ARTICLES

Let's Downplay Christ

And Kneeling, Tabernacles, Genuflection, Rubrics, Gregorian Chant, a Sense of Sin, and the Pope

By Anne Knight

Approximately 100 people, mostly lay parish leaders, came to the diocesan pastoral center on the evening of December 4, to hear Father Charles Miller. In a talk advertised by the diocese as a discussion of the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal, Father Miller, a Vincentian, devoted most of his time to 20th-century liturgical developments and aspects of Vatican II. He touched briefly the revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal. The new instruction was issued by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship in July 2000 and is the first such revision since 1975. The instruction provides guidance on how to celebrate Mass and is included in the Roman Missal, which was approved in 2000, but not yet released. According to Father Miller, once implemented, the new instruction will not entail significant departures from U.S. liturgical practices.

Father Miller has been at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, the Los Angeles archdiocesan seminary, since 1956. He served as its rector from 1978 to 1987 and is currently a professor of homiletics and liturgy. In her introductory remarks, Mary Ann Fallon, director of the diocesan liturgy and spirituality office, mentioned that, besides another presentation to laity, Father Miller addressed 60 diocesan priests on the instruction.

According to the May 2001 Inside the Vatican account of the new instruction, "Perhaps most notable were its instructions for priests to concentrate more on their role as celebrants of the sacred mysteries and less on their role as greeters and masters of ceremonies at Sunday Mass.... Other regulations describe proper acts of reverence for worshippers, calling for more order, dignity and reverence among communicants approaching the altar for Communion.... The new regulations also limit some of the duties of extraordinary lay ministers and warn against carrying inculturation too far."

During his talk, Father Miller praised Saint Pius X for encouraging lay participation in the Mass, including the singing of Gregorian chant. However, he lamented that such participation was in Latin, rather than the vernacular, and asserted that "Gregorian chant is very difficult to do well." Father Miller praised the new instruction for affirming the vernacular, "despite the efforts of some bishops to go back to Latin." He praised Pope John Paul II as a strong proponent of using the vernacular, since he insists on celebrating Mass in the local language during his travels, which fosters a sense among the people that he is their pope and not a "foreign pope."

Although Father Miller endorsed the Second Vatican Council's documents, he did not mention that Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy stipulates, "Nevertheless, care must be taken to ensure that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them." Nor did he mention that this document stresses the importance of Gregorian chant in the Mass: "The Church recognizes Gregorian chant as being especially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services...."

Calling Pius XII "the most significant pope of the 20th century," Father Miller explained that his work laid much of the foundation for Vatican II, and he defended him against recent accusations about not doing enough to oppose the Nazi holocaust. John XXIII's addition of Saint Joseph to the list of saints mentioned in the Canon of the Mass "was really a shocking thing at the time, because the Canon of the Mass ... was considered so sacred, nothing could change it," Father Miller said. "In fact, when I was a seminarian, our liturgy professor told us, 'If you change a single word in the Canon, it is a mortal sin!'" The audience laughed. "People of my era thought everything's a mortal sin.... You want to know what a mortal sin is? September the 11th. That's a mortal sin. God doesn't care about some of these little peccadillos."

Father Miller: "Very often, religion is confounded with culture." As an example, Father Miller, quoting Vatican documents, commented, "'The Church does not wish to impose [a] rigid uniformity,' even in the liturgy.... But that's the American mentality: rigid uniformity. We think everything has to be exactly the same. No matter where we go, we want every Mass to be exactly the same [and] all priests to do exactly the same thing." He characterized such expectations as "fundamentalism in rubrics," which, he said "is just as wrong as fundamentalism in Scripture."

The liturgy "was recovered by the Second Vatican Council," Father Miller stated, whereas prior to the Council, apart from assistance from altar servers, priests did everything in the Mass and led all parish activities. "If somehow we return to having a plethora of priests, we should never return to a pre-Vatican II Church in which the priest did everything in the life of the Church and in the liturgy. That's not the Mystical Body of Christ." In his overview of Vatican II's 16 documents, Father Miller identified the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Divine Revelation, The Church in the Modern World and the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church as the council's major documents. He recommended reading these four, especially chapter III of the Dogmatic Constitution, on the Church's hierarchy, because "in a lot of Catholics' minds, the pope is the Church and the Church is the pope. And I find, when I quote a bishop to them, they say, 'Don't tell me what the bishop says; I want to know what the pope says.' And I always say, 'The pope would tell you, "Obey your bishop."

"We have to be honest about this. There are some people in the Church who want to go backwards. They want to have a Latin Mass; they want to have a quiet liturgy; they don't want to sing; they don't want to be bothered. They don't do anything in the Church. They're not the ones who bring Holy Communion; they're not the ones who teach catechism to the kids; they just want to live their own private, individual lives." Father Miller attributed this attitude to American individualism, which he equated with selfishness and ascribed to "the legacy of Protestantism." Its influence, he said, is reflected in those who don't want to give the sign of peace during Mass: "'Don't ask me to give the sign of peace to these people; I'm about to receive Jesus in Holy Communion,' and Jesus is sitting right next to them."

Father Miller reaffirmed the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Church's teaching that Jesus is present in the Mass in four ways (in the Word, the assembly, the priest, and the Eucharist). He sometimes asks people, "'Which of the four ways do you think needs emphasis in the Church today?' In my experience, most people say, 'In the Eucharist.' There's a number of Catholics -- not a large number; there's usually a little segment of Catholics -- who want to object somehow to the idea that Christ is really present in people.... There's less challenge to accepting Christ in the Eucharist than to accepting Christ in people." Father Miller accused "some people on the right" of focusing excessively on Christ's presence in the Eucharist. He believes that the revised instruction will help counteract Christo-monism, which he described as a relationship with Christ only, rather than all three persons of the Holy Trinity. Christo-monism is a heresy, Father Miller said, and the underlying cause of people coming to Mass only to adore Christ in the Eucharist, genuflecting to the tabernacle while ignoring everything else and opposing standing during the Eucharistic Prayer. Upon being questioned at this point by an audience member, Father Miller acknowledged that the new instruction will preserve the current norm of kneeling throughout the Eucharistic Prayer. Later he opined that standing is the correct way to pray.

Father Miller claimed that the new instruction requires that the tabernacle must be kept separate from the altar; he prefers a separate chapel, to provide a quiet place for prayer. "The old instructions had recommended not reserving consecrated hosts in the main church but in 'a chapel suited to the faithful's private adoration and prayer,'" Inside the Vatican wrote in its May 2001 issue. "This led to the removal of tabernacles from behind altars, a move strongly objected to by devout faithful. The new instructions again allow the tabernacle behind the altar [i.e. in the sanctuary], although they do not prohibit the Eucharist being kept in a nearby chapel. Not unexpectedly, the bishop of the diocese is given the final authority in the decision. (On several occasions recently the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger have spoken in favor of tabernacles being in the main church when possible.)" Father Miller did not mention the new instruction's provision for locating the tabernacle in the sanctuary.

"The [new] General Instruction got some bad press because the press loves controversy," Father Miller said. "They emphasized the negative things, and there were negative things. The negative things flow from the fact that it's impossible to run a universal Church; you can't do that.... And in my judgment, some of those experts in Rome cannot visualize a vibrant, American parish with normal Catholics at Mass -- a full church, everybody going to Holy Communion, lots of Communion cups left over -- so they say, 'Well, only the priests and the deacons can purify the cups.'" Here Father Miller was referring to the revised instruction's warnings against extraordinary ministers distributing consecrated hosts and consecrated wine to sacred vessels and, after Communion, assisting with the consumption of remaining consecrated wine and purification of sacred vessels. "All those negative things that people can't do any more [under the revised instruction] -- that's all been settled," Father Miller said emphatically.

The December 20 Southern Cross reported that Fallon said Father Miller's lectures "were very well received." However, at least three local Catholics who attended Father Miller's presentation found some of his commentary disturbing. Carol (a pseudonym): "It sounded to me like, if it were up to him, we would not kneel, we would not genuflect.... One of the things that alarmed me was when he made the comment, 'September 11, now that's a mortal sin.' Are we to follow from [this comment] that that's about all that is a [mortal] sin?... When his opinion differed from what we're supposed to be doing [in the Mass], he made that perfectly clear, but not by saying 'I personally disagree with this.' It was like, 'They're wrong and I'm right.'"

Tom (a pseudonym): "He's saying, 'If you pray to one [person of the Trinity] and not the others, you're a heretic,' but you're just doing what you were taught to do. I was floored! When did all the changes come about?... He goes along with the new party line: They don't really believe that's the Body and Blood of Christ. He didn't come out and say that, but that's just the way that the flavor of the conversation leads you."

Jean (a pseudonym), said with regard to Father Miller's comments about Christomonism, "He was outrageous; there's no way to separate the three divine persons of the Trinity.... He was trying to downplay the whole document [the new instruction] because it was sort of going against his modernist agenda; it was like 'This is really no big deal.'" Tom then chimed in, "Yeah, it was like, 'Wink, wink, we're all just going to continue to go the way we're going.'"

The March 1998 Los Angeles Mission reported that "ever since the mid-1970s seminarians at St. John's Seminary (theologate) have been forbidden to kneel during the eucharistic prayer of the Mass -- a practice required of all Catholics in the United States. At the initiative of Fr. Charles Miller, the long-time 'resident liturgist' and past rector of St. John's, seminarians have been consistently told that kneeling is an inappropriate posture for anything other than penitential practices...."

During these years, seminarians protested this deviation from the rubrics of the Church. When describing his classroom experience with Father Miller, a former student who requested anonymity commented, "He tended to denigrate anything that relates to traditional piety and the Eucharist."

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