Paix liturgique

It is essential to understand that the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council and unfolded from 1964 onward is in no way comparable to the various reforms, modifications, evolutions, and adjustments that Catholic liturgies have undergone throughout the centuries. Paul VI's reform is unique. It was a comprehensive reform: it modified the entirety of worship: the Mass, the sacraments, and the sacramentals; it was a radical reform: the changes profoundly affected every aspect of this domain. Moreover, like any process resembling a revolution, this reform is never truly finished. It constantly seeks something "more" or "better."

Paul VI may have believed, upon publishing his new books, that he had completed the work of transformation, forgetting that the intrinsic malleability of his own reform would necessarily transcend all his decrees. John Paul II and Benedict XVI imagined they could rein in the runaway engine and inject a dose of classicism into the innovations, but none of this is possible because this reform process, like the liberal Catholicism from which it stems, seeks an adaptation to the present era, the era of modernity. And modernity is constantly shifting and advancing. And so is the reform.

One of the key words of this reform is inculturation: the liturgy must be Indian in India, African in Africa, inspired by Pachamama in the Amazon, and so on. However, modernity tends to globalize and unify, and to make diversity marginal, reduced to being a way of relativizing the heritage of the past. A paradigmatic example of this marginal adaptation, which aims to demonstrate that the lex orandi is fundamentally a modifiable law, is the inculturation of the Roman liturgy within Aztec culture.

On June 27, in Los Angeles, where a large part of the Catholic population is Latino of Mexican origin, an Aztec Mass was celebrated at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. This Mass combined liturgical texts, dances, poems, and symbols inspired by Aztec traditions. Liturgical dancers—it almost seemed as if, alongside the ministries of lector and acolyte (both male and female for that matter), a ministry of dancer (both male and female) might be created —adorned with feathers, advanced in procession to the beat of drums playing supposedly indigenous rhythms accompanied by lyrics taken from the liturgy. The official bulletin of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles described this inculturated celebration as “a worship experience.” And all the better that they limited themselves to feathers and dances, without re-enacting the human sacrifices offered to the deities, which represented the most striking practice of that Aztec liturgy which was thankfully abolished with the arrival of the Spanish missionaries who brought the Gospel. Regarding the box of ideas held by our liturgists, I might also point out that of a Dominican friar, a professor of dogmatic theology, who believed that Germanic liturgies, for instance, might be inspired by certain Wagnerian operas.

In reality, the ‘Aztec culture’ today is nothing more than a folkloric reconstruction. And, just as interreligious dialogue is often simply a dialogue with oneself, conducted through interlocutors who supposedly represent Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, or animism, as if each of these entities, with its countless ramifications, were a distinct religious whole, endowed with a kind of ecclesiastical structure. In reality, I repeat, this inculturation allows for a diversifying relativization. Moreover, we are told that diversity must be “open” and not “closed.” “Diversity becomes a problem when it becomes closed in on itself,” stated Monsignor Filippo Iannone, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and one of Pope Leo XIV’s trusted advisors, in a recent interview in Zagreb ([Document] "La diversité devient un mal lorsqu'elle se referme sur elle-même" : Monseigneur Filippo Iannone expose les priorités de Léon XIV - Tribune Chrétienne).

Therefore, this promotion of diversity cannot allow itself to be extended to the point of giving way to the Tridentine liturgy. That, obviously, would be practicing a “closed diversity.” In contrast, the inculturation carried out on October 4, 2019, in the Vatican Gardens, on the occasion of the Synod on the Amazon, was a paradigmatic example of “open diversity.” It was a moment of prayer between Pope Francis and members of the Curia with indigenous representatives, purported followers of a more or less ecological Amazonian cult. This moment of prayer included chants and processions around figurines representing pregnant women from the so-called Pachamama cult, which symbolized life, fertility, and Mother Earth.

Dear Parisian sentinels who are asking not for the Aztec Mass, but for the Tridentine Mass, you do so in vigilant prayer, reciting the rosary at 10 rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame, Monday through Friday, from 1:00 to 1:30 p.m., and at Saint-Georges de La Villette, 114 avenue Simon Bolivar, Wednesdays and Fridays at 5:00 p.m., in front of Notre-Dame du Travail, Sundays at 6:15 p.m.