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The Bishops’ Pastoral Letter and Litany of Lament at last Sunday’s masses are another example of Church leaders’ persistent inability to take full responsibility for the institution’s decisions.
The inability to take full responsibility for these decisions has been a constant complaint of survivors and victims of abuse.
However, in this action, the episcopal and religious leaders commit a liturgical abuse of the Sunday Assembly by calling them to become complicit in the leaders’ sins.
The majority of Mass-going Catholics—laity and clergy alike—are not complicit in the hierarchy’s (bishops, congregational leaders, and functionaries) failures of moral judgment, nor have most of them perpetrated crimes of abuse against victims within the Church.
Nonetheless, they are co-opted, through the apology and lament, into sharing responsibility for their leaders’ actions.
Consistently, victims and survivors of abuse have complained that their voices have not been heard and that they have been ignored or minimised.
Last Sunday, the voice of the liturgical assembly—and each believer’s right to participate without coercion in the Mass—was added to the number of those who have suffered at the hands of a leadership that seems incapable of real change.
The Litany of Lament
The Litany of Lament used during the Mass was a subtle form of abuse because it demands that the Sunday Assembly participate in an act of repentance that has no rightful place in the Sunday liturgy.
Positioned either in the middle of the Liturgy of the Word (in place of the homily), it disrupts the focus on Scripture.
Placed at the end of Mass, it undermines the Assembly’s commissioning for evangelisation. If deemed necessary (which is questionable), it should have been integrated into the Preparation Rites as a Penitential Rite, where corporate sin is acknowledged and forgiven.
However, placing this form of litany with its antiphonal structure and form of words in place of the Penitential Rite would be inappropriate because the Penitential Rite’s structure and theology are qualitatively different from the Rite of Penance and Reconciliation, from which the Litany of Lament has been derived.
A Litany of Lament
The litany of lament used on Sunday is a biblical form of prayer used by individuals and communities when they are overwhelmed by exhaustion, confusion, numbness, or despair due to their actions.
Its purpose is to process grief in God’s presence, not, as the bishops erroneously suggested, to “channel anger” or “rekindle our thirst for justice in an unjust world.”
Litanies of lament function differently depending on whether they are a lament of repentance or penance.
A lament of repentance is used before a lament of penance, but both are used by individuals who have directly sinned to process their grief at their decisions and actions as they kneel at the feet of those they have sinned against.
Penitents use these types of litanies before they receive individual absolution.
These litanies are not for bystanders
Using these forms of litanies in a penitential service makes sense.
Using them in the Sunday Mass—without a clear understanding of what the litany is supposed to achieve—shows that those responsible for this do not understand the nature of forgiveness in the Eucharistic liturgy or the nature of reconciliation in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, where restitution and a firm commitment to change are essential.
Symbols of shame and repentance
Biblical acts of lamentation are accompanied by symbols and gestures of shame—rituals such as rending garments, sitting in ashes, or walking barefoot through the city.
These practices articulate repentance that comes through penance.
Potent symbols speak louder than apologies, which have become hollow acts of avoidance. Symbolic acts of repentance might include tearing episcopal garments and mitres or breaking episcopal staffs.
Penance might show Church leaders sitting humbly on the ground outside each cathedral in front of survivors and the wider Catholic community, publicly asking for forgiveness. They would wait in silence until survivors and the baptised community were prepared to offer forgiveness.
Such profound acts of penance, followed by visible restitution, could culminate in a public sacramental reconciliation.
Given the depth of sin and the severity of the crimes, symbolic actions must resonate with the ontological violence inflicted to address the shame honestly.
Public sin, public reconciliation
Failures in moral judgement and crimes against innocents demand rigorous theological reflection.
The Church’s ancient tradition of public forgiveness for public sins offers a framework for this reflection. It recognises how sin and crime corrode not just the individual but the broader community of the Church and society.
Public sins, such as moral failings or abuse, require public acknowledgement and forgiveness because they are experienced and known publicly.
The processes of restitution, forgiveness, and reconciliation must also unfold publicly. Within the Church, this is liturgical and ultimately sacramental.
The scandal of abuse has deeply shamed the Body of Christ.
Addressing this shame requires a healing process that names it explicitly and offers it to the Father through Christ.
Without such an approach, shame and violence will continue to burden the entire community.
Healing the communion of the Church is imperative because victims and perpetrators alike are members of the Body of Christ.
- Dr Joe Grayland is currently an assistant lecturer in the Department of Liturgy, University of Wuerzburg (Germany). He is priest of the Catholic Diocese of Palmerston North (New Zealand) for nearly 30 years.
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