Has Mass lost its appeal?

Generalizations about U.S. catholic parishes, and what goes on in them, are awfully risky. After all, there are almost 20,000 of them, and even anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that there are apples, oranges, kumquats, and perhaps lemons among them.

The liturgy, to begin at the beginning: In a perceptive recent interview with Arthur Jones in the National Catholic Reporter, Father James Moroney, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, painted this picture: "When you think of someone whose primary liturgical experience on Sunday is with the Tridentine rite, where it's legally permitted, and then you think of a Catholic who every week sits under a tree, or in a nonconventional sort of setting while working for the poor in Nicaragua, someone who celebrates the Eucharist in a totally different cultural milieu, and that both of them, liturgically, legally, and in spirit and in truth are full-fledged Catholics celebrating Catholic rites--wonderful."

Writing in that estimable and always interesting Irish magazine, The Furrow, a teacher, Joe Coy, speaks so clearly on the subject here that the temptation to quote him extensively is impossible to resist: "My three children go to Mass with me every weekend. The two boys say nothing, but my younger daughter tells me, quite often, that Mass is boring and asks when it will be over. `When you're 18,' I feel like saying.

"Sometimes it occurs to me that not only has Mass, as currently celebrated, little to offer children, it doesn't appear to do much for adults either. A look around most churches reveals vacant focus and quiet indifference. And I wonder what motivates me to go there. Habit perhaps, continuing a tradition inherited from my parents? A desire to identify with something outside myself? Some vague religious sense? A need to believe in a life after death? I'm really not sure."

Some Catholics, clerical and lay, while continuing to thank God for the window-opening of the Second Vatican Council, sometimes wonder if, in the liturgy, we may have thrown out both the baby and the bathwater.

One of our most progressive leaders, Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan, recently shared his doubts with a large convocation of religious educators. He outlined the way in which the participation of the congregation has, in many ways, actually declined because of tasks left incomplete after the reforms of Vatican II.

The turning around of the altar "in your face," Untener says, and the translation of the Mass into the vernacular "literally intruded on prayer." With Vatican II "the idea was, `We'll do it together now,' but we don't. We said, `This will be great.' Well, it hasn't been. But it has great promise."

The Saginaw bishop's shot across the bow was: "Twelve people [in our liturgies] have more actions, the other 1,000 have less to do."

Back in County Galway, Joe Coy would probably agree with that latter statement.

"Church services at present can be very sterile. The appeal is to rationale and literacy--there is little room for feelings or emotions, nothing to lift us beyond ourselves--not enough color, light, music, sound, or scent, not enough atmosphere. Why can't the atmosphere generated by the solemn novenas, for example, be achieved on a regular basis?"

It's hard to know how widely such criticisms apply in U.S. Catholic parishes. But can there be any doubt that a little imagination, a touch of the unexpected here and there, would help us to brighten the corner where we are?

What if, once in a while, the congregation waiting for Mass to begin were to be greeted by the celebrant/ presider walking down the aisle (cope optional), sprinkling Holy Water while saying the beautiful prayer ("Sprinkle me with hyssop") that was part of the asperges ritual?

Or would it be aliturgical to break out and ignite incense in an act of adoration after the Consecration of the Mass?

Back to the wisdom of Coy: "Instead of the formulaic `Prayer of the Faithful,' which nobody listens to, [amen from this writer], why not ask people to contribute real requests--for A who got a new job; for B who is worried about a pending operation; for C who died happily after 92 years; for the parents of baby D who was stillborn; for E who got engaged. Real prayers for real people."

Reforming our liturgy by really involving the people in the pews--as well as those "in their faces"--is, more than likely, the most important challenge confronting the church as we approach the new century. The Holy Spirit can be counted on to help with the heavy lifting, but the rest is up to us.