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On the Power, Misuse & Neglect of Liturgical Symbolism

Noel J. Augustyn is a lawyer living in Maryland.

“The institution that understands the power of symbols best is the Catholic Church.” This statement, which I heard over thirty years ago in a sociology class in an Ivy League college, seemed remarkable at the time. The professor making it was Jewish — and it was greeted with good-natured hisses by the students — mostly cradle-Protestants who presumably saw the Church as an instrument of oppression amid Age of Aquarius liberation. The statement remained in my mind, and it seems worth revisiting now, decades later. For I wonder if it could be made today. In their apparently unending efforts to make the Church “relevant” to the “modern” world, her shepherds in recent years have been showing a diminished understanding of how the Church’s traditional symbols speak to the heart of the human condition, and they have often traded the power of liturgical symbols for what at some times seems nothing more than poorly followed rules of procedure for a town meeting, and for what at other times is nothing at all. The impoverishment of Catholic symbols has led to a desacralization of Catholic life.

The most serious example is also the most laden with irony: The diminution of symbols has notably detracted from the meaning of what is far more than a symbol — namely, the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Recently the cardinal archbishop of an east coast archdiocese expressed his chagrin upon learning that most Catholics in the U.S. either do not understand or do not believe in the Real Presence. The cardinal, however, acknowledged no responsibility for the role he and his fellow bishops have played in overseeing the degradation and elimination of certain liturgical symbols (and the addition of others) that have promoted this condition of ignorance and disbelief. There is a serious relationship between belief in the Eucharist and the symbolic messages communicated in the course of its celebration. And those messages are communicated — not unlike the messages sent by the set and costumed actors on a theater stage — primarily in and from the sanctuary.

Not so long ago, the only people in the sanctuary at Sunday Mass were the priest and the altar boys and, at the rare Solemn High Mass, two other priests functioning as deacons. The focus on the most important action taking place there — the Eucharist — was clear. Today, however, priests are also joined in the sanctuary on Sunday and even weekdays by the choir, lectors, and Eucharistic ministers. The new symbolism now is similarly but misguidedly powerful: The functions performed by each “minister” can be easily if mistakenly seen as equally important. The presence of Christ in the Eucharist consecrated by an ordained priest, then, is readily if wrongly viewed as no different from His presence in the words read or in the songs sung by laity.

The effects of the misuse of other symbols surrounding the Eucharist are even more direct and deleterious: the absence or removal of communion rails; reception of the Eucharist while standing rather than kneeling; Communion-in-the-hand; the distraction of the horribly misplaced Sign of Peace; the regular use of lay Eucharistic ministers even when communicants are few; the moving of the Tabernacle, in even the smallest churches, away from a central location; the virtual disappearance of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; the reduction of the altar to about the size of a card table. The theology justifying all these practices might be legitimate, but to the 99.44 percent of God’s pure people not theologically schooled, a definite — perhaps unintended — message has been communicated about the meaning (or lack thereof) of the Eucharist.

Both attitudes and beliefs can be affected by practices which, in their symbolism, communicate either, on the one hand, a sense of the sacred or, on the other, of the commonplace. It is doubtful that even the most reactionary of the faithful would advocate a Holy-of-Holies, Jerusalem-Temple approach to the Holy Sacrifice, or even a restoration of medieval sanctuary screens; nonetheless, when so many now see the celebration of the Eucharist as just a sort of ritual gathering of the local community, there must be a recognition that the symbolism surrounding the Real Presence must again be taken seriously.

The failure on the part of priests to appreciate the power of symbols is obvious in other parts of the Mass as well. And while failure in these areas may not detract from an appreciation of the Real Presence, it does adversely affect the sense of the sacred in general, which often seems to have all but vanished in contemporary worship. These examples are individually minor, but cumulatively their effect is serious. Folded hands as a symbol of prayer and reverence, for instance, used to be standard — certainly at least among the clergy and religious. Priests today, though, are rarely seen in this posture, either leaving or entering the sanctuary; and a procession that resembles a stroll down the street can symbolically convey that nothing special is about to happen at the stroll’s end. Later in the Mass, for reasons best known to themselves, the post-Conciliar liturgical reformers decided to replace the genuflection at the Credo’s “et incarnatus est” (“and became man”) with a deep bow. The genuflection was indeed omitted, but the bow, in fact, never came into general use. An important symbolic message was lost.

Similarly, the tap of the fist to the breast at the mea culpa (“through my fault”) in the Confiteor, and the triple striking of the breast at the Agnus Dei, are also now gone. An American Catholic may see these gestures of contrition today only, perhaps, on a television news program of Moslems observing Ramadan. Breast-beating is, to be sure, a Middle Eastern symbol, but Christianity, after all, is a Middle Eastern religion in its origins, and progressive Occidentals ought not to be embarrassed by that fact. One might even ask: Where is the outcry from Catholic “multi-culturalists” concerning this deletion? More seriously, the question should be asked: Is there a relation between abandoning a physical gesture expressing sorrow for sin — and a diminution of a sense of sin itself?

Symbols are usually understood as nonverbal instruments of communicating meaning, but surely the ultimate symbols are words themselves. And just as the Church’s bishops and priests have often failed to understand the negative effects of bad or absent nonverbal symbolism, so they have often failed to appreciate the importance of words. This neglect is again most obvious in the Mass. There is today much legitimate concern about accurate translations of Scripture and the Lectionary, and there are debates about “inclusivity” and so on. But the question must be asked: What does it matter what is in the official Church texts if priests grant themselves license to ad-lib? Not satisfied with the “scripts,” as it were, many, if not most celebrants add to or change the Church’s words. After the introductory Sign of the Cross and Dominus vobiscum (“The Lord be with you”), for example, there is hardly a priest in America who does not say something like “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” or “Good evening,” depending on the time of day. The symbolism is — perhaps unwittingly — profoundly negative. The message is that the Church’s greeting is little more than an official ritual; the real greeting is the secular ad-lib. It can well appear to the congregation, then, that they are not entering into the timeless kingdom of the Infinite God but getting together for a meeting. The interesting issue of our time thus concerns not so much the secularization of society but the secularization of religion.

Do such priests consider their individual phrasing to be superior to that composed by official liturgical authorities, who presumably devote serious study, time, energy, and care to their compositions and translations? The officially prescribed sentence preceding the Confiteor is, “As we prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins.” One simply cannot improve on that, any more than one can improve on “To be or not to be…” or “Fourscore and seven years ago…” or, indeed, “Our Father who art in heaven….” But there is scarcely an American priest who doesn’t try, for example: “Before we celebrate this Eucharist, let us pause to consider our faults”; “To prepare ourselves for this Mass, let us put aside all distractions and put ourselves in the presence of God”; “As we prepare to celebrate the Eucharist, let us recall our failings and ask the Lord for pardon and peace.” Ad infinitum, ad nauseam. (In point of fact, there are now two other optional, official penitential rite invitations; and while neither is as eloquent as the one cited, they are equally irrelevant to priests who invent their own.)

The ad-lib phenomenon occasionally extends even to the canon and other prayers at Mass. It includes, most unfortunately, a compulsion among many priests to tell jokes — and not only during the homily. Can we both joke and be about solemn business simultaneously? As Alexander Solzhenitsyn asked the Harvard graduating class of 1978, “What are all the smiles about?”

Words that are printed — and the style in which they are printed — are, of course, like spoken words, also symbols. The symbolic deterioration here is quite subtle yet most effective in reducing a sense of the transcendent. Catholic publishers — ranging from renowned cosmopolitan publishing houses to those who produce the humble Sunday parish bulletin — seldom recognize the Deity by capitalizing Him when He appears in pronoun form. Christ’s pronouns and possessives are now no different in print from those of Bob; God as a lower-case father isn’t distinguishable from a dear old dad. And Mass spelled in the lower case is simply, so the dictionary says, “a quantity of matter of considerable size” — perhaps a miracle in itself, as is all creation, but not the same as the Eucharistic Banquet and Holy Sacrifice.

The form of symbolic degeneracy most obvious to the laity has been, of course, the abandonment of clerical and religious garb by those consecrated by the Sacrament of Orders or by religious vows or both. The rationale for this “street clothes chic” when it was the rage among clergy and religious in the late 1960s and early 1970s was presumably the desire to avoid the deference granted to them by the faithful because of this religious identification. Whatever merit the argument may have had 25 or 30 years ago, it surely has none today, when the collar and the habit should justly be seen as badges of courage and when wearing them in some circles can amount to engaging in hazardous duty.

In any case, clothes are powerful symbols, and abandonment of religious garb can well signify that Holy Orders and religious vows are not important. The consequences here are not academic. While it would be simplistic to state that the sharp decline in prospective postulants, especially in women’s religious orders, has been a result of the abandonment of the habit, it would also be naïve to dismiss the correlation as insignificant. And, again, the ironies in a larger sense abound. Just when Catholic religious decided on sartorial modernization for “relevance,” the young moderns to whom they hoped to be relevant were adopting beads, beards, sandals, wire-rimmed glasses, and other unusual anachronistic accoutrements. Incense disappeared from the liturgy — but was fired up in strobe-lit dance lounges. Peaceniks displayed the “V” sign with their fingers at about the same time that clergy and religious quit using, outside of Catholic church buildings, the Sign of the Cross. At least some of this symbolism among late adolescents (of all ages!) at that time was a legitimate expression of a search and a need for an alternative to the materialist bourgeois world. In that quest in those days, some hippies might well have stumbled across religious kindred spirits, but they would have failed to recognize them, since the latter had recently shaved their beards, traded their sandals for shoes, their wire-rims for tortoiseshells, and their cassocks for khakis and button-downs. It is not wild conjecture to surmise that at least some Aquarians might have chosen lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience — instead of drugs, sex, and acid rock — had they been exposed to the right symbols from the right sources; but the latter, alas, were donning secular disguise. No shock of recognition occurred.

Symbols and their absence often have their effects in a far less dramatic way. At one time a purple stole always hung on a hook or on the priest’s chair inside the confessional, so that at least one vestment was ready to be worn when the sacrament was administered. No more. To be sure, a penitent’s sins can be as certainly forgiven when the confessor is wearing blue jeans as when he’s wearing a cassock, surplice, and stole. But somehow it doesn’t quite feel the same. And one need not be a romantic to understand that feelings are important and that symbols often touch very deeply those areas of the human soul that influence attitudes — often more deeply than does the intellect. Symbols in all their many forms can and do convey a sense of the sacred, and they can come to terms with those ultimate, mysterious realities that cannot be embodied otherwise.

It seems that in the decades since the Second Vatican Council the Church has been trying to distinguish between religious style and religious substance. Surely that distinction is important and has been well recognized. But the time is now long overdue for the Church’s leadership to realize that style and substance are also related, often intimately so. The only purpose of the Church’s existence is to help save souls. To the extent that style and substance merge via symbols and assist in a mysterious way in this purpose, their value cannot be overestimated, and understanding their importance and use is vital for all of God’s people.

By Noel J. Augustyn | May 2000

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