"The liturgy, like the Church, is intended to be hierarchical and polyphonic," he says. Not concentric and egalitarian, but hierarchical and polyphonic: "Respecting the different roles assigned by Christ and allowing all the different voices to blend in one great hymn of praise." I'm not saying there shouldn't be lectors and acolytes, and so on. There should be. But the point is, it's not how close you get to the altar that determines how fully you participate. If that were the case, then those who aren't ministers of some sort at Mass would be second-class participants. That's not what the Council meant, says the Pope, by full participation.

Then the Pope comes to active participation. "Active participation certainly means that in gesture, word, song, and service all the members of the community take part in an active worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness, and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily or following the prayers of the celebrant and the chants in music of the Liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way, profoundly active. In a culture that neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural."

Especially in our noisy world, we need to have silence. Especially in our world where it is hard to pray, we need to have contemplative adoration. In a world that doesn't respect the liturgical cycles and seasons, we need to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on a Thursday, not on a Sunday. Precisely because we have to be counter-cultural, we need to say there's something more important than the workday. It's our feast day.

Finally, the Holy Father discusses conscious participation. He says, "Conscious participation calls for the entire community to be properly instructed in the mysteries of the liturgy" - the Council's main instruction - "lest the experience of worship degenerate into a form of ritualism. But it does not mean a constant attempt within the liturgy itself to make the implicit explicit, since this often leads to verbosity and informality which are alien to the Roman Rite and end by trivializing the act of worship."

Conscious participation, then, is not a multiplication of commentators telling us what's happening as the Mass goes along; it's not laid back informality and the trivializing of the liturgy. That's why I think it may seem like a small thing, but it's a very bad to begin a liturgy by saying, "Good morning, everyone." That's not how you begin a sacred liturgy. You begin a sacred liturgy, "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," or better yet, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."

The Holy Father continues: "Nor does conscious participation mean the suppression of all subconscious experience, which is vital in a liturgy which thrives on symbols that speak to the subconscious, just as they speak to the conscious. The use of the vernacular has certainly opened up the treasures of the liturgy to all who take part." There is, then, a positive value to the vernacular. "But," the Holy Father continues, "this does not mean that the Latin language, and especially, the Chants which are so superbly adapted to the genius of the Roman rite, should be wholly abandoned."

What, then, does the Pope say about full, conscious, active participation? That it should be hierarchical, that there should be quiet, and worship in awe and reverence, and that there should be a place for Latin and, certainly for Chant in the liturgy. I submit to you that in most parishes across this country that's not what you habitually find at the ordinary Masses for the people. Thus, although the Pope doesn't say it in so many words, he is of the opinion that the way Mass is currently celebrated doesn't conform fully to the mandates of the Council, as intended by the Church for the next century.

We have now two extremes and a moderate position. One extreme position is the kind of informal Mass, all in English, facing the people, with contemporary music, which does not at all correspond with what the Council had in mind. But it is legitimate, it is permitted; it is not wrong. And we have on the other extreme those who have returned, with permission, to the Mass of 1962 and, as others have noted, it is thriving and growing. But it is not what the Council itself specifically had in mind, although it is the Mass of the ages.

Then you have the moderates. Those in the middle. Me and a few others. But I am going to insist on my right as a Catholic and as priest to celebrate the liturgy according to the Council, according to the presently approved liturgical books, to celebrate a form of the Mass that therefore needs no special permission-and which in fact cannot be prohibited-what I've called "the Mass of Vatican II."

This essay appeared in the September/October 2000 issue of Catholic Dossier and is based on a lecture on the liturgy given by Father Fessio in May, 1999.