Our Place of Worship Move over, Jesus! Part I.

In our Jan-Feb edition, Catholic Insight reported the unhappiness of many American bishops with the American document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (EACW) issued in 1978 and its latest, 1999, incarnation Domus Dei (House of God) (see pp. 23-24). In Canada, too, unhappiness has grown by leaps and bounds about similar suggestions which usually are presented as commands and decrees from on high, mandatory and unchangeable. In the March edition we published Filippo Mecozzi's "Temple of God or community hall?" (pp. 28-29) on the same theme. In this issue Mr. Nicholas Burn of Ottawa tackles the latest Canadian document, sprung upon us in the summer of 1999. Editor

EACW refers to Environment and Art in Catholic Worship', produced by the United States Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy in 1978. This document has been the subject of some controversy over (among other things) its recommendations to place the tabernacle in a separate chapel when renovating existing, or building new, churches. There are numerous construction and renovation projects that point to EACW as the cause of divided parishes, disheartened faithful Catholics, and minimalist form-follows-function architectural design in Catholic churches. The intent of this article is not to review the status and problems with EACW, but rather to draw your attention to a Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) publication entitled Our Place of Worship [(OPW).sup.2] that I believe incorporates the same problems that have been associated with EACW.

Who am I and what are my qualifications to expound upon, or undertake, a critical review of Our Place of Worship? I am not an expert in theology, liturgy, or architecture. I am a lay convert of some four years who has developed an interest in the relationship between liturgy and architecture. This interest was borne out of my parish's attempts to educate parishioners through a series of liturgical workshops designed to prepare us for the building of a church. I guess I was somewhat naive and innocent a year ago when these workshops began, believing that all would go well with the church building process and that we would end up with a Catholic church that reflected our beliefs and faith.

1978 American document

When my wife returned from one of the first meetings close to tears, I was alarmed at what could have transpired. To put it directly, my wife had been publicly berated by the workshop leader for questioning the statements being made that our church would not require any kneelers as kneeling during Mass (except perhaps at Good Friday) was no longer necessary. Further, EACW was held up as the authoritative document that would be guiding our decisions. It did not take long searching the internet to discover numerous horror stories about parish church renovation and building projects that have been hijacked by advocates of modern community-oriented theology as espoused by EACW. One of the greatest deceptions is the insistence that EACW is an authoritative document approved by the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and the Holy See. This is far from factual, as the NCCB itself has released a statement that addresses the question of the authority of EACW [3] The entire statement reads:

"Environment and Art in Catholic Worship is a 1978 statement of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy. The purpose of the document is to provide principles for those involved in preparing liturgical space. The committee statement received the approval of the Administrative Committee in keeping with Conference policy. Because the document was not proposed as a statement of the whole Conference of Bishops, the full body of bishops was never asked to consider it. Environment and Art in Catholic Worship does not have the force of law in and of itself. It is not particular law for the dioceses of the United States of America, but a commentary on that law by the Committee for the Liturgy. However, it does quote several documents of the Apostolic See and in that sense it has the force of the documents it quotes in the areas where those documents legislate. The Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy has appointed a task group to revisit Environment and Art in Catholic Worship. The Committee on the Liturgy intends to submi t the revised edition of this document as a statement of the Conference of Bishops. It is therefore anticipated that the revised document will be considered by the full body of bishops."

I reproduce the statement to also draw your attention to the detail that the U.S. Bishops commissioned a new task group to revise EACW. A final draft has been produced under the working title of Domus Dei (The House of God) and was presented for review by some 30 bishops at their recent conference in November 1999. Articles in The Wanderer [4] and Adoremus Bulletin [5] contain some highly critical comments made by the bishops concerning Domus Dei, in effect admitting that it has been a big mistake to remove the tabernacle from the sanctuary and place it in a separate, sometimes hard to find, chapel, thus fostering a lessening in the appreciation for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Our Place of Worship

When presented with the statement from the U.S. Conference of Bishops, our pastor agreed that EACW would not be used as a guideline for our liturgical decisions concerning the building of a new church in our parish. I was then informed that our own Conference of Bishops was preparing a document entitled Our Place of Worship for use as a guideline for the renovation and construction of churches in Canada. I was provided with a prepublication final draft of this document in the summer of 1999. I have since obtained a copy of the final document that is available from the CCCB at the time of this writing. My purpose in acquiring an official copy was to ascertain that the analysis I performed on the pre-publication draft also applies to the final document.

So, with the problems and controversies associated with EACW fresh in my mind, I set about reading the text in Our Place of Worship with a somewhat critical eye. Critical not in the sense of looking for errors just to prove a point, but critical in the sense of being sensitive to the abuses that faithful Catholics have been enduring in our sacred liturgy and architecture. It is unfortunate that, in my opinion (and I will endeavour to justify this opinion through the evidence presented hereafter), Our Place of Worship is not an accurate reflection of Catholic theology and the doctrine from which our liturgy is derived. Bearing in mind that OPW is simply a guide that has no force of law, and that there are many authoritative Church documents that address the same topics, and that there has been a general malaise in sound Catholic catechesis these past 30 years, it is my firm belief that there is great risk of reductionism of our Catholic faith if the principles contained in OPW are applied. The weight of appro val by the National Liturgy Office alone of this document will likely suffice for many Catholics to accept its teachings as representative of Magisterial sources.

The structure of OPW is comprised of four main parts and five appendices. It is with Parts I and II that I have the most difficulty. These parts are entitled "Building for the Church" and "Ritual Space" respectively. The bulk of my comments are rooted in these two parts.

Good points

Having said that, there are several good things contained in this document. It clearly presents some of the realities that must be confronted in a project of the magnitude of building a church. It recognizes that many participants are involved on a volunteer basis, balancing this commitment with their family and work commitments. It speaks of the strength of the faith community in gathering together to worship God. It also speaks of accommodating the diversity of cultures and traditions of the faithful in a parish. There is good spiritual and technical advice on acoustics and lighting. I also thought it provided sound advice on materials, energy use, life-cycle costing, maintenance, and security. References to artists and the commissioning of hand-wrought artifacts were well considered. Finally, Part III on "The Building Process" offered some thoughtful advice on this topic, particularly with regard to written records and communication with the parish at large.

Part IV is a small three-page section dealing with the Rites of Dedication of a church and altar. Appendices two to five offer fairly pragmatic advice on Project Specialists' Skills, Seven Phases of Change, Value and the Long-Term Perspective, and Site and Neighbourhood. The first appendix addresses the History of Space for Worship from the time after the death and resurrection of Christ, to our modern times.

While reading Our Place of Worship, I began to make note of what I thought were some underlying themes that manifest themselves in the text of the document.

Primacy of the Assembly

First, and perhaps most obvious, is the strong emphasis on the gathered assembly or community. I have heard from clergy and laity alike that prior to Vatican II, too much emphasis was placed on the Eucharist to the detriment of Jesus' presence in the worshipping assembly. I personally cannot see how it is possible to be too emphatic in our adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. However, if this was seen as an issue in the praxis of our faith in the past, then surely a catechesis and elevation of the faithful's understanding of His presence in the community should have taken place, not a transfer of reverence from His presence in the Eucharist to His presence in the assembly. Monsignor Mannion, [6] in his critique of EACW, addresses the problem of the sacramentality of the congregation taking precedence over all other sacramental media when he says that, "the difficulty is that this position relegates all other elements of the Catholic worship system, the ordained ministry, and the rites themselves (inc luding their artistic and architectural elaboration), to secondary positions."

We get a taste of the community-oriented theology that is pervasive in Our Place of Worship in the foreword itself by Archbishop Marcel Gervais: "It [OPW] also offers principles and characteristics of an appropriate place, always with the primacy of the assembly in mind..." (emphasis added).

With the primacy of the assembly firmly established, Our Place of Worship proceeds to architectural considerations for a "worship space". Not surprisingly, the transcendent nature of architecture in recognizing the importance of God in our worship space is ignored or marginalized in favour of community-oriented, horizontal worship of the assembly. OPW asks "What kind of space emphasizes the importance of the assembly?", to which I would counter "What kind of space emphasizes the importance of Christ our Saviour, Son of God?"

The primacy of the assembly is reinforced in the following passage from Our Place of Worship:

"The principal symbol of faith is the assembly of the community, believers assembled in celebration; it is the primary manifestation and embodiment of the life shared with God. The assembly makes possible all the other manifestations. It makes present and shows forth the mystery at the heart of human life" (emphasis added).

Blurring the roles of the clergy and the laity

The second theme is the diminishment of the role of the ordained priest. The royal priesthood of the people has been elevated at the expense of the ordained priesthood. Repeatedly, the priest is referred to as the "presider", which is a correct and proper role for the priest in addition to acting in persona Christi. However, beyond the role of presider, the other priestly roles are not mentioned (mediator, minister of the sacraments), leaving one with the impression that perhaps the role of presider can be open to any member of the royal priesthood. This laicization of the clergy, and clericization of the laity, only serve to blur and confuse the right and proper roles each has in celebrating the Mass. It was the express purpose of the 1997 Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priest [7] to clarify these roles and put an end to abuses. Related to this theme is a non-acknowledgement of the hierarchical nature of the Church.

The following brief paragraph from OPW illustrates this:

"Each believer, baptized into Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit, and nourished at the Lord's table, shares in the common priesthood and is empowered to offer authentic corporate worship. Thus, the primary liturgical minister is the whole assembly, and the whole space is a holy space because the whole people is holy. However, the common priesthood exercised by the holy people is served by specific ministries. A well-designed or properly renovated church takes into account each one of these ministries" (emphasis added).

No distinction is made between the ordained priesthood and the royal priesthood of the people. The priesthood is merely seen as one of many specific ministries without any regard for a special calling from God or reception of the sacrament of Holy Orders. This diminishment is evident throughout Our Place of Worship by continual reference to the priest as "presider". This term is merely a title and is indicative of the same tinkering that accompanied baptisms in the name of the creator, redeemer and sanctifier, which were subsequently deemed invalid by the Church. In this sense, to preside is merely to "occupy a place of authority: act as president, chairman, or moderator." [8] Whereas, priest is an honorific designating someone ordained to perform the sacred rites of a religion. This seems to me to be another subtle attack on Catholic doctrine that would end up with lay ministers performing the functions more properly suited to the ordained priesthood, thus more progress towards the clericization of the laity and the laicization of the cleric.

Nicholas Burn is a lay convert to the Catholic Faith, freelance writer, and webmaster of the Canadian Catholic Information Network (http://www.cyberus.ca/[sim]nburn/ccinhome.shtml). His 20-page detailed analysis of Our Place of Worship will soon be available on this website.

Our Place of Worship is available from the National Liturgy Office, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 90 Parent Avenue, Ottawa, ON, KiN 7B1.

Footnotes

(1.) Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, The Liturgical Press, Chicago, 1978.

(2.) Our Place of Worship, National Liturgy Office, Ottawa, 1999.

(3.) Committee on the Liturgy, NCCB/USCC.

(4.) Likoudis, P., "Is Domus Dei D.O.A?", The Wanderer, December 2, 1999.

(5.) Benofy, S., Hull-Hitchcock, H., "Bishop's Discussion of Draft Document Domus Dei Stresses Sense of Sacred", Adoremus Bulletin, vol. V, no. 9, December 1999-January 2000.

(6.) Mannion, F., "Beyond Environment and Art in Catholic Worship", Antiphon, vol. 4, no. 2, 1999.

(7.) Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priest, 1997

(8.) Webster's Dictionary.