Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a four-part series addressing the decline in the number of Catholic priests and seminarians worldwide. Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3.
(LifeSiteNews) — With regard to the sacred liturgy, Optatam totius considers it the “primary and indispensable source of the truly Christian spirit” (n. 16). Sacrosanctum concilium affirms that “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed,” a sacramental contact with God, and “at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows” (n. 10). This formula is justified since “the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper” (ibid).
The Church is not an NGO to ensure that people have land, housing, and work, or to fight against global warming and the deforestation of the Amazon, even if her social doctrine does aim at the enforcement of a genuine justice in society. Her essential purpose is to see that men, women, and peoples believe in Christ, live in God’s grace, and make their way to heaven.
The liturgical celebration is a sacred action par excellence. But here comes the problem: the liturgy is a sacred reality, and the Council continually calls it “sacred liturgy.”
Sacredness implies that the beauty and solemnity of the rites visibly and audibly convey that they are actions of Christ, not subjective fabrications of the celebrant, the “liturgy team,” or the handful of faithful pompously referred to as “the community.” The rhythm of an entertaining show or the “religious fervor” of a soccer game – let us recall the end of the prefaces of the Eucharistic Prayer – should not be introduced into a sphere that objectively communicates with heavenly glory.
Believe it or not, there is no lack of people – bishops included – who maintain there is no longer any difference between the sacred and the profane. A man out of the Stone Age would be scandalized by this frivolous assessment, which is denied by the phenomenology of religions. “Sacred” is linked to “sacrament,” “sacrifice,” and “mystery.” Christ, by His Paschal Mystery, established a new eschatological sacredness and introduced it into the profane world as a transfiguring foretaste of heavenly life. As St. Leo the Great taught, “what was visible in our Redeemer has passed into the sacramental rites,” into the mysteries of worship…
Many of the faithful do not understand that the Holy Mass is the sacramental presence of the sacrifice of Jesus. What has been imposed is a reductionist idea of the “community meeting,” of the “common banquet.” One Argentinean bishop celebrated Mass on the beach, wearing a beach outfit with a stole thrown over it, a small tablecloth on the sand, and the chalice replaced by a yerba mate gourd! Cases like this are unfortunately multiplying day by day.
These are bad examples for seminarians and a mockery of the stern conciliar warning that “no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority” (Sacrosanctum concilium, 22). The lack of education among priests and faithful and the devastation of the liturgy have been the bitter fruit of the imposition of the alleged “spirit of the Council.”
In this third decade of the 21st century it is surprising that the prejudices of the previous century, which produced so much havoc in the liturgy, are continuing and multiplying. One example is the displacement, if not prohibition, of the organ, of Gregorian chant, and of classical and modern polyphony. As for popular religious songs – which in Argentina saw excellent composers like Bishop Enrique Rau and Fathers Osvalda, Bevilaqua, and Lombardi – bad taste has spread: products that privilege syncopated rhythm over melody, along with insipid, sentimental lyrics that are alien to the Mystery being celebrated, are widely used.
We must add to these evils the abolition of silence. The displacement of the Tabernacle and the Cross has permitted the enthronement of the priest, the “presider of the assembly,” as he is called, not as a humble minister of Christ who makes present His sacrifice, but often as a showman who directs the spectacle. I will not dwell on other authoritarian impositions by those who pretend to be “up-to-date” and “advanced.”
Bishops and priests are not mere social leaders, much less ideological agitators, like those who abounded in the 1960s and ’70s, to the detriment of Church and society. Apostolic preaching draws its strength from the sacrifice of the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, so that the congregatio societasque sanctorum is offered to God as a universal sacrifice. St. Augustine’s City of God speaks beautifully of this “congregation and society of saints.”
Relativism – the arbitrary manipulation of the sacramental order, the unworthy secularization of priestly life, the populist confusion between popular piety and superstition, the disrespect installed in the chairs of formation centers, and the negligence of those who by their office should correct and keep watch – explains the undeniable setback of the Church in Argentina and other countries according to the differing characteristics of place and time. The negative situation is prolonged: every year hundreds of people who were baptized into the Catholic Church go join various evangelical groups, or at least attend their services – they are told about Jesus and salvation, which is what the poor hope for most.
How did we come to the painful generalization of negligence, the ruining of a sense of the sacred, and the intrusion into a sphere of arbitrariness, vulgarity, and decadent expressions of gestures and music? Those of the “spirit of the Council” apparently did not read the texts of the Council, such as point 5 of Presbyterorum ordinis: “Let priests take care so to foster a knowledge of and facility in the liturgy” (emphasis mine). The preparation, the predisposition, begins in the seminary, where genuine “professionals” of divine worship, i.e. liturgists, should be formed. The fact that this is not being done, or is done minimally and in a few places, explains our general situation and the habituation of the faithful to whatever they are given.
The priest is a minister of the mercy of Christ; he talks little about it, but practices and lives it. The concept of “mercifulness” spread by the Vatican forgets what St. Thomas Aquinas so accurately expressed: “justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution.”
Populism and pastoralism are capable of circulating attractive slogans and often rely on an effective propaganda apparatus, but they will only produce emptiness and disappoint young people who are looking for solid formation. One of the most absurd measures in the seminaries is to send students in the last year of the theologate – or even beforehand – to live in the parishes, even to interrupt their studies for a time; those in their first courses are also sent to do the same thing on weekends.
Seminaries muck up the pastoral formation they are supposed to provide by handing seminarians over to the clergy, which is not necessarily composed of men who have expertise in pastoral leadership as true teachers. All of this is part of the haste to make them “put their beard in the chalice,” as the Spanish saying elegantly expresses. What is truly successful, and what I myself experienced in 1972, is for deacons to exercise their ministry and live in parishes before their ordination to the priesthood.
Another prejudice that refuses to die is the false dichotomy between doctrine (study) and pastoral practice – always to the detriment of the former – as well as the resistance to send the most intellectually and spiritually gifted students to specialize at higher academies, so that a diocese can have “priests … trained at a higher scientific level in the sacred sciences and in other fields which may be judged opportune. Thus they will be able to meet the various needs of the apostolate,” as recommended to the bishops in Optatam totius, n. 18. This craze reveals an inability to forge a well-formed and united presbyterate where all members, with humility and fraternal love, can work harmoniously in the most diverse environments, according to the talent and choice of each priest.
As for public image, a typical quirk of progressivism is to prohibit seminarians from wearing the cassock, teaching them not to look favorably upon priests who do – they are suspected of “conservatism,” and it would always be “closer to the people” to wear rags and long hair. The ecclesiastical “fissure” really has reached such ridiculous extremes.
Concern for the people of God means diligence and careful application, which includes concern and often some anguish. These complex feelings, already found in seminary, invite seminarians to cultivate an intimate friendship with Jesus Christ and to rest confidently in His Heart. This implies that they must work passionately for the Gospel. It is necessary to live for the Church, not to use her to lead a more or less comfortable life without any major shocks.
I think the caution offered by Cardinal Robert Sarah in The Day is Now Far Spent is very timely:
No human effort, no matter how talented or generous, can transform a soul and give it the life of Christ. Only the grace and Cross of Jesus can save and sanctify souls and grow the Church. To multiply human efforts, to believe that methods and strategies have efficacy of themselves, will always be a waste of time. Only Christ can give His life to souls. He gives it to the extent that He Himself lives in us and has taken full possession of us. So it is with the saints. Their whole life, all their actions, all their desires are inhabited by Jesus. The measure of the apostle’s apostolic value lies solely in his holiness and the density of his prayer life.
The surest and most effective strategy includes prayer, adoration, communion of life with the Lord, and charity toward all. In short, this is what the seminary must inculcate in young men who aspire to the priesthood. All of its efforts must be directed to accompany them on that ascending path, from Galilee to Jerusalem, where the Cross and Resurrection take place, so that the vision of God – to the extent we can approach it on this earth – enlightens them and their pastoral work.
Return to the sources, starting with Jesus Christ
This work of synthesis – based on what I have studied, taught, and lived as a priest and bishop – was born out of pain and hope: pain because I love the Church and it grieves me to see her in steep decline, especially over the past 12 years, and hope (which, as I have already expressed, always carries with it a share of joy, but also of clarity of reasoning, realism, and tears) because I also notice an attempt to return to the sources, to orthodoxy, to Tradition, starting with Jesus Christ, among groups that are still in the minority yet increasingly significant. It is there where I clearly see genuine paths for the future.
Contra facta non valent argumenta: From the official statistics of the Holy See that we began this series with, there was a relationship established between the number of vocations in secularized countries with progressive clergy and the number of religious institutes that respect and care for orthodoxy and Tradition. The figures are convincing:
- Spain – one seminarian for every 17.5 priests
- France – one seminarian for every 19.5 priests
- Italy – one seminarian for every 15.3 priests
- Germany – one seminarian for every 34.5 priests
On the other hand, vocations among traditional congregations range from 0.65 seminarians per priest to one seminarian for every 2.35 priests. For the number of priests in a diocese to remain stable, a minimum of one seminarian for every five active priests is necessary. These are categorical figures that exclude any ideological manipulation.
Our progressive overlords disdainfully affirm that the “trads” have vocations because they “brainwash young people,” as if they were ignorant dupes, easy prey to any deception. They should read what Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI – says in his Jesus of Nazareth about the priestly consecration of the apostles, which is continued in the current ministers of Catholic worship: “They must be immersed and clothed in Christ, and thus they will be made partakers in His consecration, His priestly commission, and His sacrifice.”
This is what young men must be prepared for in the seminary – and nothing less!
Héctor Aguer
Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata
