Taking Protestants to a Bad Novus Ordo

When the Novus Ordo Missae was first promulgated, it was presumed, almost assumed, that a simplification of the liturgy would mean that the new Catholic Mass would be more acceptable to Protestants. Though this was certainly not a primary motive in promulgating the new Mass, some envisioned that true ecumenical progress could come from the Novus Ordo, and this was seen as a happy consequence of its promulgation. Given that theory, it is ironic that the Novus Ordo that we often get in practice actually has a contrary effect. I am referring to what others have called the "Can't Take a Protestant to a Bad Novus Ordo" phenomenon.

For a moment let us forget about rubrics and papal instruction, on lofty ideals of how the Mass ought to be celebrated and what we ought to get out of it - let us put it all aside and instead look at the experience of an average Catholic at your average parish. Judging by my experience in my own region, I would say that probably 15% of the liturgies are what I would call more or less in line with what the Church envisions, while the other 85%  deviate from the Church's ideal, some to a greater degree than others. You know what I am talking about - inventive liturgies, ad libbed prayers, weak homilies, terrible music, no spiritual development, little sense of the transcendent, bad art, etc. etc. I don't think I need to go on listing the catalog of Novus Ordo bizarrities here.

This fact is bad enough for the Church as it is, but the problem is compounded from an apologetical standpoint when we start to bring into the equation Protestants who are seeking the Truth or whom we actively recruit to come to Mass. It is standard fare of Catholic apologetics to insist upon the superiority of the Mass to any other form of Christian worship, due to its institution by Christ, the sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the ordering of the Mass towards the glorification of God, the participation of the angels and the saints in the worship, the immense graces made available, etc.

This is all well and good, but it is when we actually first convince our Protestant friend to attend a Mass that our real problem begins. If we are lucky, we can convince him to come to Mass where and when we choose, and go alongside with him to ensure his experience is authentic. He of course will want to know why, in the Universal Church, must he only attend a certain, limited amount of parishes and not others, and we will have to explain to him how the vast majority of Catholic parishes are not suitable places to grow in spirituality, that they may not preach orthodoxy, that despite professing, "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church," the reality on the ground is that few parishes actually practice the historic faith as professed in the Creed. The Protestant will invariably ask why this is, and then we introduce them to the entire sorry history of the post-Vatican II era, introducing the Protestant to terms like "liturgical abuse" and other things he would have never heard or even thought of had he not expressed interest in Catholicism; he must learn about liturgical worship and lose his liturgical innocence in the same breath - in short, he must be made aware that since Vatican II, the Church has apparently become schizophrenic. If he ventures to go off on his own to check out a Catholic Mass and randomly attends one of these progressive parishes, he will see confirmation of all of this, at which point he may wonder how the Church professed in the Creed and defended by Catholic apologists relates to the freak-show liturgy and limp-wristed homily he just had to endure. If anything, he goes away shaking his head wondering what this thing called 'Catholicism' is.

To put this into a concrete example: I have a very dear friend, a Protestant, who loves the Lord tremendously, has a hearty respect for Church history and the Fathers, and in all things is an exemplar of a good Christian soul, though being non-Catholic, his faith is imperfect. I desire with all my heart for this friend to come into the fullness of faith. And yet, if he were to suddenly get interested in Catholicism and go to his local Catholic parish on a whim, what he would see would make him laugh (or cry?), and he would come away, not more impressed by the faith, but rather less interested than before. If he were ever to come to a Mass, I would have to go out of my way to make certain that he only went to a parish that I approved of him going to - and this state of affairs ought not be.

In looking at this, I think there are several areas we can meditate on in their relation to how a Protestant might be affected:

1. It is part of the Church's teaching that God is encountered in the Mass in an immediate and exceptional manner. Does the nature of the liturgy reflect this reality?

If we teach that the Eucharistic liturgy is an encounter with the divine, do sparsely decorated sanctuaries, sloppily dressed altar boys, ad libbed, flippant prayers, and banal, poorly executed music serve to reinforce this ideal? Do they not rather detract from it, and leave the outside observer with the impression that we do not practice what we preach? That our faith at best suffers from a disconnect between praxis and dogma and at worst is a hypocritical sham?

2. Our faith tells us God becomes present to us through the Church's liturgical action. We have already examined the role of the clergy; what about the disposition of the congregation? Do they testify that liturgy is a meeting with God?

Lex orandi, lex credendi. We know that these weak liturgies beget congregations who are likewise lukewarm in their participation: people sloppily or immodestly dressed, yammering in the Church, clapping as at performances, little participation in singing the Mass parts, checking cell phones and playing with iPods during the liturgy, chewing gum, and acting in general in a way that is not fitting with the dignity of the liturgy.If an outside observer, knowing what we claim about our liturgy, sees such behavior on the part of the people who claim to be benefiting from the fruits of the Mass, will they not presume that Mass itself must be no less casual than the people attending it? Will they not think that all this talk about Christ being present during the Mass is simply empty words, since the people obviously do not behave as if this were true?

I heard a story once about a murderer in England who was about to be hanged. As he was approaching the gallows, a pastor was walking beside him, telling him, somewhat dryly, as if by rote, about God's forgiveness and mercy. The condemned man looked at the pastor and said, "Do you really believe that? If that were true, I would crawl across England on broken glass just to tell people." Similarly, when an observer witnesses the relaxed, casual, non-chalant way that many of our Masses are said, will he not likewise assume that we either do not really believe what we say or that it is not true?

3. What about the manner of life of the Catholics a Protestant is likely to encounter in these poorly executed Novus Ordo liturgies?

If the Faith, and the Mass in particular, really do make available all of the graces that we claim in our apologetics, then Catholics ought to demonstrate the effects of this grace in their lives. Granted, each person is an individual, and tares are always found in the midst of the wheat, but I personally have frequently been disheartened by the worldliness of people I have encountered the times I have had to go to a progressive parish: cussing and blasphemy in the parking lot, all out drunkenness at parish events, liberal and anti-Catholic social causes advocated from the pulpit and supported by the parishioners, and in general a demeanor among many parishioners that reveals a total lack of spiritual formation or even an interest in spiritual things. I want to avoid here making blanket judgments about entire parishes, but I think you know what I am getting at - parishes that are spiritually alive tend to bear good fruit in the lives of their parishioners, while parishes that are spiritually dead tend to replace authentic spirituality with a lot of social causes and parish activities that give the illusion of vibrancy but do not actually contribute to the holiness of anybody. Thus, you tend to find a spirit of worldliness that pervades progressive parishes, a worldliness that will stick out like a sore thumb to any devout Protestant and reinforce their belief that the Catholic faith is something shallow.

4. Another issue likely to raise a red flag with a Protestant inquirer is the fact that poor liturgies tend to go hand in hand with wimpy homiletics.


If anything turns a Protestant off to Catholicism, it is listening to a bad homily. And modern Catholicism has lots of bad homilies. Shallow theology, ignorance of Scripture and Tradition, lack of spiritual insight and sometimes heresy and worldliness, coupled with a dull delivery, certainly contribute to turn Protestants (and even many Catholics) off. But fortunately, the flip side is also true - few things are able to reach out and really draw a Protestant in like a good, solid homily from a holy priest. This was one of the things that people loved about Father Corapi (er, I mean, the Black Sheep Dog) before his fall was his stellar homilies.


This is true with each of these issues - if poor liturgies or music or preaching makes Protestants laugh at us, then reverent liturgies, excellent music and powerful preaching makes them stand up and take notice. Am I being overly sensitive about this issue of not feeling comfortable taking a Protestant to a bad Novus Ordo Mass? Maybe; we have to remember that it is the Holy Spirit's job to convert people, not our own, and that things that seem out of place to us might not to a Protestant. When I first came back to the Church, I was thrilled that there was a liturgy at all, and it took many years before I started questioning the nature of that liturgy. Then again, if we know that something like terrible music or a worldly pastor will be a stumbling block to one interested in the Faith, I don't think we should intentionally put that stumbling block before them.

The real issue is that this is an unjust dilemma - being in the position of defending the Church and the liturgy with our words and writing but then having to apologize for the actual state of it in practice when trying to evangelize others. It simply ought not to be; the liturgy should be the liturgy, and the fact that it is not so, and how this effects my evangelization of my non-Catholic friends, is a problem I have not yet successfully resolved.

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