UNDERSTANDING THE LITURGY by John J. O'Brien, C.P.

A BIG SHIFT: FROM LATIN MASS TO A SOUND PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY WORSHIP

Most Catholics do not appreciate how much we have changed, adapted, and negotiated a contemporary style of worship. Nor are we proud enough of the effort we have put into liturgical renewal.

United States liturgical pioneers back in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s were talking about the priest facing the people, a Mass where people participated in the Latin, and the hopes for worship in one's native tongue. I remember following the Latin Mass with a Latin-English missal in my high school years in the 1950s. The missal was the only way to access the words and the meaning since most Americans at that time did not speak Latin. Mass required personal devotion and participation. It did not demand full, conscious, active assembly participation. That came in 1962 when the Spirit moved the Bishops to change from Latin to local languages. By 1969 Catholics in the U.S. began celebrating liturgy in their own tongues.

For three decades we Catholics have changed. Missals were no longer really needed after 1969, although we were terribly afraid to get away from the earlier habits of printed texts in our hands. Nor had anyone articulated the huge difference between rooting our worship in experience instead of print ,i.e. a worship rooted in trusting our senses instead of our missals or missalettes.

The renowned Jesuit scholar and humanist, Walter J. Ong, penned a superb explanation of the meaning of print and literacy in world cultures. Here are some of his points.

First, we are blessed with literacy. Put us all together in a library, lecture hall, or church building and we can read. How does literacy and print shape us? Unlike the ancients who read everything aloud, we moderns read silently, with nose in the text, following line by line till we are done. Each reads at one's own pace irrespective of anyone else's pace. The experience is incredibly private, even when done in the company of others. Print privatizes and reading isolates the person from others.

Secondly, we usually think that the opposite of literacy is illiteracy. But the opposite is really orality. Oral cultures are traditional, not primitive. Oral communication styles are quite sophisticated. Oral peoples rely on sound, not print, speech, not sight, song and chant, not recitation. They usually appreciate the lyrical quality of the sounds we identify as speech and song.

Thirdly, when we hear someone proclaiming God's Word aloud and with feeling, when we join in communal song, when we look at the person praying the petitions we hear, we are leaving behind our literacy and entering into an earlier way of experiencing and knowing, an older path of appreciating and cherishing.

When we listen attentively to the Scriptures being proclaimed, we do a communal action. We look at ministers of the Word as they present and proclaim the Word. We listen so that the speech-act may touch us simultaneously and together. We catch the resonance, the sound that echoes within the chords of our hearts, that evokes our faith, and that enkindles our dedication. For this we are grateful.