Orthopraxy

St. Paul, Minnesota was the Mecca of post-Vatican II contemporary Catholic music (i.e., Glory & Praise and Gather hymns) when I was growing up there. Mom was a member of this scene as liturgical music director of our little parish—to my enduring pride and amazement—attending workshops with Marty Haugen, David Haas, et al.¹; working alongside Fr. Michael Joncas; and collaborating with the likes of Fr. John Foley, S.J.²

Then at age 16 I learned guitar, and by the time I was in college, I found myself being the guitar-strummin’ guy at the guitar Masses. Couple that with my formation in the Faith, both in high school and college, and I was your typical Jesuit-educated, Catholic mainstreamer. Then fast-forward all through my adulthood to the Contemporary Choir at St. Dominic’s in San Francisco where my liturgical guitar-strummin’ allowed me to cross paths with my now wife—Deo gratias.

…and so when we returned to California in Spring 2021 we switched parishes to Star of the Sea, a traditional parish in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I had actually discovered Star the year prior as I was Tridentine-curious, but once we joined the parish we attended the Novus Ordo.

Lex orandi, lex credendi

There are all kinds of little things I found attractive about the traditional Catholicism at Star of the Sea: ad orientem, Communion at the rail and on the tongue (from a priest), Gregorian chant/sacred polyphony, the space for silence, the pious families it attracts, etc. The sanctity and beauty stirred my soul; and the funny thing is that we were coming from what is arguably the most objectively beautiful church in all of San Francisco.³

But the deeper reason for traditional Catholic liturgy has to do with cognitive dissonance and the Eucharist.

Did you know that nearly seven-in-ten US Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence⁴? In some ways I can understand this, as the proposition of transubstantiation does boggle the mind; but then when you consider that it’s the “the source and summit of the Christian life”⁵, that figure is more astonishing.

You might suppose that it’s the result of society becoming more scientific ergo more materialistic. Or perhaps a catechetical failure. Both probably partly explain it. But I believe there’s a liturgical factor.

Shia LaBeouf became Catholic not so long ago (and a TLM adherent as well) and noted the strange juxtaposition of casual preaching with the sublimeness of the sacrament (“letting your hair down right before you’re asking me to fully believe that we’re about to walk through the death of Christ”). Wholehearted agreement here: my brain is decidedly not agile enough to pivot between, for example, homily jokes and inexhaustible mystery breaking through the veil in the Eucharist; and, I think, the traditional liturgy is meant to spare us from that maneuver.

At one of the parishes I’ve attended, everyone remains standing during the Eucharistic Prayer, which, to be fair, is totally sanctioned, but also presents a problem in that your posture is discordant with what is really transpiring before you, and so your brain doesn’t compute.

Not just posture but dress (vestis virum facit). I realized a number of years ago that the Mass is infinitely more important than the fancy secular events I’d get dressed up for, so I try to put on a tie and leave the Vikings jersey at home⁷, to honor the Lord but also to keep in the fore of my mind that I’m at the mystical wedding feast of the lamb.

You say tomato, I say tomato

The Gen Z Retort: “Well, that’s great and all, but these are all just stylistic preferences—strawberry vs. vanilla—so you do you.”

The Boomer Retort: “I grew up with priests turning their backs to us and uttering Mass parts inaudibly—why would we go back to that?!”

When you look at what the research reveals about the reasons people leave the Faith, it isn’t first and foremost the hot button issues nor the sexual abuse scandal, it’s “I just gradually drifted away from the religion,” and for Catholics who become Protestants, it’s that their “spiritual needs weren’t being met”¹⁰. When the liturgy becomes about me and my needs,¹¹ the worshipper becomes a consumer or spectator, evaluating the “performance”: the homily was okay, but too long; and I’ll give the music a B+. And then what happens when you amass enough mediocre reviews? At best you become disenchanted or disillusioned; at worst you disappear.

Seeking True North

The stereotype regarding the “traditionalists”—or pick your moniker of those attending more conservative parishes—is that they are holier than thou, supercilious, too cool for school. I’m sure that’s the case in certain places, but the opposite of what I’ve found at Star…maybe because traditionalists are aware of the stereotype and work all the harder for their own humility.

As for me, I’m just a sinner who’s working out his salvation with fear and trembling. No lie. There’s a Jungian principle called Enantiodromia, a running contrariwise. When a sapling is bent in one direction, you don’t just push on it; you pull hard from the other side until it’s straight. That’s me with the Faith: I went seriously off course—that’s as much specificity as you’re going to get in that confession, Dear Reader—and I believe the Holy Spirit helped me find a traditional parish to help me “bend back”¹².

I’d also liken it to cycling: I appreciate riding with stronger cyclists because when you’ve got someone to chase, someone to pull you up the climbs; you end up riding harder and stronger. Similarly, when a large segment of your parish is pretty committed to their faith lives, it helps you with your own piety (a virtuous cycle or flywheel).

Traditional Catholicism is ultimately in service of the truth (as opposed to clinging to old comforts for their own sake), and its effects are real and visible.

And yes, it’s now counter-cultural and unfashionable¹³, but St. Paul encourages us in his letter to the Romans (12:2):

It’s amazing (in a nerdy kinda way) how the Twin Cities became the epicenter of contemporary Catholic music, but there’s a huge list of composers hailing from (or at least connected to) Minneapolis/St. Paul: Sr. Delores Dufner, Daniel Kantor, Lynn Trapp, Tony Alonso, Lori True, Donna Peña, Msgr. Richard Schuler, Richard Proulx, et al. ↩
The great Fr. John Foley, S.J. came over to our house one time to collaborate with Mom on one of his tunes. ↩
In this way, it reminds me of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, going from one transcendental (the beautiful) to another (the true)—not at all to disparage St. Dominic’s, but rather to lift up Star of the Sea as something that radiates, thanks to the blessing of Our Lady, Stella Maris (perhaps as a result of 24-hour adoration and other devotions). ↩
Pew Research Center, July 23, 2019, “What Americans Know About Religion” ↩
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1324). ↩
I jettisoned the latter part of the quote about crash helmets and life preservers and signal flares as I’d say it’s got more comic than theological value. ↩
Mt 22:11-12: “But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence.” ↩
For example, ad orientem is less about the celebrant “having his back to the congregation,” and more about all of us (priest included) facing liturgical East to offer up prayer together to God. Or with communion on the tongue and from a priest: priests are the exclusive ordinary administers of Holy Communion because their hands are consecrated. ↩
Bullivant, Stephen. Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America Since Vatican II. Oxford University Press, 2019. ↩
Pew Research Center, “Faith in Flux: Leaving Catholicism,” April 27, 2009 (revised February 2011). ↩
Another related angle is that the postconciliar Mass got off-kilter by over-emphasizing meal at the expense of sacrifice, a critical point Bishop Barron has made. ↩
To be clear, a huge ingredient in my “bending back” and my attraction to traditionalism is the fidelity to doctrine and the sound catechesis of the congregation, both of which make a huge difference (e.g., one group understanding that departed souls require prayer versus another people “celebrating the life of” the departed and then maybe not continuing to pray for them because they’re assumed to be “in a better place” [i.e., Heaven] may have real consequences). But this piece isn’t about all of traditionalism—just the liturgical aspects—even though the doctrinal aspects are arguably more important. ↩
St. Alphonsus Liguori has a good answer to this: “Do not consider what others do, or how they do it; for there are but few who really work for their own sanctification.” ↩