The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Irish Style!

The Irish Independent national newspaper has a front page caption today of a priest who is offering his parishioners a "quickie" Mass during Lent which he guarantess will take no longer than 15 minutes.
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Fr. Michael Kenny of Kilconly parish in Co. Galway has introduced these 15 minute Masses to better facilitate his parishioners and their busy lives. Normally the Mass would be at 9am but that time proved to be inconvenient for many who had work and school to attend. And so he now offers the Mass at 7.30am for the duration of Lent.
(For those of you who are not Irish - it's important to understand that places in Ireland, like school and workplace, open soemwhat later than in many other countries.)

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The move has seen a 10 fold increase in those attending daily Mass for Lent (30-40 instead of 3-4). Fr. Kenny says: "Now, more and more people are coming along to the Mass at 7.30am as they know they can be on their way to work or school 15 or 20 minutes later and it is far more suitable."

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The paper (not the online edition) carries a breakdown of the 15 minute Mass and seems to join the parishioners (at least those who were interviewed) in their admiration for the Lenten Fast Mass. The "15 Minute Service", as the paper calls it, goes as follows:

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7.30am (Sharp) Mass begins with the Entrance Antiphon

7.31am Opening Prayer

7.32am First Reading

7.35am Responsorial Psalm

7.37am Gospel

7.39am Communion. Lay Minister of the Eucharist speeds up the distribution of communion.

7.44am Prayer after Communion.

7.45am Fr. Michael wishes the congregation a happy day. Mass over and congregation disperse.

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Now there are a number of problems with this timescale - not least how it is possible to pray the entire Eucharistic Prayer (even Eucharistic Prayer II) and the entire Communion Rite in 2 minutes - between 7.37am and 7.39. That seems to be an impossible feat. Perhaps I have misunderstood or perhaps the reporter mistook a Liturgy of the Word with distribution of Holy Communion for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But Fr. Kenny assured the reportere that he wasn't "leaving anything out" of the Mass. It just doesn't seem possible to do it all in 15 minutes.

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Quite apart from the fact that, with 40 people in the congregation, an Extra-Ordinary Minister of Holy Communion (in my experiencethe correct terminology is still almost unknown in the Irish Church) seems to be illicit; how can it take them from 7.39am to 7.44am to distribute Communion - unless of course Fr. Michael is very particular about the way he purifies the Sacred Vessels afterwards.

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This story just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. First we had 'A La Carte' Catholicism, then 'Cafeteria' Catholicsim and now Convenience Catholicism.

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One last sound bite from Fr. Kenny: "We are here to facilitate the congregation and if there are any further increases in numbers attending, then the more the merrier."

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Respectfully I would disagree with Fr. Kenny on this point (among others). We priests are here to facilitate an encounter between God and his people, to facilitate the lifting of hearts and minds to the Lord in worship that is beautiful and edifying - both for the priest and the people. We priests are here to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as prayerfully and as lovingly as we possibly can. Fr. Kenny may well be able to do all that in his 15 minute Mass - if so then fair play to him. I couldn't do it in that time and still feel that I have given my parishioners a draft of the spiritual treasures that are in the Mass.

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And one final thought: One of the parishioners interviewed expressed the hope that the cause of the 15 minute Mass would be taken up in other parishes. I pray sincerely that this does not happen.

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From Sacrosanctum Concilium #7 & #10:

Every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree...

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Pastors of souls must therefore realize that, when the liturgy is celebrated, something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration; it is their duty also to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects.

My Rant on Vatican II

It is an unfortunate reality that ‘the spirit of Vatican II’ has become the much touted reason for any and all innovations to the Catholic faith and the way it is presented and expressed these days. This ‘spirit’ has become the animating principle behind such glorious theological constructs as 'devout' catholics being pro-abortion and liturgies of such true noble simplicity as the parish ‘Polka Mass’ – I kid you not! This ‘spirit’ of the council, while remaining silent throughout the council itself, began to speak even before the seats of the Council Fathers had cooled. This 'Spirit' has long since then spoken through the ‘creativity’ and ‘intuition’ of a select, but influential, few whose life mission seemed to be the call to carry forward the complete overhaul of the Catholic Church to bring it 'up-to-date' with the world around it; this ‘spirit’, however, seems to be anything but the Holy Spirit which for twenty centuries has guided the Church through the most difficult and dark moments of its long journey of faith.

Nowhere can this ‘spirit of the council’ be seen to be more active than in the travesty which sometimes passes for Catholic liturgy. Nowhere is it clearer that somehow, somewhere something has gone wrong, than when one sees a Mass that is more man-centred than God-centred, more about entertainment than about sacrifice, more about what the people can get out of it at the level of the emotions rather than what they can put into it at the level of the heart and soul.

So what went wrong? Why did a council which offered such an immense opportunity for the Church to engage with the modern world and which has, without a doubt, produced immense good fruit, also yield some of the most undesirable fruit imaginable? Who could have foreseen such a disastrous implementation of the council’s directives, as seems to have occurred in some quarters? So many questions, each with many diverse and complex answers, but I think Pope Paul VI intuited it well when he spoke about a supernatural undermining of the Council. Precisely because the Council was desired by God and guided by the Spirit of the Risen Christ, and precisely because it has (not had) the potential to revolutionise the Church in the most positive of senses; equipping it for the great task of evangelising the third millennium; precisely for these reasons the attack of the evil one will obviously be all the greater, since the Church’s charter is one of salvation and all her efforts are to this end and anything which the Lord inspires and graces the Church with will always make her more adept at fulfilling this purpose. And so, is it any wonder that the Council should undergo an attack of this kind, a subtle misinterpretation or misrepresentation?

It is, therefore, absolutely necessary for us to hold faithfully to the intentions of the council which are absolutely clear to anyone who reads the documents of the council without any preconceived agenda being at work in his or her mind. Precisely because the council has not been implemented faithfully by some of those assigned this task, must we strive all the more for fidelity to it.

The past few decades have been a sort of labour pain for the Church. The labour began when Pope John XXIII was inspired to throw open the shutters of the Church and let the Spirit breathe new life into her members. The Church rejoiced that the seeds of the ressourcement would soon bear fruit in a renewed and vibrant Church, which would harvest the whole world. But the labour pains have been many and at times torturous and, as with the woman in the Book of Revelations, the ancient serpent sits ever ready to devour that fruit. But the pains will, I believe, soon be passed and with great hope we should all look forward to that day when this masterpiece of the Spirit will be truly accomplished and the Church will emerge stronger and more faithful to her Lord. These labour pains will then be a memory.

Had the implementation of the council passed off peacefully and smoothly, without that the barque should rock a little, then perhaps we would have cause to worry. But the fact that it is attacked, misrepresented, misinterpreted and rejected by many should help us realise that it is truly a marvellous work of the Spirit and one which will lead to the spread of the Catholic faith and the salvation of souls to the glory of our Heavenly Father.

We, who are pastors of the flock of Christ, must therefore at all times recall our commitment on receiving Holy Orders to faithfully minister to the faithful only from within the faith and according to that faith. It will be love for Christ, for the Church and the people of God that will motivate both our creativity in winning souls and, at the same time, our fidelity to the means by which that salvation is administered. Christ does not need gimmicks to touch hearts, theology need not accommodate every spirit and disposition, and liturgy need not be simplistic and banal to be noble and simple. The true spirit of Vatican II presents us all with a great challenge to live faithfully the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a world that is often hostile to that way of life. The agenda-driven ‘spirit of the council’, on the other hand, is but a spectre which needs to be exorcised by humble religious submission to the authentic Magisterium of the Church, and adherence to the laws which govern the liturgical life of the Church.

May the good Lord give Pope Benedict XVI many more years. Another 10 years and he will have the whole ship back on course! Amen!