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The Catholic YM Blog has been referred to as "the 411 of Catholic Youth Ministry." Your blogger is D. Scott Miller, director of the Division of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Baltimore... Read more...
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The National Catholic Reporter recently ran an article suggesting that our brains are wired liturgy. It reminds us that ritual and liturgy are powerful because they allow participants to taste, if only for a moment, the transcendent spiritual unity that all religions promise.
If ritual or liturgy is to maintain meaning from one generation to another, the balance between rhythm and content must constantly be adjusted. By rhythm, they mean that it recurs in the same or nearly the same form with some regularity. As an example, they refer to the Second Vatican Council prescribing the use of the vernacular for Mass. The content of the ritual had been preserved but the change remained controversial; some found the vernacular Mass less satisfying. “Virtually all rituals must maintain this delicate balance, between permanence and impermanence,” they write.
Therefore, as we all move closer towards the implementation towards the latest edition of the Roman Missal, we have our work cut out for us in addressing all the generations. FDLC will be offering a workshops for priests and diocesan leadership towards this effort.
A great deal of people seem to be viewing the upcoming introduction of the new missal with a certain degree of suspicion or perhaps even anger. While I can appreciate some of the questions they are raising – like why it took forty years to retranslate, and why they couldn’t get it right in the first place – I am far more convinced that the introduction of the new Missal represents a rich opportunity to connect people with the riches of the liturgy.
As Catholics, the ritualisation and routine of our faith and the centrality of the sacraments are one of our greatest treasures and also one of our greatest weaknesses. By the latter, I am referring to the fact that it is so easy to be carried along by the ritual without engaging at a deep level. It is easy to adopt a ‘ticks in boxes’ mentality to receiving the sacraments or perhaps an attitude which allows us to believe that we have been fully fed and fully engaged simply because we were physically present. One thing that youth ministers come across again and again is young people who have been exposed to the Mass multiple times, but yet have no understanding of what it really means. It’s like watching a sport with no clue what the rules are, and so they just get bored. Some stay out of duty. Others leave.
For this reason, I think that anything which shakes things up a bit and disturbs our comfort zone is a good thing. A lot of people will soon be asking us what certain parts of the Mass mean and why they have been changed, and therein lies an opportunity to move them forward in their understanding of it all and to invite them to go a little bit deeper…
Comment by Jack Regan — Thursday, March 11, 2010 @ 4:47 am
Mr. Regan,
I must agree with you. We will have some natural teaching moments in the near future regarding the Liturgy. We will need to prepare ourselves now for those questions.
The Institute for Liturgical Ministry is a good place to start.
http://www.ilmdayton.org
Comment by Greg Sinclair — Saturday, March 13, 2010 @ 12:34 am