Catholic Identity: More than the Tip of the Iceberg

It is becoming more and more difficult to deny that there is a crisis in the Church. Statistics are available that show a decline in the Church in practically every measurable way, from Sunday Mass attendance, to priestly and religious vocations, to baptisms and confirmations. And these are just the measurable categories that show that the Church is in decline. The greater decline – and the greater tragedy – can be found in a category that is much more difficult to define and measure: Catholic identity.

The measurable categories mentioned above can be considered to be the “natural reality” of the Church. Catholic identity can be assumed to exist in this natural reality, but only on a superficial basis. Catholic identity is manifested in the natural realities – the sacramentals, the spoken prayers, the sign of the Cross, even stained glass windows depicting Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, etc. But the most important part of Catholic identity is the supernatural reality of our faith—the “mystery of faith,” the part that we can’t see and measure. It is the foundation of the natural reality. The relationship is reciprocal and cyclical, too: the supernatural reality of our faith is expressed in and gives real meaning to the natural reality; the natural reality, in turn, reinforces and reflects the supernaturality.

Consider this analogy: It is said that only 10 percent of an iceberg is visible, and that 90 percent of the iceberg is underwater. The same is true, in a sense, with the Church, and also with the spiritual life of each individual. In the natural reality of the Church, we can see the buildings, the finances, and the activities that are going on. We can see that Mass attendance is down, vocations have declined, etc., and we can acknowledge that this is a “crisis.” But these data points form only the tip of the iceberg; that is, people getting into their cars and driving to Mass on Sunday, is a natural occurrence. There is nothing necessarily supernatural taking place. Frankly, some of the Masses attended make no pretense of any supernatural happenings. And some people no doubt attend Mass only for natural reasons. Similarly, polls tell us that roughly 90 percent of both Catholics and non-Catholics use artificial contraception; but even the 2 percent of couples who are not contracepting are not necessarily avoiding it for supernatural reasons.

All of this natural activity is supposed to be “just the tip of the iceberg”; there is supposed to be another 90 percent below the water that is not visible: the supernatural part, the invisible part. For instance, since a sacrament is the outward and visible sign of an interior and invisible reality, then 90 percent of the reality of the sacrament is supposed to be interior and invisible. At a baptism, we can see the priest putting chrism on the baby’s forehead, but we can’t see God removing the guilt of original sin, and restoring the soul of the child to union with the divinity. Clearly, the part we can see is infinitely smaller than the part that we can’t see.

But in the Church today, it certainly appears that the natural activity, buildings, finances, etc., of the Church—which we can see—are not the “tip of the iceberg” any longer; they are the iceberg, and it is melting fast.

Now, applying this analogy more concretely to the current crisis in the Church, imagine that you need this iceberg to live. In places where there are shortages of fresh water, schemes have been considered such as using a large ship to tow an iceberg where there is a shortage of water. Let’s imagine this actually took place—and that your city required this iceberg for water, or else the whole community would die of thirst. Imagine that the tip of the iceberg is visibly shrinking as the iceberg melts and the water is used, but all of the citizens assume that there is still 90 percent of the iceberg remaining below the surface. However, the city fathers take the precaution of sending a scuba diver below the surface to check on the status of the iceberg, and to the shock of all, the diver reports that there is no iceberg below water. The small remaining part of the visible tip of the iceberg is all that is left, and it will soon be gone, and everyone will die of thirst.

The current crisis in the Church is like the shrinking iceberg with nothing left under the water. It is as if our Catholic identity now consists of some visible natural elements that have little or no supernatural basis underlying them. A case in point is a current Knights of Columbus program entitled “The Family Fully Alive.”¹ While there is nothing ostensibly wrong with this program, it suffers from a distinct lack of Catholic identity. The emphasis is clearly on “peace and justice” items such as participation in Special Olympics, Community Garden, Parish Spring Cleaning, “Global Wheelchair Mission,” “Coats for Kids,” Habitat for Humanity, etc. The bulk of the activities suggested are for individual families, and involve working outside the context of the parish itself. The program does call for all the families to join together in the parish hall to watch a free family movie once a month—but the suggested movies, which include “Beauty and the Beast,” “Despicable Me,” “The Lion King,” and “The Incredibles,” do nothing to promote Catholic identity.

The program does include a few authentically Catholic elements: going to confession as a “family project” is suggested for January, and November’s suggestions include a “Sunday trip to visit an adoration chapel,” but it is telling that these are included as “special events.” Shouldn’t these activities ideally already be a part of a Catholic family’s life? And although Marian hymns and prayers are included, there is no mention of a regular recitation of a “family Rosary,” nor any special Marian traditions (crowning of Mary in May, for example, or special emphasis on the Rosary in October). In November, there’s not even a mention of praying for the dead, and there’s not a word about indulgences. Some Latin hymns are included (words only—no musical notation) which seem almost like an anomaly in the context of the rest of the promoted activities.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the activities promoted in “The Family Fully Alive” program. My point is: What is Catholic about this? Where is Catholic identity revealed, encouraged, taught? The program is equivalent to the “tip of the iceberg” discussed above. In fact, the overall impression given by the booklet provided is that we’ll have happier families if we just participate together in some volunteer projects, and watch a movie at the parish hall once a month. But we won’t build a “domestic church” in any Catholic sense until those families come to appreciate some Catholic traditions—which more effectively access that 90 percent of our faith below the surface. And while going out into secular society in order to evangelize may be part of the mission of the laity, evangelization efforts will only bear fruit if the families are well-steeped in their Catholic identity.

The cause of the crisis in the Church—the heart of which is a lack of Catholic identity—can be debated on various levels, but an honest assessment has to lay a major portion of the blame on the liturgical abuses that run rampant in the experience of the liturgy as it is celebrated in many, if not most, parishes in the U.S.. Since the Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian lives, it should not be surprising that a deficient Eucharistic celebration, as experienced routinely by the vast majority of Catholics, will be reflected in the deficient lives of faith commonly observed in our Catholic parishes and schools. Those same deficiencies have also led to an incomplete and secularized understanding of social justice. (For an extended commentary on the effects of the deficiencies in our liturgical worship on many other aspects of our lives, it is well worth reading Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis: Sacred Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church.²) The bottom line is that our Catholic identity has been dealt a severe blow, and that blow is felt most keenly in, and because of, the Mass.

The problems that we face due to the current weakness of the faith, as it is practiced in most parishes, especially in the West, can be seen in the current state of society, with Catholic teaching being attacked from all sides, and many Catholics acquiescing with cultural norms that include “gay marriage,” divorce and remarriage, contraception, and even abortion. Relatively few Catholics actually stand up for the truth of Catholic teaching; in fact, teachers in Catholic schools seem opposed to some essentially Catholic Church doctrine, as Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has discovered in his attempt to require Catholic teaching from Catholic school teachers, and require that their public lives not work against the teachings of the Church.³ Eighty percent of the teachers signed a petition protesting “morality clauses” in their contracts, prompting the wry observation that “San Francisco parents of children enrolled at local Catholic schools were recently shocked to discover that their children are attending schools run by Catholics.”⁴ The petition-signers, by their actions, are also aiding and abetting secular society in its attempt to keep Catholic schools from being Catholic. At this writing, San Francisco city officials are threatening legal efforts to essentially curtail the religious liberty of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.⁵

The current problems in the Church are not new, of course. In a book written over 10 years ago, sociologist David Carlin enumerated the causes, effects, and measurable outcomes of the decline of the Church. Carlin concludes that the Church is in decline because Catholic identity has been diluted to merely Christian identity; our religion “became no longer Catholicism, but generic Christianity, or Christianity-in-general.”⁶ And it is Catholicity, more than “mere Christianity,” that holds together the fabric of society. A notable case in point is the fact that every Christian denomination bowed to the demand for acceptance of artificial contraception—which is arguably a prime instigator of much immoral behavior—while the Catholic Church, to this day, decries and forbids the practice.

The connection between moral decline and liturgical abuse should be obvious. Lex orandi, lex credendi, as the saying goes, is often paraphrased as meaning that the way we worship reflects what we believe, and vice versa, really, in the sense that what we believe also determines how we worship. Ideally, we train our children (and new adult Catholics) to worship in a way that will adequately reflect what we, as Catholics, are supposed to believe. A problem arises, though, when the “worship environment” in which our children are raised fails to adequately reflect our Catholic beliefs. Then, our children (and new adult Catholics) fail to understand their faith, and there is no binding force to keep them “in the Church.” There comes a point where Catholic identity is so diluted, there is no reason to remain Catholic.

The fact that the development of the new Mass was influenced by voices seeking to make the liturgy “relevant” to non-Catholics seems to be widely accepted now; and surely it is clear that such an influence will necessarily remove some critical elements of Catholic identity! Comparisons of the new Mass with the old Mass show that some theological strengths of the former became crippled, or even non-existent, in the latter. For example, the centrality of the Holy Trinity in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which can be clearly seen in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, is diluted in the new Mass where the prayers of the liturgy seem to have been systematically edited to omit or alter references to the Holy Trinity. The Preface of the Holy Trinity is seldom used in the liturgies most often experienced by the faithful today; the use of the sign of the Cross has been reduced; and the use of the “Gloria Patri” or the “Glory be” has been purged from the liturgy. Also, the rubrics for cleansing the vessels are much less detailed in the new Mass, reflecting (and perpetuating) a decline in reverence for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic species.⁷

There are other changes and omissions that have struck me as detracting from Catholic identity. We’ve lost the Asperges, for instance, which is a very apt preparation for Mass in that it reminds us of our sinfulness and of God’s mercy in cleansing us of that sin. In fact, throughout the prayers of the Mass of the extraordinary form, one can find this constant reminder of the tension between our sin and the mercy of the Father. Of course, in the liturgy celebrated in most parishes, there is an opportunity to examine and confess our sins in a meaningful way. But the problem is that the flagrant disregard for the norms, set forth in the GIRM, has so marred the new Mass that the differences between it, and the extraordinary form, are exacerbated.

There are other differences between the two forms which are not abuses, but which bring the current liturgy down to a more “human” level, whereas the older prayers raise our minds and hearts to Heaven. For instance, in the ordinary form of the Mass, we find this offertory prayer:

“Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.”

But in the extraordinary form, the prayer is much richer:

“Accept, O Holy Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, this unspotted Host, which I, Thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, to atone for my countless sins, offenses, and negligences: on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians, living and dead, that it may avail both me and them as a means of salvation, unto life everlasting.”

In the liturgy experienced by most Catholics every Sunday, we no longer have this reminder that God is holy, almighty, and everlasting. Those words convey a much more Catholic sense of God than “God of all creation,” a phrase which many pantheists would be able to embrace! In the old prayer, we are also reminded again of our sins, and the prayer indicates that this includes our “offenses” and “negligences.” We also see in the old prayer that we are offering the sacrifice for the dead, as well as the living, and that this is for our salvation. These are important concepts which have been lost, and which have resulted in a decrease in Catholic sensitivities.

The liturgical actions in the Mass also serve as a means of catechesis,⁸ and this is another case where changes have resulted in a decrease in these signs and symbols of our faith. The many genuflections and bows of the head that occur in the extraordinary form instill a reverence that is lost when they are omitted. Since these actions are much curtailed in the ordinary form of the Mass, it should not be surprising that there is a corresponding decrease in reverence for the tabernacle, altar, the Holy Name of Jesus, and Our Blessed Mother. Although that decrease may not go to the extreme of irreverence, it is clear that much less awe and wonder has been instilled in the lay ministers who traipse through the sanctuary in order to take their part in the liturgy. Think also of the Credo: even in my pre-Catholic days, I noted that while the missal indicated that all should bow at the words “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man,” no one did. When I asked about it, I was told: “We don’t have to do that anymore.” In the older form, the rubrics instruct the faithful to genuflect at those words, not just bow the head. The message sent is exponentially greater with the more reverential action.

In these liturgical actions of the older form, we see the tip of the iceberg undergirded by a mass of theological depth. The “tip” signifies what lies below in a way we would expect—that 90 percent lies beneath it. On the other hand, in the Mass that most of the faithful experience today, we see fewer gestures at the tip of the iceberg, and the foundation under the water has been eroded. That is, the Mass is being celebrated ostensibly as a Catholic liturgy, but with (more) words and (fewer) gestures expressing less Catholic theology. What once loomed large below the surface—the true, supernatural reality of our Catholic identity—has been steadily decreasing as use of the ordinary form of the Mass has increased.⁹

When Summorum Pontificum was promulgated, I had been a Catholic for just five years, and had never experienced the older form of the Mass. When I did, however, I expressed my own realizations about the differences between the ordinary formand the extraordinary form of the Mass in an article published in HPR:

We’ve had some priceless treasures taken from us: a language (Latin) that adds beauty and a sense of history to our liturgy; music (Gregorian chant) that does the same; a sense of the a sense of the hierarchical nature of the Church (cf. Lumen gentium, §18-29; Sacrosanctum concilium, §26-32); a sense of the Real Presence of Jesus; a sense of reverence, awe, and wonder associated with the mysteries of the liturgy; a sense of right and wrong; a sense of the power of God; a sense of the importance of our choice of words in speaking to him; a sense of sin.¹⁰

In that same article, I wrote about watching a video of the extraordinary form of the Mass. Here are the words of a mere neophyte (me!):

I was in awe as I watched the video. I saw how much is lacking in the way many parishes celebrate the forma ordinaria. I understood why the alleged percentage of Catholics who actually believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is so alarmingly low.The forma extraordinaria leaves no doubt as to his Real Presence, while the behavior of many of the ministers in the forma ordinaria Masses I have attended has often suggested that they are oblivious to him.

I became very, very much aware of the fact that we have been robbed.¹¹

Whatever the intentions of the reformers of the liturgy, it is clear that what has become the standard in American parishes is simply bad liturgy, which has prevailed ostensibly as a way to make the Mass and the Church “relevant.” By the numbers, this approach is clearly a failure. We have been seeking to keep people in the Church through methods that weaken Catholic identity, using the old saw “we have to meet them where they are” to justify the introduction of bad music, inappropriate use of guitars and tambourines, and other liturgical abuses at Mass. These abuses are meant to make the Mass more “contemporary,” and thus to keep the pews full by making the people “feel good” (or at least “comfortable”). Not only is that the wrong approach, it hasn’t even worked, as evidenced by the low levels of Sunday Mass attendance in most parishes.

Of course, the Mass is for the people, too—though not simply as a pacifier, but as a means of spiritual growth! Spiritual nurturing is not properly accomplished by providing banal music and pandering to the desire of the laity to “be involved” in the liturgy, any more than children receive proper nutrition from candy and cake. The pandering to the desire to make people “feel good” at Mass leads to liturgical abuses, and those abuses are an affront to properly formed Catholics, making them “feel bad.” So, whose “feelings” matter more? At times, the “war” between New Mass adherents and traditionalists seems to boil down to whether a Gregorian chant schola or a guitar group should provide the music at Mass. That’s not the real issue, of course. The re-introduction of Latin, Gregorian chant, and the use of the organ—all of which do, in fact, convey a Catholic identity—will not, in and of themselves, do justice to the Real Presence. But neither should tradition-minded Catholics always be required to “offer up” the pain they feel at the typical poorly-celebrated Mass when guitars and tambourines replace the organ, and “contemporary” Christian ditties replace Gregorian chant.

The Mass should form us and teach us how to worship, and why to worship, and it can be argued convincingly that the extraordinary form of the Mass accomplishes this more efficaciously than the ordinary form. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, in the book mentioned earlier, makes a good point about the liturgy and its effects on us:

… By attending poor liturgy one implicitly accepts it—that is, one says to it: “Shape me, shape my soul, form my spirit. Make me like yourself.” But this is what one must not allow to occur with experimental, horizontal, anti-sacral liturgy; its habits, as it were, must not become my habits. Sadly, the vast majority of Catholics who still attend Mass, including their bishops and priests, have been habituated precisely to this poverty, so much so that it is no longer possible for most people to be made aware of the impoverishment, let alone convince them of its remedies.¹²

It is in becoming “habituated to this poverty” that we have lost our Catholic identity, lost the sense of Catholic morality, and lost the capacity to implement Catholic values in the society in which we live. As I noted above, this loss became for me a sense of having been robbed; but in a sense, we’ve been victims of a kind of “shell game,” where our valuables have been replaced by cheap imitations. I wrote in my 2008 article:

But the thief did leave something behind to replace some of the treasures lost: humanity has replaced divinity; “egalitarianism” has replaced the hierarchy; familiarity and contempt have been substituted for reverence, awe, and wonder; “innovation” has replaced tradition; “relevance” has replaced the essential mystery of the liturgy; “tolerance” has replaced our sense of right and wrong; moral relativism has replaced our sense of sin.¹³

What has brought us to this state? It seems we have lost a sense of our own Catholic tradition, which is an essential part of our identity. The traditional Latin Mass was squelched for decades, and despite the stipulations of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the use of Latin and Gregorian chant were all but eradicated. Even secular society recognizes those as essential elements of Catholic identity, to the extent that one can scarcely find a movie that mentions or alludes to the Catholic Church without hearing some of each!

An interesting notion of Kwasniewski’s is that a “threefold amnesia” has gripped the Church: the attenuation or negation of traditional liturgy; the downplaying of integral Catholic social teaching; and the dismissal of the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas.¹⁴ Indeed, in theological and philosophical disputes in the Church today, Aquinas is often set on a dusty shelf in a dark closet, the Traditional Latin Mass is forced to sit in the back of the bus, and Catholic social teaching is now all about “Peace and Justice”—the by-words of those following a liberal/progressive agenda. Personally, I experienced this “amnesia” time and again with commenters on my own blog. Those who disagreed with my take on various subjects (particularly NFP and Theology of the Body) relied heavily on Vatican II and post-Vatican II documents, while often seeming to casually dismiss Fathers and Doctors of the Church like Aquinas and Augustine. My references to popes as recent as Pius XI and XII even met with resistance, on occasion. The common perception these days seems to be that the Church came into existence in 1965!

The tension that exists between opposing views of the value and weight of tradition is yet another symptom of the decline of Catholic identity, and, I think, boils down to an emphasis on natural reality, and a dismissal or unawareness of the supernatural reality of the Church. Too much emphasis on “relevance” leads away from the time-honored traditions of the Church, and away from their supernatural foundation—the 90 percent of the iceberg that is invisible to us. The monumental task to be faced in rectifying the crisis in the Church lies in acknowledging the fact that the invisible supernatural realities, such as the state of people’s souls, are so much worse than even the visible natural realities, such as the fact that 98 percent of Catholics are using birth control, or 80 percent are not attending Sunday Mass regularly.

What is true of the Church is also true of individuals. Each one of us has his own spiritual life which consists of visible activities, such as attending Mass on Sunday. We assume that the visible, natural, exterior part of our spiritual life is just the tip of the iceberg, and that there is another interior, invisible, supernatural part of our spiritual life which is many times larger than what we can see.  But if we sent a scuba diver down to check on the status of this submerged part of our spiritual life, what would he find? Would he say that this iceberg still has an underwater connection to the infinitely large stores of fresh water from which it comes? Or would he say that there is no “there” there, and that “what you see is what you get,” that it exists only on the surface?

To resolve the crisis in the Church, it seems we must find a way to restore the 90 percent of that dwindling iceberg, that invisible supernatural reality, to the lives of the faithful who have, for too long, been fed on an impoverished faith that relies primarily on visible realities. One way to do that is to promote and catechize the faithful on the majesty and beauty inherent in the extraordinary form of the Mass. To be sure, this is not the only way to restore Catholic identity, but because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian lives, this is where we must begin.

One of the most frequently visited posts on my blog is entitled: “Seven Reasons Why You Should Not Go to the Traditional Latin Mass”¹⁵ (the title was, of course, tongue-in-cheek). Here’s a partial list:

• You’ll wonder why we have lay ministers of Holy Communion (and why so many receive Holy Communion in the hand).
• You’ll become more aware of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
• You’ll wonder why we have guitar music at Mass.
• You’ll gain a new understanding of the liturgical worship of the Catholic Church.
• It will make you hunger and thirst for true worship every time you attend the typical impoverished Mass at your parish.

In short, I was “warning” that the extraordinary form of the Mass will make the faithful more aware of their Catholic identity! But such an effect takes time, because of our “habituation to the poverty” of the liturgies most of the faithful experience every Sunday:

 … if you go just one time, you might feel like a fish out of water; it may seem odd and quiet and just plain different. … you will quite likely say, “I guess it’s fine for all those trad types, but it’s just not for me.”

…If you really give the TLM a try, though—because maybe you seek a greater “actual” participation in the Mass, and you are a Catholic who wants to truly be Catholic—you will experience all of the above effects, and they really are good things and not bad.

The answer to the current crisis in the Church is to restore Catholic identity. In order to do that, the extraordinary form of the Mass must be introduced, explained, promoted, and provided for all the faithful. Why? Because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian lives, because the Mass is our highest form of worship, and because the Sacred Liturgy is who we are as Catholics.

The tools for true renewal of the Church are available; it is only for the shepherds of the Church to begin to employ them.