“Everything for everyone” – Herwig Gössl consecrated in Bamberg

In a full cathedral basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul and St. George, Archbishop Ludwig Schick consecrated the new auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Bamberg, Herwig Gössl, at 47 Germany’s fourth-youngest bishop.

In his homily, Archbishop Schick outlined the full calling of a bishop, to be everything for everyone: a bishop has to proclaim the entire Gospel and the entire faith and celebrate all of sacramental life. The entire diocese, all of humanity and the entire world is his work place. He also quoted Pope Francis in saying that a shepherd has to have the smell of his sheep, that he has to be close to his people.

Going further back in time, the archbishop also passed on some advice from Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, who said that bishops “should not be dogs who don’t bark, not silent onlookers and unpaid servants who flee before the wolf,” but good shepherds “who watch over the flock of Christ. Let all of us, great and small, rich and poor, people of all ranks and ages, proclaim all of God’s plan, to the extent that God, conveniently or not, gives us the strength.”

Among the other bishops present at the consecration were Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg and Heiner Koch of Dresden-Meiβen and the auxiliaries Wolfgang Bischof of München und Freising, Florian Wörner of Augsburg, Reinhard Pappenberger of Regensburg and Otto Georgens of Speyer. Bishops Karl Braun and Werner Radspieler, retired auxiliary bishops of Bamberg, served as co-consecrators.

Bishop Gössl chose a simple style of staff, ring and pectoral cross, but is not a stranger to symbolism, as his coat of arms shows:

The motto comes from the Gloria, “You alone [are] the Lord”. On the red half of the shield we see Mount Tabor, on which Jesus, his monogram shown above the mountain, was glorified. The red refers to the sacrifice about which He speaks with Moses and Elijah (Luke 9:28-36). This Gospel passage is, of course, read on the second Sunday of Lent, the day of Bishop Gössl’s consecration. The right half of the shield shows the coat of arms of the city of Bamberg and below it a river, which is to be understood as the River Jordan and an image the Sacrament of Baptism. The river can also refer to the places where Bishop Gössl worked as a priest: Pegnitz, Seebach, Regnitz and Main. The colours of the coat of arms can, finally, also be seen to refer to his birth place of Munich (gold and black) and to Nuremberg, where he attended school (red, silver and black).

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Cardinal Eijk sanctions a priest for excessive liturgical creativity, so why is the cardinal the bad guy?

Cardinal Eijk is the media’s bad guy again. He sanctioned a priest for ‘forgetting’ a few words at Mass. Well, as it often is when secular media try to report on Church business, reality is a bit different.

It is true that the priest, a Dominican who assists at a parish northwest of Utrecht, has been forbidden to publicly offer Mass for a year. It is also true that he forgot some words. And then some more.

A Mass in which the Kyrie, Gloria, all three prescribed readings, the preface and the entire Eucharistic Prayer were either skipped or replaced is, quite frankly, not a Mass. The bread and wine do not become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the faithful do not partake of Communion with God and Church, and the priest flouted his oath and duty. A previous “misstep”, as the Archdiocese calls it, in the same parish, prompted the cardinal to re-emphasise the liturgical rules in force in the Church.

Is this reason for the sanctions as described above? That can be debated, of course, but the fact is that this is exactly why Cardinal Eijk wanted to focus more and how the liturgy is celebrated in his archdiocese. It is also fact that the liturgy of the Church is not just a collection of rules for their own sake.

In the words of the archdiocese’s own explanation of events (which is altogether more reliable than the reports of secular media):

“[Replacing or skipping the Eucharistic Prayer’] is most serious, since this invalidates the celebration of the Eucharist. It means that faithful came to the celebration, to receive the Body of Christ, in vain. The Eucharist (which refers to the Last Supper of Jesus Christ) is the most important sacrament, in which the faithful celebrate their unity with God and each other. All the more painful in this context is the fact that, on Maundy Thursday, the Catholic Church celebrates the institution of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood. Cardinal Eijk thinks that faithful should be able to rely on valid Masses being offered in the churches of the archdiocese. Not without reason the Vatican instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum states that the complete omission of the Eucharistic prayer is “objectively to be  considered among grave matters […] that puts at risk the validity and  dignity of the Most Holy Eucharist”.

Priests have considerable freedom in the pastoral care they perform for the faithful under their care, in the way they teach and proclaim the faith. They do not, however, have the freedom to change or ignore what God, through His Church, instituted. The sacrament of the Eucharist is the single most precious treasure we have been given: it is Christ Himself. By changing what He wants to give us every single day, we place ourselves above Him. True, we are very important, also to the Lord. But we are not Him.

The priesthood is the channel through which Gods grace, in the sacraments, comes to His people. The channel can not change what it is given to safeguard and pass on.

So, yes, Cardinal Eijk is very correct in taking steps to correct this abuse. No one with a basic understanding of Catholic theology and understanding of the sacraments has any excuse not to realise that. Sadly, none of these people work at newspapers and television stations.

Photo credit: afp

Ash Wednesday

The sanctuary at the cathedral. The retable doors are closed to indicate that Lent has begun

My forehead now featuring a blackish smudge, I can say that Lent has truly begun. It feels as if Christmas was just a few weeks ago, but Lent actually isn’t particularly early this year. From now until Easter, the liturgy of the Mass will be sober. There won’t be any ‘alleluiah’ or Gloria, for example, and decorative elements are removed from the sanctuary as far as possible. All this to make the period of fasting and abstinence visible as something performed by the entire Church.

In the past, Lent used to be stricter than it is now. Now only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (like every Friday) are days of fasting. The rest of Lent holds no obligation to fast. Personally, I believe this has contributed to a diminished awareness of what Lent (and consequently Easter) is, so I’ll have none of it. Lent is a 40-day period of fasting and abstinence, with only the Sundays as breaks (the Sunday is by definition a feast day).

Easter is the high point of the liturgical year and a period of preparation, by consciously given things up and realigning oneself to God, seems far from unreasonable. Because Easter, the salvation by Christ, is quite something. It is all that Christianity is about. We can simply not afford to let it pass virtually unnoticed.

So my forehead smudge of ashes indicates my willingness to prepare myself, to give up some creature comforts and refocus myself on God. And I’ll do my very best to live up to that.