Bp. Serratelli steps up

His Excellency Arthur J. Serratelli, Bishop of Patterson (NJ) since 2004 has begun a series of articles on the sense of the sacred. I tip my biretta in his direction for this good initiative. o{]:¬)

Here is an excerpt from the first offering (my emphases and comments).

Living in our world, we breathe the toxic air that surrounds us. Even within the most sacred precincts of the Church, we witness a loss of the sense of the sacred [Do my eyes deceive? I think H.E. just set up a parallel between irreverence in church and breathing toxic air. Notice he used the word "precinct". Oooooo Bp Trautman won’t like that one. Toooo harrrrd!]. With the enthusiasm that followed the Second Vatican Council, there was a well-intentioned effort to make the liturgy modern. It became commonplace to say that the liturgy had to be relevant to the worshipper. [Again, the spectre of Bp. Trautman’s argument about liturgical translations slithers into view, as well as that execrable letter from the ordinary of Los Angeles, Gathering Faithfully [sic] Together. Brrrrr….] Old songs were jettisoned. The guitar replaced the organ. Some priests even began to walk down the road of liturgical innovation, only to discover it was a dead end. [Nice analogy.] And all the while, the awareness of entering into something sacred that has been given to us from above and draws us out of ourselves and into the mystery of God was gone. [Excellent, Excellency! Holy Mass is not about us or about what we do, ultimately, but rather about what God does for us and through us. Mass is not a "truly human experience", as it was called by an old incarnation of the BCL at the time liturgy was being dismantled.]

Teaching about the Mass began to emphasize the community. The Mass was seen as a community meal. It was something everyone did together. Lost was the notion of sacrifice. Lost the awesome mystery of the Eucharist as Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The priest was no longer seen as specially consecrated. He was no different than the laity. With all of this, a profound loss of the sacred.

Not one factor can account for the decline in Mass attendance, Church marriages, baptisms and funerals in the last years. But most certainly, the loss of the sense of the sacred has had a major impact.

Walk into any church today before Mass and you will notice that the silence that should embrace those who stand in God’s House is gone. Even the Church is no longer a sacred place. Gathering for Mass sometimes becomes as noisy as gathering for any other social event. We may not have the ability to do much about the loss of the sacredness of life in the songs, videos and movies of our day. But, most assuredly, we can do much about helping one another recover the sacredness of God’s Presence in His Church.