When I was growing up, the Mass was in Latin and the
priest who celebrated the Mass faced the altar, which was against the wall, and had his
back to the congregation. The advantage of the Mass being in Latin was that you could go to Mass
anywhere in the world and it would be the same. There was consistency and familiarity in
it. The disadvantage, of course, was that you could not understand what the
priest was saying. Many Catholics had a Missal that included the prayers in
their own language. But others attending the Mass would do things such as pray
the Rosary. The Mass was an activity where the priest re-enacted Christ's Last
Supper, when he changed bread into Christ’s body and wine into his blood. The
Mass also was a re-enactment of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, in which he saved
us from our sins, through his death and resurrection. The priest was an
"alter Christus" (another Christ) and by his actions we were brought
to salvation. No need for us to understand what was going on or to participate
in the process.
One of the most obvious effects of the Second Vatican
Council was the changes in the Mass. And the biggest change was that the Mass
was prayed in the vernacular (that is, the language of the people participating
in the Mass). In his book, Practicing Catholic, James Carroll writes
about how different the experience of attending Mass in English was for him: “And
once Catholics entered into the mystery of the Mass as literate participants
instead of as passive spectators, an unprecedented renewal took hold – and my
own steadfast devotion to Mass attendance until now is a measure of it.” He
also describes “The arrival of English in the liturgy, and the resulting
transformation of my own experience of worship …”
Additionally, the concept of the Mass changed from a
sacrifice to a meal. The Mass was the re-enactment of the Last Supper and the
Last Supper was a meal that Jesus shared with his apostles. The altar changed
from an altar of sacrifice to an altar table around which the faithful
gathered. The priest no longer faced away from the congregation, performing a
ritual that they could not see. Instead, the altar was moved away from the wall
and the priest faced the congregation and they could see what he was doing and
could now understand the prayers, because he spoke them in their language. The
congregation became an integral part of the liturgy of the Mass. Vatican
Council documents even referred to the "priesthood of the laity" (the
term laity referring to those Church members who were not ordained priests).
These changes came about while I was at St. Charles
College minor seminary (high school and 2 years of college). St. Charles was a
seminary for young men who aspired to be parish priests. The order of priests
who ran the seminary was the Sulpicians (the Order of St. Sulpice). Training
young men to be parish priests was the mission of their order. As with any
change, some Catholics were more receptive to the changes occurring in the
Church than others. Even within the clergy (priests, bishops, etc.), there were
some who embraced the changes more wholeheartedly than others. For the most
part, it seemed that it was the younger Sulpicians who were most enthusiastic
about the changes coming forth from the Vatican Council.
One of the spiritual activities we participated in at
the seminary was weekly confession. Each of us was assigned a
"confessor" (a priest to whom we would go on a weekly basis to
confess our sins, to be counseled about our situation and to have our sins
forgiven). As freshmen in high school, we were assigned to a specific priest
and given a time for our weekly confession. After that first year we could
request a different confessor. During my first two years, I had a confessor who
had been a priest for a number of years. I would consider him pretty
traditional. I would go to my weekly confession and recite my sins; he would
give some words of advice and then forgive my sins.
During my junior year, I was assigned to a different
confessor. He was new to the
seminary and had been recently ordained a priest. I
don't think I requested him. I think I just asked for a change of confessors. I was very lucky.
Because I have always felt that he changed my life and I became a much better
person and more serious about my faith because of him. For most of the time
since then, I thought that the change occurred because he helped me to see that
God loved me and that I was a good person, who was capable of doing many good
things in my life. Recently, while reading Practicing Catholic, I got a
different insight into this. In the book, James Carroll talks about the Church
(the Catholic Church in general) in which he grew up (the same one in which I
grew up; he is 4 years older than I am) emphasizing how we are all sinners who are unworthy of God (“Domine
non sum dignus” – “Lord, I am not worthy”). The emphasis in the Church was on
obedience to the Ten Commandments and the rules of the Church. James Carroll
writes about having to obey The Rule during his seminary training. The Rule was
a set of requirements for training future priests that was established by the
Council of Trent in the 16th century. The motto in the seminary James Carroll
attended was "Keep the Rule and the Rule will keep you." The main
responsibility of the seminarian was obedience. And I think that was the main
responsibility of Catholics in general. To get to heaven, you needed to be
obedient to the Commandments and the teachings of the Church.
I now believe that what happened during my junior
year with this new confessor is that he emphasized to me and to the other
seminarians for whom he was confessor that God is love, that he loves us and
wants us to bring his love to others. During this time of the Vatican Council,
the message of the Church to its members changed from "God is a God who punishes
us for our sins" to "God is a God of Love". I still believe that
my junior year confessor helped me change my life. But I now see this, not just
as his individual message to the seminarians he was counseling, but as related
to a major change that was happening in the Church. For those Catholics who
grew up in the 1970s and later, this idea of a punishing God may seem foreign
because, from the 1960s on, the Church's message in religion classes and
homilies has been about a loving God. But, before that time, God was someone to
be feared not loved.
For us seminarians, this change meant no longer being sheltered from “the world”, as we had been in the seminary. Prior to Vatican Council II,
we had been taught that the ways of the world were in conflict with the ways of
our religion. Now, we were expected to engage with the world and bring God’s
love into it. The world saw this reflected in the participation of priests in
civil rights marches and demonstrations; in their involvement in anti-war
protests; in churches in inner-cities offering soup kitchens and other services
to poor people, including those who did not even belong to the Catholic Church,
etc. This was a time of change – and many of us embraced the change
wholeheartedly.
