← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 165: Summary of Liturgical Diversity (2025)
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Together, with Fr. Mike, we arrive at the conclusion and “nugget day” for the section on liturgy and culture. Fr. Mike reiterates the importance of the fact that the Church does not abolish culture, but redeems and fulfills it. He also emphasizes that even though the Church welcomes liturgical diversity, there are still some things that are incompatible with the Faith and, therefore, unable to be incorporated into Catholic liturgy. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1204-1209.
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Father Mike Schmitz
Foreign. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in Years, brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 165. We were reading paragraphs 1204 to 1209. Those last little bits are nuggets. And I'm also, as you probably know, using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. On one thing I know people are like, why do you always say the same thing every time? What do you have to tell us that it's the Ascension edition of the Catechism? Why do you have to tell us that we can get the Catechism into your reading plan? It's kind of like, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched a TV show and sometimes they have the opening credits. It's always the same kind of like that. You know, just, this is the intro. You're like, how come you. You keep having the intro? We've. This show has been on air for eight seasons. Why do you keep doing the opening credits? And the answer is, because that's how you start things. And also, what a great thing, streaming services, what do they have the ability to skip the intro, skip the opening credits? You know what you could do? You can click, you know, fast forward, jump it ahead 30 seconds, and then jump over all that stuff. It's right there. Also, I want to thank everybody. Anybody who's supported the production of this podcast with prayers and financial gifts could not do this without you. We made it all the way to day 165. Reading paragraphs 1204 to 1209. Those last three paragraphs are nuggets, and the first three paragraphs are not nuggets. They're about liturgy and culture, which is. Here is the culture. And culture is taken into account. Whenever the church encounters culture, it always takes that culture into account and incorporates the culture in a unique way when it comes to celebrating the liturgy. Also, though, whenever that happens, the Church takes great care, great care to make sure that there are not any corruptions to the liturgy by anything. It's incorporated into the culture. So that's a big thing. There is a diversity, but that diversity is not random diversity. There's a variety, but that variety has a must have. Must have a very clear unity as well. And it's not kind of a willy nilly we just accept whatever from any culture. There are many things that can be baptized in a culture, and there are many things that in a culture we have to say, nope, that that can't be brought into the tradition of the Church. And so we're going to talk a little bit about those things today in paragraph 1204-1209. As we begin, let's say a prayer. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you so much for bringing us to this day. We ask you to please enlighten our minds, open our hearts, so that we can appreciate the variety that you've given to us in that we can participate in the unity of the Church that you have given to us through your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit. Amen. Day 165 paragraphs 1204-1209 Liturgy and culture the celebration of the liturgy, therefore, should correspond to the genius and culture of the different peoples. In order that the mystery of Christ be made known to all the nations. To bring about the obedience of faith, it must be proclaimed, celebrated, and lived in all cultures in such a way that they themselves are not abolished by it, but redeemed and fulfilled. It is with and through their own human culture, assumed and transfigured by Christ, that the multitude of God's children has access to the Father. In order to glorify him in the one Spirit. In the liturgy above all that of the sacraments, there is an immutable part, a part that is divinely instituted and of which the Church is the guardian, and parts that can be changed, which the Church has the power and on occasion also the duty to adapt to the cultures of recently evangelized peoples. Liturgical diversity can be a source of enrichment, but it can also provoke tensions, mutual misunderstandings, and even schisms. In this matter, it is clear that diversity must not damage unity. It must express only fidelity to the common faith, to the sacramental signs that the Church has received from Christ, and to hierarchical communion. Cultural adaptation also requires a conversion of heart and even, where necessary, a breaking with ancestral customs incompatible with the Catholic faith. In brief, it is fitting that liturgical celebration tends to express itself in the culture of the people, where the Church finds herself, though without being submissive to it. Moreover, the liturgy itself generates cultures and shapes them. The diverse liturgical traditions or rites legitimately recognized manifest the catholicity of the Church because they signify and communicate the same mystery of Christ. The criterion that assures unity amid the diversity of liturgical traditions is fidelity to apostolic tradition, that is, the communion in the faith and the sacraments received from the apostles, a communion that is both signified and guaranteed by apostolic succession. All right, there we have it. Day 165 1204-1209. Those last three nuggets are pretty powerful, but so are the first three paragraphs, man. Again, we're talking about this, these diversity of liturgical rights. And they grew up why, as we said yesterday, they arose by the very reason of the Church's mission. The mission of the Church was to engage every people, to go to all nations, that there is no culture, that no person, no individual, no kind of person, no race, ethnicity, no nation, no language that does not deserve to know the good news of Jesus Christ. And so, because the Church has this mission, the Church has gone to all the world proclaiming the good news. And when the Church has encountered all of the world, it basically brings that seed we talked about yesterday, right? That image brings that seed, brings that gift of the sacraments, brings the gift of the liturgy, brings the gift of heaven and earth kissing, right? Time and eternity touching, brings the gift of the paschal mystery. And what happens is that culture, some of the cultural images are brought into that liturgy, right? And some of the liturgy goes into the culture. And this is something remarkable, Remarkable. It says, the Church, again, the liturgy, has lived in all cultures in such a way that they themselves are not abolished by it, but redeemed and fulfilled. So sometimes you have people who will say things like, you know, here in the west, say things like, well, you know, you have a Christmas tree. And again, this isn't part of the liturgy, but it's a part of our culture, the Christmas tree. And the Christmas tree that, well, that's a pagan symbol, because when the Church encountered Germanic peoples, they had this, you know, tradition of bringing an evergreen trees into their homes as a sign that in the middle, even of winter, that it's. It's not the end of the world. That here is. Here's life is still there. Cause they're evergreens, right? The whole thing. And here's the church that now here, Christians, Catholics, you have Christmas trees. And see, that's wrong, because it was originally a pagan thing. And the church says, mm, originally it was. But here's what we've done. We've baptized that. Because you were a pagan once too, and you got baptized, you got brought into the. Into the Lord, you got brought into the faith, brought into the body of Christ. And so there, There are some aspects, Aspects of culture that are brought in, and they're actually made signs of Christianity because we've adopted them essentially. Now, at the Same time, paragraph 1206 highlights the fact that at the very last sentence, it says cultural adaptation also requires a conversion of heart meaning. Okay, so it's not just like everything in my culture I can bring into Christianity. And even where necessary, a breaking with ancestral customs incompatible with the Catholic faith. There are some things that are incompatible with the Catholic faith. While here's a Christmas tree or an evergreen tree that's brought in, like, okay, that makes sense because, yep, there's life even in the midst of death. There's light in the midst of, you know, darkness of winter. That can be translated pretty easily into a Christian message. But there are some aspects that can't be. I mean, you can think of. Man, you can think of. I always. I think of the places in Southern United States, say, Louisiana type area, or even like, places like Haiti and other. Other countries where voodoo is. Is a thing. And it. There's this. This weird integration. I say weird, but, you know, if that's my. That's my perspective, a strange integration of here's a message of Christianity and here are the kind of like, animist religions of those local places. And the church has to say that actually isn't legit. And same with, in other. Other places in South America, Central America, that just. These are places I know about, right. Where I've visited. And I was like, oh, wow, you can see how they. Here they're wearing a rosary or they're wearing a crucifix alongside this other, you know what we'd say, like, pagan image. And they're incorporating these two together in a way that the church would say, actually, no, you have to actually eschew that. You have to get rid of that. That's not. That is not compatible with the Catholic faith. And so we need to do that. And the church actually gets to do that. The church gets to tell us this is incompatible with the Catholic faith. And that highlights this. When it comes to 1209, it says the criterion that assures Unity in the midst amid the diversity of liturgical traditions is fidelity to the apostolic tradition. Right? So there's that sense of, like, it's not just because someone's taste, like, oh, that's different than what I'm used to. That is not the criterion. The criterion is, is this not faithful to the apostolic tradition, in which case it can't be brought in, can't be inculturated into what we're doing as Catholics. Two last notes here in 1205, because this is really important. So I'm talking about all these things that can be changed. There are some things that can be changed when it comes to liturgy. So again, we talked about all these different rites yesterday. The Byzantine Rite, Alexandrian Rite, or Coptic, Syriac Rite, Armenian Rite, Maronite, Chaldean Rites, of course, the Latin Rite, Ambrosian Rite. But there are some things in all those rights that can be changed, yet there is an immutable part of those rights, an immutable part that is divinely instituted and in which the Church is the guardian, that cannot be changed. Immutable, meaning, you know, unchanging. The Church has the duty to protect that immutable part, and the Church also has the power and occasionally the duty to adapt the part that can be changed. Hopefully, that. That makes some sense, because that's. That's. It's a really, really important piece. Now, the last thing I said, or I said I was gonna say one more thing. In paragraph 1207, in the. In brief, it says this. Moreover, the liturgy itself generates cultures and shapes them. I think this is worth praying about. The liturgy itself generates cultures and shapes them. You know, culture comes from that word culture. So we recognize that we have culture that arises in so many ways out of religion. And religion is, you know, you know, cult has a bad word on it, but a bad connotation with it. But what we're saying is the good part here, this is this aspect where the way. How we. How we worship God, how we. Our faith is meant to actually impact and shape. It's meant to. Meant to generate even culture. And this has happened in the past, right? We have Christendom that existed for many, many years. And that was the church that had this, the liturgy, the way the church prayed, the way the church invited people to live, that shaped the culture. And so we're encouraged to let that happen again. Now we live in a culture, probably, if you're living anywhere near where I'm living, we have a culture that is post Christian, and yet at the same time, we have an injunction. And that injunction is to bring the gospel to all nations. We're bring our. Bring the gospel to our particular culture and to let that gospel, to let the way we pray, to let the way we live generate and shape the culture in which we find ourselves. And that's. That's part of the. The continued missionary command from Jesus Christ given to all of us today. And it's. It happens in many ways through obviously evangelization, proclamation of the gospel going out. But it also happens. Culture is also generated and shaped by the way we pray, which is one of the reasons why we have to be so faithful to the right, to the tradition that we've been given, right the way to pray that we've been given by the church, when we're faithful to that. And we do it in the most beautiful, most powerful, not just because of art's sake, but because of God's sake, because of the people of God's sake. We do it for that reason. It actually does generate culture. It does actually shape culture. And so that's what we're called to do, just to pray as best we can, not only go out and share the gospel, but also the way in which we pray and just pray the Lord and give God glory and pray for the sanctification and salvation of the world that also has the ability to generate and shape the culture around us. It takes time, though, and so we need to be patient because of that. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.