By JAMES MONTI
When several months ago, dear readers, I had the happy privilege of beginning this new column for The Wanderer, “Restoring the Sacred,” it was with the intent of exploring with you how we could rediscover and renew what it truly is to render unto God that which is properly and fittingly His in Catholic worship.
What does it mean to seek the restoration of the sacred? It is a quest to deepen the sense of holiness and transcendence in the Catholic liturgy and in Catholic life, to perceive God as He truly is from the perspective of who we truly are, His creatures.
How did we ever lose the sense of the sacred in the first place? This question can be answered in many different ways, but it ultimately comes down to the intoxicating allure of a life without rules — or at least without rules that are uncomfortably specific.
This allure began in the Garden of Eden and it is not going to go away anytime soon. We inhabit a chronically casual culture, a culture in which men and women have lost not only their reverence for God but also their reverence for one another — the art of common courtesy, and ultimately the sacredness of all human life from the unborn child in the womb to the elderly woman in her wheelchair.
One area of daily life where the loss of the sense of the sacred often hits home is in the realm of language — the words or expressions that we select or refuse to use.
An example that immediately comes to mind is the way in which we refer to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. For several decades now it has become routine in some circles to refer to Him simply as “the Spirit.”
Why is the traditional adjective “Holy” being dropped from His proper title? The word “spirit” by itself can refer to any human soul or any angel, including the demons. And it can also refer merely to some frame of mind — “the spirit of America,” etc. By contrast, the term “Holy Spirit” leaves little room for doubt as to whom we are referring to, and it moreover shows due reverence for our triune God.
We all remember the long battle to correct the ICEL translation of the Roman Missal that reached a fortuitous conclusion in 2011 with a far superior rendering of the Latin prayers and rubrics into suitably dignified and accurate English. But on some fronts the liturgical “word games” are far from over. There are priests who “edit” the words of the new missal translation, dropping at will certain terms they don’t happen to like.
The butchering of traditional hymn texts continues, with the original words suppressed not only to force inclusive language upon us but also to delete “unpleasant” references to sin.
And the General Intercessions can unfortunately be turned into a vehicle for radical theological or political propaganda.
The Real Presence
The sense of the sacred is similarly marred by the trend to censor the Sacred Scriptures, the quiet omission of biblical passages that might make people “uncomfortable.” Each year on the Feast of the Holy Family (the Sunday after Christmas), some parishes choose the “option” of omitting from the Mass’ second reading (Col. 3:12-21) St. Paul’s injunction about wives being subordinate to their husbands.
Ironically by omitting all the bracketed passages from this reading (the brackets indicating in the Lectionary which verses can be left out to shorten the reading), you wind up with a text that makes no specific reference to family life whatsoever — everything that Paul specifically says about married couples and their children is dropped.
How we choose our words when referring to the Holy Eucharist not only expresses but also affects how we and others perceive the sacrament.
The term “breaking of the bread” is indeed a scriptural term for the sacrament (Acts 2:42), but outside of its biblical context its incessant use, as well as any other unqualified references to the Holy Eucharist as “bread” and “wine,” serves to blur the distinction between the outward appearances (accidents) of the sacrament and the real and substantial Presence of our Lord, His real Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, that transubstantiation has wrought.
The use of hymns at Mass that talk about “breaking bread” and “drinking wine” simply sends the wrong message.
In the wider society the exploitation of language by abortion propagandists is well known. The act of exterminating an unborn child’s life was given a new name, “choice,” a word swap that has been papered over the deaths of well over 50 million babies.
We are all familiar with the attempt to suppress the greeting “Merry Christmas” by putting in its place the vacuous expression “Happy Holidays.” But there is another anti-Christian term change that has gained ground in academic literature. “B.C.” (“Before Christ”) and “A.D.” (“Anno Domini”), the traditional terms for distinguishing whether a year was pre-Christian or post-Christian, have been quietly replaced with the terms “B.C.E.” (“Before the Common Era”) and “C.E.” (“Common Era”).
Obviously the thought police of our culture have decided that even the slightest reference to Christ constitutes a threat to their secular world vision.
Still another example of the butchering of traditional language has been the use of the frankly stupid title of “Ms.” for women, purely an invention of fanatical feminists who evidently resent defining a woman’s state of life by whether she is “bound” to a man or not. The two traditional titles for women, “Miss” and “Mrs.” — both of which have their counterparts in all the other Western vernacular languages (Mademoiselle and Madame in French, Senorita and Senora in Spanish, Fraulein and Frau in German, etc.) — are both terms of respect for women.
I recall my mother relating to me that during her honeymoon in Quebec, a bus driver, when taking her by the hand to help her onto the bus, first addressed her as “Mademoiselle,” but immediately upon spotting the wedding band on her finger corrected himself and said, “Ah, Madame!” An unmarried girl deserves to be treated with respect for her maidenhood, as does a married woman for her vocation as a wife and mother.
The term “Ms.” dangerously blurs the distinction between married and single life and thus indirectly feeds into a culture that condones out-of-wedlock unions and the breaking of marital vows.
“Nonconformists”
Our sense of the sacred is also corrupted by foul, suggestive, and profane language. The use of such terms is an offense to God and attacks the sacredness of the human body by reducing it to the object of gutter talk.
An anecdote concerning George Washington relates that as he was conversing with several other men one of them said, “As there are no ladies in the room…,” leaving little doubt about the vulgar nature of what he was about to say; Washington quickly stopped him, retorting, “But there are gentlemen in the room!”
“Dirty jokes” are an insult to the dignity of the human person, defiling not only the ones who tell such stories but also those who willingly give ear to them. Moreover, talk of this kind strips the beauty from life, and makes what is sacred appear ugly.
In a society where cursing, swearing, and taking the name of God in vain have become almost routine in daily conversation, we as Catholics must be willing to take a stand as “nonconformists” by refusing to use such language.
Civility in how we address others, even our enemies, can go a long way toward changing hardened hearts. One of the lessons to be learned from the classic 19th-century English novels is the beauty of maintaining a code of civility even in heated conversation. Thus in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the moments of dramatic confrontation between the characters never descend into a torrent of abusive language.
Addressing another person with respect, even a person who by his words and actions may seem unworthy of respect, testifies to the fact that each person is made in the image and likeness of God.
God is present at all our conversations. Bearing this in mind will go a long way toward helping us know what to say and what not to say.
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