Justin Welby was hailed as the “Archbishop of Banterbury” in a Daily Mail headline last week after footage of him reducing the Pope to fits of laughter was released to the public.
Archbishop Welby was filmed leaning towards the Pope mischievously, while visiting him at the Vatican, and reportedly telling him the following joke: “What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” This apparently prompted the Pope to erupt with mirth.
But when Cindy Wooden of the Catholic News Service shared the joke on Twitter, Lambeth Palace said that the story was not true. Perhaps this prompt denial is more significant than what really caused the Pope to guffaw so heartily. The joke is old and seemingly innocuous, but Lambeth Palace was keen to deny it was ever told. Is this because they assume that liturgists are prone to oversensitivity?
The Benedictine liturgical writer Fr Anthony Ruff admits that he can’t stand the joke: “Oh yeah, it’s very derisive of us liturgy types… and I’m afraid we have it coming at times. I hate that joke! But it reminds me to lighten up, so it’s probably good for me to be made fun of.”
The joke is definitely a jab at those too preoccupied with the niceties of the liturgy, says Fr Leo Chamberlain, another Benedictine. “[I’m] not familiar with the joke but I understand it,” he tells me. “We used to refer to people very keen on liturgical niceties as Spikes.”
But Fr Chamberlain believes that the joke is dated and belongs to post- Vatican II liturgy squabbles. “The joke is largely out of date because its not today’s problem,” he says.
Liturgy is always controversial: look at the fierce debate and complex Vatican power games which followed Cardinal Robert Sarah’s recent request to priests to celebrate Mass ad orientem. Few subjects provoke such earnest online debate as liturgy.
But 50 years ago the debate was even more heated; and it is, of course, associated with the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), who vehemently opposed the changes to the Mass. Their objections were on doctrinal as well as liturgical matters.
Perhaps some memory of the Vatican-SSPX disputes – culminating in the excommunication of their leader, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – lingers in the joke about the impossibility of negotiating with liturgists.
Of course, it wasn’t only the SSPX who protested at the changes, and the speed with which they were introduced.
But as the Benedictine Fr Hugh Somerville-Knapman says, the joke is a bit of an antique. He calls it “almost tediously familiar”.
He also suggests that the joke is a slur invented by those who wanted to be reckless with the liturgy. “From what I can tell it dates from the conciliar period when liturgists were advocating change left, right and centre, citing supposed precedents from the early Church, a species of authority in which they then clothed their opinions to make them as indisputable as possible.
“As the changes departed more and more from the liturgical tradition and theology of the Church, the more shrill became their advocates. They were given an inch and took a mile or 10.”
But making jokes about terrorism nowadays is in poor taste, he suggests. “Given the intensity, prevalence and scope of terrorism today it is a tasteless joke. Liturgy saves, terrorism kills; and in the joke both truths are lost to the smug tittering of the sycophants and fellow travellers.”
Fr Somerville-Knapman also argues that if the joke is still popular, it might reflect the establishment’s insecurity about new generations who are keen to revive liturgical traditions.
“This frightens the ecclesiastical establishment (be it clergy, episcopacy or dominant laity) because they see in its the beginnings of a re-interpretation of Vatican II, one which will look to its explicit teachings rather than the ‘spirit’ it unwittingly unleashed.”
In other words, the “terrorists” line is an exaggeration borne of fear: fear that the “spirit of Vatican II” narrative is unconvincing to newer generations.
Fr Somerville-Knapman argues that Catholic liturgical life is moving in the opposite direction. “Chant, polyphony, the ritual and rich panoply of liturgical worship that even the humblest parish used to be able to muster to express its devotion to God –these have a timeless quality that the young are increasingly recognising, if intuitively and sometimes unconsciously, as authentic to worship, especially to the Mass, the source and summit of the Church’s life.”
You wonder, then, how Mgr Guido Marini, master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, felt when he heard the joke. Mgr Marini was present at the time of the archbishop and the Pope’s meeting and one observer said that he visibly “chortled” at the punchline.
But this laughter may have been through gritted teeth, given that Mgr Marini is closer to Benedict XVI liturgically than he is to Pope Francis and has, according to some reports, experienced some abrupt simplification of his liturgical efforts.
One commenter suggested that an alternative punchline to the archbishop’s joke: “At least terrorists have supporters.”
Perhaps Mgr Marini was thinking the same as he laughed politely.
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