Letters on Liturgy - Fr. Dwight Longenecker

 

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A significant crux of my conversion to Catholicism was    my dissatisfaction with Protestant- Evangelical worship. It always seemed narcissistic to put it in modern context. That is it was (and still is I assume) people centered. We sang songs "about" how "we" experienced him; they were not songs "to" God and how "He" objectively was.  The choir, piano, and organist were up front, on stage, like performers. When they performed we watched "them" and evaluated their performance. This is especially true today with the pop oriented "seeker" church movements with bands and drama performances on stage or video screens. 

Most egregious to me was the hour long sermons with the preacher demanding our attention. No, there was something more egregious to me: the lack of inspiring art on the walls, ironically rejected by my evangelical upbringing because there was a misguided claim that art drew our attention to the artist not to the subject of the art. This was a strange view since we hardly ever knew who the artist was, even if there was a name microscopically inscribed in the lower corner.  And the most obnoxious element of protestant evangelicalism (lower case on purpose) was the architecture, or lack of it. There was nothing about most churches (except perhaps the Crystal Cathedral) that lifted the soul upwards toward heaven. Visually the evangelical protestant churches were stuck to the wrong side of the iconoclastic heresy of the 700s. God was a good friend, my buddy, a chum, not the almighty. majestic, invisible creator behind the universe. 

For reasons I can only guess, my understanding of God was always one of awe. That may have developed because of my exposure to nature and the intricacies of creation and the wonder of the heavens; astronomy was an early hobby that mesmerized my imagination. 

Old St. Marys in Detroit, MI

Catholicism, and the Mass changed all that for me. Suddenly I was introduced to a way to worship God that  more befitted my (yes, it was still about my sinful perspective) view of who God was and how we should approach him. The longer I was Catholic, however, and attended a variety of Masses in various churches in the Detroit, MI metropolitan area, I saw elements of Protestant-Evangelical worship that turned me off. Some Masses (at particular parishes) were too friendly, and too "us" focused.  The music was pop, cheesy and trite. There were a couple of churches where the sign of peace became a party with everyone leaving their pews and wandering about the nave shaking hands, hugging, talking, and creating a vast disturbance just after the consecration of the wine and bread into the body and blood of our Lord. It was incongruous and distracting, it turned our attention from God to each other.

In recent years I've gravitated to the Tridentine Latin Mass, and I only wish there was a church, a gothic styled church, near me that celebrated it. The downside of a Tridentine Mass however, is that I can never follow the liturgy and thus worship with my mind because the priest never says much of anything out loud, except the homily, and when things are sung or said aloud, it's in Latin, which I don't understand. And the missals don't help. I've been to dozens of Latin Masses and the missals they hand out or that I bring with me are of little help. If the priest doesn't follow the missal in my hands exactly, I'm lost. 

Alas, I see that this post has become a narcissistic outlet appeasing my melancholy-choleric nature. Let me shift.

Pam, Stan, Fr. Dwight after Mass at
Our Lady of the Rosary, Greenville, SC

The parish I would most like to attend is Our Lady of the Rosary in Greenville, South Carolina pastored by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Just one problem...it's a 12 hour drive away. Many have moved to Greenville SC, however, with their large families because of this parish and their school. Pam and I have relatives in town and we've been there a few times. The Sunday 10:30 AM Mass is SRO. If you're late you get a chair in the aisle or foyer. Many of the families have a pew full of children. Fr. Dwight celebrates a New Order Mass, but there's a bunch of Latin thrown in, with an excellent schola choir and pipe organ in the balcony, and he celebrates the Eucharist ad orientem, with the people and the priest facing East together. Yes, the new church was deliberately built so the people and the priest face EAST during Mass.

This post is supposed to be about Fr. Dwight's book Letters on Liturgy (LOL). So, I'll finish with a few words about it. I've only read five of Fr. Dwight's 30 or so books. They're all good. He's easy to read. I can identify with him for a number of reasons including his easy non-technical choice of words, his Evangelical roots, his love for orthodox Catholicism, his preference for art (he was an art major before he turned to theology), his love of good stories, and no doubt because we're working together to produce a major television documentary on St. Michael's Sword. 

I wish more Catholic priests would read LOL and put the ideas the book contains into practice. Am I being narcissistic? No doubt, why else would I have a blog? (I have several, actually.)

In the Foreword to LOL, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone writes: 

This work is nothing less than a practical resource for priests to realize in their life and ministry the apologia for Christianity that a defiant world truly needs and unconsciously years for: the production of art from the Church's womb that mediates the presence of the sacred, and the witness of saints who personalize the power of the truth, beauty, and goodness of the transcendent majesty of God. 

Some quotes from LOL:

First Thoughts

...traditional Catholic worship is iconic...every person, every action, every vestment, every point of art and architecture, music and liturgical text functions like an icon—a door into the invisible realm of God's presence." (p 21)

Sacrifice or Sacred Feast 

The Extraordinary Form of the Mass is the Mass of the Ages and it therefore transcends particular time-periods and cultures. A traditional church building, Gregorian chant, traditional trained altar servers, and a traditional style of celebrating the mass rise above all our individual tastes, cultural influences, fashionable ideas, and political ideologies.  The very antiquity of such a liturgy gives it a transcendence that cannot be denied. (p 34) 

Priest: Wimp or Warrior? 

The priest must be a warrior, not a wimp. He is a man of sacrifice. He is one who hears Jesus Christ say, "Take up your cross and follow me," and "unless you take up your cross and follow me you cannot be my disciple." The way the priest does this is by offering the sacrifice of the Mass with due reverence and awe... (p 43) 

Celebration of the Mystery

Through the ritual we connect with the ancient truths in a symbolic and unspoken way, and it is through this language that we worship best. (p 53)

On the Mystery of Language

Worship is the way we step into the other side of reality. (p 59) 

Words, the Word, and the World

People need to see and hear how the faith is real in the lives of real people. [Therefore] Faith stories incarnate theology. Faith stories make real the truths you are preaching. (p 74) 

Plays and Playtime

It was through religious ritual, drama, and ceremonial storytelling that the ancient peoples participated in the deep truths locked in the myths, and it is through the liturgy that we do a kind of ceremonial storytelling that connects us at the deepest level with the life-changing drama of Jesus Christ. (p 79)

Fr. Dwight ad orientem Mass
Our Lady of Rosary, Greenville, SC

Priests and People

The altar servers are robed in white because they...represent the angels who serve God day and night. their function in the Mass...is a symbol of the constant service of the angels in the court of God. This is why at the consecration altar servers should kneel before the altar of God as the angels who cry "Holy, Holy, Holy." (p 91)

Beauty: The Language of Worship

Beauty is the language that really takes us beyond language. (p 98)

We open up to beauty, and as we do we also open up to truth and goodness because beauty, truth, and goodness are a little Holy Trinity. You cannot have beauty without truth and goodness. You cannot have goodness without beauty and truth and you cannot have truth without beauty and goodness. Three in one and one in three. (p 98-99)

Church art is not just pretty decoration. It is part of the whole act of worship. (p 103) 

Images, Art, and Icons

[Sacred Art is incarnational.]

Music: Praying Twice

What would it be like if we could hear the music of the spheres and the singing of the planets on their way? Sacred music is church is meant to bring us to the threshold of heaven—where we hear echoes of eternity.  The music in church should therefore be otherworldly, transcendent, and sublime. (p 146-147) 

Any kind of music performed badly is awful. The answer to poorly sung Gregorian chant is not to ban Gregorian chant, but to work harder to sing it well. (p 151) 

Okay, enough. I have to go to Mass. Today I'm taking our Chinese (Catholic) house guest to a Chaldean Catholic Mass, parts of which will be in Aramaic.  Jesus would like it.