Norwegian Bishop: Young People Eager to Rediscover the Old Rites

Bishop Erik Varden, 50, of Trondheim, Norway, in a recent lecture (CoramFratribus.com, 7 September) criticised a mid-20th century trend among Catholics, including monks, to turn to yoga and other Far Eastern bodily religious practices while abandoning the Church's own Liturgy after Vatican II. He explained that the Church could do without yoga and regain confidence in its own tradition. Main points concerning the Roman Rite.

- In Catholic circles, young people are eager to rediscover aspects of the liturgy and ascetic practice that were abandoned after the Second Vatican Council.

- Today's young seekers find themselves rebuked by a predominantly older establishment, shaped by the anxieties of that revolutionary time.

- Today's so-called liturgical "conservatism" is not an expression of an allegedly "retrograde" or "rigid" tendency, but rather represents the opposite: a desire to be renewed in Christ.

- The celebrant in the Roman rite is subject to moral and physical discipline. Soul and body are prepared in advance for the Eucharistic Sacrifice [requirement of confession and fasting]. Priests are to be adapted to the liturgy, not the other way round.

- Regarding fasting before Mass [from midnight], some revision of the Church's rules was demanded, such as allowing the fast to be broken with water or medicine. But the erosion went much further. The current rule is to fast for one hour before taking communion, which more or less only excludes munching sandwiches in the pews.

- The priest is not the subject of the celebration. His task is to disappear in the words and gestures assigned to him, submitting himself to an objective reality.

- The intelligent daily repetition of significant rites cannot but be formative. External actions influence the conscious mind and the sensitive spirit for good or ill.

- In an age weighed down by artificiality, leaden rhetoric, dud personality cults, desperate "innovations" of appalling banality in stagecraft, political campaigning and liturgical practice, the search for objective, devotional expression in sacred functions seems to me sound and forward-looking.

- Many priests had found the old liturgical form, the Mass with its inflexible rubrics, 16 genuflections and 52 signs of the cross, "stifling" and were hungry for "spontaneous expression", but what followed was the sometimes tedious and destructive emergence of the priest as a personality. Whether or not he was endowed with much charisma, theological training or preaching skills, he was the centre and visual focus of attention. He has considerable executive freedom to shape the rites according to his form and whim.

- There seems to be no doubt that the incidence of priestly abuse in the Roman Catholic Church rose sharply from the early 1960s, coinciding with the abandonment of physical, ritual discipline in life and worship.

- It is documented that physical abuse is almost always prepared for and preceded by spiritual manipulation based on claims of personal authority based on a delusional, semi-mystical idea that amounts to the claim: "I am special, I am in charge, I do what I want".

- It seems short-sighted to dismiss the hunger of many young Christians for ritual, ascesis, symbols and formality by branding it as a silly nostalgia, with the supreme charge that it is anti-modern, anti-inclusive or, in a Catholic context, anti-conciliar.

- The watchword of Vatican II was: "Return to the sources! Drinking deeply from the sources is exactly what young people want. Why not help them?

Picture: Erik Varden, © katolsk.no, #newsUafykaxncy