Sacra Liturgia 2013 Speaker Updates: Bishop Peter Elliot & Dom Alcuin Reid

Some highlights from Bishop Peter Elliott’s June 26th address: “Ars Celebrandi in the Sacred Liturgy”:-

“We cannot expect an ars celebrandi from clergy who do not know, or have never read, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Yet this is a widespread problem today.”

“The publication of a more accurate and richer English translation of the Mass is having salutary effects in the Anglophone world.”

“Celebrating Mass and the Sacraments is an “art”, which requires what all artists need: experience, discipline and practice open to a willingness to develop and refine skills.”

“The ‘art of proper celebration’ should never become too specialized, that is, an elite exercise for only a few people, which is the case with so much ‘art’ in Western societies. I prefer to understand the art of celebrating in terms of “craft”, something accessible to all of us, whether we think we are ‘liturgically minded’ or not.”

“My ideal is that the priest should be a good liturgical craftsman, an artisan of the worship of God.”

“A skilled celebrant with a recollected demeanour never gives the patronizing impression that he is giving lessons to his people. He has humbly absorbed that wider, guiding principle the Eucharist as Sacrifice and Sacrament takes absolute priority over the liturgy.”

“Some celebrants have as much style as an unskilled butcher. [Such] priests may have great inner faith, but who can tell from their clumsy or casual behaviour? [Drawing] on the need to integrate internal faith and external actions, consistent behaviour and attending to matters of detail is important, as any good craftsman knows.”

“While ‘style’ is important, I add a word of caution. The good celebrant avoids an artificial style. He is not trying to play a role in a theatre.”

“Clergy feel inadequate because they must compete with the world’s skilled communicators. Bishops can develop a better ars praedicandi among clergy and seminarians through providing practical workshops, animated by the grace of encouragement.”

“[Celebrants should] never imagine that sound must always surround the assembly or otherwise the people will become bored. This is when the devil of ‘entertainment’ takes control.”

“When I am about to celebrate Confirmation in some parishes, I think I am in a cinema, such is the noisy effect of secularization among our people in my country.”

“[The usus antiquior of the 16th century] provided precise and binding rubrics to control abuses and rein in the poor celebration of Mass and the Sacraments. The priest in the village, the chaplain at court, the monk in the abbey, the friar in the city, they all knew exactly what was expected of them: ‘Read the black and do the Red’.”

“Mass can be celebrated well in an ugly church, but the church remains ugly and the people deserve a better place for the Eucharist.”

“Catholic worship calls for a spacious and beautiful sanctuary, not cluttered up with useless furnishings or irrelevant decorations or distracting slogans.”

“I would invite every priest to take a long look at the altar of his church… Is this altar beautiful? Does it speak to us of God, his sacrifice and banquet?”

“In celebrating the divine mysteries well, any priest who is committed to the ars celebrandi is called to be a loving pastor. He gives glory to God as he seeks to nourish Christ’s faithful day by day.”

Some highlights from Dom Alcuin Reid’s address: “Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation”, 27th June:-

“Without participatio actuosa [conscious and actual participation in the liturgy], liturgical renewal and reform is at risk.”

“It is my concern that in rushing to ensure that everyone ‘participates’, and in the haste to reform rites to facilitate this, we have perhaps not attended to this precondition for participatio actuosa, for a real and fruitful connection with Christ at work in the Sacred Liturgy.”

“Participatio actuosa and liturgical formation are inseparable. [Both] are essential if we are to read the rest of Sacrosanctum Concilium and its consequent principles and policies correctly.”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not about the clergy: rather, their liturgical actions and comportment serve to reflect the beauty and splendour of Christ made present through their sacred ministry.”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not an exercise in self-exaltation or indulgence on the part of the clergy, but their humble ministration of Christ in and to our world.”

“The liturgy is not one optional spiritual practice amongst others, or a peculiar method of devotion promoted by seemingly obsessive people called ‘liturgists’. It is normative for Christian life.”

“[The spirit of the liturgy] is more easily ‘caught’ than ‘taught’: caught by hands joined in a way only used for prayer, by knees bent in adoration, by voices raised in the discipline of the Church’s chant…”

“It is a great sign of hope that now ‘the question of the liturgy’ is very much in the minds of younger clergy and seminarians, and is increasingly a concern for seminary and diocesan liturgical formators.”

“Liturgical minimalism is the enemy of the spirit of the liturgy and is a cancer to true liturgical formation.”

“In the Church’s wisdom and tradition, the sung liturgy is the norm – a truth our Eastern brethren have never forgotten. Yet for centuries, the liturgical formation of far too many has been grounded in the read liturgy, the missa lecta or low Mass.”

“If our parishes never celebrated the Divine Office liturgically, in all its richness, how will our people imbue the spirit and power of the liturgy?”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not primarily a missionary or catechetical tool. It is the Church’s worship of almighty God, not a means of propaganda. We do violence to its nature and perhaps even to Christ when we make use of it as a direct instrument of evangelisation.”