This week, the Catholic Church in the United States has undergone the biggest liturgical transition since the initial reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Despite the fact that the current translations have been in use for half a century, at the behest of the Vatican, all translations of liturgical texts from now on must match their official Latin rubrics as closely as possible (Liturgiam authenticam). A committee of theologians and scholars representing all of the English-speaking episcopal conferences of the Catholic world (The International Commission on English in the Liturgy or “ICEL“) labored for nearly a decade to compose new translations of the Mass that meet the Vatican’s new norms for all liturgical documents. On a nationwide basis, the various bishops conferences tweaked and honed these translations to what they saw as best suiting the needs of the faithful in their own jurisdictions. The American bishops have been completing this process for the past several years and have now reached its conclusion. On the First Sunday of Advent a completely revised translation of the Mass was introduced in America, following suit with other English-speaking countries that have already implemented the new texts earlier this year. This news has never been without controversy, considering that the new Latin-friendly texts may not be as compatible to English-speaking ears.

As so many Catholics have been left to ponder the ramifications of these mandatory changes, it seems appropriate to ask: why are the revisions being forced upon Catholics in the first place, what message is being conveyed by their imposition, and in the long run – how will they ultimately affect the church in the English-speaking world?

History shows us that Jesus of Nazareth never delivered his famous Sermon on the Mount in Latin, but rather in Aramaic – the language spoken by the Jews who lived in first century Palestine. In the decades and centuries following Jesus’ death and Resurrection, the Eucharist was celebrated in Hebrew and later in Greek. Contrary to popular belief, Latin was not always the dominant language used throughout the Roman empire.  Greek (in a particular dialect known as “Koine”) was spoken throughout the Roman world as the common denominator that united all social classes. It was in this collective tongue that the liturgy of the Eucharist was to develop. Even today, parts of the Mass such as the Kyrie and the very word, “Eucharist”, (which means “thanksgiving”) have been preserved from the ancient Greek compositions that formed the liturgies of the early Church.

Only in the early fourth century was Latin imposed upon the Western church as the universal language to be employed in the liturgy. Even when this occurred a lengthy transitional period was necessary for all of the faithful to grasp such a drastic linguistic switch. Eventually, as the centuries drew on, the laity would no longer understand Latin, but it would remain the official language of the Mass celebrated by the clergy. It was only during the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960′s that this barrier of comprehension would be eradicated from the liturgy, finally allowing all Catholics to actively participate after having been passive observers for nearly a millenia.

When confronting the situation that is before us today it must be stated simply that the primary motivations behind these efforts are not, at their heart, spiritual, but rather ideological/political.

During the Second Vatican Council, a renewed emphasis was placed on identifying the Church not just as an organism composed of the pope, bishops, and other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but instead as the People of God. Casting aside a pyramidal, strictly hierarchical definition of the Body of Christ, the Church was now understood as a community of faith. The black and white distinctions between clergy and laity were understood anew, now seeing all individuals who had been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ as sharing in His prophetic, royal, and priestly mission of salvation to the world. The priesthood of all the baptized did not eliminate the unique role of those who had been called to give ultimate service to God through the ordained priesthood, but rather levelled the spiritual playing field so that all Christians – whether clerical or lay – could support each other equally as members of the universal Church.

As individual bishops conferences around the world were gradually given the permission to translate the order of the Mass into their own respective languages, so the English-speaking bishops of the world decided to incorporate this renewed communal understanding of the Church into their respective liturgical translations. From the incomprehensible language of Latin, English-speaking Catholics the globe over would now be made familiar with the Eucharistic Prayer in their own tongue, “Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give You thanks. In You we live and move and have our being; Each day You show us a Father’s love; Your Holy Spirit, dwelling within us, gives us on earth the hope of unending joy. Your gift of the Spirit, Who raised Jesus from the dead, is the foretaste and promise of the paschal feast of heaven…”

The newly revised texts that have been introduced may adhere more closely to the original Latin that remains the official language of the church. When it comes to the most frequent exchange that occurs during the Eucharistic liturgy there is indeed an obvious mistranslation. As the priest addresses the congregation with the words, “The Lord be with you,” the congregation has voiced in response for the past thirty years, “and also with you.” In Latin, the original response is “et cum spiritu tuo” (and with your spirit). This refers to the unique “spirit” of ordination that has been conferred upon the presiding priest in the sacrament of Holy Orders. In most languages this meaning has been preserved. In French the response is “et avec votre esprit”, in German “Und mit deinem Geiste”, in Spanish “Y con tu espíritu” and so on. This is a legitimate concern that deserved mention.

Yet, more is at work than merely an honest attempt to render linguistics concisely.

The new texts are certainly more lofty and formal than the clear, simple, and straightforward prayers introduced after the Second Vatican Council. As a former Episcopalian, I’m accustomed to and can somewhat appreciate rather old, classical English phrases decorating the liturgy. However, for many Catholics, who have used the previous texts for the past thirty years, such a patrician flavor employed during weekly worship gatherings will definitely be an acquired taste.

But it is not even the loftiness of the language that leaves such a bad taste in people’s mouths concerning this translation. In a more profound sense, a drastically different theological picture is painted in the words of these texts compared with those that were introduced following Vatican II.

In the Penitential Rite, where the faithful acknowledge their misdeeds and the ways in which they have failed to imitate the love of God and ask God for forgiveness a startling contrast is made clear. In the texts that many have known for so long the congregation prays, “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words in what I have done and what I have failed to do…” The revised text has been modified to say, “I have greatly sinned, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…” The tone of all the prayers has transitioned from one of an intimate, loving relationship to one of uncertainty, supplication, and vertical distance. Take for instance the prayer over the gifts for the Second Sunday of Advent. The version of the old missal reads, “Lord, we are nothing without You. As You sustain us with Your mercy, receive our prayers and offerings. We ask this through Christ our Lord.” The revised text implores, “Be pleased, O Lord, with our humble prayers and offerings, and since we have no merits to plead our cause, come, we pray, to our rescue with the protection of your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.”

Just over a month ago, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a report entitled “Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Authority.” It’s a fascinating read, though arguably not as fascinating as some of the startling reactions it has elicited from American Catholics.

The report is a refreshing and honest take on our current economic woes and an insightful look at how we can both address our short-term problems and build effective institutions of global governance to safeguard our well-being in the long run. I call it “refreshing” because of the careful way in which it diagnoses the ideological and moral threats to the global economy without resorting to simplistic attacks on the straw men of secularism and religious diversity. Instead, the Council frames the problem in more widely resonant terms, and lays the blame at the feet of “neoliberalism,” “utilitarianism,” and other “-isms” that have been destructive of our attempts to build decent societies and that have “minimized the value of the choices made by the concrete human individual.”

The most controversial assertion of the report, at least from the point of view of those free-market apologists who fear that the Holy See may be lending undue moral weight to the case against laissez-faire, is that the governments of the world ought to work toward strengthening organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, endowing them with more authority to coordinate global action on a scale sufficient to grapple with problems like environmental degradation, food scarcity, and human trafficking. Such a project would ideally culminate in the creation of a “central world bank” that could better stabilize the world’s monetary and financial systems, and prevent a repeat of the carnage we’ve seen in the past few years. Couple this with a modest proposal for a tax on financial transactions of dubious social value, and you’ve apparently got a recipe for radicalism.

In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Fr. Robert Sirico writes that there is “no question” this document will be used to “stir up political mischief… [and] to convince the Catholic faithful that big government solutions are morally justified.” That a Catholic priest writing in one of the nation’s preeminent newspapers would accuse the Vatican of attempting to incite “political mischief” should seem unthinkable in a church where ideological conformity is becoming ever more highly valued. Aware of this fact, those Catholics who wish to resist the call for more global cooperation have had to find excuses for why this advice ought to be disregarded.

George Weigel of the National Review insists that “the document’s specific recommendations do not necessarily reflect the settled views of the senior authorities of the Holy See… The document doesn’t speak for the Pope, it doesn’t speak for ‘the Vatican,’ and it doesn’t speak for the Catholic Church.” Tito Edwards of the National Catholic Register quotes Bishop Mario Toso, a member of the Council, as saying that the “note” merely “suggests possible paths to follow”, and then condescendingly admonishes us to “notice the word ‘suggest’; the Church always proposes, not ever imposes.” One wonders which Church he’s referring to.

Why should Catholics even want to resist this call? Why the quibbling about the authority of the Council issuing the report? I, for one, would love to see more open debate and collegiality within the Church, and so I don’t dismiss critics like Fr. Sirico for worrying out loud about the real-life consequences of trying to turn a utopian vision of world government into a reality. There could be real costs to asking nations to cede sovereignty to a centralized global bureaucracy, and I don’t mean to ignore or diminish them. But the forcefulness with which some have reacted to the release of this report is indicative of a deeper problem: the dearth of American Catholics advocating for economic justice in the name of Catholicism. Sadly, it seems that many Catholics have been persuaded by the conservative movement that unfettered markets are what their faith demands after all.

This problem reaches deep into the hierarchy. Instead of using its public platform to emphasize the ways in which both political parties fall short of the dictates of Catholic teachings (for better or for worse), the institutional Church in the United States has become nearly synonymous with American-style conservatism, despite the fact that the two are qualitatively distinct. We often hear the bishops criticize liberal Catholic politicians for their public positions on abortion and euthanasia, but we never hear of Republicans being denied communion for supporting the death penalty, or for opposing nuclear nonproliferation, or for routinely insisting that war is a higher budgetary priority than healthcare for the poor.

To a traditionalist, any mention of the primacy of conscience is taken as a euphemism for an attempt to normalize sin and discredit Catholic doctrine, and merely pointing out that there exist teachings that are noninfallible is seen to be a wholesale rejection of the Church’s authority. And yet when an arm of the Roman Curia “suggests” that it might be worthwhile to encourage more multilateral cooperation in the name of promoting economic justice, we are met with the truly remarkable spectacle of American Catholics insisting that the people doing the suggesting really have no power whatsoever, or aren’t the Pope, or don’t know what they’re talking about, or are actually just trying to “stir up political mischief.”

I respect the right of my fellow Catholics to listen to their consciences and do what they believe is right. But when someone asks us to “[abandon] all forms of petty selfishness… [embrace] the logic of the global common good.. [and share] the common dignity of all human beings,” I’d say we should listen. Even if it’s only a suggestion.

This piece is cross-posted from Theology Salon, a new Internet space for theology in response to Occupy Wall Street. 

On Monday [October 24], the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace published a “Note on the reform of the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority” (official version only in Italian so far; I am referencing the unofficial English translation at Radio Vaticana). Although the Note was almost certainly not in response to Occupy Wall Street, it reflects many of the same concerns and even suggests some of the same solutions as the global protest movement. As theologians and supporters of Occupy Wall Street, how can we engage this document in our theological work and in support of the movement?

Context

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We are deep into autumn. Cars have a frosty, sparkly sheen when I take my late-night walks. The cold seems a fitting omen for the new Mass translations, arriving November 27, the First Sunday of Advent.

I wrote a post about a year ago, critiquing the revised Missal for hewing so closely to literal Latin sense and grammar that it sounded not so much like fingernails on a chalkboard, but like boots thrown at a chalkboard. I had skimmed the Order of Mass for obvious translation fails. Lately, however, I’m reading critics more thorough than I, who dig up examples that aren’t just awkward, but opaque.

Rita Ferrone, in a July gem from Commonweal entitled “It Doesn’t Sing”, presents part of the slicked-up Preface VIII for Sundays in Ordinary Time:

For when your children were scattered afar by sin, / through the Blood of your Son and the power of the Spirit, / you gathered them again to yourself, / that a people, formed as one by the unity of the Trinity, / made the Body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, / might, to the praise of your manifold wisdom, / be manifest as the Church.

“What is the main point?” Ferrone asks of this sixty-four-word, run-on sentence. “It is hard to tell.” Even worse: “If the speaker is not careful to separate the first line from the second and join the second with the third, separating them from the first, he ends up suggesting that the Blood of Christ and the power of the Spirit are instrumental in scattering God’s children.”

I take the new Missal personally. Between high school and college, I studied five years of Latin. And if I had used the Vatican approach, my teachers would have killed me.

Freshman year of high school, we had a beginner’s textbook with appropriate baby sentences. The first week, Mr. Keating asked me to translate Puella est magna. Puella is “girl,” and the book gave magnus, -a, -um as “great” or “large.” I proclaimed that “the girl is large.”

Mr. Keating looked amused. “Well, Justin, I think that sounds a little rude: ‘the girl is large.’ You wouldn’t say that in real life.” Better to say “she’s a big girl.” I got the point.

Mr. Keating, a devout Irish Catholic with deep respect for “the tongue of the angels,” taught us many Latin prayers. He made us approach them with “the art of translation.” We dissected the second stanza of Veni, Veni Emmanuel (“O Come, O Come Emmanuel”): Veni, O Sapientia / Quae hic disponis omnia / Veni, viam prudentiae / Ut doceas et gloriae.

After cases, verbs, and Latin’s free-to-the-point-of-promiscuous word order were hashed out, this more or less became: “Come, O Wisdom, who arranges all these things. Come that you may teach us the road of foresight and glory.”

Then Mr. Keating gave us a more familiar version for comparison: “O come Thou Wisdom from on high, / Who ord’ rest all things mightily. / To us the path of knowledge show, / And teach us in her ways to go.” Again, I got the point: a seamless fusion of two elements, Gregorian chant and English poetry, producing a third substance.

Senior year with Mr. Mural, we studied Virgil’s Aeneid in both its original text and Robert Fitzgerald’s English translation. I’ve always been struck by the first one-and-a-half lines of Book I and how Fitzgerald dealt with them: Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris / Italiam fato profugus…

About the best our class could do was: “I sing about weapons and a man, who first fled from the shores of Troy to Italy by fate.” Now Fitzgerald: “I sing of warfare and a man at war. / From the sea-coast of Troy in early days / He came to Italy by destiny…”

Fitzgerald knew how Latin meter sounded to the Romans. He knew how English speakers expect to hear poetry. He took into account the overall thrust, knowing that weapons and men foretold warfare and men at war. He had a feel for punctuation, which Latin generally lacks. The result is magisterial yet unpretentious. An Amazon.com review calls it “beautiful, accessible American English.”

The great translators are master conjurers. They help one world give birth to itself inside another. They do not simply preserve text, as if they were embalmers. Like the great poets and prose artists they study, they can throw down a phrase like a sledgehammer. They make this look easy.

Unintelligible run-on sentences, “suggesting that the Blood of Christ and the power of the Spirit are instrumental in scattering God’s children,” are not sledgehammers. They have no ease and they give birth to nothing. They are not beautiful, accessible English. They, and the Missal they come with, are embalmed.

At Respect Life Sunday at the beginning of the month, the priest at the Mass I attended referred to the two “darkest times” in American history.  One was the blemish of slavery on our past. The other was the passage of Roe vs. Wade. (Incidentally, our history of atrocities against Native Americans and disregard of women as people before 1919 didn’t make the list.) Not surprisingly, the full-spectrum of life issues was not addressed; the death penalty and euthanasia didn’t get a mention (I think because “criminals” and “sick people” are less cuddly than babies.) The fixation on abortion whittled its focus down to an even finer point, squarely blaming irresponsible sex “just for pleasure” as being the source of this social ill. And aside from the cuddle factor, I think this is at the root of the Catholic fixation with abortion: it’s inextricably linked with our fixation on sex.

A couple years ago, I wrote a post about how arguments about abstinence and condoms in AIDS prevention in Africa sorely missed the point: there’s a lot of sex happening in Africa, and around the world, that is not consensual. This includes a lot of sex that results in pregnancy, here and the world over. To think that all unplanned pregnancies result from pleasure-seeking libertine behavior simplifies the issue in a way that is both insulting and dangerous. Because if we don’t accept that non-consensual sex can result in pregnancy (which can result in abortion), then we’re focused on the wrong end of the spectrum, the unwanted symptom rather than the (I hope) equally unwanted cause.

Some “moderates” acknowledge this reality in their wish to end abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with insisting that anti-abortion morals must apply across the board; if you believe life begins at conception, then the way that life began is irrelevant. I get that. But if that’s where you’re coming from, at the very least, please, please acknowledge the many nuanced, painful elements that figure into every unwanted pregnancy. Yes, it’s easier to point the finger and cite “irresponsible sex” as the cause — but that’s really just an irresponsible simplification.

I’ll be upfront about where I stand. I’m politically pro-choice, meaning that I don’t want abortion to be illegal. But I want to end abortion, too. I want to end abortion by ending the rape of nine-year-old girls by their stepfathers; I want to end abortion by ending the sneers and judgment we heap upon single mothers when they have trouble controlling their child in the supermarket or on the city bus, sneers and judgments these women never would have had to endure if they’d just quietly “taken care of” it. I want to end abortion by offering help to families in crisis throughout the full span of the child’s life, not just the cute baby stage. Yes, it’s wonderful for churches to collect diapers and little sleepers, but it’s equally important that they collect school supplies, feminine hygiene products, resources about financial aid for college. Because no baby who is born stays a baby forever, and too often, we turn away within the first two years — as long as the baby got itself good and born, our consciences can rest easy.

But they can’t, not when we still live in a world where there’s a one in four chance that that baby, if she’s a girl, will be sexually molested at some point in her life (one in six if he’s a boy). Not when we still live in a world where a Catholic school will fire a teacher for being pregnant and unmarried. Not when we live in a world where our best solution to poverty is incarceration or moralizing about how the poor shouldn’t be having sex in the first place (which is what the “only have as many children as you can afford” argument basically boils down to.)

I want to end abortion. But first, I want to end rape, poverty, judgment, and lack of education and resources. That’s an overwhelmingly tall order, even a pipe dream. But ending abortion won’t make any of these other issues disappear. And I have a feeling that if we could address some of these underlying issues, abortion would diminish without much additional effort devoted to it. I would love to create a world where we can find out.

When I was unemployed, I was a devotee (in a totally ironic and hip way, of course) of the latest of late-night television. It was the kind of TV that goes with a third-rate motel room lit by a single hanging bulb, its glow fighting through a nimbus of Marlboro smoke.

There was Tony Robbins, who blamed my troubles on my inability to “feel good now.” A blond woman offered a free month’s supply of pills to enhance “that certain part of the male anatomy.”

A man with a mullet sold knives in one-minute offers. I had one minute to call in for a samurai sword. I had one minute for a stainless-steel flip-open that hid well “in a backpack or a shoe.” Billy Mays pitched marvelous contraptions with magnetic and clip-on properties for several months after his death.

Mostly I watched televangelists. Fred Price, who depending on his mood is the Apostle Fred Price or Dr. Frederick K.C. Price (and who, also depending on his mood, may appear in a double-breasted suit or in a cardinal’s cassock with red piping and sash), told me to pay no attention to the economy because God was bigger than any economy. Joyce Meyer said God would prosper me if I was more enthusiastic at the office, which I could no longer go to.

Mike Murdock held court every night with the same program in a perpetual “Groundhog Day” loop. He explained that because of his tithing, “God has kept me in clothes for thirty-eight years,” including an abundance of suits costing several thousand dollars each with tags still on them. He and T.D. Jakes had put a mutual anointing on each other so that whenever God gave one “a million-dollar donation or a jet,” the other would get the same.

We could share Murdock’s endless bounty if we “planted a seed” (i.e., contributed to his ministry). It was urgent that we do so, because Jesus was “coming back very soon,” so we needed to “have a debt-free home.” The connection eluded me.

Murdock asked the audience to hold up their wallets so he could bless them. Those who did not have a wallet could share the wallet of somebody next to them. At home we could run and get our wallets, or just hold up our hands and imagine wallets in them.

I do not think the “prosperity gospel” has fully arrived. There is a reason it comes on TV at the hour it does. But the movement is big enough to be worrisome. I recommend God’s Profits by Sarah Posner as a primer.

Even prosperity preachers who refrain from obvious extortion (as do the most suave and successful ones, like Meyer, Jakes, and Joel Osteen) still endorse the underlying, tempting mentality. God provides great personal success in exchange for great personal faith. Outside realities do not intervene.

Even before the crash, our society was dangerously susceptible to such preaching, given our fascination with things that are loud, big, shiny, red, never-before-seen, bleeding (see “red”), fifty percent off, and on fire. Now it could be, and likely is, much worse.

I appreciate Catholicism for being mostly immune. We have not preached economic justice consistently. But a still, small voice always survives, keeping detractors at bay.

It appears first in the New Testament (“the last shall be first and the first shall be last,” “and they held all things in common”). It was embodied in the simplicity and intentional community of monasticism, and by individuals like Francis. It was evident to Aquinas, who noted that “those things which some possess in excess of reasonable needs are owed by natural law to the sustenance of the poor” (Summa Theologica II.II, 66, art. 7).

Catholic officialdom eventually climbed aboard. Economic justice has been central to papal social encyclicals from Leo XIII onward. This emphasis freed others to expand on the theme, culminating in liberation theology, with its “preferential option for the poor.” And we can’t forget so many recent prophets: Dorothy Day, the Berrigans, Merton, Romero.

Overall, Catholicism teaches there is enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed. We are not to focus on achieving prosperity by faith or works. We are to seek justice for all.

But this is, as they often say, our best-kept secret. I wish those awesome people occupying Wall Street were all quoting Populorum Progressio. Of course they’re not. I wish Archbishop Timothy Dolan were camping there with a sign saying: “Jesus was one of the 99 Percent.” Of course he isn’t.

And matter how many people support the occupation right now, millions more are lost and alone, flipping channels in the dark and seeking magic. If the Catholic Church can’t reach them in this hour, this deciding hour, we might never live it down.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix is issuing new “norms” (euphemism for “restrictions”) for the reception of Communion under both kinds. Parishes that gave out both Body and Blood on a regular basis must limit it to certain occasions. The early Christians would be puzzled, but Olmsted, citing Rome, holds his flock to more exacting standards.

Phoenix obviously offers reasons for the changes, which you can find at “Questions and Answers: Norms for Reception of Holy Communion Under Both Forms”. I try to stay within seven or eight hundred words, so I’ll pick just a couple of points. (Since the document has been updated at least once, my comments are based on the text as I accessed it October 2.)

For one, the “Questions and Answers” specifically speak of a “relaxing of restrictions,” not their creation (3). This claim hinges on new guidelines in the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. Ritual rules from Rome are always the baseline, and no, Rome has never permitted both bread and wine for everybody all of the time. But allowances can be made, and are made.

Such allowances were formerly granted by bishops’ conferences alone. But under the new rules, the diocesan ordinary has considerable personal latitude. So restrictions actually are relaxed…if you’re a bishop like Olmsted.

Meanwhile, we must consider that “in this country, the Church had special permission to experiment with Holy Communion under both forms for 25 years” (13). (Spoiled Americans!) And when you factor in global poverty (booze is always pricey), most Catholics can’t ever get near the wine anyhow. (Spoiled Americans!)

Thus, when we properly understand how Phoenix fits into the universal Church (“from the broadest, most inclusive perspective”), we realize Olmsted is actually continuing the “great expansion of the practice” of offering the cup (13). Amazing, right?

This is Machiavellian doublespeak. Restrict the cup if you will, but do not insult people’s intelligence by saying the diocese giveth because it taketh away. I also see a curious inversion of what mothers tell their picky eaters at dinnertime: “Don’t drink your milk, there are starving kids in India.”

Second, I observed the list of the times both Body and Blood “may be offered” (11). Namely: “at the Chrism Mass and feast of Corpus Christi.…to a Catholic couple at their wedding Mass, to first communicants and their family members, confirmation candidates and their sponsors, as well as deacons, non-concelebrating priests, servers and seminarians at any Mass, as well as community members at a conventual Mass or those on a retreat or at a spiritual gathering.” (A local priest may also designate “other important solemnities” like the feast of a parish patron.)

Notice the substance of what Olmsted will apparently enforce. Communion under both species is specially reserved for those dressed for the part (“servers” but not, for example, “lectors”), any priests who happen to be around at the time (“non-concelebrating” indicates you aren’t on the altar), men who will become clergy (“seminarians”), and vowed religious (“conventual Mass” is the community Mass of a convent, monastery, or other religious house). Special people need not be constrained by special occasions, like the rest of us.

The rest of us. Olmsted is wary of the rest of us: “In normal circumstances, only priests and deacons are to distribute Holy Communion; when both forms of Communion are used frequently, ‘extraordinary’ ministers of Holy Communion are disproportionately multiplied” (4:5). The result is a “practical need to avoid obscuring the role of the priest and the deacon as the ordinary ministers of Holy Communion by an excessive use of extraordinary (or lay) ministers” (12).

Jamie Manson, when quoting those points in her NCR column last week, wryly observed: “The multitude of lay hands, it seems, is starting to make [Olmsted] feel uncomfortably outnumbered.”

And there it is. To quote TV detective Adrian Monk, “Here’s what happened.”

In the eyes of the hierarchy (Olmsted is likely just the trial balloon), people don’t know their place anymore. They are a rude, demanding mob. We need to restore the Eucharist, the big event of the week, as a kind of etiquette class, making it perfectly clear who’s who. From there, we might stamp out other problems with “obscured roles”: women trying to be priests, LGBTQ people exercising the rights of cisgender straight people, notions of married priests, etc. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place.

But in the Church, where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female” (Galatians 3:28), we have to turn first to the life and example of Jesus. As Garry Wills wrote in What Jesus Meant, Jesus “walks through social barriers and taboos as if they were cobwebs.” Seizing the Eucharist, and using it to spin up a blizzard of cobwebs, is a sin.

UPDATE 11/15/11: Bishop Olmsted rescinds the Communion policy; allows for “wide use of wine.” Read it at: Final Phoenix Communion norms allow wide use of wine | National Catholic Reporter

A little over a week ago, I drove two hours to the hospital where my grandma was staying. On that Friday night, all of her children and as many of her grandchildren as could make it went to say goodbye. Earlier that day, my mom’s voice broke on the phone as she told me that they’d decided to stop treatment and to let Grandma go. The doctor predicted she’d be gone within 24 hours.

This was at the end of a harrowing two weeks when an allergic reaction had started a downward spiral into a myriad of health complications, not the least of which was my grandmother’s Parkinsons. When the doctors told her the inactivity and stress would likely make it impossible for her to regain sufficient muscle control to walk or eat on her own again, she asked her children to stop treatment. All the experts said she’d never go home, even if she made it through this health crisis; she’d have to go into a nursing home, which she and my grandfather were set against. So her family honored her wishes, and as the day wore on, our prayers changed from, “Please let her pull through,” to “Please let her go peacefully.”

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 ”No one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins.” -Mark 2:21-22

At this same time three years ago I can remember eagerly following the events of World Youth Day, which was taking place in Sydney, Australia. I was unable to attend in person, but I remained glued to the television, taking in all of the exciting festivities that were occurring during that week-long celebration of faith.

Since 2005, when the event was held in Cologne, Germany (and I began to feel intensely drawn to Catholicism), I had fostered the desire to attend a celebration of World Youth Day at some date in the future. Witnessing so many young people who were excited, driven, and vibrant about their faith in Christ was wonderfully inspiring to me. Throughout my life my faith has always been an abiding mainstay. Yet, even if America technically remains a Christian nation, most people of my generation either practice their faith nominally or are indifferent towards it.

As I grew in my understandings of the world around me, I came to view this reality less from a judgmental standpoint and more from one of discouragement. I knew what a great source of empowerment and joy my own faith was, and it saddened me to know that other people my age didn’t really seem interested in cultivating such an aspect in their lives. From what I saw, the people who were in my age category at my parish did not participate in the life of the church voluntarily - because they enjoyed and felt fulfilled by it - but rather, because they had been prodded into these activities by their parents or other family members. Consequently, I never really felt that I could share the intensity I had for my Catholic faith with most other people my age without seeming odd or unusual.

This is why the entire premise behind World Youth Day resonated so profoundly with me. The opportunity to travel to another country and to gather in fellowship with other Catholics who shared my love of the church and ardent faith in Jesus Christ I knew would be a powerful respite that would spur me to remain steadfast and confident in sharing the light of the Gospel with others. Also, the chance to meet other like-minded Catholics with whom I could forge new friendships was an uplifting prospect.

To coincide with 2008′s World Youth Day, the Vatican attempted to tap into the buzz that had surrounded social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and created their own networking tool called Xt3, which was designed to connect pilgrims before or after they had attended World Youth Day in Sydney. I eagerly signed on to this effort, anxious to meet other Catholics from around the world who shared the same vivacity about their faith that I did.

For awhile I stayed connected to this initiative and saw it as a way of getting more closely involved with those who might be attending World Youth Day in the future. But I began to notice something startling. At this point in my life, I was just beginning to define my identity in terms of my sexuality as well as my political beliefs. As I began sharing this process of exploration with those whom I had befriended online I noticed that many people did not have a very open-minded attitude when presented with these topics. Eventually, certain people began to take it upon themselves to denounce me as a heretic, warning me that I was consigning myself to eternal damnation for holding such opinions.

As I gradually moved to a new position of enlightenment and stability in my faith I began to see this online forum as less and less relevant to my personal growth and edification. I’m happy to say that I have maintained contact with several people whom I met through this website who have continued to remained supportive of me since I came out and learned to see my faith in a new, more objective light. But as a whole, the website no longer serves any substantive purpose in my life. Sadly, the very same conclusion can be reached concerning World Youth Day today.

How productive is this gathering if those who participate are not allowed to bring all of the experiences, perspectives, and unique insights that form the foundations of what it means to be a youth in todays’ world? Would this not be the avenue par excellence to enter into dialogue on a variety of topics that the church’s youth could offer a refreshing and compelling take on? For example, why not establish opportunities during the course of the festivities where designated sessions of conversation might be able to take place concerning such issues?

The institutional church would like to give the impression that this is precisely what occurs during World Youth Day. However, the question and answer sessions that usually take place over the course of the week are usually very contrived with the questions being screened and picked beforehand. As far as the responses from those who conduct these venues go, they are always exhortations to follow the Catechism and ecclesiastical doctrines to the most minute letter of the law.

In a sense, all of this could be viewed as a subtle form of brainwashing. Perhaps this is why, when I began to expound and become confident in new ideas, others on Xt3 were so quick to respond in a discouraging and condescending manner. If the youth of today’s church aren’t allowed to embrace an adult approach to their faith how can the universal Church ever grow and make a meaningful impact on society if it is composed of children relying on their eccelsiastical parents for the answers to life’s questions?

Despite such inertia, a glimmer of hope can be found. Our fellow 20/30 members Nicole Sotelo and Emily Jendzejec attended last month’s most recent celebration of World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain as official ambassadors of Call to Action, spreading the message of reform and renewal throughout their stay. One day, they took the opportunity to promote the dignity of LGBT youth within the church by offering rainbow ribbons to passersby in an effort to build solidarity for this cause. Although Pope Benedict, nor any of the prelates gathered there would have never even contemplated such a gesture, many pilgrims responded positively, pinning the rainbow ribbons to their shirts. A young Spanish priest even commended Nicole and Emily for their presence at World Youth Day – a remarkable sign indeed!

Instead of being theological versions of ideological political conventions it would be wonderful if future World Youth Days could truly be seen as venues to approach the challanges and questions the church faces with the joy, hope and objectivity that the experience of youth can bring.  In this way, the words of the late, Blessed John XXIII would be brought to abundant fruition, “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”