ARTICLES

Lessons From the Liturgical Left

How New Age Catholicism Shapes a Church

By Stanford Espedal

On Tuesday, February 4, the San Diego diocese office for liturgy and spirituality hosted Sister Marilyn Morgan from San Francisco, an approved liturgical design consultant for the diocese. Sister Morgan presented an evening seminar entitled "The Church's Liturgy Shapes the Church's Worship Space." The lecture/slide show promised to be based on the national bishops' document Built of Living Stones.

Built of Living Stones says in its first sentence, "One of the most significant and formative experiences in the life of a parish community is the process of building or renovating a church." It can also be one of the most divisive.

The major question, though, is what is its legal status? According to the St. Joseph Foundation website, although the document has the support of a majority of the bishops who voted on it, nevertheless it is devoid of legal force, except where it quotes prior binding legislation. The national bishops' conference can only make a document it adopts binding if it deals with a matter that the Code of Canon Law authorizes, or which has the prior mandate of the Holy See. Stones has neither condition. Furthermore, it must have the affirmative vote of at least 2/3 of all the bishops. Finally, the Holy See must confirm it. Stones was ratified by voice vote only, of only those bishops present at the November, 2000 meeting and passed only by a simple majority.

Some of Sister Morgan's points on February 4 were excellent. In discussing the baptistry she rightly maintained that the practice of baptizing with a trickle of water, while valid, is minimalist.

However, the theme that pervaded the entire talk was disturbing. The real subject was "Facilitating Community in the Design of Worship Spaces." Not just an overused word (at least 1000 times), "community" rolled on as the axis of her wheel. Building community stood out as the central emphasis, a virtual end in itself.

Isn't the goal of evangelization the incorporation of persons into the community of the Catholic Church? But the Church as the visible society Christ established was evidently not the community of which she spoke, as the following statements demonstrate. In the context of discussing indoor gathering spaces: "We need to ask ourselves, what creates community?" Obviously this is not the Church, if it's something we create! In criticizing a church that has nine doors: "We are called to be gathered as community, not to funnel in as individuals!" (The reader will detect here the New Age loathing of the greatest sin, individualism.) Continuing, Sister said, "Something (negative) happens to your community when you have all these doors. You don't ever gather people into one by having them come in and out of all these doors." Notice that the gathering into one is something done to people on the part of facilitators.

Sister Morgan even described baptism as "the way we enter the community." What about the way God frees us from original and actual sin, and gives us sanctifying grace? True, baptism unites us to the Catholic Church, the one Ark of salvation for all, but she means the local community of faith. (And how does this differ from any other "faith community?") It seems that in Sister Morgan's lexicon, community is a Catholic word invested with un-Catholic meaning.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen predicted the coming of the Antichrist as a "Great Humanitarian" who will "spread the lie that men will never be better until they make society better." The Great Humanitarian will promote "a new religion without a Cross.... "In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity."

One more quote from Sister Morgan will show that the community of which Bishop Sheen warned us is exactly where she leads. "We are called to be community." I had understood that we are called to follow Christ! Following Christ, while necessarily done as a member of the Church, is done as an individual. It requires complete dependence on God, the opposite of the interdependence of "being community."

Another strange element appeared in the treatment of the sanctuary. Ideally, Sister Morgan said, we should place the altar so that the community can gather around it. This could mean either bringing the altar out into the main body of the church, with the seating arranged around it, or else placing the altar where all can stand around it. She showed several examples of both possibilities. She definitely favors the "church in the round." She supported her position saying, "The document calls for the altar to be central." False! Paragraph 58 of Built of Living Stones says, "The altar should be centrally located in the sanctuary and the center of attention in the church. Nothing here about being in the center of the church! With regard to seating around the altar, Stones, paragraph 86 says, "Parishes will want to choose a seating arrangement that avoids any semblance of a theater or an arena." Yet what could possibly give more semblance of theater or arena than the altar in the center of the church?

Sister Morgan's obsession with gathering people in a circle continued: "The document calls for the assembly to be gathered around the altar." This, as we have seen, is not the case. Showing a long nave leading to the altar, she declared, "This one is like a bowling alley! You're so far removed that you cannot be intimately connected to this altar!" (Contrasting slide) "These people are gathered around the altar! They can be involved in the most important action of the Eucharist." So! There is no intimate involvement in the Eucharist unless you're right there in a circle around the altar?

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