Southwest Liturgical Conference brings many voices of faith to Tucson

Intro and Feduccia

The message is Mass, music, prayer can inspire
Southwest Liturgical Conference brings many voices of faith to Tucson

By MICHAEL BROWN
Managing Editor

Liturgists and catechetical leaders from around the country were treated to a unifying view of the church “springing from the spirit of Vatican II” at the 58th Annual Southwest Liturgical Conference Study Week.

“It’s wonderful to see people going back to their dioceses with what they have seen and heard here,” said Father Miguel Mariano, director of the diocesan Office of Worship and co-chairperson for the event held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Tucson Jan.15-18.

Besides liturgy and other leaders from dioceses in Texas, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming, representatives came from dioceses in Oklahoma, Indiana, Michigan, Louisiana, California, Georgia, Missouri and New Hampshire.
People from many parishes in the Diocese of Tucson attended, Thermarator said. Overall, more than 300 people attended the six General Sessions and 30 workshops.

“I’m very happy with the turnout, “Father Mariano said. “We had a lot of people attending Study Week for the first time.”

The theme of the Study Week was the well-known prayer at the end of Mass, “Go in Peace, Glorifying the Lord by your Life.” Father Mariano said he was encouraged also by a subtle theme in presentations that emphasized pastoral and unifying approaches to liturgy and catechesis, especially when in some parts of the Church, things are becoming more polarized between groups embracing pre-Vatican II practices and others advocating more progressive ideas.

“We are just following the lead of Pope Francis,” he said.

Keynote speakers and workshop presenters closely followed that lead too.
Robert Feduccia, the founding director of the Youth Liturgical Leadership Program at St. Meinrad School of Theology, St. Meinrad, Indiana, made respect for diversity a key theme in his keynote, “Liturgy in a Missionary Key."

Feduccia also focused on creating a newmodel of catechizing, two decades after the release of the long-awaited “Catechism of the Catholic Church” was published, but unable to stop the decline of people, especially young people, who self-identified as Catholics.

The Catechism was published in1992, but it did not help the “Millennials”– Catholics born 1980-2000 –from leaving the Church.

Feduccia noted that only 29% of Catholics born in 1980 attend weekly services, compared to 43% of Catholics born before that date.

In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, there were significant changes to the way Catholics learned their faith. Sometimes, that meant that devotional practices - like the rosary, Marian devotions and study of the lives of the saints – were set aside.

“Catholics born after 1980 are the least likely group of religious believers to pray daily,” he said.

What is particularly challenging is that among immigrant populations - and Hispanics figure prominently in that number – as second and third generations come forward, they are far more likely to neglect daily prayer and weekly Mass attendance, and find religion to be less important in their lives.

Former Catholics who reported they no longer identified as part of a religious community – called “Nones” – said they left for a variety of reasons: the mission and message they were given were vague;answers to difficult questions were superficial; the Gospel and life in the Church were not considered “Good News”; the responses did not address their emotional needs or their pain; and they found other things more distracting, such as social media and the business of life.

Baby boomers were contented to live with the answers of faith – “seven seconds answers” - laid out by the old “Baltimore Catechism,” Feduccia said. For Millennials, “we responded to all kinds of questions, but we didn’t answer any of them.

“With the new Catechism, the US bishops mandated that new religious education materials include more of the core tenets of faith, given that young people seemed to be lacking the basics. “They thought the textbooks must be the problem,” Feduccia said.

This led to why Feduccia referred to the early 2000s as “the School of Slow Answers.”

With another generation of young Catholics at risk of falling into the“Nones,” Feduccia proposed a “School of Spirituality and Encounter.”

“The key to remaining active is daily prayer,” Feduccia said. “This is not a crisis of catechesis. It’s a crisis of Spirit.”

He went back to the documents of Vatican II, beginning with Sacrosanctum Concilium, the “Constitution on Sacred Liturgy,” and build upon it with quotes from Lumen Gentium (“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”), Dei Verbum (“Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation”), Gaudium et Spes (“Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”) and Ad Gentes (“Decree on Church’s Missionary Activity”).

During the past two decades, there has been a resurgence of liturgical practices reflecting a return to traditional worship, including a desire for Gregorian chant. Feduccia said that the liturgical reforms of Vatican II aren’t being undone just because of a longing on the part of some people for the old forms of worship.
A self-described “liturgical pragmatist,” Feduccia said there doesn’t need to be friction between those who long for chant, and those who embrace post-Vatican II forms of liturgy.

“People want to go back and forth on this, but’s fine to go back and forth,” he said.

Feduccia told a story about his visit to the Holy Land, and a sense of disap­pointment he felt about not feeling any special connection to God while visiting the places where Jesus lived. It wasn’t until he stood at the Western Wall, the remnants of the Temple, that things changed.

“It’s said ‘The divine presence never leaves the Western Wall,’” Feduccia said. “Deep in my heart, I heard ‘Yes, Robert. This place, this Church. I have made a covenant with you and I will not leave.’”

That’s why there isn’t a real dichot­omy between different elements within the Church, because God is present in all of it, he said.

It’s not a choice between “social justice Catholics” and “evangelization Catholics,” he said. “It’s social justice and evangelization. It is not a division. It’s one thing.”

When someone approaches him to ask if Gregorian chant is acceptable for his parish, Feduccia said, his response is simple: “I don’t know. I don’t know the needs of your parish. Are you in contact with the homes and the lives of your people? You tell me.”

Parishes shouldn’t be looking for someone else to solve their issues, because the answer is there in the com­munity. “The fullness of salvation rests in every parish,” he said.

Liturgists have the ability and are in the position to do something about this. Through worship, “you can open up peoples’ hearts. That’s your job.”