"Rituals are objective and piety is subjective," states Monsignor Douglas Fater (Archdiocese of San Antonio) who recently authored an article (The Priest, May 2013) about the New Roman Missal and personal piety (of the priest at Mass), noting that priests should allow the rituals of the Church to speak for themselves, letting the Church’s beauty and mystery speak to the people and allow for a dialogue to take place in the Mass be-tween the people and God as mediated by the priest-presider.
I found this article interesting and very poignant particu-larly as I meet with families who are trying to "catch up" with their "older" children’s sacraments – children beyond the age of reason (7 years old) and even into their early teens who have not yet made their Baptism, First Reconciliation or First Holy Com-munion. Some families have encountered difficulty from the Church’s representatives when they seek to come back. The fami-ly reasons for the delay might be many: from sports taking a pri-ority over religious education and Mass attendance as a family to unreasonable priests and parish leaders who insert their own be-liefs (piety) into Church teaching and Canon Law. For me, the latter is what ties into this article by Monsignor Fater.
Monsignor Fater writes about the Roman Missal (formerly called the Sacramentary)—that big red book the priests uses during the celebration of the Mass —and how the ritual of the Church which is laid out in the Roman Missal, when prayed reverently, allows the beauty and depth of the Church’s prayer life to speak to each and every person—meeting them where they are on their individual journeys of faith. The problem arises when priests, even well intentioned ones, add their own piety to the rituals and teachings—changing them—and their meaning.
By way of example, Monsignor Fater cites a priest that elevates the host during the Consecration and holds the host in the air for three or four or more minutes in adoration saying, "Look at Jesus. How much He loves us." This is not part of the Mass! "Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Take and eat.’ Jesus did not say ‘Take and gaze.’" Furthermore, that is not what the ritual says to do. Rather, one is told to elevate the host slightly above the altar and then may ring the bells three (3) times, lowering the host to the paten. The ritual is prayerful and reverent, not elongated. "The third edition of the Roman Missal does NOT exhort the pre-sider to ad lib personal piety," according to Monsignor Fater. Neither do the teachings of the Church or Canon Law, but rather the laws and teachings of the Church are meant to be offered pastorally to each and every member of the faithful. That does not mean that the teachings or laws are not meant to be observed but rather that we are not to add more burdens to the life of the faithful, but are called to guide them and help them see how applicable the faith is to modern life. Yes, absolute truths cannot be separated from life. But life is not always black and white; forgiveness and mercy added to the truth are what Christ com-mands of us.
What does that mean to the unbaptized 13 year old or the 11 year old who has yet to make his or her First Holy Com-munion, or the infant of unmarried parents? It means we work with them. It means with offer Christ’s Truth and then work to find a way to pastorally bring them back to the faith and to His Church. In our parish it means that our religious education has programs to help committed parents who have been away from the Church but who now recognize the Church as relevant to their families and want to "come home". It means that we meet with couples and offer the sacrament of Baptism for their child whose soul we must care for deeply. It means we meet folks where they are, offer Christ’s words of Truth and do our best as humanly possible to reconcile and renew—offering Christ’s love to them. Without being irreverent of too simplistic, we need to consider the Kellogg’s commercial albeit reworked a bit: "Catholicism: try it again for the first time." Our faith is not just a ritual here or a prayer there—we, all of us, are called to preach Christ wherever we are in life: the priest in the pulpit, mom and dad at the family dinner table, and most especially in the person-al decisions we make as lay faithful and then offer them as ex-amples of Christian living to our children. Each one of us has been called to be His light and love, not just the priest or reli-gious sister. At Confirmation this year, Archbishop Emeritus Daniel A. Cronin told the Confirmands that he preached from the ambo—as he stood there during his homily…but he chal-lenged the Confirmands to preach from their vantage point in life…in the midst of the opportunities Christ gives each of us He offers us to be His light in the world. Will we respond? Will we do it with joy? Will we do it faithfully in the Church’s tradition? "Ritual is objective, piety is subjective," and that goes for more than just the priest.