In the photo above is a tribal Native American spiritual custom attached to the Mass at the Cathedral in Superior, Wisconsin.
If you look at the congregation, they look as though they are watching a performance of some kind attached or hung onto the Mass. I suspect that 99.9 percent of the Catholics in the cathedral, to include the actors, are clueless as to what this means in a Catholic liturgical context. To most it seems quaint and precious to include an aspect of this tribe’s Native American spiritual customs, many of which predate Christianity.
Like liturgical dance and metrical hymns and other cultural adaptations foisted on the “noble simplicity” of the Modern Mass, it is precisely that, ornaments attached to the foundation of the Mass, like tinsel on a Christmas Tree.
And it becomes performance for the congregation to like, hate, feel ambivalent or befuddled because they aren’t sure what the connection of any of this is to prayer, worship, prayer, sacrifice or anything else essential to the noble simplicity of the Modern Mass.
Modern Liturgists who ruthlessly promoted their unique understanding of the Modern Mass bitterly complained about the accretions that were added to or foisted upon the Ancient Mass over the centuries. They were glad to be iconoclasts and strip these prayers, gestures and ritual from the Modern Mass as an exercise in getting back to how the Mass was during Apostolic times. Talk about backwards looking!
But, when it comes to inculturation of non Roman culture in to the Roman Mass, these liturgists rush forward with their own apologetic as to why it must be done even though the majority of people who might or might not enjoy what they are watching are clueless as to what it means other than entertaining them. We might tell the befuddled Catholics that pagan practices of whatever culture are baptized and now of Catholic use. But who baptized these and when?
And if this isn’t useless accretion that needs a new iconoclasm to strip the Modern Mass of, I don’t know what is.
Just my most humble opinion.
15 comments:
The bishop must be another malformed prelate
A Christmas tree isn't a Christmas tree without tinsel.
I use to think that too. But then it went out of style.
Having lived in areas where half the population were American Indian/Native American, and having seen how little of their original culture survives, mainly/only-partially among elders, them as tribes struggling to save any of it at all, to include language....
I am mystified as to why they would wish to try to native-americanize any part of so profoundly an outside cultural thing as a Mass, or why any churchman would go along with it except in performative virtue signaling...
Not as if this display of "culture", carries into the majority of their own daily lives, and it just as performative for them as the churchman who approves of it...they must put on these displays frequently for their own people at gatherings simply in an effort to remind them they exist at all....and not as if they have doing this sort of thing at Masses ever since the Europeans arrived.
The modern liturgists are nothing if not consistent "anything I like is good and anything I dislike is bad".
Thanks for pointing out that we need not be limited to the Roman rite liturgy, or as you call it the "Modern Mass'". Rather than attach authentic worship aspects let's inculturate the entire Eucharistic experience for each community. There were lots of authentic rites before the Roman incarnation.
Glad you are in favor of all the pre-Vatican rites to include the 1955 Holy Week rites, for those communities that appreciate this type of inculturation. Kudos.
Christ said to go forth and teach all nations, not the other way around.
More pandering B.S.. You want to do the Indian thing? Go read Black Elk Speaks or visit South Dakota.
When on sabbatical in 2004, the African contingent in the house at the Chicago Theological Union prepared the liturgy for Thanksgiving Day, not a typically African theme.
One of the cultural elements that was incorporated into the liturgy was the way in which the Book of the Gospels was carried in procession. Whereas we follow this norm: "a reader, who may carry a Book of the Gospels (though not a Lectionary), slightly elevated," the Africans placed it in a decorated fabric bag with a wide strap/handle. The bearer placed the book on his back and the strap went over the top of the head. Everyone sang in the procession.
It was explained that, in many African cultures, this emphasized the burden (the weight of carrying a book) and the joy (singing) of being a Gospel bearer to a waiting world.
Father K, comparing African to Native American culture is comparing the living to the dead. Much of African culture still survives despite colonial suppression attempts (even though a hodgepodge) and Mass involvement of that culture is in Africa of majority African membership, while the stuff in US parishes is quite recent, an invasion of a dying culture into an external world having nothing to do with that native culture.
It would be quite different in a thriving majority native church/churches such as the North Dakota Turtle Mountain church mission field, and you don't (or didn't) see overmuch of any native ceremony there in a Mass, and if there is currently, it also a late innovation, and more fitting.
Adapting cultural elements of a predominant culture is not a problem....adapting pagan religious elements is the problem as well as pagan religious elements from a vastly minority culture only to appear "pastoral"/woke.
Bob - I did not compare African culture to Native American culture. How on God's green earth you think I did is beyond me.
I noted that an aspect of African culture was included in a liturgy I experienced. I did not say it was in any way equivalent to or meant to be compared with Native American culture.
If we can't have the "invasion of a dying culture" in the liturgy, we'll have to do away with Italian architecture in American churches, chant composed by Frankish musicians used in non-Frankish congregations, Damask fabric (named for Damascus).
And there are many Native Americans who would disagree with your assessment vehemently.
Father K, I can always count on arrogant dismissal from you, and thank you for not disappointing. The original post was about native Americans...YOU brought up African elements...
The tribes having to run low attendance classes on their culture in striving to prevent cultural extinction would disagree with you as for its health. I happen to live in a tribal area and know all about it. Nice try on trying to infer I was a white man making culturally insensitive remarks, but that is you by your lonesome, ranger.
No, Bob, if you look at the title that Father McDonald posted it's about the question of inculturation. The post HAPPENED to use Native Americans. It might have used Tongans, Tibetans, or Transylvanians. The ethnicity isn't germane.
My response was about inculturation, not about Native Americans.
And I don't give a tinker's damn about yor ethnicity or where you reside. What concerns me is your questionable reading comprehension
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