I miss you, Oscar - and Lena and Ella and Joe and Niels-Henning and...

Lena Horne is gone. I can’t believe she was 92—how long it’s been since I first heard the live recording of her performance, with Lennie Hayton (Lena’s husband) leading the band, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. I’m sure I was under twenty at the time and knew nothing of her history. I just loved that passionate and sexy voice and the songs she had chosen to sing and the live sound in the room and the band and those arrangements. I can still sing a couple of verses from “I Love to be Loved.”

I’m pretty sure I was born too late—mostly because I never got to see Art Tatum play live. The story might not be absolutely true, but my piano teacher told me that when he saw “God” at the old Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver some time in the mid-1950s, Tatum—who was blind—was led out to the piano, where he sat down, looked up to his right and never moved a muscle except for his hands as he played tune after mesmerizing tune.

Art Tatum died in 1956 at the age of 47. There has never been a jazz piano player since with the same combination of spectacular technique, exquisite tone, masterful touch and control, and improvisational genius.

Fortunately there are many high-quality recordings of Tatum’s music available. There also lots of wonderful Tatum stories.

I didn’t get to see Art Tatum but I did get to see some of the other jazz greats who are now gone: Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Errol Garner, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Joe Williams. I loved the mainstream people; I wasn’t a fan of Coltrane or Bill Evans (I like Evans now though) or the bebop guys.

My first experience with live jazz came when I was eighteen or nineteen and my teacher took me to hear Errol Garner at the old Isy’s Supper Club on Georgia Street in Vancouver. I had already heard all these great musicians on records, but the club atmosphere and the “liveness” of the music, and seeing and hearing Garner in the flesh, with his big smile and that slicked-down hair and the signature grunting/groaning, and Errol’s idiosyncratic style, with the rhythmic left hand and the wildly inventive improvisations—it was all more than I could take in.

I loved Garner—and I still do—but I was completely blown away when I first heard Oscar Peterson. I never got over it. That driving, virtuosic, relentless swing, with the chord sequences and the riffs that were uniquely Oscar’s gave me the shivers all over. Oscar had this trick—and I’m no musician, so I don’t even know if it was a trick—of improvising in some swinging, fairly up-tempo tune, and just when you think the thing couldn’t get any more exciting, suddenly taking it up a notch to a new level of swing. The first time I heard that was when I really listened to “Noreen’s Nocturne” on the 1956 album The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. Just the other day I was watching a DVD of a 1985 Peterson concert in Berlin; he did the same thing on "Who Can I Turn To?"

Peterson’s style evolved over his career, but the swing was always there, no matter the venue, no matter the sidemen, no matter the tune. The swing was rendered more interesting and more exciting by a phenomenal technique and a thorough knowledge of the history of jazz, as well as a bottomless well of improvisational creativity.



And he even looked good. Always an elegant dresser, Oscar would invariably appear in a tuxedo or what we used to call a “Peterson jacket,” a gorgeously patterned silk tuxedo jacket in muted blue or red. The sidemen, usually a bassist and a drummer, were also immaculately turned out. A very large man, Peterson had an attractive face and the most beautiful smile that would break out when the swinging got to just the level he wanted it to be. He would sweat profusely and mop his face with a large handkerchief, but never in the theatrical way that was characteristic of Louis Armstrong; Oscar let nothing get in the way of the music.

I saw him live several times throughout his career—at Isy’s, at Simon Fraser University, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and in the lean years before jazz made a comeback, at a hotel in North Vancouver that is now condominiums. The last time I saw him was at Jazz Alley in Seattle in 2003. He had had a stroke and was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair. The great Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen was still playing bass for him—beautifully and devotedly—and Peterson’s other sidemen were top notch. Oscar’s love of playing jazz and his ubiquitous swing were still there but the incredible chops were sadly missing; the sidemen had to do a lot of the solo work.

Oscar died just four years later, on December 23, 2007. The beloved Niels-Henning had died two years before at the age of 59.

I have seen many of the “newer” jazz people—Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Chucho Valdes, Bill Charlap, Diana Krall—and I have been thrilled by their playing. But I guess it’s always a generational thing: even though I didn’t really start paying attention to jazz until I was in my late teens, Oscar and Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie and Duke Ellington and Joe Pass—and Lena Horne—were from “my era.” I can still see them and listen to them just about any time I want to, but I miss them all the same. And Oscar, I miss you the most.

Jesus and Sin

I am reading Spencer Burke's book A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, in which he promotes (his view of) spirituality over (his take on) religion in the postmodern age. Burke is one of the founding members of the emerging church movement. While I do not agree with everything he says (so far) in this book, I find some of his ideas beautifully resonant. For example, in a section of Chapter Three ("Grace and the God Factor") called Grace, sin, and spirituality, he says the following about Jesus and sin:

Sin would perhaps be better understood in our culture if it were presented as pursuing self-interest at the expense of the well-being of the larger (or smaller) horizons of our existence, whether through self-abuse or through lack of concern for the world in which we live.

Instead, sin has often been presented as a violation of the rules and regulations of religion. In Christianity, Jesus is held up as the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire. "Jesus," it is said, "was tempted in all points as we are yet was without sin." This concept of Jesus as a sinless individual permeates Christian theology. But was Jesus really sinless? He certainly seems to have violated a number of the rules and interpretations of the Law that his contemporaries regarded as huge sins. He violated the Sabbath and excused his disciples for their violations. He interpreted the meaning of the Sabbath by telling the story of King David's questionable use of the Law in order to feed his men. He repeatedly talked to the unclean, the unlovely, and the unrepentant.

As I see it, Jesus may not have sinned against God, but he certainly committed sins against the religion of his day. Jesus lived his sinless life in grace - and that grace often transgressed the moral codes of religion. The challenge for followers of Jesus is to reframe the story and offer society a new understanding of exactly what grace is and what it means for us all.

What Burke is saying here reminds me of Hans Kung's remarks about how Jesus might relate to the Church authorities of today and of Marcus Borg's take on the subversive compassion of the pre-Easter Jesus. Again, it seems to me that we have a significant disconnect between what religious historians and theologians have determined Jesus really was about and what institutional Christianity requires us to believe. As for myself, the more I read about, the more I observe, the more I think about the Catholic Church, the more inclined I am to "find a congenial, compassionate way to live inside of it and yet outside of it," as Father Richard Rohr tells us.

Life as a Human

I have just begun contributing to a fairly new online magazine called Life as a Human; my first article is "The Old Catholic Church."

The following is from the "About" page on the magazine's website:

Life As A Human is a lifezine that explores, celebrates and discusses the weird, wonderful, challenging, funny and poignant experience of being human. We feature a diversity of inspired writing that creatively probes the status quo– and the fascinating nooks and crannies of our human experience.

We are a multicultural gathering place for writing that moves and inspires – a venue for the authentic voice, regardless of age, nationality or perspective.

I expect to be contributing three to four articles a month, but I will of course continue to post on this blog as time and the muse allow.

Dear Ben

Here is a letter God wrote to B16 recently:


Dear Ben (or Joe, or whatever you like to be called now):

I know you’ve been pretty busy these last few years since you were prefect for the CDF (BTW, wasn’t a prefect some kind of military officer in the Roman empire? Just asking) and then got elected pope (BTW again, I’m still not sure where that whole trip came from, but then the Vatican is in Rome, isn’t it?), but you might just remember me anyway from back in the day when you were a seminarian and a priest. Boy, a lot of water under the bridge since then, huh? Vatican II, your little theological about-face, that business with the priest in Munich—you really didn’t know about that?—then Rome and life in the Vatican with your pal JPII. After you hit Vatican City, you got so much power in your hands I think for a while there you were scarier than Margaret Thatcher—and she was scary! I mean, just ask Chuck Curran, you kicked his ass all the way to the Southern Methodists. Now that’s power. And of course you’ve still got it; you just have to appear more pontifically indirect when you use it.

I’ll bet you’re scratching that head of gorgeous white hair (why didn’t those painters ever give me hair that colour?) right now wondering why God is writing you a letter. After all, you pray to me several times a day with those prayer books and all those wonderful phrases you quote from the thousands of books in your personal library (Geez—oops, sorry, Son—how many condoms would the cost of all those books equate to? Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Never mind, they’re only sex-crazed Africans).

And it seems you really believe it’s me answering those prayers, reassuring you that you and your cronies in the curia are all divinely appointed (by me. Hello!) to pilot the ship and to hire a loyal crew. Hell, you’re even allowed to sail the damn ship backwards if you want to; after all, what’s apostolic succession mean if you can’t do what you damn well please? And anyway, why do they call you Holiness if it isn’t because you are, well, holy?

I guess you're wondering too why God would use such common language when He (“Ridiculous pronoun,” says that lovely woman, Karen Armstrong; now there’s a true Christian if ever there was one) probably should be speaking with a more biblical inflection. I did write the Bible, didn’t I? Well, no, actually, I didn’t. It was written mostly by a bunch of Jewish guys (just ask Karen! Haha). But that’s another story, so to speak.

Remember that fat little guy Angelo Roncalli? Peasant background. Became John XXIII. Everybody thought he was a joke till he called for Vatican II. Shocked the hell out of most Catholics, but especially those tight asses in the curia. I thought old Ottaviani was gonna have a stroke! Anyway, I like Angelo (he’s here now, with me). Speaks his mind, uses plain language, tells a good joke. His family might have been farmers there on earth, and he might have been a curial outsider, but Angelo had vision and the guy had guts. Cut through all the BS and got the show on the road. Opened all the doors and the windows and got the bishops to sweep out a lot of the dust that had been piling up since at least Pius IX. Now that’s a lot of dust. Angie wanted a modern Church for a modern time, so he wound up the little duck and got it started waddling. Too bad he got stomach cancer and died (I did not have anything to do with that!) and Montini didn’t have the guts to wind that duck all the way back up again when it started to run down. Let’s just say Angie's successor was dealing with some personal issues and leave it at that. But you and that Polish guy. Wow, you just stomped all over that duck till the poor thing couldn’t even let out even the tiniest little quack.

Anyway, back to Angelo. He’s the one actually got me writing this letter. He’s pretty upset with you and JPII for raining on his Vatican II parade (well, he actually used a different type of downpour metaphor, but he was a peasant after all; I’m cleaning it up because I know you are sensitive to that kind of thing—decorum and all that). He’s probably more ticked off with me for letting you guys go ahead and do what you did to Vatican II. I tried to explain to him again about free will, but he’s just not listening right now—you guys know all about the not listening thing. So what Angelo is saying is that he tried to catch the Church up with the modern world, but you guys have put the ship in reverse so the world’s going in one direction and the Church is going in another. Angelo says, “What’s that about anyway?”

You popes might not be rocket scientists (I mean, come on, it only took you four hundred years to figure out Galileo wasn’t a heretic), but you, for one, are a pretty smart guy. Here’s the thing: change is like running water. Nothing’s going to stop it. Nothing ever has. Now I know you are the pope and everything, but even you can’t stop it. Just look around you. Take Portugal, for instance. You go in there and you say that gay marriage is “insidious and dangerous” and you condemn abortion and divorce, and I know what else. At the same time, gay marriage and women’s rights are getting official support and sanction in more and more countries. You’re advising your loyal Catholic organizations not to be taking government money so that they can continue to discriminate against the very people those governments are trying harder and harder to protect.

I hate to tell you this, Ben, but you’re kind of out of touch with reality here. When your bishops start kicking kids out of Catholic school because their parents are gay (oops, I mean homosexual; you guys don't use the word "gay"), when your henchmen call the sex abuse crisis “petty gossip,” when you protect a serious big-time abuser because your pal liked him and he gave a lot of money to the right folks in your neighbourhood, your cred is going to take some heavy-duty hits. And as your cred goes, so does the Church’s.

You see, my big problem right now is—and here’s the reason for this letter—in all this stuff about moral absolutism and the magisterium of the Church and the value of Catholic Tradition, you kinda forgot about me. Somewhere down the line, you guys made the connection between me and the Church—and all the rules. And suddenly I got replaced by your idea of Church. Fact is, I didn’t really have anything to do with the church thing. And if you read Hans Küng (okay, I know you don’t like him but he is smart guy, might even be as smart as you) or better still, talk to him equal to equal, he’ll tell you that my Son didn’t even say all that stuff to Peter about being the rock that his church would be built on; those words were added later by Matthew`s community. So the Church as you see it doesn’t mean much to me. Don’t get me wrong: I like the idea of church—as a community bonded together in love, a community that welcomes all as my children. But Church as institution, with the catechism and so many kinds of sins you need a database program just to keep them all in order, just doesn’t do it for me.

What my Son did say is that rule #1 is “Love one another as I have loved you.” Do you remember that one? Now I think “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is pretty clever. But I don’t really buy it. For a couple of reasons, like who gets to decide what’s a sin and like can you really separate “sin” and sinner. I like Jesus’s way: keep it simple, keep it about love, and you can’t really go wrong. I mean, I like the robes and the singing and the incense and all that stuff, but you know what they say: it’s not the wrapping that counts, it’s the gift inside (okay, maybe I just made that up, but I can do that. I’m God).

Well, I’m starting to ramble here and Angelo wants to go out for a smoke, so I guess I’ll sign off. One last word: Think about that eight-year-old kid in Boston who is gonna have to change schools because his Catholic school told him he couldn’t attend since his parents are lesbians. Don’t think about the theology of it or what the catechism says. Think about the kid. And then think about love.


Best,


G


P.S. I love your hat.

A Priest's Loyalty

It has been almost two weeks since I wrote to my parish priest to tell him that I was excusing myself from membership in the parish I love because I could no longer accept the institutional homophobia of the Church and at the same time maintain my personal integrity. I copied the priest-in-residence in the e-mail. Both of these men know me quite well. As of today, I have not received a response from either priest.

I am frankly not sure whether I am surprised or not by their silence. I do know that I am disappointed. And although I do not like to admit this, I am hurt. I feel as if I have been left in the cold; it may even be that they are glad to be rid of me because my absence means there will be no more letters or comments on the Church and homosexuality. Or they may have sought advice from the Chancery and been told that the best response is no response; after all, this guy has chosen not to accept the wise teachings of Mother Church.

Anyway, although I am obviously feeling sorry for myself over this, and these feelings certainly cannot be separated from what I write here, the purpose of this post is not to elicit sympathy (after all, it was I who made the decision to withdraw; I was not kicked out of the parish) - so please do not offer any. It is rather to muse about what might be going on in the minds of these two men. And I do mean muse - or speculate - as I am in no way privy to their thoughts, nor am I a psychologist.

Both of these priests are Vietnamese; both of them came to Canada in the 1980s as refugees under very difficult and dangerous circumstances. Both come from devoutly religious families. My pastor has one brother who is a priest and two sisters who are nuns. The priest-in-residence has a brother who is a Benedictine monk about to be ordained a priest. The two fathers are outgoing and intelligent; each has a wonderful sense of humour. They are warm and thoughtful and appear to be happy in their chosen vocation.

At one time I believed that there was a budding friendship between myself and each of these men. We went to lunch a couple of times, I helped them to edit documents they wrote, and the pastor even once sent me a Christmas card in which he wrote that he thanked God for our friendship - I was touched by his message and kept the card for a long time. While they remained warm to me in church, the "friendship" seemed suddenly to cease. About a year and a half ago I suggested to the pastor that it had been some time since we had had lunch together and that it was about time we made a date; I was quite cleverly put off. Again, perhaps they were advised by fellow priests or by the Chancery that it was not wise to get too close to a gay man.

In my study of Chinese culture (I have a B.A. in Chinese language and and M.A. in contemporary Chinese literature and taught Chinese history and culture for a number of years in a Vancouver college) I learned that Vietnam and Korea were two countries that were most strongly within China's sphere of influence. These countries,which were "tribute states" to the Chinese emperor, adopted the Chinese writing system and, most importantly, Confucian ideology. One of the most enduring features of Confucianism, which looked to China's past for examples of ideal attitudes and behaviours, has been an emphasis on patriarchal authoritarianism. In addition, in these East Asian countries, loyalty and service to the group - family, clan, village - take precedence over the rights and interests of the individual. Finally, in the 1980s Vietnam was still very much a communist country. When I was a student in China in the mid-seventies, before the economic reforms and the open-door policy instituted later in the decade, a characteristic of communism that I found surprising - for a supposedly radical, left-wing ideology - was its puritanism. It is interesting that Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, also came from a very conservative, communist-dominated country.

All this is to say that my two priests are not culturally disposed to accept homosexuality, to recognize the rights and interests of one individual over those of the group (i.e. the Church), and to do or say anything that might be construed as going against authority. They are also culturally predisposed not to offend. So what do they do when someone they may like personally - and who is older than both of them - presents a compelling argument that is in conflict with their belief system? Where a priest from a Western country might express sympathy for the dilemma the protester finds himself in but kindly yet firmly remind that protester of the inerrant teaching of the Church, my guys take the only option that fits within their cultural paradigm: silence. If my somewhat speculative but also somewhat educated theory is even partially correct, it goes to show how powerful these cultural predispositions can be: both priests have been in this country for nearly thirty years.

Regardless of the reasons for the silence of these priests, I cannot help but wonder at the woeful pastoral inadequacy of a priesthood that is unable or unwilling to come to the aid of a soul in distress even when that soul is constitutionally unable to accept one of the doctrines of the Church.

In the two weeks since I withdrew from my parish, I have felt the loss keenly. Yet I am also beginning to experience a kind of liberation. The Church has unwittingly freed me to explore other options like the Old Catholic Church, which welcomes everyone without judgment, and gay-friendly Anglican communities. No matter which option I choose, however, I believe that if I were ever fortunate enough to find a Roman Catholic parish in which the pastor was truly modern and truly pastoral, I would return in a heartbeat.

Jesus: Inclusive, not Exclusive

I am not a biblical scholar, but I’ll bet you that words and phrases that speak of religious authority, like orthodoxy, discipline, doctrine, dogma, rule of faith, and magisterium, were not among those attributed to Jesus in any of the synoptic gospels or in John. Of course, they may have been uttered by the Scribes and Pharisees, who seemed to be fixated on adherence to the letter of Mosaic law and who missed the point of Jesus’s preaching, of his preference for association with the “unclean,” and of his way of living, all of which were about love, compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance. His final commandment to his apostles was “Love one another as I have loved you.”

As a simple Christian who is seeking to experience God in the Church, I find these words of religious authority to be alienating. I believe them to be exclusive rather than inclusive, divisive rather than unifying. In fact, they are often used as weapons against those within the Church who dare to profess any degree of spiritual independence. If one does not cleave to orthodoxy, one is therefore un-orthodox and, depending upon the degree of un-orthodoxy, one is less than a full member of the group. If a parishioner does not believe in all the doctrines of the Church, he or she should not presume to receive Holy Communion along with those who do believe. Heaven forbid that one should be an actual dissenter: Catholic theologians like Charles Curran, Hans Küng, and the late Yves Congar have all paid dearly for their public disagreement with tenets of Church doctrine.

A friend and former colleague, who is (or once was) an Anglican, regularly sends me a copy of the ANiC Newsletter. The ANiC (Anglican Network in Canada) is a group of parishes that split from the Anglican Church of Canada over issues such as the ordination of openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex relationships. After the schism, the ANiC affiliated itself with other conservative Anglican bodies, such as the newly formed Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), of which ANiC considers itself a member diocese, and the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. The ACNA constitution blames the split in the Church on “those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance,” referring of course to the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church (TEC), which is the Anglican Church in the United States. Both of these churches have moved toward blessing same-sex relationships and have approved ordination of openly gay clergy.

The ANiC, along with other breakaway conservative Anglican groups, affirms the Jerusalem Declaration, a set of “tenets of orthodoxy that underpin [their] Anglican identity.” These tenets include belief in the Old and New Testaments as “the Word of God written” and as containing “all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.” They also include upholding Anglicanism’s Thirty-nine Articles “as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” And this one on ecumenism: “We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognize the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.”

Thus if I do not believe in the Bible as the literal Word of God, if I disagree with any of the Thirty-nine Articles, or if I do not completely “uphold orthodox faith and practice,” I am not a true Anglican and am therefore on the outside. Recent statements by some bishops, members of the Anglican Communion, which is the embattled umbrella organization of all Anglican churches worldwide, confirm this to be true. According to the April 11 edition of the ANiC Newsletter, these bishops believe that the authority of the Anglican primates and the Primates Meetings has been trumped by other organs of the Communion in dealing with the “sustained crisis” in the Church. The Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Orombi, claims that “Anglicanism is a church of Bishops and, at its best, is conciliar in its governance. The grave crisis before us as a Communion [i.e. disagreement over ordination of openly gay clergy, blessing of same-sex relationships] is both a matter of faith as well as order. Matters of faith and order are the domain of Bishops.” Archbishop Orombi goes on to make the following recommendation:

There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continue sorting out the crisis that is before us….The Primates Meeting is the only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it can act if you will call us together….Finally, the meeting should not include the Primates of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada who are proceeding with unbiblical practices that contradict the faith of Anglicanism [my italics]. We cannot carry on with business as usual until order is brought out of this chaos.

The same edition of the ANiC Newsletter contains excerpted information from an article in a British Columbia diocesan newsletter. The article points out that “the Anglican Church of Canada has lost almost 60 percent of its membership since 1961”; that “70% of baby-boomers are church drop-outs”; that “people under 55 constitute only about 12 percent of the average Sunday attendance at the average Anglican church”; and finally that “if the present trend continues, the last Anglican will leave the Anglican Church by 2061.”

If the hierarchy of the Church—any Church—continues its hubristic insistence that it possesses the divine authority to determine what people in the Church must believe, how they must practice their faith, and who must be respected as the sole voice of authority, and if it fails to recognize the need for Christ-like compassion and humility in an age in which many of the social and cultural contexts of the Bible are irrelevant, the members of that hierarchy should not be surprised that the pews continue to empty.

According to Church leaders, dogma and doctrine are immutable. Orthodoxy is unbending loyalty to “established teachings.” But if these leaders will only look around them at the world—at the universe—that God created, they will see that God’s creation is an ongoing symphony of change. The People of God live in a world of rapid and constant change—technological change, scientific change, environmental change, cultural and social change. We have discovered and acknowledged that men and women are different but equal; we have recognized that races and ethnicities are different but equal; we have come to understand that gay and lesbian people are different but then not different from straight people. God has blessed his creation with diversity and has blessed this modern age with unprecedented recognition of the possibilities inherent in diversity. So when increasing numbers of people under the age of 55 are claiming to be spiritual rather than religious, perhaps they are saying that they need God in their lives, but that the insistence of the Church on adherence to doctrine and dogma and orthodoxy and the conflict and division such insistence creates is either irrelevant or abhorrent to them.

If we presented to them instead an image of an open-armed Christ embracing people from across the grand spectrum of life—Christians and non-Christians, people of all colour and ethnicity, men and women, LGBT people, the young and the old—they might just be intrigued enough to want to hear more of the message of love that was at the core of Christ‘s mission.

On Ritual

A friend, a former Catholic, told me this morning that on the rare occasion that she does go to church, she almost feels like laughing because the whole liturgical pageant appears so ridiculous in its pomposity. She said that she would like to ask the priest if he could possibly not be aware of how ludicrous he looks in all his vestments and surrounded by all the trappings of the ritual of the Mass. I believe that there are many who would agree with her.

Of course I was at first deeply offended by her ridicule of something that is a hugely important part of my life. But once I got my ego out of the way, I recognized that I had never really asked myself why I found the ritual of the Mass so moving, especially when it is conducted with great reverence and skill by the celebrant. The morning Mass of last Christmas and the most recent Easter vigil in my former parish were liturgies that affected me most profoundly. Yet I had never thought of being a “liturgy queen” as anything more than having a great love of theatre mixed with nostalgia for a long-lost aspect of my childhood.


When I first returned to the Catholic Church after a long absence, one of the chief reasons for doing so was to become connected with something much larger than myself, something more significant, more meaningful, more serene than my own emotional turmoil, my own misguided and failed aspirations. I now believe that it is, for me and for millions of Catholics, the ritual of the Mass that helps to make that connection. That ritual, in all its component elements—the entrance procession, accompanied by the opening hymn, with the crucifer, the acolytes, followed by the priest in his vestments and moving slowly up the centre aisle of the church, and ending in the genuflection before the altar; the consecration of the bread and wine and the elevation of the host and the chalice before the assembled congregation; the final blessing by the celebrant—transports me to a place of peace and joy that the HD broadcast of a gorgeous opera from the Met does not, that a thrilling concert of baroque music does not, that a brilliantly written and acted play or film does not.

The transcendent effect of the ritual can easily be diminished or even ruined by any number of factors. The worst of these is, of course, the lack of true reverence on the part of the celebrant, a deficiency that can be manifested in many ways, such as a slovenly appearance, inadequate attention to the reading and proper articulation of prayers (making mistakes, mumbling, losing one’s place), poor singing (this of course may not be the fault of the celebrant), and an unsatisfying homily. This last offence may be the result of poor preparation, lack of consideration for the listener in the determination of the content, unenthusiastic delivery (the worst case of which is reading the homily from a prepared text). The celebrant can also be overly reverent, evincing a kind of “faux” piety that is nearly as offensive and distracting as not enough reverence. I have seen this phenomenon in my mother’s church, with a young priest whose ritual behaviour would be laughable if his homilies were not so reflective of a patronizing and condescending attitude to parishioners who are, for the most part, twice his age. Poor lectors, noisy children, cell phones, mediocre choirs, and latecomers are just a few of the many other factors that can mar the transcendent effects of ritual.

Of course it is not just to Catholics that ritual is important; ritual has been a critical factor in people’s lives for thousands of years. Joseph Campbell speaks of the “shaman’s song,” which is a “deep psychological summons” and a “visionary image” through which “the shamans center themselves.” He tells of Father Alberto de Agostini, “who was a priest and a scientist” and who lived among the Ona and Yagan people of Tierra del Fuego in the early 1900s. The priest-scientist speaks of “waking up in the night and hearing the local shaman playing his drum and chanting his song alone, all night long—holding himself to the power.

Now, that idea of holding yourself to the power by way of your dream myth is indicative of the way in which myth works generally. If it is a living mythology, one that is actually organically relevant to the life of the people of the time, repeating the myth and enacting the rituals center you. Ritual is simply myth enacted; by participating in a rite, you are participating directly in a myth.

The problem with Catholicism for many people—and for Campbell—is that it has ceased to be a “living mythology.” The insistence of the Church hierarchy on cleaving to medieval scholastic and neo-scholastic theology and to a literal-historical interpretation of Scripture makes the liturgy of the Mass, and all its ritual elements, appear irrelevant and therefore ridiculous. Yet as I have noted before, Campbell suggests that “it’s a good thing to hang on to the myth that was put into you when you were a child, because it is there whether you want it there or not.” But in order to breathe life into it, you have to “translate that myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy. You have to learn to hear its song.”

And my little sermon to the churches of the world is this: you have got the symbols right there in the altar, and you have the lessons as well. Unfortunately, when you have a dogma telling you what kind of effect the symbol is supposed to have on you, you’re in trouble. It doesn’t affect me that way, so am I a sinner?

The real, important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine message in such a way that you are capable of experiencing it. What the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other might be, in technical terms, is not half as important as you, the celebrant, feeling the Virgin Birth within you, the birth of the mystic, mythic being that is your own spiritual life.

Religious ritual also appears ridiculous—to many believers and non-believers alike—when the trappings of ritual are used, especially by senior members of the hierarchy, simply to impress upon others the importance of one’s ecclesiastical position and authority. In light of recent revelations about the Catholic Church and the complicity of members of the hierarchy in the most heinous of crimes, such misuse of ritual goes beyond the ludicrous to the utterly shameful.

My friend’s comments have caused me to examine and articulate a vital aspect of my love for Catholicism and my desire to continue to participate regularly in the liturgy of the Mass despite my recent decision to terminate my active involvement in the Roman Catholic Church. I am thus grateful to her for her honesty.