The Eucharist belongs to the entire church, universal as well as local. The dynamics of its structure are deeply rooted in the theology of God’s grace and in the reality of human religious experience. The Eucharist, rooted in Scripture and Jewish prayer, has been shaped by centuries of tradition, and then reshaped as it was handed over from one culture to another.

As if to signal that its elements were not subject to the whim of individual congregations or presiders, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy stipulated changes could only be made by those authorized to do so (§ 22). Thus, the liturgy, belonging to the whole church, should not be arbitrarily changed. Preserving its integrity is the duty of the individual presider.

At the same time, the Council decreed the guiding goal of full, conscious and active participation for all the baptized faithful (§14), each in his/her respective role. That means every effort should be made to tailor the celebration to the mentality, culture and needs of any given community. One sign of that obligation is the explicit exhortation regularly found in the rituals themselves that presiders say something “in these or similar words.” Thus, in another sense, the church’s liturgy belongs in a unique manner to the local gathering of faithful and must be adapted accordingly. This is also the duty of the individual presider.

Historically the official missals and rituals of the church have been published with directions on how the sacraments should be celebrated in small red print, called “rubrics” (from the Latin word, ruber meaning “red”), and the actual words to be said by presider or congregation printed in larger black type. Thus, the word “rubrics” has come to signal attentiveness to the directions in fine print which should be followed in any sacramental celebration.

Rubrics, as I indicated above, are important because they give direction, structure and purpose to the flow of the liturgical celebration. They help prevent serious lapses or deficiencies in the sacramental sign itself. The rubrics can protect the sanctity of the ritual. They serve to keep the individual celebration of each parish’s liturgy in communion with the larger church, diocesan and universal.

When I use the word “rubricism,” however, I mean such an obsessive and driven preoccupation with the directives in red print as to risk losing sight of the Eucharist’s main purpose. The primary goal of sacraments, especially the Eucharist which is the source and summit of the church’s life (§ 10), is sharing in the death and resurrection of the Lord and in Christ’s praise of the Father which accomplished the new creation of God’s people by divine grace and mercy.

While rubrics are important, they can also become obstacles to God’s grace if taken out of context or given exclusive attention. For that reason the Council also included a solemn warning: “Pastors of souls must therefore realize that, when the liturgy is celebrated, more is required than the mere observance of the laws governing valid and licit celebration. It is their duty also to ensure that the faithful take part knowingly, actively and fruitfully” (§ 11).

Now to the other part of my title for this column. Heresy is the deliberate and knowing denial of a divinely revealed truth. Like serious sin, formal heresy required full knowledge and a deliberate act of the human will.

There is also the type of heresy called “material,” namely a de facto denial of God’s truth which is not fully understood nor freely made. Such an act can be a denial of God’s truth without the individual realizing it. Good and holy people can have seriously erroneous (namely, heretical) opinions. This latter sense is the notion I’m addressing, and that’s the reason for the title’s use of the word in quotation marks.

There are two reasons for suggesting that total and narrowly exclusive preoccupation with the rubrics of the Eucharist might be heretical, that is, embodying a serious denial of a fundamental truth of our Catholic faith.

First of all, excessive and exclusive preoccupation with the directives governing the human actions of our Eucharistic worship could be heretical because it suggests that our salvation depends upon our own actions alone, not God’s grace and mercy. The error of acting as if we can achieve our own salvation by our works, howsoever holy and attentive, is a serious one, called “Pelagianism” after its fourth century proponent.

Secondly, excessive and exclusive preoccupation with the rubrics might be heretical because it totters on the brink of indulging in magic. Whenever anyone thinks the blind recitation of certain words or the performance of physical actions themselves causes the effect, that is magic … hardly consistent with our faith or with our Christian recognition of God’s sovereign power.

In Catholic tradition there is an historical recognition that an action can have its own immediate effect … ex opere operato … but that is by the promise of God, not the action of any human being as such.

These are things I as a bishop worry about, given today’s increasing focus on correct rubrics as if they were the means to salvation, rather than an occasion for God’s loving mercy. Keep an eye on the mystery, not merely the pathway to it.