The Injustice of an Irreverent Mass

'Surely it’s hubris to think man’s entertainment could be the draw toward the Church? The actions, objects, and setting of the Mass are not the draw—they point to Him who is.'

From Crisis

By Sarah Cain

Carelessly-celebrated Masses are still all-too-common, wherein the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is reduced to a kumbaya session.

Some recent summertime travel caused me to venture into another diocese. As a daily Mass goer, I was thrilled to be in a rental only a block from the basilica. On a Friday afternoon, we entered a beautiful church. We sat in a pew, three of us wearing veils, and were suddenly aware of how disparate we were from the aging parishioners around us. The population of the parish was exclusively elderly, which forewarned us of the liturgy that we could expect. There’s an undeniable association between an overwhelmingly elderly parishioner class and the style of celebration of the Mass that either attracted them or drove everyone else away.

Soon, the priest appeared, singing a vaguely religious song a capella. During and after the consecration, we were heartbroken by the manner in which he treated Our Lord. There was, within myself and my companions, an overwhelming desire to make reparations to Christ and to protect Him from the one whose duty it is to do so. We watched as the priest held the host one-handed, announcing “The Body of Christ” like a living contradiction, as his mannerisms belied a lesser recognition of whom he held in his hand.

He would later clean the vessels with one brief pass of a purificator (cloth), followed by dumping it in the chalice and setting both to the side. His irreverence was scandalous, for his actions conveyed an apostasy. We are informed by the behaviors of others. How people act tells us what they believe. So, a priest acting thusly misinforms his flock.

Careless Masses such as this are not a unique experience—sadly, it’s not even rare. It’s become a too-common reality wherein the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is reduced to a kumbaya session in which the consecration is treated as getting in the way of the “important” things that people want to do. It’s the reduction of the Holy Sacrifice to a “service,” to something to do with fellowship and perhaps vaguely related to the Last Supper.

Some argue that our proper priority is to be welcoming rather than to yield to what they condemn as “legalism.” In fact, they posit that such casual and irreverent liturgies are in some way preferable because they’re more accessible to strangers who might have otherwise been confused by gestures and symbolism that they don’t understand. It all seems rather backward, as if it were possible for a church to become a place of such entertainment that it would compete with the secular world and draw in crowds.

And what if it did? To whom would be the victory, if we filled our churches with people who came merely to be entertained? But the proposition that reductionism results in increased parishioners is also a demonstrable fallacy, for the guitar Mass and thoughtless priests aren’t filling churches, they’re emptying them.

Those newcomers who visit Catholic churches and who find something quite unique—altogether different from what they find in the world—that’s who’ll stay. And it’s those converts who soon get jeered at for their zealotry and “legalism” by advocates of Broadway Masses. Many such converts run major traditional Catholic publications.

Those who are aware of the presence of God want to be around those who acknowledge it too, and they want to treat Him with love. They thirst for richness, depth, history, and transcendence, along with an ever-deepening understanding of the timeless symbolism in every facet of what we do at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. A lifetime spent learning such things inclines itself to proper humility.

Even the linens used in the Mass symbolize the labor and mortification necessary in purifying ourselves, as the stems of the flax are beaten, purified, and bleached to become the whitened linen used for such purposes. The naysayers are right that the symbolism in action, word, and object in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is overwhelming, overshadowing us. Yes, it is—Deo gratias. It’s also beautiful.

Surely it’s hubris to think man’s entertainment could be the draw toward the Church? The actions, objects, and setting of the Mass are not the draw—they point to Him who is. They all serve to indicate that something entirely unique is happening. Together, they echo John the Baptist as he said, “He must increase, I must decrease.” The people, likewise, should disappear into the liturgy itself. We point to God with the best of what we have, in our highest form of worship. We don’t toss Him aside in cheap bakeware because He’s getting in the way of the next hip song we want to sing and sway to.

There is a reductionism inherent in our embracing of the modern at the expense of Him who is outside of time, and it causes us to fail to transcend—to see beyond our current moment and into eternity. It’s a tragedy and an injustice if one could be inside a church and be locked within the walls of the here and now, blind and deaf to anything that is not timebound and contemporary. Worship of the transcendent God takes us out of ourselves, beyond past, present, and future, and touches us to the timeless now of divine eternity. Such an experience, even if fleeting, could convince us that we are made for so much more than any here-and-now could ever give us. The Church must answer the call of the Good Shepherd, who leads us out of this present darkness.

Some people who enjoy the flexibility of nondemanding Masses will herald the “options” that the Church has allowed since the 1970s, in her attempt at making things friendly, inclusive, or even simply faster. But irreverent Masses should not be an option. A Mass that is not Christocentric is offensive and unjust. This is not a comment on the Novus Ordo versus the Traditional Latin Mass—though it is hard to ignore that the former is the most reverent when it looks most like the latter. In any event, dutiful respect should not be optional. Misinforming parishioners of the Truth by one’s actions and thus malforming their consciences should not be a licit option.

It’s not unusual to talk to converts who first visited a reverential Mass and were completely lost—and yet in love. The liturgy has the power to take one out of himself, to humble us, and to demonstrate something far greater than ourselves. That’s not a defect. It doesn’t need to become as banal as we are. Our smallness in relation to His greatness is the Truth.

And paradoxically, it points to why man has such a majestic dignity: because his rational soul bears likeness with his Maker, the one who holds him in existence. It’s what makes man’s adoption as a child of God at Baptism all the more incredible, as a pure gift without the possibility of repayment. If we believe all of this, our worship should reflect it.