Religion

ONCE THEY’D HAVE BEEN MARTYRS INSTEAD OF MEDDLESOME PRIESTS

BILL DAMPIER

In the past 15 years Quebec’s Roman Catholic Church has been turfed out as the educator of the province’s Catholic children, lost its considerable influence in labor movements and presided over a dizzy fall—from about 80% to 30%—in Catholic-born attendance. All things considered, the church hardly needed the kind of liturgical warfare begun late last year by 53-year-old curé Yves Normandin. In the last two months, Normandin has challenged Rome, his own archbishop and has even found himself in court because he insists on saying Mass in Latin—using the 400-year-old Tridentine Rite. Alarmed by the Church’s progressive tendencies and the adoption of a new service drafted by the Vatican II council (and ratified by Pope Paul VI in 1969), Father Normandin began saying the traditional Mass two years ago at his modern Sainte-Yvette Cathedral in Montreal’s St. Michel parish once a week. He found a ready audience. People who hadn’t been to church in 10 years turned up. Others came from far out of town. One man trucked his 14 children 130 miles a week to attend. The parish debt was reduced and the offertory overflowed. When Montreal Archbishop Paul Grégoire, after sending emissaries to reason with Normandin, dismissed him from his post in early November, the curé, and a small band of supporters, countered by occupying the church for three weeks.

Normandin is not the first Catholic priest to defy the new Rite of Pope Paul, sometimes called the Pauline Mass. (Since 1969, that Mass has been translated into virtually every language in the world. It exists in Latin as well, but the whole intent of the Vatican II’s liturgical reform was that priests and congregations celebrate it in their own languages.) In Norfolk, England, Father Oswald Baker has likewise been dismissed from his benefice for performing the Tridentine Mass (so-called after the Council ofTrent, 1545-1563).

Seen largely as a dispute over the use of Latin, the current controversy actually embraces rituals within the Mass as well. Now, priests may face the congregation during the ritual; bread is placed in the hand of the communicant, not on his tongue; women are allowed in the sanctuary; the communion rail is removed; and there are different prayers.

Like Baker, Normandin has appealed his dismissal to Rome, and declines comment on his troubles pending their decision. In the meantime, he is planning services in private halls across the city. But Monsignor Renato Martion, counselor to the Apostolic Nunciature in Ottawa, who forwarded Normandin’s appeal, says: “I’m afraid it will be very difficult to see him coming back to his church.” Canon law decrees that during the appeal period, the appellant shall conform to the bishop’s orders. In Rome, Canon William Purdy, of the Vatican’s secretariat for Christian unity, confirms Normandin’s dim prospects. “The case of the Quebec priest has aroused little interest here,” he says. “It is a disciplinary matter now for his local bishop.” Canadian Roman Catholic officials agree. Says Father Everett MacNeil, general secretary of the Catholic Conference, “Normandin is trying to do his own thing. But there is no groundswell among Montreal priests to support him. The irony is that Father Normandin is being forbidden to do what— 400 years ago—he would have been canonized fordoing.”

GLEN ALLEN/DAVID WILLEY/ALAN HARVEY

The Lord helps those...

Although it takes in $1.5 million annually in gross revenues, owns real estate worth an estimated two million dollars and meets a $25,000-a-month payroll, Toronto’s People’s Church—the largest Protestant Congregation in Canada—is scarcely a conventional business. Instead, with a mixture of unabashedly flamboyant hype and fundamental evangelism, it sells salvation—and its 4,500 adherents and a weekly television audience of thousands more are eager and loyal consumers. The guiding hand of the church, which also runs a 200-acre dude ranch, belongs to the Reverend Dr. Paul Brainerd Smith, 54, who once described Roman Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses as “false cults.” Son of onetime Bible salesman Oswald Smith, who founded the People’s Church in 1928, the charismatic “Dr. Paul”—his honorary doctorate was conferred by an obscure Florida Bible college—conducts Sunday services complete with a 50-piece orchestra, 85-voice choir and high-priced guest speakers (among them: cowgirl Dale Evans, astronaut James Irwin and right-wing radio commentator Paul Harvey).

“I guess you’d have to say our services are flamboyant,” says Smith, who once brought a horse into his pulpit to illustrate a sermon. “I don’t see any reason why religion has to be boring; it doesn’t matter how good your message is if you don’t get the attention of your audience.” Like the church itself, the show preaches “an unmutilated Bible,” salvation through the blood of Christ and victory over all known sin. “We tend to be more dogmatic than other churches.”

Despite authoritarian leanings, The People’s Church is obviously doing a number of things right. The nonprofit corporation employs 11 full-time ministers. A twoweek crusade for fundamentalist missionaries earlier this year raised $958,000 in pledges. By watching his own video tapes, Smith has learned to polish his technique. Recently, his TV director told him which was his good side. “That did a lot for me,” he jokes. “It made me aware that I have a bad side.”

Such humor is not too far removed from the church’s basic philosophy. “We don’t believe man is inherently good and getting better,” says one People’s official. “We believe he is sinful by nature, with a propensity to get worse.”