Reaction to Pope’s Edmonton Stadium Liturgy

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Reaction to Pope’s Edmonton Stadium Liturgy

Bernadette Gasslein, Edmonton, AB

Volume 37  Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: October 8, 2022

Maggie Fisher, (Fort Good Hope), 1969. (from Here I Sit by René Fumoleau, Novalis) (see Poem entitled Chance in the Poetry section)

A number of you have asked me what my reaction was to today’s Papal Mass. In many ways, I found it very puzzling. The absence of inculturation was overwhelming. Things that could have been included:

1. Drumming and honour songs – at the beginning of Mass, incorporated into the liturgy, not just when Pope Francis arrived in the popemobile;

2. Use of sage and/or sweetgrass;

3. Proclamation of that very short gospel in several Indigenous languages;

4. An intention in the prayer of the faithful for the children who were lost, those buried in unmarked graves, and for the missing and murdered Indigenous women; another for an end to racism in Canadian society.

5. The intentions of the prayer of the faithful could have been announced in various Indigenous languages;

6. Hymns (other than a few verses of the closing hymn) in Indigenous languages.

7. An altar frontal with various Indigenous symbols.

8. Vestments that used First Nations designs.

I’m sure that those with way more experience in preparing liturgies in Indigenous communities could add to this list.

The homily made me think that someone had failed to explain to Pope Francis that it was relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren that had been so deeply disrupted and destroyed by residential schools. It was a strong paean to grandparents, but in idealizing the grandparent-grandchild relationship, it may well have caused pain to those who never experienced that special intimacy.

I kept waiting for Pope Francis to make that connection – which could have been relatively easily made. It never happened. And he violated his own “norms” for homilies – his was way longer than 8 minutes, excluding the translation. It’s too bad that he hadn’t limited himself to the last ten minutes or so of the homily, where he challenged us to live out of the roots from which we have grown and consider what we will bequeath to the next generation.

The hyperclericalism of the liturgy was also distressing. Given the context, in which survivors of the sexual, physical, cultural and emotional abuse at residential schools had been the victims of an enclosed clerical system, it would have been important to de-clericalize the liturgy to avoid re-presenting the same system in this important liturgy. Maybe papal liturgies have always done it this way, but this one needed to be different.

Bernadette Gasslein is a liturgist who once held a national office in that field.

   

Bernadette Gasslein, Edmonton, AB