a pastor and teacher in the United Church of Christ. I was meeting with a deacon in the church in which I was ordained and reviewing with him the order of the service. When we got to the point where we discussed the distribution of the elements to the congregation, I said ‘So when I finish saying the words of institution, I will then say ‘Ministering to you in Jesus’ name, we now offer you this bread.’ At that point, the deacons can then just take the trays from the table and distribute them to the congregation.’
As I observed his body language, I suspected that he had the sense that I had said something wrong. I didn’t have to wait very long before he said to me ‘Do you mean that you will then give the deacons the trays to distribute?’ He then added that wonderful cross denominational phrase ‘That’s the way we do Communion here.’ I, never one to be without an opinion, responded (I hope kindly!) ‘But, this IS a church that came out of the Reformation, right? So, I have a problem with the idea that the elements in some way move down hierarchically from clergy to deacon to congregation. I’m a lot more comfortable just having you take them off of the table.’
Now, this wonderful man had no intention of vetoing the reforms set off in Europe back in the 1500s. He was just trying to organize the service well as he did so consistently in that church. Nonetheless, this brief conversation indicates that even in ‘low’ liturgical churches, i.e. congregations which would cringe at being called ritualistic in any way, there do exist prescribed rubrics, often unwritten, which are very much alive within that congregation. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with prescriptions or ritual traditions in worship, rather that to cite such as typical of a ‘Catholic’ rather than ‘Protestant’ approach may not be completely accurate.
I will also never forget an incident in my early years at my new church. About an hour before the service, one of my wonderful deacons had noticed that we were missing the tray that would contain the cups for distribution of Communion, in particular, the grape juice. A bit of panic set in as this individual is terrifically conscientious and organized. A choir rehearsal was going on just a few feet away and he inquired of choir members as to whether they had any idea where the missing plate might be, then turned to me with a plaintive query ‘What are we going to do?’
I decided to approach this humorously and, I am sure, quite sarcastically as well. I hope that by this point, my congregation had a sense of my personality and those standing around did not construe my remarks as negative. I said, with tongue firmly planted in cheek: ‘Well, we’ve got a problem. Let me go back to the New Testament and see what Jesus suggested for when they had missing Communion trays. Hmmm ... it’s probably in the same place in the Bible you will find the requirement for polished candlesticks and for grape juice!’ Fortunately, by that point in our relationship, our parishioners had a hint of both my style as well as the position I had preached about previously to them i.e. that Protestants are not immune from accruing ritual traditions and, denials to the contrary, meet some of the criteria for a religious approach based on custom, tradition and rubric!
Understanding both Catholic and Protestant traditions and the tradition within each Protestant denomination must be centered on the recognition that each contains a significant pluralism often unknown to both those within and outside of that particular church. This is a pluralism or variety of practices and of emphases brought about by several factors including, but not limited to, the church’s leadership and the influences upon it. The effect of a pastor who has had a ‘significant run’ at a church, i.e. who has served that community for a good number of years is that her/his approach, theology, and style of leadership will wield enormous influence in shaping the attitudes of those in her/his care. For better or worse, a child could have the same pastor for all or most of her/his Sunday School or CCD career. That child’s perception of the church would be shaped greatly by the pastor’s leadership, i.e. her/his actions and teachings in the life of the child’s community of faith.
Within the Catholic tradition, the particular ethnicity of the parish is a powerful example of pluralism within the greater church. Though in recent years parish mergers and closings have rendered the situation considerably different, Catholic immigration carried along with it the powerful institution of the Catholic parish. If a Catholic growing up in an urban area such as New York or Boston or Chicago were to ask a fellow Catholic of the same era where that person happened to be from, it would be quite possible that the answer would contain the name of the parish to which the respondent belonged. I recently had a conversation with a woman who was raised Catholic and has recently begun attending my church. When she told me she was raised in Hartford, my state’s capital city, I instinctively asked her ‘what parish’ she grew up in, so closely linked were local neighborhood and local church! There would most likely be the high probability that the one asking this kind of the question would know that exact location based upon the parochial designation. ‘You grew up in St. Anthony’s? I was not far down the road in St. Anne’s myself!’ the French Canadian Catholic might say to his Italian colleague, the high probability existing all the while that, even if both were of the same age, their twains would most likely have never met, unless for some reason they happened to end up together in the local public school or in the regional diocesan Catholic high school.
Parish ethnic identity would have an impact upon the kinds of devotional practices to which one might be exposed. Certain Catholics would have a particular devotion to particular ‘saints’ (Italian Catholics to St. Anthony, Irish Catholics to St. Patrick, etc) and certain prayers, songs and practices such as novenas common in one parish and culture might be mostly unknown in another. Practices in certain parishes might vary with respect to celebrations such as First Communions, Baptisms, Confirmations and weddings. As a result of one’s immersion in and exposure to the power of certain customs and traditions, one could easily think that a particular practice has been a part of this particular faith since Jesus left his disciples in charge of things down here on this earth.
When I began my work in the late 1980s as a Director of Religious Education in a local Catholic parish, I lived through an example of this up close. My predecessor had instituted a controversial policy in the parish, one supported by the pastor and expected to be implemented by me, her successor. This policy banned girls making their First Communion at the age of seven or eight from wearing ‘traditional’ First Communion dresses and veils which present themselves as mini bridal gowns for young children. When I met with the parents to explain an already established policy in the same meeting in which I talked about the meaning of Communion itself, a mild uprising took place from some of the mothers, their dominant argument being that this local parish had a lot of nerve changing ‘the way things have always been in the church.’
Now, when these parents said ‘the church,’ they were not just talking about that local church. They were referring to the way things had always been in the big, vast Roman Catholic Church. Now, the historical fact is that the Communion dress and veil tradition is one that had not really been around for all that long, in the great span of church history, and that it was heavily favored in some ethnic communities more than others. ‘The way things have always been’ was more accurately translatable as ‘The way I have known things in my relatively short lifetime.’
Examples abound within that big, vast church and examples of pluralism in practice cut across ecclesiastical and denominational lines. Yet, even more significant than some of these differences in practice are the deeply held theological differences that exist within both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Within Protestantism, the evangelical/mainstream split is noteworthy, as we have said, carrying with it a number of implications for church practice in the areas of worship and its accompanying rituals and rubrics.
Roman Catholicism, which is perceived monolithically by many both within and outside of it, harbors a profound theological pluralism at this point in its history between those whose opinions and theology was shaped by the Second Vatican Council7 (1962-65) and those who have been heavily influenced by what has emerged from church leadership, in particular, papal leadership of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
