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Published: February 8, 2008

“The resisters”

Dissident theologian says Paul VI’s liturgical reforms threatened by small but influential faction inside the Vatican

A small group of Vatican insiders has never accepted the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical reforms, a “powerful but determined” clique that continues to resist the changes wrought by Pope Paul VI, says well-known dissident theologian Fr. Richard McBrien.

Writing in his column published in the Feb. 1 Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese, McBrien calls members of this group “resisters.”

The subject of McBrien’s column was a new book, A Challenging Reform, by Archbishop Piero Marini, papal master of ceremonies for Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. Though Marini should have succeeded Cardinal Francis Arinze as Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, says McBrien, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Marini president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses instead. Marini is no longer even papal MC.

The “powerful and determined group” would have “raised a holy ruckus” if Marini’s replacement of Arinze had even been contemplated, says McBrien, because Marini represents what they chiefly oppose – the “de-clericalization of the liturgy.” To this group of “resisters,” the “Church is identical with the hierarchy and the priests who serve under the bishops. The laity, on the other hand, are simply the beneficiaries of the sacramental ministrations of the clergy, in a process ultimately controlled by the Vatican.”

The “resisters” do not so much object to the vernacular Mass, but to the fact “that the laity could now fully understand it and actively participate in it.” For this reason, the “resisters” object to “the turning around of the altar to face the congregation,” removal of communion rails, reception of communion in the hand and while standing (and not kneeling), for “each of these changes signaled again that the laity are not passive observers at Mass, but active participants.”

A new ecclesiology, which is really what the “resisters” oppose, underlies all the post-conciliar liturgical changes, says McBrien. “The Communion rail is gone,” he says, “because there should be no barrier between the sanctuary and the worshiping congregation. Communion is given in the hand because the laity should feed themselves rather than be fed like infants or very young children. The communicants stand rather than kneel because they approach the priest as co-equals with him in Baptism, not as serfs coming before their lord and master to express their fealty.”

Marini’s book, says McBrien, not only “presents the case for the perennial validity of the council's liturgical reforms,” it “also challenges those who would, some 40 years later, attempt to undermine those reforms, in opposition not only to Vatican II but to the expressed wishes of Pope Paul VI himself.” In 1965, the pope said the “new way of doing things… will have to prevent and shake up the passivity of the people present at Mass. Before, it was enough to assist; now it is necessary to take part. Before, being there was enough, now attention and activity are required."

For McBrien, “the Mass is not something performed by the clergy, but is an action of the entire congregation. Like an orchestra leader, the priest-presider cannot presume to play all of the instruments himself, but must strive to bring them into a general harmony.”

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