Dear Friends at Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish and Saint Frances Cabrini Parish: Praised be Jesus Christ! The manner that the Mass is celebrated is a deeply personal topic for so many of us as Catholics. This makes sense because of what we know the Mass to be from a doctrinal perspective, recognizing it to be a vital means of contact with the Lord himself for us his faithful followers. This means we take it very seriously. From the perspective of mere human routine it is personal simply because as humans we crave the solace of what is familiar so that we can rest upon it like a bedrock, meaning that disrupting routines disrupts our very core. Catholic liturgy, unlike so many other types of worship or group gatherings, is distinctly consistent and routine oriented, to the point where adjustments to it can become seriously jarring. All of this is partly why for so much of our history a major flashpoint or source of argument in the Church has been around how the Mass is celebrated. Added to this would be the fact that contrary to what some believe, the liturgy is always changing because it is impacted by the trends that make their way through the Church itself. The kernel of the Mass itself, which is the proclamation of the Scripture and the changing of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus is always constant, but the style and manner in which this is accomplished is not at all static. For example, only a couple of months ago, we were informed in the American church that when praying the opening prayer of the Mass, we were now to omit the word “one” from “one God forever and ever” because it was an unfaithful translation of the Latin text, even though we’ve been using that same phrasing since 1970. I was fascinated while traveling through Germany and Austria to learn of all the subtle, local variations in the liturgy from parish to parish which were a function either of Vatican II liturgical changes they just never implemented, or of pre-Council old traditions that they never wanted to let go. I asked one Austrian priest what would happen if they tried to actually correct these things and remove some of the devotional elements of the Mass, enforcing what the Missal actually says to do, and he said it would be a disaster because of how attached the faithful were to the devotional elements of the prayers. Which is all a way of saying that if anyone has been paying attention to the back-and-forth arguments in the Catholic press in the past few weeks about the recent decree of Pope Francis that governs the celebration of the 1962 Mass (the form of the Mass before Vatican II), it would be helpful to attempt to hold a nuanced perspective on it all. We have always argued about the liturgy and today is no different. It would also be helpful to accept the fact that the liturgy is going to continue to evolve as trends make their way through the Church. Altar rails and receiving Communion in the mouth are coming back in a major way for reasons that are very compelling. More and more it is the case that priests are once again celebrating Mass on the same side of the altar as the congregation, with everyone facing the same way rather than the priest facing the people across the altar. More and more Latin and chant is making its way into the Mass. All of this is grounded in sound liturgical theology if one properly understands the reasons. The Pope’s pronouncement from a few weeks ago did not say anything at all about these trends I have just listed, and I expect that these trends will therefore continue to expand their reach, including here in West Bend. We can never be done with the job of teaching and re-teaching what the Mass means. We can never be done with the task of trying to celebrate the Mass more faithfully and with true devotion. We will also never be done with debating what all of that means, or with the process of liturgical adjustments. Patience is in order as the Church continues to slowly stumble forward in time as we deepen our understanding of the proper way to worship and adore the Lord. The day we stop arguing about it is the day that we have stopped taking it seriously. That day must never come.