent column on the boomer-millennial divide in some parishes did attract feedback and suggestions, and for all that, I am grateful.
The lengthiest and perhaps most thoughtful reflection was courtesy of Msgr. Arthur Holquin, STL, who writes a Substack column called “Liturgy and Truth.” His mission statement is “a lifelong effort, now in its fifty-second year of priesthood, to think with the mind of the Church.”
Unfortunately, this apparently has placed Holquin on the front lines of the liturgy wars. Some of his more disgruntled readers have criticized his column as the “mindless rant of a boomer.” One went so far as to tell the monsignor that “he could not wait until priests of [his] generation died off, so that Church could ‘get back to the orthodox faith.’ ”
In light of this hurtful sentiment, Holquin thought I was perhaps overly charitable in my desire to get the two sides to understand each other.
Tolerating both a guitar Mass and the ad orientem posture should be possible, he argued, for the Church of Vatican II “never asked us to be identical, only to be communio.” But his concern is that this hostility to the fruits of the Second Vatican Council is also a challenge to authority. It is not just aesthetic or generational, but a much broader claim that “the reformed rite and the Council that gave rise to it were themselves errors to be waited out, corrected not by argument but by the mere passage of time and the dying-off of the men ordained to serve it.”
There can be a Catholic both-and, as I recommended in my column, but Holquin cautions that “charity toward taste is not the same discipline as charity toward a rejection of the Council’s authority.” “I will not collapse the two for the sake of an easier peace,” he added with a harrumph that I share.
Another priest named Father Ben, a bit younger than Holquin, wrote of his experience. “I’m a 48-year-old priest and often find myself in the middle of this [divide]. My diocese … has much less generational division among the priests than is typical, but these tensions manifest themselves in our parishes. Thank you for a call to love, not a call to arms!”
Laura Lynn from the East Coast wrote that she has thought a lot about this divide, at least in terms of musical styles, in her role as a liturgical musician. “I’ve played traditional and ’70s and ’80s hymns both (depending on the parish/pastor), and I do think the latter genuinely helped a generation of Catholics for whom Latin is strongly reminiscent of a dead, impersonal Church.”
Laura raises an important point. There is a reason that a strong movement for the vernacular grew throughout the 20th century preceding Vatican II. Converts and younger Catholics pine for what they imagined was the reverence of the Tridentine rite, but they do not remember the lived reality.
One suggestion from Lynn was for “hosting Sunday listening circles with refreshments between Mass times and providing facilitated questions that address the generational divide.” This takes considerable skill on the part of a facilitator, but for a divided parish, listening to one another would be a start.
One common complaint I’ve heard is that the changes implemented by an eager pastor these days are often peremptory and poorly explained. There is a whiff of clericalism in the pastor’s decision to impose changes that confuse and upset some even as they may delight others. Berating the complainers is not helpful either. Ironically, some critics of the original implementation of Vatican II’s reforms also felt that they were not well explained.
I think there is today a persistent ignorance about the structure and history of the Mass and the Council’s intentions that cripples our experience of it and leaves some of us searching for something else. Such ignorance will not be defeated by an occasional “demonstration Mass,” but that at least would be a start. It will take priests who are well schooled in Vatican II and Church history.
There are also devotions and traditions that may have been forgotten in the six decades since the Council, and their rediscovery is a good thing. These are treasures, as are the scriptural and liturgical gifts of the Council itself. We owe it to ourselves and to the Church to value both.
