Video: Austrian Cardinal participates in grave liturgical abuse

Your Eminence, Cardinal Schonborn, I love and admire your previous good work for the Church.

... but what are you doing?!



This video depicts grave liturgical abuses. Someone who wrote the Catechism of the Catholic Church should know better. I know things are bad for the Church in Austria - but this is not the solution to the problem of young people straying. The Cardinal looks hardly happy about the whole situation, but he remains complicit in it.

As a personal contribution, I studied in Austria for several months. I've participated in Masses across Austria. They're not all this bad! There are people in Austria who love the Mass reverently celebrated. The Church can be a magnificent sign of contradiction to the pervading secularism of Austria - but only if it remains a contradiction.

This saddens me.

update: I'm seeing precious little reaction in the Catholic blogosphere to this video, AmP and Fr. Z's excepted. The video was recorded last Sunday in Wolfsthal (lower Austria). More details in the combox below.

Ph/t: Fr. Z.

update 2: Fr. Z received a statement from the spokesperson for Cardinal Schonborn which he posted.

Several people have contacted me asking me to clarify what I mean in my post title by "grave liturgical abuse."

The statement which Fr. Z has posted answers my primary concern, e.g., that the matter used in the consecration was invalid. It does not rule out, of course, the fact that the large "chunks" of Eucharistic matter provide an all-too-easy opportunity for crumbs to fall, be trample upon, etc.

The statement, however, also fails to answer the other ways in which I would consider this Mass to contain some grave liturgical abuses, such as....

• tie-dye vestments (which liturgically proper color is that?!)
• rock instruments, including heavy metal for the consecration response
• the injection of non-liturgical elements, such as the balloon-release
• violation of the sanctuary space by persons not ministering (you can barely tell where the sanctuary ends and the "church" begins)
• an extensive, and intrusive light show, complete with strobe lights and lasers (what is this, pink floyd?)

And those are just the ones that first come to mind, I could go on.

Back in February, Pope Benedict asked if outdoor Masses are "what the Lord wanted", and simultaneously took steps to reform them. I can say with a confidence gained from studying liturgy at some length, that the sort of Mass depicted above is not "what the Lord wanted." These sort of liturgical innovations have cropped up often in the past 40 years, but they take on a gravitas they do not deserve when Cardinals themselves participate and condone them.

At any rate, when you put together all the inappropriate elements represented here, the end result is a thoroughgoing violation of the sanctity of the liturgy, and that, to my mind, is a grave liturgical abuse. Maybe not technically, but if this celebration shows us anything, it's that one can complete violate the spirit of the Mass while arguably remaining inside the loosest interpretation of the liturgical rubrics.