Gary Wills on the loss of the sacred

Great stuff on the loss of the sacred, from Gary Wills in Bare Ruined Choirs (a bracingly cynical read).

He points out the obvious, that the Council was conceived and run by the Pope, the bishops and a select number of theologians, not by the faithful. “The Mass was not brought into the vernacular for him–the laity did not ask for the change … the innovations were made in the name of freedom, though they had to be imposed on many laymen, and Latin was not even retained as an option, as a gesture to men’s right of choice. The priest, you see, was the one being freed–the priest, with his face to the wall before him, his only contact with the congregation a brace of juveniles (aka altar boys).”

“Escape from Latin involved for these men more than the Latin Mass; it meant the breviary as well, and–most important–it meant escape from the years of theology learned in Latin by rote … Vatican II was a theologians’ rebellion, that of the periti (expert consultants) against the Curia. The Latin theology class was resented even more than that of the Mass–and both were resented by younger faculty and the recently ordained, not by laymen.”

The layman came to church “to do things–witness the miracle, and believe in it; consume the eucharist, and believe in that. Belief, as a result of the priest’s formulation (and of the people’s expectations, formed on that), had been ritualized; it was not a thing one heard about or held by intellect, but a rite to be gone through. Change the rite, and belief would inevitably change, despite all assurances that it was changeless. A Monsignor addressing the Latin Mass Society of England in 1967 put the matter with stark truthfulness: ‘The Blessed Sacrament has been removed from the high altar by the simple expedient of turning the altar around.’ When the shrine, a thing removed, was brought down into the congregation’s midst, the whole genius of devotion at (and to) that shrine evaporated.”

Tags: loss of the sacred, mystery, Vatican II