Mahony May Urge Wider Congregant Role in Mass

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony is preparing a major new directive that could change the way millions of Catholics worship on Sunday mornings.

Instead of remaining in their pews, Catholics could find themselves standing around the altar with the priest during a key liturgical prayer. They might be encouraged to lift their arms in praise while reciting the Lord’s prayer. The Communion wafer might be replaced by baked bread.

These are among the changes envisioned in an early draft of a new pastoral letter to be sent in September to the 3.6 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

At their heart, the changes under consideration are intended to fully engage worshipers in the life and service of the church. Rather than being spectators watching an unfolding sacred drama in which the priest celebrates the Mass, parishioners are to become active participants as members of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is to be found in both the Eucharist and in the assembly of believers.

But even as Mahony and a committee work behind the scenes on a final draft of the pastoral letter, opposition has been mounting among conservative Catholics ever since an early version draft of the letter leaked out.

Last month, for example, a single paragraph in one independent conservative Catholic newspaper, the Wanderer, castigated Mahony as “brash, arrogant, authoritarian, condescending and ill-informed.” Another conservative paper, the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission, provided the addresses of leading Vatican officials should readers want to complain.

Both papers based their stories on leaked copies of a May 17 second draft of the proposed pastoral, a copy of which was also obtained by The Times. But Mahony said he is already working on an eighth draft.

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The controversy in the Los Angeles archdiocese is a microcosm of tension within the worldwide Roman Catholic Church since reforms were first approved in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, among them permission for the Mass to be celebrated in native languages.

Three decades later, the controversy continues. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said in an autobiography published in Italy in April that Pope Paul VI caused “extremely serious damage” by suppressing the use of the Tridentine Mass, a highly ritualistic service.

Ratzinger’s assessment was challenged by Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, considered a liberal, who said the real damage was done when Pope John Paul II allowed a limited return of the Tridentine Mass.

For some Catholic parishes in Southern California there is little new in what Mahony is considering. Many of the 284 parishes in the archdiocese have already adopted at least some of the changes.

With the approach of the year 2000 and Christianity’s third millennium, Mahony is determined to complete the job.

The uproar may be difficult to understand for non-Catholic Christians who are members of nonliturgical Protestant churches. While they have largely respected anyone’s right to worship as they choose, Protestants in nonliturgical churches have sometimes dismissed “formal worship” and “rote prayers” as falling short of authentic worship.

But for Catholics, the liturgy and its climactic celebration of the Eucharist is the central act of worship. Not only do Catholics believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, but the Eucharist is also seen as a powerful symbol for modeling their lives when they leave the church.

“People react very strongly to liturgical renewal, and that’s understandable because this is very close to their hearts. It’s the essence of their relationship with God,” said Father Richard Albarano, director of the Los Angeles archdiocese’s office of worship. For that reason, he said, it is important to prepare parishioners for the changes.

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The second draft of the pastoral letter proposes that priests engage in extensive education and teaching to explain the significance and meaning of liturgical changes.

The draft leaves it up to individual parishes to determine how best to implement the reforms, taking into account the unique character of each congregation and architectural limitations of their buildings.

The Body of Christ, Albarano said, is to be found in both the bread and the wine, and within the midst of the assembly, the people gathered in worship.

That is a problem for A.J. Matt Jr., the longtime editor of the Wanderer, published in St. Paul, Minn.

“The real problem is the focus is all on the activity and attention of the people at the expense of the ‘reality,’ the confection of the Body and Blood of Christ within the Eucharist, the whole sacrificial aspect of it and the banquet aspect of it,” Matt said in a telephone interview. “It’s either assumed or it’s irrelevant. It’s [as if] we’re all getting together to have a good time! What are we there to celebrate if it isn’t the Eucharist of Christ?”

Albarano disagreed. “It’s not a shifting of emphasis at all. There’s an enlargement of emphasis that Christ is present in his fullness and that we need to open up our hearts and minds and our eyes to see and feel and touch Christ in his fullness. . . . We certainly don’t want to put our hand up and say, ‘Stop! I only want you in one way.’ ”

He said the whole point of Vatican II is to reclaim the “noble simplicity of the Roman Rite”--the one that existed before changes in the Middle Ages that brought about a clerical view of the faith that relegated parishioners to spectators.

“If we’re not living justice, then our celebration of liturgy is emptiness. . . . The whole point,” Albarano said, “is for us to be transformed, to change and grow and be formed into Christ in the world in which we live.”