Liturgical Form and Liturgical Expression: Reflections Concerning Engaged and Active Participation by Baptismal Priesthood During The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Liturgical Form and Liturgical Expression

Reflections Concerning Engaged and Active Participation by Baptismal Priesthood During The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

• Introduction

• The Balkanization of Liturgy and the Rise of Liturgical Instruction

• The Development of the Ritual Wedge

• The Fallout Between Ritual and the Semantics Superstition

• Deployment of Ritual as Instruction Rather than Expression 

• Liturgical Expression and Active Participation of Baptismal Priesthood

• Liturgical Expressive Depth

• Dialectics of Liturgy: Instruction and Expression Along the Anthropic Plot Points

• Calibrating Liturgical Expressive Depth: A Vision of Two Forms

• Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest

• Introduction: The Need of a Guide for the Baptismal Priest

• Examination of Sacrifices Part I: Calling to Mind

• Examination of Sacrifices Part II: Consideration of Expressive Options

• Conclusion

Introduction

Once upon a time I came across the remains of a dormant comment feed where the original post asked a simple question, “can you shake hands as a ‘sign of peace’ in the Traditional Latine Mass?”  If the reader is at all attune to the state of affairs on the digital continents regarding liturgical “debate” one can imagine that what seems like an interesting but non-important question quickly attracted excited personalities of all kinds.  From the theologically conservative side, what kept coming up was that “there is no rubric for the laity”.  What intrigued me was not this fact, but that the people who were stating it were doing so with the implication, “therefore no you cannot shake hands.”  What I see in the statement, “there is no rubric for the laity” is near total liturgical freedom of the baptismal priesthood to express how they desire.  But something has happened to the laity that makes us feel like we have no forum for expression in connection to the liturgy.

 The purpose of this treatise is to assist baptismal priests in investment and expression of their office, especially as it concerns the liturgy. We will do this by reviewing some historical and cultural situations that have led to alienation of the “laity” from their priestly participation in the liturgy.  We will comment on possibilities and modalities by which the laity can express as baptismal priests in the liturgy.  Finally, we will attempt to create a Handbook for a  Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.   

In the first section we will review the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  Our context will be the current contentious liturgical camps in the American Catholic Church.  We will trace the reactionary nature of both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary forms of the Mass, and consider the development of a very functional view of the mass as a medium of instruction.  We will also note how a semantical development in the empirical secular culture has successfully equated ritual with superstition and isolated the deepest expressions of the life of the Church from the everyday life of its members. A bi-conciliar strategy of dealing with this phenomenon manifests in the form of rubriced control of the participants of the Mass, first the clerics (Trent), then the laity (Vatican II).  We will note that this control was implemented under the assumption that a major function of the liturgy is instruction of the populace.  To end this section, we will seek to demonstrate that in ritual life, instruction as a goal is subservient expression.

In the second section, we will attempt to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy.  We  will attempt to analyze how, on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox, the liturgy is controlled or liberating and able to change.  We will explore the symbolic nature of each form of the liturgy concerning immanence and transcendence in order to get a perspective on why the two forms function differently.  Then we will explore the tension between expressions of the various anthropic plot points as well as the tension between instruction in the liturgy and expression through the liturgy. We will then discuss the various abilities of the baptismal priesthood to ritually express according to both the Ordinary and Extraordinary form. 

The last section will consist of The Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.  In this manual, we will briefly discuss the need for an examination of sacrifices.  This will include how such an examination would be beneficial for orienting the baptismal priest to what sacrifices they bring to the Eucharist as well as giving one skill for better engaging in their sacrifices in the future. We will detail the two parts of the examination of sacrifices.  The first part reviews what sacrifices one is bringing to the mass as an offering and lists a series of questions to be used as an examination.  The second part is the consideration of expressive options, which considers options available to the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Mass and explores the ways the baptismal priest can express ritually in connection to the liturgy. 

The Balkanization of Liturgy and the Rise of Liturgical Instruction 

In this first section we will review the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  After that we will go on to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy.  These sections will inform the last part which consists of The Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.

The Development of the Ritual Wedge

It seems that there are two liturgical camps in the Church and at the extremes, they appear to be at bitter odds.  Regarding liturgy itself, division should not be the case.  This is because all liturgy acquires its effectiveness from one source.  According to Hebrews, “Now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice.”  There is only one sacrifice that the mass queues into.  This was discussed this in the treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent,  

Christ’s body is extended through space and time through the Eucharist makes the Church his mystical body.  That extension is balanced by a backflow of sin gathering upon Christ’s body hanging upon the cross.   Through the Eucharist the communicant is bound to Christ Body, specifically his body at the event of his sacrificial death, where he takes our sin upon his body and destroys it by his death. The effect of “communion” with his body is that, as part of Christ’s body, the venial sin of the communicant is destroyed with Christ Body through his sacrificial death (though not mortal sin, where one who is in open rebellion against God will accept the invitation to the Eschaton nor the forgiveness offered).  Through the Eucharist, that mystical body is bound across space and time to his sacrificial death and at the same time, the individual sinners are purified of the guilt of venial sin.  Thus in mass one can easily assent, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim your death O Lord until you come again.” 

That there are varieties of expression of the mass seems to be confusing to some people.  This confusion may spring from a sense of efficiency.  The confused person believes the “best way to do mass is XYZ.”  “Best way” could mean most effective for the individual to cooperate with grace.  It could also mean most suited to express the truths the individual or the culture needs.  These people argue for suppression from one or other of the forms for the sake of this efficiency.  There are several problems with this.  First, to assert this objectively negates the unique experience of each human and the developing and adaptable nature of both individuals and society.  Second, God is not concerned with efficiency, only salvation, and justification.  If a form or rite was practiced in only one city, for example, the Braga Rite, and was only really effective there, I feel certain that would be fine with God regardless of how it seems inefficient.    

Another thing that happens is that a people objectively asserts that only one form is effective and the others are less so or not effective at all.  This is not what the Church implies.  Any rite that is approved or has ever been, has been effective.  That is to say, they affect grace and connect us to the sacrifice of Christ.  The form facilitates cooperation with grace to a greater or lesser degree, but the grace comes from God regardless, and according to the teachings, Christ gave authority to the magisterium to define valid and invalid forms.

These divisions draw away from a much more serious problem that has developed over the recent history of the church.  That problem is the alienation of the baptismal priest from investment in their role in the liturgy.  This alienation has developed through a series of reactionary attempts to preserve just such an investment.  The history of this divided is a long and complex tale that we will analyze in a certain context in order to understand how this alienation took place. The end result was is two camps where, at the extremes, people are claiming to have the “better liturgy”.   

The two forms that are in “contention” among certain spheres of Catholicism are the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form.  One could also see them referred to as “the traditional Latin mass” and the “Novus Ordo”.  For the average Catholic, the Ordinary Form is what they know as the mass.  Until recently the Extraordinary Form was not often celebrated.  Now the Extraordinary Form is growing in accessibility and becoming popular, especially more among young Catholics.  As is hopefully obvious by the language, the Ordinary Form would be the usual way mass is celebrated.  The Extraordinary Form is not “extraordinary” because it is “amazing” or “awesome”.  It is extraordinary because it is extra-ordinary, that is unusual or outside of the normal way of doing things.  

The divide in the American Church is largely cultural phenomenon, that at the extremes breaks down liturgically between the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms.  To have differing experiences and preferences is absolutely acceptable.  What is not acceptable is to deny valid experiences of others, imply that they are not valid, or worst of all be stirred to wrath because of how others have an experience of God.  Sometimes it comes down to something to the effect of, “I hate it when that person experiences God that way.”  No one can get behind a statement like that, so it becomes, “they must not be experiencing God because their way is invalid.  It is not a real or full experience of God.”  All of these speculations are ridiculous and generally lead back to the root, envy of someone’s reception and acceptance of grace.  The envy then stirs wrath.  This issue of envy and wrath needs to be faced and reconciled in our culture far more than “who is correct” regarding form of the mass.  To achieve this it may help to start with a brief historical overview that sets the context of the forms, and then set out ways to engage this context in order to better appreciate how one may regard their experience of the mass.

  

Each form of the mass is crafted out of an ecumenical council called for within a certain context.  Thus each approaches its various goals in differing ways.  The Extraordinary form was crystallized during and in the aftermath of the Council of Trent.  The context of this council is the rapidly developing experience of the Protestant Reformation.  The council was a reform of the Church in response to the call of the Reformation.  It sought to implement reform in ways that developed rather than rejected key elements of Church structure and practice that certain spheres of the protestant reformation was jettisoning.  For our purposes, we can focus on one issue particularly, the sacramental cosmology.  The treatise Sacramental Cosmology noted the rejection of this cosmology as one of the great tragedies of the protestant reformation, in league with the Enlightenment.  The response of Trent was to define and bolster two expressions of that cosmology, the ritual system that seeks to specifically connect with the profound communication of the cosmos (the seven sacraments) and the clerical class that guards the safe practice of these rituals.  The agenda is absolutely noble.  The Protestant reformers were hyper focused on the texts of the Bible at the expense of the experience of prayer through ritual engagement.  Thus, the Protestant progression went from “high church” focus on the Bible in the context of pared down ritual, to “low church” rejection of the entire sacramental system, save a pared down version of the specific rituals mentioned in the Bible (baptism, “the lord’s support”, and marriage).  This would include the ritual for investing priesthood.  A key component of the Protestant reformation is “the priesthood of all believers” which hyper focused on the baptismal priesthood to the exclusion of the ordained priesthood.  The Council of Trent responded with a much clearer definition of the technical role of priests and an agenda of education and lifestyle regulation for the clerical class. The Council of Trent also responded to the evershifting development of Christian ritual in reformation circles by codifying ritual in the Church.  It officially defined the seven sacraments and commented on their nature.  The council itself begat the apostolic constitution Quo primum which promulgated the new Roman Missal of Pius V.  This Missal organized and unified practice of the mass at a time of rapid and haphazard development of Christian worship.  The extreme nature of the rubrics and the absolute exclusivity of it’s claim is a direct result of the roughshod effect of Protestant liturgical innovation.

The promulgation of Pius V’s Missal began a culture of crystallization in both liturgy and ultimately devotion in the Catholic Church.  Due to the traumatic fall out from the reformation, there began a tendency to rally around rubric and formula for liturgy, which then began to encompass devotion as well.  This crystallization coincided with an age of exploration and evangelization that presented the Tridentine rite to the world but also became a symbol of colonial cultural genocide.  The rite was formulated out of the experience of the Roman empire as it devolved in west and northwest Europe.  This development is legitimate, but not exclusive.  For example, Christianity did still exist to a small extent in Africa after the Islamic conquest.  It still existed in the Eastern Roman Empire and in India.  As the influence and abidance of the Church spread across the globe, the crystallization of liturgy simultaneously became a symbol of immutable truth in an increasingly diversifying experience of the Christian world. The Tridentine liturgy seemed to gear toward a more transcendent relation to God and thus came to be seen as universally applicable across the planet.  This was conveyed by the use of a dead language, that disallowed any particular culture from claiming the liturgy.  This liturgy is also experienced by all involved facing toward the object of veneration, the tabernacle.  The ordained priest is performing the rite for baptized priests, but all are at a stance of worship together.             

As we shall see, by the time of the mid twentieth century, there had developed a growing discomfort with the hyper crystallization in the Church, not only of liturgy but of devotion that reflected mainly the European experience of Christianity in a world where most Catholics were less and less European.  With the Second Vatican Council, there was an attempt to reform the power structure of the, now global, church and a reform of the liturgy.  The new focus was to develop manifestations of the liturgy that were culturally accessible.  The main way that this took shape was a humanistic focus of liturgy as “God with us”, present in the community of believers.  Though both councils greatly stress the communal nature of liturgy, the versus populum practice contrast to the more transcendently geared liturgy of the ad orientem tridentine mass.  Also, the reform of the Mass sought to allow for cultural access to the liturgy, while carefully seeking to balance union with the greater church.  The Constitution on Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium states, 

Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples' way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.

Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics.

     

The Second Vatican Council was also a response.  This time the response was to the “crystallization” mentioned above which was resulting in a fortress mentality that was not an incarnational approach to evangelization.  The Catholic church had become withdrawn and isolated in an axiomatic mentality wrapped up in a very particular aesthetic.  The Council was meant to break this mentality and open the Church to dialogue with the world.  

Liturgically this manifests as yet another experience of developing liturgy.  Instead of developing against ideas that were shedding a sacramental cosmology, the liturgy developed as  “the Mass” amid a culture and took on a host of cultural instantiations that centered around the same basic framework. This time, the liturgy developed within the context of magisterial guidance using Pope Saint Paul IV’s Missal as the calibrator for what is appropriate.  Each development contrasted greatly with the uncontrolled and excoriating development of how the Protestant Reformation formed its worship services.  The most famous reform of the Novus Ordo had was that it had the priest face the people making the situation assume more of a community of worship together with God imminently than a community together focused “outward” or “upward” with a focus transcendently.  A second famous reform was the liturgy using the native language of the people as opposed to exclusively using Latin.  Since the language used is the language spoken by the people present, the ethos is less “other focused” using a strange language that is conceived of as “godly”.  Rather, the language is common to the people present and thus liturgy as spoken if found with the people present.                   

Interestingly each adaptation of the liturgy is interested in the people being instructed by the Mass.  The enlightenment and the reformation fallout definitely mitigated or spoke to a mitigation of intuitive ritual investment in the liturgy.  The way this is done by Trent is to unify and solidify the meaning of the Mass by controlling the clerics involved.  They are to be trained and educated so that they can properly understand and properly execute the liturgy.  The restrictions of Trent are clearly aimed at the action and embellishments of priests in the mass. The assumption is that once the priests are well in hand, they can properly train the laity.  Session XXII of the Council of Trent states that “the mass contains great instruction for the faithful people,” and then goes on to say,

the holy Synod charges pastors, and all who have the cure of souls, that they frequently, during the celebration of mass, expound either by themselves, or others, some portion of those things which are read at mass, and that, amongst the rest, they explain some mystery of this most holy sacrifice, especially on the Lord’s days and festivals.      

The assumption here seems to be that a ruling and educated clerical class will educate the people concerning the significance of the Mass, and the Mass itself will then intuitively instruct the faithful.  But grace is not equivalent to instruction.  That the sacraments dispense grace does not necessarily mean that they dispense conscious knowledge.  

This structure of ritual investment assumes a culture that generally supports the baptismal priesthood in its task of offering sacrifice in the secular world, that centers on Mass as the actualizer of these sacrifices, binding them to the sacrifice of Christ.  The problem was that a culture that supported such intuition was already rapidly crumbling.  The enlightenment was fomenting a cosmological change to deism with an agenda of neutralizing “superstition”.  This same concern is even reflected in the same session of the Council of Trent.  The session condemns practices of superstition during the ritual of the mass, implying that bringing this under control is one reason for the promulgation of such strict rubrics and such an extensive program of education for the clergy (a very “enlightenment” approach to the problem).  

The problem with the agenda seems to be an over reliance on the ability of the clerical class combined with ritual action to fight the tide of culture, which was moving against the very nature of ritual engagement itself.  The treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment discussed how the modern secular world invests in ritual equally as much as the ancient religious.  But they have reframed and named what such rituals are.  Now they are no longer attached to the name “ritual”, which has become an action with pejorative connotations.  Instead, the rituals of the modern secular world are so deeply ingrained and intuitive, that they consist of assumed way of life, and are contrasted with “ritual” as connected to superstition.  The disconnect between day to day life and religious ritual, which seems to have been wedged by means of the word superstition, has caused great damage to engagement in the liturgy and all sacraments.  This wedge is the result of our loss of a sacramental cosmology, resulting for the cosmological reconfiguration of the enlightenment, and the tool that facilitated it was the clever employment of the concept of superstition as it plays on human pride.  The wedge between “ritual” and life can also be a lens through which one can track the progress, successes, and failures of the liturgical fluctuations of the past five centuries.  

The Fallout Between Ritual and the Semantics Superstition

If one observes the frequency of the word “superstition” in texts one can see that it hit a spike around the time of the Council of Trent and then plateaued again for about a century before the Second Vatican Council.

    

Superstition is a bludgeon against those who thwart the empirical dogma of absolute casualty. The word marshals a family of meanings against the perceived enemies of an empirical worldview.  First, the word is an ad hominem attack on the concept of magic.  Superstition is belief in magic that uses “ritual” (specific actions) to affect the world by means of channeling power.  In this meaning, it is implied that the “action” taken in superstitious ritual is lacking in two regards.  First that the action does not in any observable way causally relate to the results desired.  Secondly, the action is actually ineffective in bringing the result desired.  Otherwise, action taken to manipulate future results is simply the program of applied science.  If one reflects one realizes that to go through a series of precisely defined actions as part of a science fair demonstration and expecting a result is not seen as a “ritual”, but it absolutely is.  The only difference is that the ritual adheres to scientific cosmology and is related to causality.  The word “magic” would never be used to describe such a ritual.  And it would in no way be considered superstition.   But these biases cannot be boiled down to, “well at least we understand science, that’s why it works.”  Well, no.  No one fundamentally understands casualty.  We simply observe and manipulate it.  

The second target of the word superstition is celestial beings, whether they be God, gods, angels, demons, saints, or ghosts.  In its worst manifestation, the attack of “superstition!” implies any sort of recourse to celestial sentient beings.  More likely, such an attack implies at least that one can have any meaningful or effective relationship with such beings.  These two basic meanings spring from the anti-ritual agenda via an implementation of the term “superstition” as an attack.  The increasingly prominent use of the word correlates with an increasingly mechanical cosmology which is deistic at best and effectively atheistically deterministic as a result.  In short, there was an agenda, or a cultural development, that uses the concept of “superstition” to shift cosmology from sacramental to mechanistic.  This agenda lacks multivalent epistemology and is exclusively pro-observable causality.  The linguistic maneuver is seeking to alienate any regard for the intangible.  

This disregard is already a serious problem.  As we noted in Mythic History and Contemplative Prediction this world view puts a host of other phenomenological aspects of human existence under suspicion, not the least of which is human will.  Now it is also closing off what religion considers important aspects of the order of the cosmos, in our case, both relationships with celestial beings who help us and the operation of our sacramental cosmology.  This treatise is not denying that the concept of “superstition” is useful in combating certain problems.  A better understanding would be, haphazard actions that either run contrary to a cosmological framework or do not fit into a cohesive cosmological framework.  This would allow for a wide understanding of “effectiveness” of action, one that can work outside of empirical effect, and therefore one that can accept both cooperation with celestial beings and investment in a sacramental cosmology.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds to this same view and then asserts the required framework to be the faith and doctrines of the Church.  “Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.” 

In effect, each “side”, the empiricist and the Church, are trying to control the understanding of superstition and use it to encompass, “that which is not what we do considering how we view the world”.  The XXII session of The Council of Trent states that it is reforming the Mass in part so “that no room may be left for superstition”.  Gaudium Et Spes recognizes that the modern world has allowed for, “ a more critical ability to distinguish religion from a magical view of the world and from the superstitions which still circulate purifies it and exacts day by day a more personal and explicit adherence to faith. As a result, many persons are achieving a more vivid sense of God. On the other hand, growing numbers of people are abandoning religion in practice.”  These councils are not employing an empiricist view of superstition.  Rather they are using the word to indicate a need for good understanding of ritual as it exists in the Church and to mitigate any sense of “ritual Pelagianism”, thinking that one can work sacred ritual under a mechanistic or causal context.  The effect of sacred ritual operates in the realm of spiritual/relational, not the real of causal physics.  To interpret ritual effect in a similar causal manner is considered superstition in the way the Church uses the word.   

But interestingly the latter portion of the quote from Gaudium Et Spes (the loss of faith) is derived from the former (the inward turn of religion).  This inward turn as an exclusive regard for the religious realm is further evidence that the assumptions of an empirical mechanistic cosmology has taken hold at the expense of a sacramental cosmology, where there is commerce between the spiritual and the physical. To religiously abide exclusively in either field of experience, the external world as ritual mechanism or the inner spiritual awareness is a disordered extreme that begs cross-spectral mutual pedagogy.  In the documents of trent one can just begin to sense the loss of the sacramental cosmology that breathes life into the mass.  By the time we reach the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, that loss is near complete in the culture at large.  The Mass is seen by the populace as a superstition in the empirical (not the Catechetical) sense of the word.  The Church’s use of the term as a derogatory without control of the popular meaning of the term actually seems to do more damage than good.  The rituals of the secular empiricist are not subject to disconnect with daily life and are intuitively invested in.  At the same time, the rituals of the Church suit the popularly understood empirical definition of superstition. The only foothold religious ritual has is that it is seen as “interiorly” effective, (the only realm to remain outside of the empirical gaze) so it is tolerated.  This loss necessitates conscious ritual investment on the part of the laity (the majority of Catholics).  At this point, the ritual life of the Church faces a serious uphill battle.  

Deployment of Ritual as Instruction Rather than Expression 

The Second Vatican Council sought to address the battle for intuitive ritual investment in the same way that the Council of Trent did.  The strategy was to find a way to mitigate the growing association with superstition, which alienated people from investment, by controlling ritual and framing it as an educational tool.  The Council of Trent sought to control the clerics, imposing strict rubrics upon them.  The Second Vatican Council sought to control the laity by the same strategy.  According to Sacrosanctum Concillium “The revision of the liturgical books must carefully attend to the provision of rubrics also for the people's parts.”  This maneuver was extremely novel.  It seems shocking, but, previous to the implementation of the Novus Ordo, there was no rubric for the laity.  But even still th approach by the council may speak to a fundamental lack of imagination.  The urge to control the ritual did not work the first time.  Catholicism lost the intuitive ritual investment of its populace.  In isolation, doubling down on rubriced control and pushing an agenda of education may not have been the best response .  

In the time span between the two councils, there seems to have developed a perceived reason to seek to control the laity.  An excellent synopsis of this time span is given in The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy.  That document states “In the post Tridentine period, the relationship between Liturgy and popular piety acquires some new aspects: the Liturgy entered a static period of substantial uniformity while popular piety entered a period of extraordinary development.” The communion rail seemed to form a wall between the static transcendent ritual, and the developing and engaging popular ritual of the people.  But The Directory goes on to note how as culture was subsumed by the enlightenment the developed a gap between “the religion of the learned and the religion of the simple people”.  The Directory concisely outlines the fascinating consequences of this divide ending with the Second Vatican Council.  As popular piety increased in dynamism and effective devotion, there came a need to critically define the central place of liturgy over popular piety.  Pius X was the first to begin a program to instill the value of liturgy over popular piety.

Though his goal was true and good, his response may not have taken into account that popular piety was serving the need of ritual expression that was lost to the laity due to the concentration of sacramental ritual life in the clerical class.  By implementing an agenda of exaltation of the mass and devaluation of popular piety the laity was left bereft of expression.  Popular piety, already under popular assault as “superstitious ritual of the simple believer”, was now under the suspicious eye of the Church itself.  With the ascendancy of the liturgy, a ritual controlled and facilitated by ordained priests, who are controlled by conciliar and magisterial documents, the laity were left more and more silent and more and more passive in the pews.

The Second Vatican Council sensed this problem and offered an agenda to give the laity a role that would invest them in the liturgy.  This began the divide between those who had come to see the liturgy as a “fixed” reality and those who saw it as an active engagement. Sacrosanctum Concillium saw as its mission, “To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times, all should observe a reverent silence.”  That is to say, to promote participation by construction of a rubric for the laity.  The purpose was to allow the educational nature of the liturgy to be effective. “The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people's powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation.”  With good engagement, the pedagogical function of liturgy could operate more efficiently.  Hence, the priest turns around so everyone can hear what is said and he speaks the language of the people so everyone can understand.  Since the Church lost the battle for intuitive ritual investment, the reform sought to invest liturgy with relevant cultural signs and symbols so as to gain an intuitive foothold and begin to turn the tide. 

There are two slight problems with an approach that focuses on the pedagogical.  The first is the extent to which Catholicism has thus far lost the battle for cultural ritual intuition.  It is not simply signs and symbols that have been replaced, but an entire cosmology that has been replaced.  The effective Christian cosmology that allows for even the basic belief in the incarnation has been almost completely lost.  That we must instruct our people in what the ritual means, shows that we are in the culturally defensive posture of conscious ritual investment.  In that posture, to assume that the ritual would then instruct ex opere operato if we just get a good cultural context is foolish.  One is simply adding another layer of stress upon an already stressed pedagogical situation.  Second, sacramental ritual is not simply pedagogical.  To use pedagogy as a major lens for ritual plays deeply into the empirical / post enlightenment mindset, which exalts reason above all else, and further draws the people away for the more holistic Catholic view of liturgy, cosmology, and human nature. 

Thus we can see that there are two major strategies for solving the problem of intuitive investment in the liturgy.  One is cosmological and involves investing people in the views of Christian cosmology as was described them in the treatise Sacramental Cosmology.  This is an intellectual pursuit, very in keeping with the strategies of post enlightenment empiricism.  To wage this battle is absolutely necessary, but the field of combat gives advantage to the opposing cosmology.  How the empirical cosmology won the hearts and minds of the populace was by appealing to efficiency and ingenuity with a projected reward of leisure and stability.  The first chink in the armor is that these projections have not come to pass.  Humans are even more overworked and reality is still invested with chaotic elements. But in the lag time between the promise and realization that the promise will not be fulfilled, the proponents of an empirical cosmology have set the rules for debating cosmology to suit its own outcome.  This difficult terrain leads us to a battle on two fronts in order to seek advantage.

The key to the second front lies in understanding that the promise of leisure and stability is appealing, but the thirst for meaning and expression is at least equally as powerful.  An empirical view offers outlets for neither meaning nor expression, only efficiency, and ingenuity.  A poor consequence of Trent was the control issues that lead to a culture of clericalism from the “top down”.  This panic for control in the face of the Reformation and the ritual wedge of secularism began the slow loss of any feeling of meaning and investment in the mass by the laity.  As the avenue of popular piety was cut short the majority of Catholics began to feel like passive observers in the ritual and in no way were they able to express meaning or relationship.  This same urge for control bleeds into the Second Vatican Council.  Even while it seeks to invest the laity, it does so by hyper controlled means.  This obsession with control has an agenda of “educating meaning into the populace”.  But meaning is experienced, not simply axiomatically learned.  The second front for regaining intuitive investment in the liturgy is investment in the baptismal priesthood as an expression of meaning or relationship.  This would also take education, but the education would be practice rather than pedagogy.       

   One of the major goals of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical reform was to invest the laity in liturgy and engage them in the ritual.  The method chosen has many benefits, but without a good sense (or experience) by the people of the role and function of baptismal priesthood, it is an effort that flounders.  In the treatise The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church we noted 

For most Catholics, “full active participation in the liturgy” means saying the responses and singing at mass.  The zealous catechist urges the faithful to consciously do this and not spout off responses as rote pronouncements.  If a member of the laity really wishes to up their liturgical game, they become a lector or eucharistic minister, and then they are really actively participating.  But it is the assertion of this treatise that each of these methodologies is still pathetic compared to what is really required for the true participation of the laity. . . .

When a person is ordained, they become a minister of the sacraments, which they administer by means of a ritual priesthood.  This is an important function, but the ordained priesthood is not sufficient for effective performance of the eucharistic sacrifice.  The ritual of the mass functions as a binding of the sacrifices of the baptismal priesthood to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  The sacrifice of the baptismal priesthood is not a ritual run by a hierarchically defined rubric.  It is framed as a living sacrifice.

    

Again one of the reasons The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy notes for the imbalance between Liturgy and Popular Piety is 

a weakening of a senses of the universal priesthood in virtue of which the faithful offer "spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God, through Jesus Christ" (1 Pt 2,5; Rm 12,1), and, according to their condition, participate fully in the Church's worship. This is often accompanied by the phenomenon of a Liturgy dominated by clerics who also perform the functions not reserved to them and which, in turn, causes the faithful to have recourse to piuos exercises through which they feel a sense of becoming active participants

          

Ritual itself is a great teacher of the whole person. To teach to the whole person is not to demean or devalue cognitive instruction through axiom.  It is simply to recognize the complexity of the human person and to understand that critical instruction toward the scope of humanity must be “diversified instruction” so as to reach all people.  Thus any religious tradition that would meet success is not simply instructed by axiom.  There is a need for ritual engagement because well done ritual hits every level of the human.  Ritual engages the intellectual, visual, auditory, musical, narrative, kinesthetic, and even the unconscious.  

The problem with the way that ritual is used in order to instruct is that the methodology, born out of the trauma of the Reformation its the secular fallout, is to “find the right rubric” for ritual.  Add to that the fact that the “instruction model” used is generally informed by the Enlightenment, which is axiomatically and syllogistically operable. Thus, one learns “facts” about the symbols of the mass and then translated from axioms through syllogism to understanding of the Faith.  This totally ignores the fact that ritual, especially sacrificial ritual, is an expression, and therefore greatly relies on creativity as an element.  Add to that the fact that sacramental ritual is “significant” not “symbolic” and one can begin to see how much is missing in the current environment which sees Mass as primarily instructive.  This focus on instruction also makes it uncomfortable for the clerics and the magisterium to accept creative expression by the laity and for the laity to appropriate their “significance” (sacramentally) in the mass.  

The culture of definition and analysis offered by the Enlightenment applied to superstition has already driven an alienating wedge between empirically defined ritual and “real life”.  Now with the idea of Mass as axiomatic and syllogistic instruction, we are using these same tools to drive a wedge between the People of God.  What we end up with is a series of hermetically sealed camps such as “liturgy and popular piety” or “Novus Ordo and Traditional Latin Mass” that are seeking different ways to solve what should be a healthy dialectical tension.  Absent that tension we are left with a much worse set of situations “Mass (religion) and the rest of life”.  These hermetically sealed camps are the result of successful secularization.  The basic attitude is that we go to mass to get instruction on why the rest of our lived experience is deficient or wrong.  The focal point of the mass becomes the homily, the most obvious place of instruction.  The rubrics become information, used by technical experts to impress. A better situation would have a liturgical and ritual life filled with a healthy tension between instruction and expression.  Instead, multiple fields have been isolated, mutually alienated and the people of God are suffering because of this. 

In this section we discussed the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  We began by noting a very current problem, the presence of contentious liturgical camps in the American Catholic Church.  We traced the reactionary nature of both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary forms of the Mass, which lead to a functional view of the mass as a medium of instruction.  We noted that there has been a semantical development in the empirical secular culture that equates ritual with superstition.  This semantical maneuver has isolated the deepest expressions of the life of the Church from the everyday life of its members and required exercise of conscious as opposed to intuitive ritual investment. We then laid out the bi-conciliar strategy of dealing with this by rubriced control of the participants of the Mass, first the clerics (Trent), then the laity (Vatican II).  We noted that this control was implemented under the assumption that a major function of the liturgy is instruction of the populace.  To end this section, we noted that in ritual life, instruction as a goal is subservient expression. 

In the next section, we will attempt to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy. After that we will present The Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.  In this manual, we will discuss the need for an examination of sacrifices, which calls sacrifices to mind  and considers expressive options.

Liturgical Expression and Active Participation of Baptismal Priesthood

In the first section we discussed the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  In this section, we will attempt to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy.  We  will attempt to analyze how, on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox, the liturgy is controlled or liberating and able to change.  We will explore the symbolic nature of each form of the liturgy concerning immanence and transcendence in order to get a perspective on why the two forms function differently.  Then we will explore the tension between expressions of the various anthropic plot points as well as the tension between instruction in the liturgy and expression through the liturgy. We will then discuss the various abilities of the baptismal priesthood to ritually express according to both the Ordinary and Extraordinary form. The last section presents The Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.  

Liturgical Expressive Depth

At the conclusion of the previous section, we discussed a healthy tension that should exist in the liturgy.  This tension is born out of certain paradoxes that we are seeking to express through the ritual itself.  Since all of the facets of the paradox take place within the context of the liturgy, we can utilize the spectral approach to paradox and seek a balance through cross-spectral mutual pedagogy.  The treatise Paradoxes and Disorders, discussed three varieties of paradoxes.  The spectral approach is less object-oriented and focuses more on the relationship.  One generally approaches intangible paradoxes in spectral ways.  By defining the extremes of these intangibles one comes to a categorization of “object”.  The flow of the spectrum is the gradation or quality of the relationship that binds the extremes together.  From this approach to paradox, developed the concept of cross-spectral mutual pedagogy in the treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy.  This is a pedagogy available when a dyad along a spectrum seeks to come into a relationship and mutually edify. The isolated extremes of the spectrum will lead to sin, but the mutual edification along points between the extremes leads to balance, the development of the virtue of temperance as well as other case specific virtues.

In the last section, we noted that there are divisions in our culture regarding the practice of the mass.  We tried to offer a brief historical context for these painful divisions.  But history is not the only problem.  There is also a problem of the approach to the ritual.  People expect to “get something out of the liturgy”.  That is to say, they go to be instructed or “edified” (emotively impacted).  There is legitimacy to these desires but like most desires, untempered they cause problems.  If this is one’s sole disposition to the liturgy, then one is treating the ritual superstitiously by both empirical and catechetical definitions.  It expects an automatic, mechanistic, response for the mass, due to proper execution.  The discontent comes when the effect is not immediately noticeable.  The result is a lashing out at perceived defects in the ritual, the form is defective, the language is improper, the rubrics weren’t followed, the homily was abysmal,  the atmosphere was non-conducive (lacking respect).  These types of complaints come from all sides of the liturgical spectrum and are aimed at the opposing side.  The critical attitude isolates specific arenas of liturgical expression, alienates them from any connection to “proper” liturgy, then decries them as dagaming.  The “damage” is generally framed as instructional.  It does not teach or invest people with the notions the critic deems important.

The point here is not to denounce any and all criticism of how any Mass is executed.  Our aim is simple to reintroduce the paradoxical nature of human existence to the experience of the liturgy in order to facilitate a diversified experience through a holistic approach.  Diversified AND holistic? Yes, that is the nature of the paradox of human existence, and, in fact, the paradoxical nature of all of the cosmos according to Christian ontology.  There is humanity and there are humans at the same time.  The presentation of the Mass must take this into account, but our minds have a hard time holding both of these at the same time.  The “instruction” of the mass regards this paradoxical ontology and the expression of ritual from all participants must take it into account.  The easiest way to do this, since we are operating according to the spectral approach to paradox is to lay out a plot spectrum of how the mass is mutually relational and expressive.

A plotted spectrum could frame a calibration for understanding one’s cultural depth of expression concerning the anthropological paradox, that is, the paradox that humans and humanity have an equal ontological status in Christianity and therefore humans must consider each equally considering aspects of theology and morality. We will enumerate our anthropic plot points on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox at seven, particularly investing in human culture as a facet of ritual expression.  We will frame this spectrum hierarchically thus the seven points are the Transcendent, Pan-Human Culture, Macro-cultures, Micro-cultures, and Individuals. 

 But this is a spectral paradox, so the specific  “anthropic plot points” are necessarily vague and ill suited to absolute definition.  This vagary springs out of the nature of Christian ontology, where all reality is simple and manifold at the same time.  So consider the first plot point, “The Transcendent''.  This plot point seems easily distinguishable from the others, which all involve humanity.  But it must be remembered that God is simultaneously immanent and transcendent, and there is a “situation” (Christ) where humanity and divinity coincide.  The transcendent also permeates the entire spectrum.  This belief is necessary in order to accept the incarnation and the ability to truly relate to God.  The scope of terrestrial anthropology from humanity to individual humans is codependent.  One cannot exist without the other.  The simplest manifestation of this of Adam, who is both humanity and a human.  Adam and Eve are a dyad of human relationship, which are at the same time humanity and the individuals who form the set of all humans.  (this is why they so well exemplify both personal sin and Original Sin, which is the sin of humanity as opposed to the sin of the individual).  As it applies to culture, the anthropic plot points are absolutely vague and relative when considering macro and micro-cultures.  What is macro on one point of the spectrum can be considered micro on another.  For example, the culture of a city may be micro when considering an ethnic culture or pan-human culture.  But the culture of a city is macro-culture when considering the culture of a family.  At the same time, all of the cultures higher on the spectrum affect the formation of the ones lower on the spectrum, while the ones lower on the spectrum, by their strong development, can slowly shape the ones higher on the spectrum.               

Understanding our cultural/liturgical expressive depth will help us in two ways regarding both expressing meaning and expressing relationships.  When expressing meaning in liturgy we may want to consider our position of expression on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox.  Are we expressing the meaning of humanity, we will express differently and use different cultural symbols and queues than if we were expressing on a more micro-plane of culture, say, meaning as part of a certain ethnic group, nation, region, or family.  First, each of these has its own symbolic language that would need to be utilized in order to be effective.  Second, the meaning we are trying to express for each plot point if different. To be a human “means” something different than to be an American, or to be a black, or to be a West-Coaster, or to be a San Franciscan, or to be a Smith.  All of these simultaneous expressive facets have different ways of abiding in the person who fits this profile.  But that person comes in communion with others who fit mostly different profiles to express meaning.  It is this communal reality that the cleric and the control the clerical class brings is most useful.

The second way of understanding how our cultural/liturgical expressive depth can help us regards expressions of relationship.  As we will see, the liturgy as a ritual is not simply an educational tool, but it is an expression of relationship.  This expression can take specific focus on many various forms of relationship, which all abide simultaneously.  The most basic relationships are the relationship between God and any given anthropic plot point.  From the divine end, the expression is always the same, due to God’s simplistic and unchanging nature.  God delivers grace through the sacral ritual to us and offers us access to the saving sacrifice of Christ.  The sacrifice of Christ is eternally significant, it being not only the sacrifice of the Man, Jesus, but also, the divine Christ.  This divinity allows the sacrifice from God’s end to transcend both time and space.  From our end, our baptism binds us to the mystical body of Christ and we present that sacrifice according to and through our lives.  When we gather from mass, it is the special encounter between God and the Mystical Body mutually expressing sacrificial love.  

The diversity in the expression comes on the human end regarding what and how we express, as well as how we tend to calibrate our liturgical expressive depth.  In the end we will express meaning, we will express relationships, such as gratitude or healing, or petition, and finally, we will express from a human point of view or context, what we are calling an anthropic plot point.  But the variance causes tension because the axiomatic instruction needs a stagnant set of axioms to build a syllogism, and as the symbols of significance from the anthropic end change and maneuver along the anthropic plot points the axioms seem to change.  In truth, the axioms come from the high end of the spectrum, God’s sacrificial Love that we react to and express our reaction.  But our thinking likes to force one method of understanding and interpretation on the entire cosmos, rather than accept a multivalent epistemology.  This one sidedness is not fitting to the expressive form of the mass, and by that, it corrupts the instructional aspect of the ritual as well.  Given that it may be time to analyze the dialectical tension present in the mass as one maneuvers among the various anthropic plot points.  

Dialectics of Liturgy: Instruction and Expression Along the Anthropic Plot Points

There exists a dialectic in liturgy, but the dialectic abides in tension rather than resolving in synthesis.  The tension is expressive of Christian ontology and the operable understanding of Christian paradox.  The tension can facilitate cross spectral mutual pedagogy among the people of God if properly expressed.  When there is spectral intemperance, the effect is liturgical stability and uniformity of instruction.  But that uniformity requires a partial view and disallows proper expression of facets of the dialects, thus mutual pedagogy is mitigated.  As one analyzes liturgical form and expression, one must realize that there is a liturgical expressive relationship at play.  Every relationship has two ends and according to Christian ontology are formed into a whole by the relationship present.  In this case, most generally the relationship is liturgical expression.  That is to say, there is a sacrificial dialogue happening in liturgy.  How one defines the two ends that are bound by the relationship is what forms our various manifestations of dialectical tension. 

The first dialectical tension is between the transcendent and the anthropocentric natures of Liturgy.  The divided camps of liturgy generally align on one point of view another concerning this dialectical tension.  For what are considered the theologically conservative, they align along the transcendent end of the liturgical expressive relationship.  This is because they “conserve”, that is they want an unchangeable or static understanding of liturgy.  From the point of view of the Sacrifice of Christ, as it exists in eternity, this is a one hundred percent accurate understanding of the state of affairs.  Since they focus on Christ’s eternal sacrifice, those who focus on the transcendent end of the liturgical expressive relationship tend to sculpt a culture of minimal anthropic expression.  God expresses his end of the sacrifice and we receive the benefit.  Our only role is to sit and receive.  At this point, such a focus tends to want to extremely particularly define the rubrics of the mass front the clerical (Tridentine) end and the passive laity are to learn about God’s expressive love through the proper execution of the rubric.  This is a very “Enlightenment” approach to both sacred magic and liturgical expression.  The lay passivity is particularly modern, born out of Pius X’s agenda of rebalancing liturgy and popular piety.  As we explained above this agenda overcorrected and resulted in the crystallization and ultimate crippling of popular expression, especially during the liturgy itself.  These among other factors have contributed to a camp of liturgy that generally aligns transcendent, values rubrics for instruction, values stability of the ritual, and values passivity of the laity.  This is what is currently referred to as the “traditionalist camp”, because they have a vision of the “Traditional Latin Mass” (the extraordinary form) that allows them to buy into their conception of liturgy.  The conception itself is not untrue or bad.  It is a perfectly valid way to approach liturgy.  But, when it exists absent cross spectral mutual pedagogy, or resists that pedagogy, imbalance results that is lacking the necessary dialectical tension and thus unhealthy.

The oppositional camp aligns with the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  They take an anthropic point of view.  That is not to say that the liturgy is meant to be “anthro-centric”.  Again, it is a relational expression, which requires two sides.  But the focus is on the human point of view in the relationship.  This type of liturgy tends to set on an anthropic plot point and seeks to express human meaning and expression by at the expressive depth appropriate to that plot point.  This gives a different role to the cleric and the laity.  They are all seen as humans in a certain relationship of expression toward divinity.  Thus, they relate with each other as cleric and laity, and their mutual relationship expresses meaning and relationship with divinity.  Being oppositional to its brother camp, in its worse case scenario, this type of focus tends to have divinity as the silent partner as opposed to humanity.  The “Traditionalist” would have no actual living human voice in the liturgy, only the static voice of rubric as the powerful expression of God’s transcendent gift.  The “Novus Ordo Catholic” would have a dynamic expression of humanity that may, in its exuberance, forget God’s transcendence gift.  At least this is the blame each side casts at the other.  

In reality, they each express the dialectic tension that should draw to the center when taken as a whole.  The draw is the draw between liturgical expression as immanent or transcendent, and it just so happens that God is both.  The trick is to be able to conceive of the whole as expressing this beautiful paradoxical tension rather than breaking the paradox into intemperate camps.  The best way to conceive of the two as a relational whole is to understand each as an expression of draw or attraction, that is, an expression of liturgical eros.  Liturgical eros is the relationship of expressive draw in the liturgy.  Transcendent focused liturgy sparks eros vertically, drawing the human gaze to the divine. It evokes eros, a longing in the human for a connection to the transcendent divine.  Liturgy that focuses on the immanent presence of God draws God “down” and expresses vertically in an interhuman context.  This evokes a desire, eros,  for understanding one’s place in the body of Christ.  In this type of liturgy one relates to an anthropic plot point and experiences the divine in “the Church” as the people of God, the mystical body of Christ.

The reform of Pius X regarding popular piety seems to have robbed the Church of any variance regarding liturgical expression.  One impetus of the liturgical reform of Sacrosanctum Concillium was to reinvigorate cultural interaction within the liturgical context.  But a question that seems unresolved is, at what anthropic plot point?  Here is another tension that is not exactly new to the liturgical history of the Church.  Any even sophomoric student of liturgy knows there are a host of rites beyond the Latin one in the Catholic Church.  In the East, the rites are generally approached with maneuvers of autocephaly.  The Eastern Churches simply generate culturally appropriate rites by means of generating cultural patriarchs and trusting their magisterial acumen.  Recently the west has tended to consolidate rather than diversify.  Again, this may be due to a more systematic approach to liturgy as a transcendent expression, but the West is culturally more comfortable with definitive definitions than the East tends to be.  But as these definitions were crystalizing over the 19th and 20th century, the Church was also transitioning from a euro-centric community to a global pancultural community.  By the time of the Second Vatican Council, the liturgical context had become so crystalized, that the laity were culturally as well as expressly disenfranchised.  

The response of the council was to promulgate reform that included cultural expressions in liturgy.  Sacrosanctum Concillium has an entire section called “Norms for adapting the Liturgy to the culture and traditions of peoples”.  It calls for “revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples”  The ultimate say in these adaptations lies with the Apostolic See.  The language of the section implies a curious leniency toward “missionary territories” which seems to indicate a very stagnant understanding of culture.  It is as if Europe has a culture that is typified by the Tridentine mass and mission territories are calibrated to that with cultural embellishment.  But the Tridentine mass is not reflective of European culture at its present state, only as it was in the past.  The stagnant view of culture may be born out of a comfort with a liturgy that uses a dead language to symbolize an ideal culture.  But no such culture actually exists.  The language of the section on cultural adaptation generally implies a “goal” or reaching a static culturally appropriate translation and expression form of the mass.  But neither language nor culture actually achieved stasis unless both language and culture are dead. 

Not only that but as the reader can see, the quote above only absolutely vaguely defines what a culture could even be.  It is simply “groups, regions, and peoples”.  This is not even as detailed as our three anthropic plot points.  Ever since, the Church has had to grapple with the interplay of language and dialect in its translation, not to mention the development of language over time.  An idea of a one time culturally appropriate English translation of the Mass is a fantasy, not a reflection of how human language and culture works.  For every conceivable anthropic plot point (almost all the way down to the individual) there is variance in language as well as demarcatable cultural flourishes.  To make it more complicated, these variances are constantly changing. The Ordinary Form is meant to be a cultural expression of relationship and meaning between God as Immanent abiding at a specific anthropic plot point as representative of the Body of Christ.  In this case speaks the target language of the people, just as God “spoke human nature” through the incarnation.  He faces the people so that his role In Persona Christi can signify incarnational immanence.  He specifically signifies Christ incarnate in that culture.  The laity, through exercise of their baptismal priesthood, signifies the People of God in that culture as the mystical Body of Christ.  Their sacrifices are collected as a specific (real) community along the scope of the anthropic paradox which is, in its particular way, expressing meaning and relationships with God through sacrifice and mediation.  The priest and the people signify that relationship together by embodying Christ as a true individual and as a “new humanity”.  Their “back and forth” relationship signifies an incarnational aspect of the anthropic paradox. The backdrop of this “back and forth” is divine transcendence.       

A serious weakness of the Ordinary form has to do with the maneuverability of expression. Since this isn’t an individual approach to transcendent God, the people have a rubric as a culture.  But at what anthropic plot point is the depth of the expression?  What is micro and what is macro is relative to one’s point of reference when one “looks up” or “looks down” the scale of the anthropic paradox.  Well, the council does not say.  All these things are decided as time and culture are in motion.  This is not exactly a new problem.  There are great saints who are known for bringing local liturgies in line with the Roman Rite.  And there are great saints who are known for creating culture specific rites.  Neither is wrong.  

The way the institution hierarchical church has tried to balance all of the dialectic tensions between transcendence and immanence and between how various is through liturgical legislation, first, of clerics, then of the laity.  But this litigiousness has put off balance another tension that must be present, the balance between instruction and expression. By that legislation, a certain ethos of control has cultivated which is concentrated at the top end of the clerical hierarchy.  The hyper litigiousness comes out of the sincere desire to allow the ritual to instruct.  In a culture where people find the liturgy an example of empirical superstition, they understand and relate less and less.  Along with that alienation, a powerful form of cultural myth and ethos has developed in the secular world such that the narratives and assumptions of Christianity are being forgotten due to perceived irrelevance.  The urge to instruct in a situation where the populace is weekly summoned by law of the Church is understandable.

Since the splintering of Reformation, the feeling has been that the instruction needs to be uniform and wide impacting.  Hence we reach the difficult bind of the Ordinary form.  The ability to adapt is limited by a feeling that adaptation is the enemy.  Thus culture is defined by the most macro of metrics, for example, those who share a language.  Then the language and culture are understood as “stagnant” thus the urge is to produce a uniform liturgy for that culture or people through linguistic interpretation and cultural rubrics.  All of this interpretation and formation takes place with a bias toward minimal change to the crystallization of the Tridentine Rite, also codified in response to the Reformation. Indeed the bias seems to be to form equally crystalized forms of the mass for each language.  By “freeing” the mass from one particular cultural context, the magisterial authority seems to have grasped wider control through multicultural crystallization.  Now the laity can only express individually or micro-culturally apart from the liturgy itself.  All of this is happening in a culture of liturgical distrust, where mutual accusations of irreverence are hurled across theological divides fostering further alienation and normalizing disengagement from any liturgy that is not personally evocative.

This complexity is simply life.  The Church is wise to have a diversified approach, transcendent and immanent, individual and cultural, to the liturgy.  It would be helpful if there could be a more mature understanding of culture that gave more leeway regarding language and rubric to bishops, and cultural expression to individual priests during the liturgy.  This could help the adaptability of the liturgy as it grapples with the fluid reality of both culture and language.  But, this could also summon the specter of “clown and hotdog masses”, referencing the tumultuous time after the Second Vatican Council when language and rubric were very “up for grabs”.  And it is true that liturgy must remain true to its transcendent aspects and what it conveys must conform to the revealed dogmas.

What needs to happen is a cultivation of universal and cultural ritual trust so that instruction and expression can coexist in liturgy and everyone can benefit.  As long as the top echelon of the clerical hierarchy maintains absolute control of the liturgy, there is little to no expression on the part of the lower echelon of the clerical hierarchy and no expression from the laity.  The control of the top certainly facilitates good education, but freedom facilities liturgical expression.  At present, there is much control and rigid education from the top, but little expression of meaning and relationship from the bottom.  

The first step toward rebalancing involves trust that must come from the top of the clerical hierarchy.  They must trust that those down the clerical chain understand the local culture and can successfully monitor cultural expression in the liturgy.  This will allow for linguistic and cultural variance at least at the level of the bishop.  Taking subsidiarity into account, one can find parity along the standard plot points of the anthropic paradox and the most basic offices of the clerical hierarchy.  The pope and the offices of the Holy See act on the most general level, making sure dogma is being adhered to.  That any “lesson” garnered from liturgy is appropriate to what has been revealed. “How” it is expressed and the anthropic plot point of macro-cultural lines up better with the task of the bishop, who should come out of this community and thus have a good working knowledge of the culture.  If a bishop cannot be trusted to be a good guarantor of dogma at the most basic level, and express the dogmas according to good doctrine, he has no place being a bishop.  In the current climate, that seems like a lot of trust!  Certainly, bishop’s conferences can meet on regional languages etc.  But our suspicion is born out of a constant history of ecclesial tension, not the least of which was the Reformation.  Should that tension inhibit expression in the liturgy to the point of alienation?  Arguably it already has, and this imbalance has fostered and intensified the animosity between our liturgical camps. 

A priest lines up with the anthropic plot point of the micro-community, the parish.  In as much as micro communities desire to express in liturgy, this would be under the preview of the priest, who could determine what was and what was not appropriate.  The laity form and conform all along the spectrum of the anthropic paradox, from the individual to the communal, in as much the associate.      

How much trust must we invest in each other?  Well, this depends completely on the situation and the relationship.  As we pointed out in Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium the Church is people, not paperwork, thus legislation cannot be the primary means of operation in the Church.  Those in lower positions must trust that those in higher positions make good instruction and regulate for good reason.  Then they must seek the lesson. Those in higher positions must trust the sincerity of the expressions from those in the lower position and sincerely try to understand the dialect of expression they are using in liturgy before they regulate litigiously.   

The current need to instill trust such that liturgy can appropriately adapt in the Ordinary Form such that we can begin to garner a modicum of appropriate expression at the liturgical expressive depth level of “culture”.  This trust allows for macro and micro culture to express. But thus far, the only expressive depth we have altered is cultural.  How are individuals as such supposed to gain access?  How can we plunge the quality of liturgical expressive depth all the way to the individual and truly include even the laity in actual liturgical expression?   

Calibrating Liturgical Expressive Depth: A Vision of Two Forms

The Ordinary Form of the mass had a goal of “including the laity” by active participation.  But that active participation was conceived, for lack of a better word, clerically.  The inclusion came in the form of rubric and role for the “community” of the laity.  The lay participation in the sacrifice of the mass, from the clerical point of view, is the collect, the gathering of those sacrifices and offering of them as the mystical body’s participation in the eternal sacrifice.  Since this is what the priest does, it is natural that the priest thinks of “the laity” as a cultural body and the clerical hierarchy would place lay participation on a more macro anthropic plot point.  But how can the micro anthropic plot points invest in liturgical expression, liturgically appropriating their sacrifices and mediations and bringing them to the liturgy as legitimate priests of baptism?  How can a minuscule micro community deep down the anthropological paradox, such as small consecrated congregations or nuclear families do this?  How can individuals, hermits, consecrated virgins, or those living the “single vocation” liturgically express AS such?  There seems to be no room for this in the Ordinary Form.  The Ordinary Form only allows for collective expression, generally at a more macro level managed by synods and offices at the Holy See who do not have the micro as part of their point of view..

These sacrifices are experienced and expressed ritually by both official and dynamic popular piety.  We discussed in The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church the complexity of the sacrificial economy between the two varieties of priest in the Catholic Church and how they interface in the liturgy,

We are seeking a shift in understanding from how the laity participates by ritual rubric to an understanding that is informed by the sacrificial economy of the mass.  This understanding centers on how the laity participates in the mass according to their priesthood.  The difference may be surmised in the difference in view of the Mass as an oasis and the Eucharist as an activation.  

 

The “activation” we were hinting at in this quote was developed as the living sacrifices of the baptismal priests in the world “outside” of formal liturgy and active mediation as Alter Christus.  This can be by means of acts of charity, expressions of love, ritual engagement by official and dynamic popular piety, or any means by which the baptismal priest sacralizes the world.  The active participation comes for the laity as an awareness of their sacrifices as the mass collects and applies them to Christ’s eternal sacrifice.  

But ritually none of this is dynamically expressed during the unfolding of the Ordinary Form.  Only the cultural anthropic plot point is given a voice and a usually macro plot point at that.  Micro anthropic plot points and individuals are relegated to expression outside of the liturgy itself.  The only time that the rubrics allow for specific variance concerning the sacrifices of the baptismal priesthood is at the beginning of the Offertory when gifts are brought up by the baptismal priests.  The rubric specifically states, “It is desirable that the faithful express their participation by making an offering, bringing forward bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist and perhaps other gifts to relieve the needs of the Church and of the poor”  Other than this, specific expressions of sacrifice by the baptismal priest can happen all the way up to the beginning of mass and immediately after mass ends, but not during.  This would be seen as “disruptive” to the larger anthropic plot point’s expression.  But as auxiliary ritual, official and dynamic popular piety are key outside the context of rubric.

The Ordinary Form creates a culture that urges expression and exercise of baptismal priesthood outside of the liturgy.  The last exhortation of the mass is “Go and announce the gospel of the Lord”.  This is a call to exercise one’s ministries, mediations, and sacrifices outside the liturgy and in the world.     

In the The Rule of Our Family’s Domestic Church, we have constructed an example of dynamic popular piety involving votive candles on our home altar that connect to candles by the Saint Anthony Alter at church, which obviously connect to the liturgical candles.  In what I call “the Dom-Rite” we press the empty votive tins of our candles into petals and glue them into flowers, leaving them at the base of Anthony's altar.  There they remain until usually around Christmas, when the sacristan gives the Church a good cleaning and our flowers disappear.  This entire ritual, which also involves burning candles at home, offerings of food to the poor at church, lighting candles in church, takes place just before or just after the liturgy.  We also burn enough candles in prayer at our home altar to have many extra flowers for random shrines we build around about or to give to people who need prayers or to simply leave for strangers to find.  These are some of the mediations and sacrifices of the priests of our domestic church that are symbolized by the one flower we leave on the altar.  By these, we are trying to bring beauty or effective prayer to the secular world.  We offer these flowers before mass as our special way to bring our sacrifices to the altar.     

I have also seen the micro communal expression go awry.  I work at an institution and a picture of one of our masses occasionally makes the rounds of ultra-trad liturgical police sites. The picture offers an expression of a micro communal devotion.  There is a symbol standing in front of the altar that is very recognizable to the micro community, but also recognizable in a very different way to the general populace. It is sad to me because I understand how the liturgical embellishment is an expression of the loving relationship of a very particular micro-community that is absolutely geared toward Christ.  But the picture doesn’t appear that way because the community uses niche symbols of communication.   Being a minuscule micro community, there is no appropriate way to express in the liturgy itself, only to attach to it before or after.  THis symbol, out of context, has caused scandal and inflamed wrath.  

To be less vague I can offer another example from the same community.  Being fairly progressive, I always thought talk of  “clown masses” was a scare tactic of the liturgical traditionalist to keep rubrics uniform and static.  I worked at this institution for literally years, and then one day I was walking to a particular mass that happens every year and it struck me like a ton of bricks, this mass was a clown mass.  What I mean is that during a certain part of the liturgy, people in makeup come into the space between the sanctuary and the pews.  There they wordlessly pantomime the reading from the pulpit.  Some priests allowed this as a cultural embellishment on the micro anthropic plot points. But sometimes priests disallow it and the reading and the accompanying “play” is moved to after mass attached to an auxiliary service.

It is an interesting case, because nothing is “said” during the pantomime, and it does not take place in the sanctuary.  But at the same time, it can easily be argued (I’d say fairly persuasively) that it distracts from reading.  The rubrics of the ordinary form note what those acting in the capacity of baptismal priesthood are to say, do, and not do.  That is to say, if the rubric says sit, then the baptismal priest sits quality.  As Sacrosanctum Concillium notes,   

In liturgical celebrations each person, minister or layman, who has an office to perform, should do all of, but only, those parts which pertain to his office by the nature of the rite and the principles of liturgy. Servers, lecturers, commentators, and members of the choir also exercise a genuine liturgical function. They ought, therefore, to discharge their office with the sincere piety and decorum demanded by so exalted a ministry and rightly expected of them by God's people. Consequently they must all be deeply imbued with the spirit of the liturgy, each in his own measure, and they must be trained to perform their functions in a correct and orderly manner.

And here I agree that the clown mass seems not to fit the bill for what Sacrosantcum Concillium is describing as its vision for the Novus Ordo.

But interestingly this is not the case for the Tridentine mass.  The culture sculpted by Pius X, the Tridentine rite has become a place of passivity, but it was not always such, and certainly does not need to be.  I must reiterate that there is no rubric for the laity in the Extraordinary Form.  The current cultural state of affairs is a population of young people who are enamored with the aesthetics of the Extraordinary Form but are bringing to it both the passivity instilled by Pius X and the submissiveness of the Ordinary Form.  What you get is a generation that could sculpt this meme:       

But this Meme is completely off base.  It is at the mass that we bring our sacrifices together and bind them to the mass.  If one mediates or sacrifices Alter Christus in one’s life by music, dance, or even buffoonery, then it may not be historically situated at the foot of the cross in first century Palestine, but the sacrifice there transcends time, and the liturgy is our access to participation in that sacrifice.  The Ordinary Form hits the high anthropic plot points collectively, macro cultures.  The Extraordinary Form hits two plot points simultaneously.  It is well known that the Extraordinary for presents the Transcendent.  It does this by means of a fixed (dead language) and a fixed rubric, projecting the ambiance and ethos of eternity.  Meanwhile, the ordained priest’s back is to the congregation.  He worships with them in relation to transcendent divinity.  His role is still that of the priest In Persona Christi who collects, but his signification resonates more with Christ, true God, and true man,  as he enters the eternal sanctuary, as opposed to Emanuel, Christ with us.  The Priest of the Extraordinary Form is far from the people.  The “barrier” between him and the baptismal priests is the communion rail, which in these latter days, as popular piety was neutralized, became a sign of clericalism, and priestly arrogance.

But absent the neutralization of popular piety, acceptance of the effectiveness of dynamic popular piety as a medium of baptismal priesthood sheds new light on the simple fact that there is no rubric for the laity.  The most shocking thing about “The Traditional Latin Mass” is that, of the two forms, it is the form where “clown and hotdog masses” are actually allowed.            

If one were to show up at Tridentine mass in a clown outfit, there is no reason to reject them.  Given the space available, if they decided to work a pantomime along with the liturgy as an expression of how they use their trade to bring joy to others, abate suffering, express humility etc, all in an attempt to mediate and sacrifice according to their baptismal priesthood, this is absolutely allowed.  If an entire troop of clowns (a micro community) wanted to do this and express their sacrifice during the liturgy, this is acceptable, because there is no rubric for the laity.  They are free as individuals and as micro communities to express as they desire.  But hotdogs?  Well, yes even hotdogs. It seems they are allowed as long as they do not cross the dynamic expressive barrier, which in this case is the communion rail.

  

The only mitigation to eating would be that Saint Paul himself seems not to approve of eating during the liturgy.  He says in 1 Corinthians 11, “If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that your meetings may not result in judgment.”  But his concern seems to be that people are arriving and eating a meal in connection to the sacrificial meal, but only supplying for those they favor.  This leaves the poor and others neglected and hungry.  This is the “judgment” he is referring to.  But it does seem that however, the Eucharist worked in Paul’s time, it’s form was dynamic and involved a lot of spontaneity.  That is to say, there seems to be no rubric for the laity.

One can gather this because Saint Paul uses this part of the Corinthian correspondence to comment on orderly worship services.  At the end of Chapter 14, Paul goes into some detail about how people need to express their gifts.  His concerns revolve mainly on prophecy, and tongues and how they interact with scripture readings and the sacrifice.  He also notes that there is more to discuss when he comes.  My response to affirm Paul’s concern.  There does need to be respect and order.  This is extremely evident in the Ordinary Form.  It is rubrics in every way.  But Paul also allows for a balance.  Prophets are obviously not priests according to the way he describes the ritual, and what they do does not seem to need to “fit” a standardized formula in Paul’s opinion.  Only to observe respect for all people in attendance.  Now we have a form that does this by absolute regulation (the Ordinary) and a form that creates an order that seems to allow for chaos, that is dynamic popular piety.

The Extraordinary form creates a definitive break between the Macro (transcendence and the eternal sacrifice) and the micro points low on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox.  The contrast allows a different type of order than the ordinary form, which situates itself at the higher anthropic plot points.  Much like physics and the scale of the universe, at the higher, Brobdingnagian end, order is more apparent, like astronomy.  But, the lilliputian end of the spectrum begins to demonstrate diversity and randomness, like quantum physics.  The extraordinary form sets a barrier, the communion rail, that bifurcates liturgical expressive depth at the extremes of the spectrum.  Therefore it is an “ordered” chaos in the outer space of the Extraordinary Form.  There, the baptismal priests are free to express according to their priesthood however they may need, as long as they are doing so with sincerity.  And I would add with Paul, as long as they are doing so in a way that calibrates to the respect needed for everyone to do whatever they need to do in the liturgy.  What that means is, if you have a food, say, fig cookies for Saint Joseph's day, and this is an extremely important part of how your family (a micro culture) expresses their communion as a collective of baptismal priests, you should feel free to bring them to mass according to the Extraordinary Form and even consume them, assuming you are not consuming the Eucharist and thereby breaking the required discipline to fast.  The only requirement seems to be that the amount be less of a meal and more “symbolic” and that you bring enough for any and everyone who may want to partake.

The freedom of the Extraordinary Form allows for every kind of popular piety to happen during the liturgy. The “traditional view” of lay participation is silent rosaries said by old ladies, but there is no rubric, they could involve calculated ritual, liturgical dance, custom made rites at side altars (such as the Dom-Rite, but during the liturgy) nearly anything.  The “Trad” Catholic would vehemently criticize the exact form of the clown mass that I have witnessed as a “Novus Ordo abomination!” while insisting that the beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass demands gravity.  But it is the comic cultural twist of fate that it is actually in the Traditional Latin Mass where such expressions are allowed.  Not only the pantomime that I saw, but the Latin Mass even allows for the possibility of verbal or musical accompaniment by the baptismal priesthood expressing their sacrifices and mediations in union with the sacrifice of the mass.  This is the freedom to liturgical express as an individual baptismal priest, or as a micro community of such.  The “rubric” is that your actions express your priesthood in union with the eternal sacrifice of Christ through the sacrifice of the mass and that it respects God, the space, and the people. But “respecting” is a fairly culturally relative term.  It would need to be at the discretion of the pastor, if they notice problems, to discuss what this person (or people) is doing and why, and then with great discernment make a judgment on whether or how they should proceed.  The interesting symbol here is that Ad Orientem assumes a culture of trust of the baptismal priest.  Whatever they are doing back there is assumed to be Kosher unless it is VERY disruptive or was brought to his attention by a fellow baptismal priest.

One problem we face is that, culturally, the Extraordinary Form is rare, and when it is practiced, it is not free.  Though there is no rubric for the laity, there is an assumed myopic-gravitas that it is believed must accompany the liturgy.  The reforms of Pius X still hang heavy and are added to the clericalist point of view of the Second Vatican Council in such a way that there remains a liturgical expressive vacuum for the baptismal priest.  The interesting canary in the coal mine for this vacuum seems to be children.  It is a famous “trad” talking point that Extraordinary Form Masses are filled with devotees who are young and children are everywhere, most likely because the rarity concentrates believers.  The “trad” makes a big deal out of all the crying or even talking children (if they are still young and cute).  The “trad” despises the cry room of the Novus Ordo.  The cry room is a liturgical symbol of alienation as well as the dumbing down of the Novus Ordo.  

I agree, crying children should never be a problem in church.  They should always be a joy.  But, having gone to the Ordinary Form all my life I can say that most people really have no problem with crying children there.  It is main because of the “formality” of the lay rubrics that such rooms were even conceived of.  The exuberant acceptance of crying children in the Traditional Latin Mass seems to be a deep seated memory of a time when the laity was more free and would devotionally “go about their business” during mass.  Children in many ways become the flash point for what liturgical freedom means.  There are many stories even in my personal life where someone talks about their child doing quirky or meaningful things during mass that summarizes the situation (from the lay point of view) or affect good questions, but they aren’t “part of the form”.  

                

I remember a colleague of mine talking about her young sister pointing at the host during the elevation and saying very loudly (nearly shouting) “Look! There’s the Miracle! Look at the Miracle!”  Our joy and fascination with children’s freedom to do this speak to a longing we sometimes have to be able to express thusly in mass.

The vision I have of the interaction of the two forms is not to overhaul them or develop a new form.  I would simply change culture and allow access to the Extraordinary Form more regularly for the benefit of the micro communities and individuals who need it.   My cultural change would simply be a recognition that there is no rubric for the Extraordinary Form.  I would not only keep cry rooms away, I would remove most if not all of the pews and begin to legitimately look at the space on the baptismal side of the communion rail as a ritual worship space for baptismal priests.  The Ordinary Form would be seemingly static in it’s mutual expression but slowly adapt to macro culture.  Whereas, the Extraordinary from would have an absolutely static central focus with a wildly dynamic periphery. I still think the Ordinary form should be reflective of the dominant culture, but that form should be more adaptable by Episcopal synods and local bishops to actually reflect the culture, not just the language, which is a relatively high anthropic plot point.  I think the Ordinary Form should be just that, the ordinary way we do things together as members of the Body of Christ.  With that vision in mind we can move to what is needed for it to take place, a way to center the baptismal priest on the sacrifices they bring to the mass.

In the first section we discussed the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  We noted the functional view of the mass as a medium of instruction and the semantical development in the empirical secular culture that equates ritual with superstition, which isolated the deepest expressions of the life of the Church from everyday life. From there we set the groundwork  that in ritual life, instruction as a goal is subservient expression. 

In this section, we sought to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy.  We attempted to analyze how, on the spectrum of the  anthropological paradox, the liturgy is controlled or liberating and able to change.  We discussed the symbolic nature of each form of the liturgy concerning immanence and transcendence in order to get a perspective on why the two forms function differently.  We then noted the tension between expressions of the various anthropic plot points as well as the tension between instruction in the liturgy and expression through the liturgy. We then discussed the various abilities of the baptismal priesthood to ritually express according to both the Ordinary and Extraordinary form.  What follows from this point is the text for The The Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest.

Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical  Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest

Introduction: The Need of a Guide for the Baptismal Priest for the Examination of Sacrifices

There is a great need for the laity to “prepare” for mass.  Lamentably, most of the materials that help a layperson “prepare” for mass assume the educational approach for liturgy and absolutely lack the expressive approach in the way we have been discussing it.  Almost all of them have two basic points.  The first is to read the readings ahead of time.  This is presumably to be able to better invest in the homily, the point of direct instruction.  THe second is to study the symbolism of the mass.  This is presumably so one can “better understand” the ritual in general and thereby better be instructed by it.  The remainder of any list of helpful preparations is generally filled out with extremely traditional “pious actions” one can do such as advice on how to dress, arrive early, genuflect “meaningfully”, and the like.  While these things are good, any expressive preparation for the baptismal priest is almost completely neglected.

The Council of Trent Session 13 offers advice “On the preparation to be given that one may worthily receive the sacred Eucharist.” but as the title suggests, it focuses mostly on how one is to prepare oneself “to be worthy” to receive.  What that means according to the text is to make sure one avoided sin, go to confession in case one had sinned and to show reverence “especially as we read in the Apostle those words full of terror; He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.” But “worth” can be measured in many ways.  Not simply the “freedom from stain” that Canon XI demands, requiring confession of a mortal sin.  But also how one positively used one’s life, how one is going to bring those sacrifices to the mass as their offering, and particularly for our purposes, how one is going to express that sacrifice liturgically as a baptismal priest.

Some guidance seems needed such that when the ordained priest says something to the effect of “accept and bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices [plural], which we offer you” we can recall and have somehow expressed the sacrifices we bring to the table as baptismal priests.  Paul is certainly right, in 1 Cor 11 when he says each person should “examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.”  But is “discerning the body” simply a moral examination in the way Trent implies, or could it be more?

The examination that this manual offers is no simple examination of conscience.  That is not to say that an examination of conscience is not a good practice previous to mass.  It would be helpful for two reasons, one may discover the need for confession according to the decrees of Trent and it helps one consciously participate in the penitential rite at the beginning of the mass.  But there is no shortage of good guides for an examination of conscience in Catholic devotional literature.  What we are suggesting is quite the opposite.  Not only should one make an examination of conscience, a baptismal priest should also make an examination of sacrifices.  The examination of sacrifices does exactly what it says.  It examines not the bad things one has done in order to seek forgiveness, but the good things one has done as sacrifices of time, talent, and treasure in order to consciously bring them to the collect as a baptismal priest.  One’s pre-liturgical examination of conscience is effectively exhausted at the end of the penitential rite.  But one’s examination of sacrifices is effective throughout the entire liturgy.  It affects how the baptismal priest engages spiritually and expresses ritually in the liturgy.  There are two parts to an examination of sacrifices.  In the first one recalls the sacrifices one has made.  The second part helps the baptismal priest determine how to appropriately express one’s sacrifices in union with the liturgy of the Church.  To these ends, the faithful would be much aided by a guide similar to the guides often produced to assist with an effective examination of conscience.  Heretofore I have never seen any attempt at such a guide in any detail.  We here shall attempt to sculpt a prototype and offer the development of successful guides to wiser minds.      

      

Examination of Sacrificial Engagement Part I: Calling to Mind

The examination is meant to prepare the baptismal priest for active priestly participation in the sacrifice of the Mass.  These exercises would be helpful for laity who are married, consecrated, or single.  The examination would assist lay and ordained alike because as we noted in The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church if one happened to be an ordained priest who is not offering or concelebrating the mass according to their ordination, they are participating under the mode of baptismal priesthood and their sacrifices are collected in the ritual as well.

The first part of an examination of sacrifices calls to mind one’s sacrifices.  This can be a convoluted affair, given that our baptismal priesthood is called to live their office with their entire life, to be living sacrifices.  This means that all actions can conceivably be sacrificial offerings, both active and passive.  Most often the word sacrifice is assumed to be the passive variety.  Passive sacrifices are sacrifices of denial.  That is to say, they are “things given up”.  As the baptismal priest makes their examination, they will want to review this type of sacrifice carefully.  One reflects on what actions have they abstained from, what things have they denied themselves for their personal betterment, for the betterment of their relationship with a neighbor, and especially for the betterment of their relationship with God.    This certainly includes working on not doing certain sins, but it also includes pius acts such as fasting.  There are also spiritual ways of passively relinquishing.  For example, as one experiences humiliation, it can be used as a sacrifice for relinquishing pride.  Or as one experiences suffering one can sacrifice any sense of entitlement to be relieved of suffering or an easy life.  This sacrifice queues us into the nature of postlapsarian reality as invested with redemptive suffering.  This particular sacrifice hits a popular cultural flashpoint.  The example narrative runs thus, some small child in school stubs their toe and the nun teaching the class tells the child to “offer it up”.  How well one resonates with her advice is an indicator of how well one understands their role in the mass as a baptismal priest.  These relinquishments could be items, actions, spiritual dispositions, thoughts, etc.  It could be the struggle of one’s intention to abstain since the last mass, even if one did not succeed, the struggle itself is a sacrifice.

After reviewing the passive sacrifices one has made, the baptismal priest should recall the active sacrifices they have made. These could be the things they have done to advance themselves spiritually in relation to God or one’s neighbor.  These can also be things they have done to exercise their baptismal priesthood in advancement of the Kingdom of God.  We can break them down into the classic categories offered in a homily on ministry and tithing to the Church, time, talent, and treasure.  But we here are framing it less as “commerce” and more as priestly action.  The categories are helpful because they break the sacrificial action into the scope of life itself (time), the skills one has and how one uses them, and finally how the baptismal priest uses the material world as it is properly at their disposal.      

Under the first category, one can offer any personal/spiritual disciplines one has actively engaged in order to better one’s self or the world.  These types of sacrifices are specifically “time” sacrifices in that they don’t have immediate effect beyond the personal relationship one has with God.  Spiritual disciplines can be any action that meaningfully draws one close to God.  So adoration seems to affect no one but the adorer, it is a sacrifice of time and spiritual discipline that helps the adorer relate to God better.  The other categories of talent and treasure take time as well, but they involve immediate action and affect beyond the baptismal priest’s phenomenological observance of time.  Of course, a spiritual discipline actually does have a wider effect, but the effects are secondary.  It is when the social effects are secondary that we are calling these types of sacrifice a spiritual discipline.  Examples of spiritual disciplines would be spiritual reading and learning, Devotions of prayer, ritual devotional practices of official or dynamic popular piety, mindful meditative activities, such as adoration or working in the garden with the intention of focusing on God’s beauty in creation.  The example of adoration or spiritual reading would be easy to conjure, but as baptismal priests, the garden example is of useful importance because its consideration is so perfectly a simple way to approach God.  These are the sacrifices we can all bring as baptismal priests if only we are creative enough to cultivate them mindfully and exercise their craft.  A regular practice of an examination of sacrifices should help us cultivate creative approaches to such discipline.

Another sacrifice of time is any sacrifice that is offered as an erogation.  One can sacrifice passively, or use one's talents or offer one’s treasures in such a way that they offer the sacrifice “on behalf of someone else”.  In this, we still receive because we learn agapic love, but the grace or merit we would attain if one can conceive of what that means, is offered to or for another.  In this act, the time one spent on attaining the merit is sacrificed for another.  

The next type of active sacrifice involves one’s talent and how one uses them in service of God and neighbor.  Talent sacrifices can be divided into two varieties, creative and servile.  A service talent is when one seeks to heal the world, for example by means of the corporal or spiritual works of mercy.  To intentionally do this as a presentation of priestly sacrifice is the primary mode of the baptismal priest.  It builds up one’s office in all capacities, regarding personal virtue, relationship to neighbor, and relationship to God.  To offer the example of the works of mercy is by no means exhaustive.  They take whatever shape meets the need of the people, that one has the talent to offer service for.  Of course, service sacrifices can be extremely “creative” but we are distinguishing between service and creative because we usually think of service in utilitarian or practical terms.  Service “fixes something” or meets a physical need.  We thus call attention to creative sacrifices so we can include things like a sacrifice of artistic talent.  Of course, this meets a deep need of the people as well.  But in our modern world often this need goes under recognized.  To be able to offer one’s talent to bring beauty to the world and help people share in the beauty of God’s creation is absolutely a sacrifice of talent worth bringing to the altar of God.

The final type of sacrifice merges both previous varieties.  A meditation on how one offers one’s treasure as a sacrifice is a meditation on how one engages with the physical world apart from interpersonal relationships.  This can relate to how one has been an effective steward of the property one has used it according to gospel precepts.  As one can see, this meditation involves use of time, because it takes us time of investment to acquire physical goods.  In as much as that time is time dedicated to service of God or neighbor it is a sacrifice.  It could be that one’s “job” directly builds the kingdom. It could also be that one’s job is fairly morally neutral, in which case one is “earning money” in order to advance the kingdom through their sacrifices by other means.  In this case one’s sacrifices concern all of the other sacrifices above regarding how one uses the physical things one at one’s disposal as a means of serving God.  

Of course, these physical things are always at the service of interpersonal relationships and how they facilitate acts of love.  With that in mind, another type of consideration could be how one uses one’s baptismal priesthood as expressed through the interpersonal dynamics.  The treatise The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church discussed the use of interpersonal relationships as both sacrifice and mediations of the baptismal priesthood’s ability to present alter Christus.  We called these dynamics the four modalities of Christo-analogical interchange.  Given the dual nature of presentation, which requires a “presenter” and a “presented to”, there are four possibilities, two offering first person presentations of Christ and two offering second person presentations. The relationship assumes some sort of help is being offered and the modalities work to “Christ as the helper”, “Christ as the helped”, “the helper of Christ” and finally“helped by Christ''.  In as much as one consciously brings Christ to others one is operating in a mode of mediatory baptismal priesthood.  In as much as one can swallow pride and allow others to bring Christ to them, one is sacrificing self to live for Christ. That treatise went through great detail on how these modalities are utilized according to the baptismal priesthood to sacrifice, mediate, and sanctify the world.  Each use is offerable on the altar of the liturgy.  Thus a baptismal priest would do well to consider any example of these as they call sacrifices to mind during their examination of sacrifices.

Lastly, when considering specific sacrifices it may help to use one’s relational life in the Church to help guide one to examples of baptismal priestly action in their life.  We abide in several frameworks that can help spark realization of how we offer our lives to Christ. So, for example, one may want to use the classic categories of vocation and ministry to analyze one’s life a look for examples to offer.  If one is married how has one used this as means of sacrifice for one’s life?  The same applies if one is consecrated or single.  Or another example of such a  framework is the micro-communities one belongs to.  One could consider how one relates to such communities and how one brings Christ to them as a ministry.  These communities could be specifically religious like one’s parish or an affiliation like the Knights of Columbus.  Or one’s micro-community could be cultural or kinship.  It could also be a completely secular community that one is engaged with, a pleasure club, or one’s workplace.  These secular communities are prime real estate for offering sacrifice to God because it is the baptismal priest’s job to sacralize the secular. 

Part one of an examination of sacrifices involves recognition of intentional and conscious use of time, talent, and treasure to offer one’s life to God.  A good examination of conscience allows one to meditate on one’s regarding the intention and conscious choice of evil.  Through a good examination of conscience, one can learn of new sins to avoid or realize one is unintentionally doing evil and through the process learn to avoid that evil in the future.  With a well executed examination of sacrifices, one can realize much good one is doing without specific intention toward exercising their baptismal priesthood and learn to engage this good as an offering of that priesthood.  OR one may at times be pressed to find sacrifices and that may motivate one to engage their baptismal priesthood creatively and develop new ways to exercise their priesthood.  In this, like an examination of conscience, it is past looking present oriented and future focused.  

Both examinations look to the past to prepare for the sacrament.  Both examinations are oriented to the present sacramental ritual and reception of grace.  Both examinations look to the future regarding how willfully cooperating with that grace will consciously and effectively change one’s life in a sanctifying way.  In this respect, an examination of sacrifices specifically connects the liturgy to every aspect of the baptismal priest’s life and orients the sacrifice of the mass into a central role in the priest’s life.  An examination of sacrifice is meant to bring conscious active participation in the sacrifice of the mass.  With that in mind, we will now offer a general but pragmatic list of questions that reflect all we have discussed.  The hope is that others can create better tailored lists and improve engagement of the examination of sacrifices.  The first part of the examination concerns conscious participation in the liturgy. In it one consciously brings one’s sacrifices to the mass for the collect.  After the list, we will move on the consideration of expressive options, which applies to how one actively participates in the liturgy.                   

       

Relevant Questions for an Examination of Sacrifices

Sacrifices of Time

• In my life, what have I relinquished in faith to God?

• In my life, what have I relinquished for the betterment of my soul? 

• How have I actively offered my life to God?

• What spiritual disciplines have I engaged in and how have I used the effect well?

• Are there any sacrifices that I have made through negation, use of talent, or offering of treasure that I would like to offer for someone else at this mass? Who and why?

Sacrifices of Talent

• How have I used my creativity to serve God?

• How have I intentionally served my neighbor as a devotion to God?

• How have I intentionally used my talents to bring beauty to the world and give glory to God?

• How have I been an effective steward of the physical goods God has granted me?

• How have I meditated Christ to others?

• How have I subjected my pride and allowed others to mediate Christ to me?

• How have I used my vocation in the Church to affect sacrificial action?

• How have I developed my ministries in the Church?

• How have I specifically made my vocation an offering to God?

• How have I developed and utilized ministries of the Church in my life?

• How have I brought Christ, whether overtly or covertly, to secular communities I engage with?

Sacrifices of Treasure

• What things have I offered to those less fortunate than me?

• In what ways have I recognized that “my” possessions are not my own?

• In what ways have I shown appreciation for “my” possessions as gifts?

• In what ways have I intentionally sacrificed my pride?

• In what ways have I accepted suffering as a sacrifice?

Examination of Sacrificial Engagement Part Part II: Consideration of Expressive Options 

Once one has called to mind their sacrifices they desire to bring to the table the next step is the consideration of expressive options for sacrificial communion.  The point here is to ritually express the intention of one’s offering in a way that is appropriately connected to the sacrifice of the Mass as the ordained priest offers it.  This should give one buy in to the ritual and offer an active participation in the sacrifice.  When considering this one would need to consider which form of the mass one intends to engage in.  Above we noted the diversity of methods of engagement open depending on whether one attends the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form.  If one has a choice of form, how one is able to express differs depending on which form one chooses.

The easiest option comes with the Ordinary Form of the Mass, which is, perhaps, why it is the Ordinary Form.  The important aspect from the ordained priest’s end regarding the sacrificial economy of the mass is the collect.  But from the baptismal priest's end, it is the offering of the gifts.  There are two ways this can be done in the most ordinary way.  First one can offer to bring up the bread and wine from the congregation.  This is a ritual expression from the baptismal priesthood end of the sacrifices we have made, “fruit of the vine, work of human hands”.  But there is limited space for this ritual engagement, so the other rubriced mode is to offer a monetary offering into the collection plate.  This money signifies the time, talent and treasure the baptismal priests have offered.  It is ritually important that some“thing” be put in the basket as a way of offering up one’s intentional sacrifices.  That said, the “thing” is often money, but could it be other things, at least paper things?  Could it a list of sacrifices or a small non-intrusive artistic representation of sacrifices as an expression?  Our parish moved to online giving for the collection several years ago.  When I signed our family up, we stopped getting the envelopes to put in the basket.  I considered the physical placement an important part of the ritual engagement.  The money offered was only a small part of the actual sacrifices I bring and to put the paper there was my major expression of our family’s efforts.  So I started printing off the receipt from the web page and putting it in.  The “handing over” as a ritual action should not be denied the baptismal priest.

Once one has developed a habit of examining their sacrifices, the entire liturgy of the Eucharist in the Ordinary Form clicks so much better as a medium of liturgical expression for the baptismal priest.  The way the ordained priest expresses in persona Christi as a dialogue with the mystical body, a collection of alter Christus’, truly comes to have a deeper effect.  As we noted above, the Ordinary form seems to hit at the higher anthropic points of expression so if one is inclined to express more communally, one need do no more than attend mass to express in the Ordinary Form.  The Church as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, tends to macro express as a default, and thus it is not a bad idea for the individual baptismal priest to have that same bias. 

That said, often we as humans have alternative longings to the macro.  We want to express as micro units or as individuals.  In this case, the ordinary form offers little consolation in the midst of the liturgy itself.  As we noted above, one must “attach” expressions to the liturgy, whether before or after in order to express down the food chain of our anthropic plot points.  But one can still be extremely individually creative in this regard.  One can creatively express in attached ways.  Examples would be expressions of official or dynamic popular piety whose role is just such expression.  Our Dom-Rite is an example of dynamic popular piety attached to the mass.  An individual baptismal priest or collection of them could create any multitude of ways to express their sacrifices in collection the mass.  As part of a school community for every schoolwide mass, we do there is an introductory procession that expresses the purpose for the mass and how we as a school community have bought into this purpose.  Usually, items that are significant to the purpose are brought up while someone reads a description from the podium.  All of this takes place before the opening procession.  Often after mass, there are rituals that express goals met or express meaning for the community.  

These types of rituals are sculpted by the baptismal priests.  The ordained priest will often check in on how these things are specifically oriented to the mass.  But this is an advisory role.  Such celebrations can be awards ceremonies, where it is clear that the work was done for Christ, fellowship meals in celebration of a sacrifice, and a host of other things that to the uninitiated observer seem to be “tacked on” to mass.  I recall that when we were children my parents would take each of us to a specific dairy queen after our confirmation in celebration.  It was definitely an auxiliary ritual for our domestic church.   In the same way, any micro-community or individual can do the same.  Our Dom-Rite is the expression of a micro-community, our domestic church.  It symbolizes our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings in the form of a votive flower.    It is left at the Church as an offering.  We offer the flowers at the Altar of Saint Anthony because he is a wonder worker and we like to have him on our side.  This brings up the fact that our celestial companions can definitely have a role in our liturgical expressions as baptismal priests.  

Do the micro expressions of the baptismal priesthood need to perfectly line up with the particular current expressions of the greater church?  Well, they should as much as they can.  For example, in a purple season expressions should reflect the tenor of these seasons.  If there are solemnities or celebrations particular to the macro community, the micro communities would do well to synchronize.  But one should not be to pharisaical.  Barring any heresy or immoral offense, the expression is under the control of the baptismal priest.  Variability amid the micro is what allows for new macro devotions to develop.   

If one has the opportunity to attend the Extraordinary Form then one has the ability to express concurrently with the liturgy.  Again, there is no rubric for the laity.  Any side altars open during the liturgy are for this express purpose.  Hence we use the side altar for our Dom-Rite before mass, but at an Extraordinary Form mass, we could perform this rite during significant parts of the mass for added buy in.  In my vision of a church where clericalism does not exist, there would be no pews in a mass that has the extraordinary form for greater ability to utilize the worship space creatively.  The only restriction, in my mind, would be Pauline.  The baptismal priests' ritual engagement should be respectful of others present.  If there is food it should be a symbolic amount and offered to all present.  If there is sound and motion involved, give others enough space and keep volume appropriate to your space so as not to interrupt other expressions.  Expressions should suit the rhythm of the mass itself such that at the time of readings and homilies one is listening and at the time of reception, reception is possible if desired.

With these guidelines taken into account, there is much room for extremely creative expression.  The baptismal priest is able to use their own body, ritual objects, ritual motions, ritual voice, and song, to the best of their expressive ability.  Micro communities are able to appropriately bring their symbols into the mass and coordinate expression in order to sacralize the entirety of life. 

It is important, as a baptismal priest, to connect an expression of sacrifice to the mass.  This not only gives one the buy in to actively and consciously participate, it also facilitates the function of the mass as a sacralization of the world.  A good examination of sacrifices should help one contemplate the best way to express, and then by expressing one should be given better advantage to participate with the grace of the sacrament as one applies it to the world.

In this manual, we began by discussing the need for an examination of sacrifices and how such an examination can be beneficial for orienting the baptismal priest to what sacrifices they bring to the eucharist as well as giving one skill for better engaging in their sacrifices in the future. Then we detailed the two parts of the examination of sacrifices.  The first part was to review what sacrifices one is bringing to the mass as an offering. We went over specific categories of sacrifices to consider and urged any reader so inclined to develop new and better methods and questions for such an examination.  At the end of this, we listed a series of questions to be used as an examination.  The second part was the consideration of expressive options.  We divided this consideration between the options available to the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Mass. We then explored the extremely wide varieties of ways the baptismal priest can express ritually in connection to the liturgy.                          

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Conclusion

In the first section we discussed the struggle of modern Catholicism to maintain liturgical investment.  We began by noting a very current problem, the presence of contentious liturgical camps in the American Catholic Church.  We traced the reactionary nature of both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary forms of the Mass, which lead to a functional view of the mass as a medium of instruction.  We noted that there has been a semantical development in the empirical secular culture that equates ritual with superstition.  This semantical maneuver has isolated the deepest expressions of the life of the Church from the everyday life of its members and required exercise of conscious as opposed to intuitive ritual investment. We then laid out the bi-conciliar strategy of dealing with this by rubriced control of the participants of the Mass, first the clerics (Trent), then the laity (Vatican II).  We noted that this control was implemented under the assumption that a major function of the liturgy is instruction of the populace.  To end this section, we noted that in ritual life, instruction as a goal is subservient expression.

In the second section, we sought to develop the expressive possibilities of the baptismal priesthood and understand how they relate to the exercise of the liturgy.  We attempted to analyze how, on the spectrum of the anthropological paradox, the liturgy is controlled or liberating and able to change.  We discussed the symbolic nature of each form of the liturgy concerning immanence and transcendence in order to get a perspective on why the two forms function differently.  We then noted the tension between expressions of the various anthropic plot points as well as the tension between instruction in the liturgy and expression through the liturgy. We then discussed the various abilities of the baptismal priesthood to ritually express according to both the Ordinary and Extraordinary form. 

The last section consisted of the The Handbook for Engaged and Active Participation by Baptismal Priesthood During The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  In this manual, we began by discussing the need for an examination of sacrifices and how such an examination can be beneficial for orienting the baptismal priest to what sacrifices they bring to the eucharist as well as giving one skill for better engaging in their sacrifices in the future. Then we detailed the two parts of the examination of sacrifices.  The first part was to review what sacrifices one is bringing to the mass as an offering.  We went over specific categories of sacrifices to consider and urged any reader so inclined to develop new and better methods and questions for such an examination.  At the end of this, we listed a series of questions to be used as an examination.  The second part was the consideration of expressive options.  We divided this consideration between the options available to the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Mass. We then explored the extremely wide varieties of ways the baptismal priest can express ritually in connection to the liturgy. 

The sacrificial nature of the liturgy is what differentiates ancient Christian worship from Protastant worship services.  The sacrificial economy operating between the two priesthoods is what allows the Mass to become a powerhouse of grace, not just for the participants, but for the world.  As the baptismal priests move beyond the church building and bring grace to the world and then return to the church building to collect their sacrifices for Christ, they form a pulsation of sacral life.  The hope for this treatise is that our manual will provide better facilitation and use of the gifts given to us by God and a better and richer experience of life in his Church.