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Fr. Withit

My legs felt uncooperative as I approached the back of the church, where Father was greeting the congregation after Mass. I had endured it all in the past without a word: altar girls, rubrics rearranged or ignored, heterodox homilies, even electric-piano accompaniment to the Consecration. But I had never before confronted a priest about it. Until today.

I had borne no suspicion at the beginning of Mass. The celebrant, Father Withit (not his real name, of course) was white-haired and kindly-looking, probably in his late sixties or early seventies, and spoke with a rough brogue; instinctively I trusted him.

I know one should never judge by appearances, but if he had been thirty-something and long-haired, with traces of blue denim and Nikes peeking out from beneath technicolor vestments, my disposition might have been different. As it was, I felt optimistic that we were in store for a fairly straight liturgy, and this made what was to follow more difficult to swallow.

The first sign of trouble came at the penitential rite. Instead of one of the conventional formulas calling on the members of the congregation to recall their sins and to ask God to forgive them, Fr. Withit prayed aloud for God to give us grace to “love one another better.” There was an awkward pause, and the choir followed hesitatingly with the Kyrie.

A crack having appeared in the dike, the whole works soon burst into a flood. The remainder of the Mass provided a good example of changing conventional ways of saying or doing things for no other reason than to get people to notice, a technique which intends to foster greater attentiveness but which usually just breeds confusion (see “Adjusting the Focus,” October 1992).

It was evident to everyone by the halting, stumbling way in which Fr. Withit read from the sacramentary that he was paraphrasing nearly every sentence, with palpable effort and little success. (It couldn’t have been easy; my heart went out to him.)

One particular goal of his “translation” of the words of the Mass seemed to be the circumlocution of every instance of the word “sin.” The example par excellence of this practice came during the Communion rite, after the Lord’s Prayer but before the doxology, where the celebrant should say, “Deliver us Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Father Withit’s version went like this: “Lord, we want to feel happy and peaceful, not burdened down by the stress and anxiety that we sometimes feel when we don’t quite live our lives according to the way you want us to. Help us to have peace and joy in our hearts when we greet Jesus when he comes again.” My memory may have misplaced a word here or there; if anything, the outrageousness of it all has been diminished, not embellished, in the retelling.

The nadir came just before Communion, when the priest, taking the host, is supposed to announce that “This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Fr. Withit felt compelled to deflate the awesome sense of mystery and reverence (not to mention fact) which those words convey, and, waving the host casually, substituted these words instead: “We want to welcome Jesus here this afternoon, present in this bread and in this wine, and say how pleased we are to be present at his table”–to which we responded incongruously, “Lord, I am not worthy . . .”

Not only had Fr. Withit again ad-libbed, turning our plea for mercy and healing into an ironic non sequitur, but he had pronounced heresy. “Present in this bread and in this wine” does not give the teaching of the Church. The notion that Christ is present in the bread and wine is called consubstantiation, a view held by some Anglicans and Lutherans.

The Catholic teaching is transubstantiation. It is Christ who is held in the priest’s hands. The bread and wine do not contain him like a genie in a bottle; they entirely cease to be in their substance. This is a crucial distinction, and it was on this point that I felt justified in addressing Fr. Withit.

I waited patiently after Mass was over (although it was never declared ended; we were just told to “have a good afternoon”) until Father had finished well-wishing his flock. I approached him cautiously. Right or wrong, this was a priest, and I was about to tell him his business. Suddenly Father Withit was free and turned to head back to the sacristy.

“Excuse me, Father,” I said without a trace of courage. “May I speak with you for a moment?” I told him I was disturbed by some of the things he said during Mass. He seemed genuinely concerned and strangely surprised.

I first asked him why he had changed so many words of the liturgy and received two stock replies: (1) Vatican II allowed for certain variations to be made at the priest’s discretion and (2) he liked to do it occasionally because it helped “shake them [the congregation] up a bit.”

I knew that there are certain parts of the Mass that allow optional or ad-libbed prayers, but these are few, and there are many more parts which specifically do not allow for variants. Fr. Withit had changed nearly everything, with the exception of “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”

Only by coincidence did the odd word or phrase coincide with the sacramentary. I could see he was arguing ad ignorantiam, and, not wanting to embarrass him and not wanting him to pull rank on me, I focused on his second reason.

“But why do this, Father? One of the good things about being Catholic is that the liturgy is the same always and everywhere.” He contended that after hearing the same words over and over again, the Mass becomes routine and eventually “they don’t hear anything.” Mixing things up a little every now and then helps the people to appreciate the meanings better, meanings, of course, being more important than words.

I suggested it was dangerous to separate meanings from the words intended to convey them, especially in religious matters. The Church chose certain words for certain reasons, and it was folly to think we could improve on them. I wanted to tell him that, if he really wanted to “shake up” the congregation, he should try reading the Mass straight out of the sacramentary and preaching a homily on the readings, but I didn’t.

Father nodded. “You’re right, you’re right,” he told me, sincere but unconvinced. Realizing I was getting nowhere, I decided to bring up the issue of consubstantiation, but before I could speak, a fresh wave of exiting parishioners, having stayed behind to hear the choir finish the recessional, approached.

“Thank you so much,” gushed a heavy-set woman in her early fifties, graying, golf-shirted husband in tow. “Beautiful sermon, Father,” said the man, shaking his hand. Fr. Withit smiled and waved and turned his attention back toward me, even as I hoped for a chance to slink away. Having the Father Withit Fan Club on the periphery certainly didn’t help my resolve.

Nevertheless I set about explaining to him the problem with saying that Jesus is present “in the bread and wine,” and I said that at least in that particular case it might be better to stick with the conventional words, if only to avoid confusing the people.

He looked at me squarely. “Are you a seminarian?” he asked, with what I thought might have been a hint of distaste.

I told him I was a student, temporarily forgetting that I wasn’t and not wanting to let on that I worked for Catholic Answers. We went back and forth for a few minutes, as I tried to establish that there was a difference between trans- and consubstantiation, and he claiming that it was just a matter of wordplay. I think I won, because he suddenly changed tactics.

“Ah, well, you see, transubstantiation is not the teaching of the Church. It was just a theory of St. Thomas Aquinas. We don’t know how Jesus is present in the bread and wine [I cringed again at the phrase], because it’s a mystery.” He smiled.

“Of course it’s a mystery, Father, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know some things about it. We partially understand what it is and, more importantly, what it isn’t.”

He asked what I studied. Theology, I said. “Well, you see,” he started again, “you can tell the difference. But they,” he said, motioning toward the church doors, “they don’t think like that. Ask anyone, and they’ll [sic] say, `Jesus is present in the bread and the wine.’ But you’re right, though, you’re right.” His brow furrowed, and he repeated to himself, “Jesus is present in the bread and wine.” It seemed as if he was thinking it through for the first time. “Still, they don’t know the difference.”

All the more reason to teach them the truth, I thought. All the more reason to say Mass the way the Church intends. “Why feed their ignorance?” I wanted to ask.

Putting his arm around my shoulder, Fr. Withit began to walk back to the sacristy. This gesture made me trust and want to follow him, as I have trusted and been guided by other priests since my youth. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I answered him as I would answer my father: I said I wanted to teach theology. He stopped walking and began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just unusual. I mean, a young guy like yourself, and you want to teach theology?” He laughed again. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or embarrassed. I chose embarrassed and excused myself, thanking him for hearing me out.

At the time I counted this as an unprofitable experience, but in retrospect I see I’ve learned some things, the first being that priests who propagate error and dissent are not all (or even mostly) young, scheming radicals straight out of liberal seminaries.

I realized that sometimes it is the Priest Next Door who is the greatest danger to the faith: a good man with honest intentions, but in error nonetheless–in the case of Fr. Withit, a good old man, easily predating the Council to which so much of this heterodoxy is (wrongfully) attributed. One’s guard tends to be down around a priest like him. One thing’s for sure. We’ll have to stay alert–the Fr. Withits are legion.

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