Fr. Z's Blog

My heart goes out to people who are constrained either to attend Sunday Masses at parishes where weird stuff goes on or have to drive great distances.  My heart is broken for people whose shepherds deny them their Christian dignity by condoning and even promoting the indignities they must endure in liturgical worship in their churches.

Consider the statement in the cruel Traditionis custodes:

Art. 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.

Now consider this.

Today is the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Barrington, IL at St. Anne‘s, of the largest parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Rather, at St. Anne’s it’s the 3rd Sunday of the Season of Creation.

I don’t remember that in the Roman Rite.

More on this, below.

Some facts about St. Anne’s.

The site says they have 3500 families. This week’s Bulletin says that last week there were 1287 people who attended Mass in person or viewed. They took in about $32K last week but that’s $5K under budget.

The parish’s self-description includes:

A commitment to a Post Vatican II vision of Church, to life long faith formation, vibrant worship, servant discipleship, strengthening our spiritual growth and a just and generous outreach to the poor and broken – are all areas in which we focus our energies.

I see in the Bulletin that they have a Faithjustice Committee.

Confessions once a week at 9:30-10:00 am on Saturday.  Clearly not a priority.

They have their own music composer who has a new “Mass of the Beloved”. HERE There you can hear the Alleluia, Holy Holy Holy, etc., with the sheet music. It’s awful, but amplification will make sure everyone hears it one way or another.

Their bulletin for this week HERE.  My emphases:

From the Bulletin this week:

Human Concerns
Forgiveness…
Today we celebrate the Third Sunday of the Season of Creation. Matthew’s
gospel answers two questions: How often must we forgive someone who
seeks forgiveness? What will happen if we don’t?
Jesus could not be clearer: We must forgive not 7 times, but 77 times—
a metaphor in his time and culture for a number without limit. Every time
they ask forgiveness sincerely, we must give it from our hearts. If we do not
forgive each other when we have been forgiven so much by God, we will
lose God’s forgiveness.
To recognize how precious God’s forgiveness for the misuse of the gifts of
creation is, we need to be conscious of how precious and sacred those gifts
are.
As we have grown in consciousness of God’s gifts in creation and of our
destructive use and abuse of them, we have experienced God’s patience,
mercy, and call to conversion in our lives—a conversion to Gospel
nonviolence and what Pope Francis has called an integral ecological
conversion.
The Season of Creation asks: How can we express and live out our gratitude
for God’s patient forgiveness to us personally? As a community? How can
that gratitude call forth in us patience and forgiveness for those “behind us”
in this journey? For those resisting our denying the cry of the poor and the
cry of the Earth?
We pray that we may take up our prophetic responsibility in this time
of crisis to speak God’s Truth to each other and to call each other into
non-violent ways of living within creation wisely, sustainably, justly, and
reverently.

Remembering that the Novus Ordo is the “unique expression”, I cannot find in my copy – yes, I have one – the Season of Creation.

So, I looked it up.

The adventure began.

I found various protestant sites including a Lutheran site: Lutherans Restoring Creation with a sermon by Leah for their Third Sunday of the Year (Storm Sunday) HERE.  There is Church of England site HERE.  It links to Eco Church!

This was more helpful and four Sundays in September.  A site called seasonofcreation.com which includes celebrating Earth as a sacred planet and confessing our sins again and empathizing with groaning creation.   My favorite: “Proclaim the good news that the risen Jesus is the cosmic Christ who fills and renews all creation.” On their home page they push the “Global Catholic Climate Movement”. Their pages says Season of Creation is endorsed by the Web of Creation Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.  I went there but didn’t immediately find much.  Also, searching on “3rd Sunday of the Season of Creation” I found a video from today 17 Sept ’23 of a church service at St. James Anglican Church in Kingston, Ontario.  HERE  And interesting moment at 7:45.  There is a deaconette in the background making a sign of the something or other.  Note the pendant on the celebrant.    They use more Latin than most Novus Ordo places.  Nice chalice in the background.   Watching bits and pieces, it looks rather like the Novus Ordo, as a matter of fact. The Church of England site was helpful. HERE

This is the period in the annual church calendar, from 1st September to 4th October, dedicated to God as Creator and Sustainer of all life.

[…]

The theme for the Season of Creation 2023 is Let Justice and Peace Flow.

So this is integrated into the Anglican calendar.  I wonder: in the Catholic Ordinariate calendars is there a Season of Creation?

But wait, there’s more.  Scrolling to the bottom of the site called seasonofcreation.com you find this. My circles added.  Click for larger.  Live links at the page itself.  HERE

Pray As You Go is a Jesuit thing.  Circled at the tope are Vatican Dicasteries.  Integral Human Development and Communications.  Integral Development has a section on Ecology.  Guess what you find there?  “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation 2023 “Let Justice and Peace Flow”.  Remember that phrase.

That’s a lot of Catholic sites.  Live links.  There must be more to this.

Sure enough.  USCCB, a CNS story:

Laudato Si’ 2.0: Pope announces new document ahead of ‘Season of Creation’

Details are trickling out about a new papal document on the environment as the Catholic Church prepares to join other Christians in celebrating the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation Sept. 1 and the beginning of the “Season of Creation,” which goes through the Oct. 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Ahead of the ecumenical celebrations of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation Sept. 1 and the monthlong “Season of Creation,” Pope Francis said he is writing a follow-up document to his 2015 encyclical on the environment.

[…]

In the pope’s message for the Season of Creation, released in May, Pope Francis called for “an end to the senseless war against creation.”

[…]

I should have paid more attention to the Curia calendar.  I should have read the Fishwrap more often.  HERE

“Pope’s message for the Season of Creation”.  I had missed that. Signed 13 May.  1 September 2023 was the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

Dear brothers and sisters!

“Let Justice and Peace Flow” is the theme of this year’s ecumenical Season of Creation, inspired by the words of the prophet Amos: “Let justice flow on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (5:24).

[…]

In this Season of Creation, as followers of Christ on our shared synodal journey, let us live, work and pray that our common home will teem with life once again.

At Fishwrap I learned: “Orthodox Christians have been marking the Season of Creation for decades.”  Also, “just months after publishing his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis formally added the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to the Catholic calendar as an annual day of prayer.”

I really haven’t been paying attention, I guess.

There’s more.

Again at Fishwrap in 2016:

Liturgical emphasis

Another way to breathe life into the encyclical would be formally adding a season for creation in the liturgical year, according to one Australian priest.

Columban Fr. Charles Rue has proposed doing just that, viewing it as “one way to structurally help implement the vision of Pope Francis given in his encyclical Laudato Si’,” he wrote in a proposal paper that has circulated among faith-based environmental circles. A fellow Columban, Fr. Sean McDonagh, has made a similar endorsement of inserting creation care deeper into the spiritual and liturgical lives of Catholics.

Rue added that a new liturgical season focused on creation “would help believers face the 21^st century ecological challenge” in a way that recognizes its magnitude.

“Church communities would be in a better position to dialogue with people of other churches and faiths, scientists and people of good will about earth as our common home, leading to new commitments as congregations and individuals,” he said.

Insua said the development of a liturgical season of creation would be a big step toward embedding Laudato Si’ into the mindset and lives of Catholics. For now, Harper of GreenFaith said seeing the day of prayer eventually raise to the significance of other notable days within the religious calendar would be a major step forward in ingraining environmental concern with faith.

“What I’d love to see is the day of prayer for creation assume some of that dignity and the ability to provoke the kind of introspection and change in life,” he said.

Three times there… a new liturgical season.  Why?

“…a major step forward in ingraining environmental concern with faith.”

This is LEX ORANDI – LEX CREDENDI.

We are our rites.

The way we pray has a reciprocal relationship with what we believe.  Change the one, and the other will inevitably change.

Thanks to St. Anne’s in Barrington in the Archdiocese of Chicago and their Season of Creation Sunday Mass, I’ve learned all sorts of things.

I guess that “environmental concern” is now part of the “unique expression of the LEX ORANDI of the Roman Rite”.

I must ask: Have you run into this in your own parishes?

Let’s see St. Anne’s in Barrington in action.

Today, the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time which is the 3rd Sunday of the Season of Creation.

Worship Aid HERE for PDF.  VIDEO HERE (links are hard to find)  Their Vimeo page is a mess.  Click that video and the first thing you see is:

Try it.   They are completely on board.

4:00 Music starts.  Be warned.  Also, Father strolls in.  The tune is by their composer.
8:00 “Lord have mercy”.   No, really.  Lord, have mercy on us.
9:30: No Gloria, straight into the Collect, which isn’t in any book I have.

God most high, you are slow to and rich in compassion.  Keep alive in us the memory of your mercy that our anger may be calmed and our resentment dispelled.  May we discover the forgiveness promised to those who forgive and become a people rich in mercy.

So, I looked it up.   I found a site called The Peanut Gallery with this exact text for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 13 Sept 2020.  This is connected to the Anglican Church in North America.  I’m sensing a theme.

Remember, the Novus Ordo is the “unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”   The LEX ORANDI of the Roman Rite.

Did that sound like the Roman Rite to you?  I guess it is.

10:20 Invitation to children grades k-4 to gather in the big empty space in front stage and between the sideways facing pews.  Piano keys are tickled.  You get a good look at the layout of the church. The empty space is between the platform where the altar is and the platform where the ambo is, deeply and impressively symbolizing the equality of the two.  This, by the way, is the embodiment of the sheer crap we were deluged with in seminary in the 80s’.

Is this the Roman Rite?  It must be.

23:15 homily

45:00 end of “Hosanna in the highest” and start of Eucharistic Prayer.   It begins: “You are indeed loving and forgiving, o Lord, the source of all goodness and grace. Make holy therefore…”.  Eventually you figure out that it is Eucharistic Prayer II.  He ad libs and edits here and there.  He did not screw around with the consecration.

51:30  Lead up to the Sign of peace.

1:04:00 Closing hymn was from Gather #829.  Let There Be Peace on Earth.  What else?

The priest celebrant strikes you are a genuinely nice guy.  His ars celebrandi exemplifies the pressure on priests that the Novus Ordo and versus populum celebration inevitably exerts.

So, dear readers, again I remind you that TC says that the Novus Ordo is the “unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”

The integration of the Care of Creation material into Sunday worship… this is now part of the LEX ORANDI of the Roman Rite?

Asking for a friend.