310/365 Change

The language of the mass is changing and I don't think I can get excited about it. Or care. I hate that about me but it's kind of a defense mechanism. I hate change, like I said at the meeting on Wednesday night. What was our tolerance for change? was the reflection question. Lots of people said "change is good" and some said less solid things like "I like change when it's a good change." So I decided to be honest and say I hate it. I hate it when things change. I hate it when things aren't planned and I know what's coming and even then I don't like it much. On the Meyers Briggs scale I'm an ENFJ. My extrovert status is solid, my intuition is solid, my feelings vs thinking is a little fuzzy (I feel, or think, that this is the one you can make yourself change more than any of the others: how you make decisions, etc). But my J? Judging vs. perceiving? It's a 10-0. I am all J. All J all the time. At one point my friends nicknamed me Lady J (I think it's a comic book reference besides) because if I don't have a plan, I have nothing. Change can only happen if it is planned. Well planned. Elections make me physically ill. Surprise changes to my schedule throw me for a loop. Babies mess up my life for, like, 3 years. Change and flux are bad. Bad.

The nice thing about being Catholic is that things don't change. Or change comes so slowly it's more of an adjustment. A tweaking. I don't mind tweaking. Local change? Fine. You don't like this banner, let's make another. Take out the carpet. Restore the tile. Make things a little bit better this year. A liturgical year evolves, it doesn't overhaul and reinvent the wheel each time a new season comes along.

Some of the language changes feel like tweakings to me. Like getting rid of gender references to the Holy Spirit. Or even "it is right and just" instead of "it is right to give him thanks and praise." Thanks and praise have already been mentioned. It is right and just. Other small things are jarring, like the changes to the Gloria, but they don't change the feel of that part of the mass.

Actually, besides the ridonkulous "and with your spirit" flip, which just makes me roll my eyes as I read all these backwards retrofitting revisionist history reasons for it, the only ones that bother me are in the creed. I believe vs we believe I don't mind; rewording the Holy Spirit section so we don't say "he he he" all the time is a great idea. But "consubstantial" and "incarnate" are just wrong. Wrong. The idea that "one in being with the Father" is a worse translation than "consubstantial with the Father" could only be true in the dark recesses of minds like Bishop Across the River Braxton. And the incarnate phrase is awkward--once again we look like jerks here, people, like mentioning that Jesus might have actually been born is such an uncomfortable topic to discuss that we have to hide it with a liturgical euphemism.

Yes, one of the lip-service reasons for these changes is to elevate the language and make it more ritualistic, which I'm all for, to a point. I'm not all for it when it comes to the creed. This is the CREED. This is what we believe. We should understand what we're saying if we're going to say what we believe. Which is why I get so annoyed when we drone on "God from God Light from Light True God from True God." Why do we mention God twice there? Why God and True God? What heresy have we forgotten that this stands against? I ask priests every so often (each change of pastor) and nobody seems to know. Not the point here (it says the same thing in Latin)--but I really feel like if I'm going to say WHAT I BELIEVE then I should use vernacular language. Not slang, not jive, but everyday speech. Incarnate and consubstantial are not in my everyday speech. One in being with the father might not be a phrase I'd use when chatting at coffee, but at least I would use the words.

I know I fear and loathe change. So I've sort of let go from engaging in this. It's one of those things, you know, I can't do anything about it and whatever. If it weren't for the Benedictines and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and my parish I wouldn't be Catholic anyway--none of this really matters to me. I have many many opinions about the hierarchy, of course, and this just gets dumped on that steaming pile.

Like I said at the meeting, this isn't going to be the issue over which I'm drummed out of the Church. There are so many better reasons.