If you can experience religious trauma, I did. I went to a diocesan synod meeting for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, my diocese now. The two-hour listening experience left me filled with a silent scream, “I want my Vatican II Church back!”
Here’s some context. Our present Archbishop Robert Casey, fondly known here as Casey at the bat, began leading our Archdiocese about a year and a half ago. He shared some seminary life with San Bernardino’s Bishop Alberto Rojas, and they both served as auxiliary bishops in Chicago. A couple months ago, Archbishop Casey began a Diocesan Synod in our Archdiocese.
Synods are consultative groups that go way back to the early centuries of the Church. They are formal gatherings called to discuss questions of faith, worship, discipline, or pastoral life. So, our synod’s goal is “…to discern needs and recommend pastoral priorities for the future to Archbishop Casey.”
I attended a Sept 19 discussion for laypeople (non-ordained), even though there were other sessions designated for members of religious orders. I figured I knew what nuns thought, but wanted to hear what non-nuns said! My assigned table had eight members, four men and four women. I was happy to see that three of them were parents of fourth graders, while the rest of us were older than that. Beforehand we had been asked to reflect on “your experience of faith and the Church, what stands out to you—experiences of joy or hope, difficulty or disappointment, belonging or exclusion, encounter or longing.” So, we began there, using the synodality discussion model: each person first speaks for as many as three minutes without interruption or comments from others, followed by two other guided short rounds of remarks from each of us.
To my shock, in the first round, six members used their three minutes to talk in various ways about the meaning they found in Eucharistic Adoration and their dismay with Eucharistic liturgy. Of course they included examples of their unhappiness with Sunday Eucharist. Lay Eucharist ministers overstep their role if they distribute when the priest could handle it, one asserted. “Communion in the hand makes me sick,” said another, elaborating at length. There is no sense of reverence in the Mass; even servers wear athletic shoes! In the next round of discussion, these remarks and others of that ilk got amplified. When I could, I interjected little comments, like that Vatican II wanted us to honor the earlier centuries of our faith, closer to the time of Jesus and the witnesses and apostles; or that Vatican II stressed our common Baptism as the foundation for all ministry and the call to universal holiness. It looked to me like this was “new news” for some around the table. That startled look also happened if I referenced any scriptural basis for beliefs, like the “body of Christ” in St. Paul’s letters means the community, not the consecrated bread. A couple times sweeping statements were made, like “well the bishops all stick together,” or “the catechism is just as bad” as the post Vatican II catechesis that made it okay to skip Confession or Mass (not true, of course!). When we were gathering up our things to leave, the older woman to my left timidly asked me: “Sister, is it okay if I still receive the host in my hand?” (I did a quick catechesis which included St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s instruction (c350) on receiving in the hand.)
Now of course I have no way of knowing if my table was typical of the other tables in the room. But it would not surprise me if it were. This Archdiocese has for years been influenced by conservative Catholic movements, including for us, particularly the movement associated with Steubenville University in nearby Indiana. So, when Archbishop Casey arrived, he found a number of his parishes where younger priests were saying Mass with their backs to the congregation, with communion rails reestablished, and so on. Meanwhile, Vatican II parishioners had fled to neighboring parishes, leaving diminished congregations behind. Many of my Sisters of the Precious Blood come from families in those parishes, so I’ve heard lots of stories!
Across the U.S., there are four or five significant conservative movements which are not schismatic; that is, they recognize Vatican II as a legitimate Ecumenical Council. But they also have adopted styles of Catholic practice that do not seem to flow from the most fundamental or grounding teachings of Vatican II. For me, and many U.S. Sisters, this is a real spiritual blow. More than any other group in the U.S. Church, we were the ones who first learned and internalized what Vatican II was doing and then pitched in to help inform and form our lay brothers and sisters about it. There was such excitement and energy throughout the Church as this happened, in the 1970s and ‘80s. Adults actually came to classes in those days, to learn the scripture and theology and history behind the Council and its changes. These also were the decades when many Religious left to marry, but the Holy Spirit was at work. Lay Catholics took their places. Dioceses began lay formation programs to certify lay teachers and catechists, and Sisters helped start and taught in many of them. So perhaps you can understand how sad we U.S. Sisters feel when we encounter this “reform of the reform” movement, which is also worldwide.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Casey had been at the bat. What I did not know, as I attended this wounding session, was that two days before he had issued his first pastoral letter--about Eucharist! It’s titled “That All May Be One,” and it oozes Vatican II theology. For example, it lifts up the Vatican II theology of how the real presence of Christ infuses the entire Mass, and gives it a “Casey” flavor by emphasizing Christ’s active presence. His letter contexts the consecrated Body of Christ firmly within the gathered Body of Christ in its diversity and completeness. And his letter is gently corrective: “The norm by which we receive Holy Communion—that is, processing forward and standing to receive—is rooted in ancient practice and filled with theological significance. This procession is a reminder that we are a Church on pilgrimage to the heavenly kingdom and the promise of eternal life… It should not be the case that an individual elects a different posture solely for the sake of demonstrating personal piety.”
Conservative Catholics do have important intuitions and critiques in what they say. Our Eucharistic liturgy does still need revision to increase our recognition that we are gathered with the Holy One. We should be able to “feel” something. The God of comfort and accompaniment, often met in private adoration, is hidden within the formality, cerebral wordiness, introversion and noise of traditional Roman liturgy. Conservatives also feel alarmed at the moral disintegration of our culture. They want their Church’s help, including during the homily sometimes, to keep us and our young formed in virtue and character.
That said, our Church somehow failed to do effective and sustained communication and teaching about the foundational theology of Vatican II, which in my opinion remains just as relevant today as it was in 1964. It seems to me that the intuitions and hungers of conservative Catholics have not been well nourished by the history that led to the Council, by the necessary connection between beliefs and scripture, by the liturgical practices of early Catholics, or by understanding the other guiding principles behind the teachings of Vatican II. Unfortunately for Eucharist then, Adoration gets personally prized over Mass, and Mass becomes more of an unsatisfactory private devotion instead of the public worship of the gathered community.
The bishops of the world should indeed “all stick together,” as the young man said, and develop a pastoral plan to light up the world again with the fire of Vatican II. Some say we need another Ecumenical Council. But it seems to me what we need is unified and sustained methods of communicating and forming our Church members in the spirituality of Vatican II, still an unfinished priority after all these years.
Sister Mary Garascia, PhD (Theology), is a member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood of Dayton, Ohio, where she now resides. Formerly, she lived and ministered at The Holy Name of Jesus in Redlands. You can follow her weekly Sunday scripture blogs at PreciousBloodSistersDayton.org.