Controversy need not be a symptom of institutional weakness, decay, or even disunity; it is often a sign of intellectual vitality and passionate attachment. Much depends on how the parties involved in any dispute conduct themselves. Are they willing to listen to one another? Or do they condemn first and ask questions later? Do they presume the best about each other’s motives? Or the worst? Even rarer, are they open to the possibility of learning something, even from their critics?

A textbook example of how not to engage others is currently being provided by Mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and by Adoremus, the Society for the Renewal of Catholic Liturgy. On television last November, Mother Angelica accused Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles of denying the doctrine of the Real Presence. Mother Angelica, a kind of Rush Limbaugh in a wimple, even went on to urge Mahony’s flock to deny their bishop “obedience.”

The source of Mother Angelica’s “I will not serve” was her evidently hasty and uncomprehending reading of “Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide to Sunday Mass,” a pastoral letter in which Mahony offered a “vision of a parish Sunday Eucharist” as he hoped it would be celebrated in the jubilee year 2000. The burden of the letter was Mahony’s recognition, in the words of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, that “something more is required than the mere observance of the laws governing valid and lawful celebration” if the liturgy is to enlist the active participation of all. Failing to understand the “conversational” tone of the letter and overlooking its explicit affirmation of the traditional understanding of transubstantiation, Mother Angelica imagined that “the cardinal of California is teaching that it is bread and wine before the Eucharist and after the Eucharist.”

Mahony had been accused of heresy on national television, and he demanded a retraction and an apology. He received a half-hearted obsequium in which Mother Angelica characterized the pastoral letter as “confusing,” criticizing its emphasis on the assembly “rather than the Eucharist.” Mahony’s pastoral letter is, admittedly, very long, somewhat repetitive, and as much pep talk as guideline. But doctrinally venturesome? Hardly. Still, Adoremus, whose executive committee features self-styled “orthodox” Catholics Joseph Fessio, SJ, and Helen Hull Hitchcock, has rallied to Mother Angelica’s defense with a 5,300-word statement (what is the connection between liturgy and prolixity?) challenging Mahony’s vision of liturgical renewal. Mahony’s pastoral letter, Adoremus divines, is “likely to increase the liturgical confusion already pervasive in the church.”

As the report on the liturgy in this issue of Commonweal attests (beginning on page 9), Catholics from across the ideological spectrum have both great devotion to and understandable concerns about current liturgical practice. Real changes have been effected by the liturgical reform, and the complexity of eucharistic doctrine—it attempts to explain, after all, a profound mystery—can be daunting. A willingness to presume the good faith and orthopraxis of others would therefore seem appropriate. In short, where heterodox views are not asserted, they should not be imputed. Presumably even cardinals can be extended this courtesy.

As any fairminded reading of “Gather Faithfully Together” makes clear, Mahony’s discussion of the distinct but complementary roles of assembly and priest, the nature of the eucharistic elements, the meaning of the eucharistic prayer, and the use of inclusive language, are uncontroversial. Only the most tendentious reading can conclude, as Adoremus incomprehensibly does, that the letter offers a “strikingly truncated theology of the Eucharist” and a “defective, functionalist view of the priesthood.”

A desire to encourage the full participation of all Catholics in the liturgy—Mahony’s stated goal—might seem naturally to begin with a proper regard for the assembly. The liturgical reform has reminded Catholics that the Eucharist is an act of the entire church, not something the priest “does.” Consequently, a recognition of the assembly’s liturgical authority need not be regarded as a move in a “horizontal” direction and the slighting of the liturgy’s “vertical, or transcendent dimension,” as Adoremus charges. Although present in the bread and wine in an exceptional way, Christ is also present in the assembly. Moreover, juxtaposing, as Adoremus does, the ideas of sacrifice and meal, priest and assembly, the so-called “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of the Eucharist, is itself a rather truncated understanding of the essentially dialectical nature of the Eucharist. All these elements exist in tension; they are not mutually exclusive.

Much of Adoremus’s critique focuses on Mahony’s alleged blurring of the liturgical roles of priest and assembly. In seeming to emphasize the priest as “presider,” the cardinal’s letter supposedly encourages an effort to cast the assembly as “co-celebrants.” Although some popular misunderstandings about the priesthood should be a matter of concern, this specific charge is baseless. Nowhere does Mahony minimize the role or status of the ordained. More important, presiding in the assembly should not be seen as a denigration of the priest’s sacerdotal powers. Rather, “Gather Faithfully Together” recognizes that priesthood finds its culmination and truest expression precisely in leadership of the worshiping community. Even the eucharistic prayer, after all, does not belong to the priest alone, but is the prayer of the whole assembly. Contrary to Adoremus’s seeming longing for a return to the days when the distinction between priest and people was given exaggerated importance, the reformed liturgy returns us to a more venerable Catholic tradition that unites all the baptized in one act of sacrifice and remembrance.

“Who are the laity?” a bishop once condescendingly asked Cardinal Newman. “I answered,” Newman recalled, “that the church would look foolish without them.” As “Gather Faithfully Together” demonstrates, Cardinal Mahony shares Newman’s sound instincts about the faithfulness and credibility of the laity. More than any conceivable shortcoming in Mahony’s pastoral letter, it is the intemperate charges of Adoremus and Mother Angelica that increase “the liturgical confusion already pervasive in the church.”