The Future of the Roman Liturgy & the Ordinariate Option

In his 2015 article The Silent Action of the Heart Cardinal Sarah wrote in L'Osservatore Romano that he would welcome a return to normative oriented worship in the fourth edition of the Pauline Roman Missal. “Liturgists” decried the cardinal’s assertion of orthopractic worship and let a more intriguing textual suggest slip by, that is, the desirous return of the Roman offertory prayers. Unlike the Canon Missae, offertory prayers originated in the Middle Ages and never enjoyed a universal text, so why reify such a narrow restoration? The old Roman offertory is now the most commonly used Sunday and festive option in the most recently approval Roman Mass books, the Missals for the various Ordinariate communities whose worship descends from Anglican rites. Has the Ordinariate Missal become a test run for the future of the Latin liturgy? No, but the future itself is less certain than it was just a few years ago.

The Ordinariate Liturgy

“Almighty God, unto Whom all hearts be open” are the first distinctively Anglican words at the Ordinariate Mass to an average Roman Catholic who attends either a Paul VI or pre-Conciliar Mass. In fact this prayer is not Anglican at all. It originated in pre-Reformation England and appears in several editions of the Sarum Missal’s prescribed clerical vesting prayers.

The Ordinariate Missal is not the Sarum Mass or the Tridentine Mass celebrated in English. It is an adaptation of Paul VI’s Mass to a manner of liturgical worship that originated in post-Reformation England and done in accordance to the Book of Common Prayer. Several features of the Prayer Book rites of Eucharist are inserted into the Mass at their appropriate times (the litany, the Comfortable Words, the Prayer of Humble Access) and numerous Anglican formularies appear along Roman greetings (“Christ our Passover is sacrificed”). The Missal renders the texts in an early modern-style English rather than the literal translation now in force for the Roman Missal and the heretical translation previously in force.

Paul VI’s Mass is more than a palimpsest for Prayer Book texts in the Ordinariate rite. The eventual outcome of the Ordinariate liturgy reflects Anglican tradition as much as it reflects the sort of Anglicans who took advantage of Benedict XVI’s generous offerings in Anglicanorum Coetibus. While many who have come over to the Church do so from a “high” American Anglican patrimony of sung Prayer Book Eucharist and Evensong services, a similar number of English extraction converts come from an “Anglo-Catholic” background, wherein some variation of the Tridentine Mass or English Missal was done in fiddleback vestments and Benediction followed Vespers. These celebrants and faithful come to the Ordinariate familiar with the prayers before the altar, the priest offering “a flawless victim” for the benefit “of all Christians living and dead,” the triple Domine non sum dignus, and the Johannine prologue. These prayers are medieval Roman prayers which are as proper to the spirituality of many in the Ordinariate as “Almighty and everliving God….” While they do not belong to the patrimony of William Laud they do belong to the patrimony of the Ordinariate.

Anyone who can attend an Ordinariate Mass, even if infrequently, should do so. The Mass captures the illative part of Catholic worship between reverent words spoken to God and the sweetness needed to move a Christian to devotion without delving into profundity. The parishes tend to exceed the average diocesan church in music; the propers are almost always sung as are motets and hymns. The now-cathedral in Houston even has a Rood Screen, an element of pre-Reformation liturgy if ever there was one. The Divine Worship Missal transposes much of what was good in post-Reformation Anglicanism into the contemporary Roman Mass for most excellent use by Ordinariate parishes.

A True Reform of the Pauline Mass?

Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia brought the impossibly post-modern academic phrase “hermeneutic of continuity” into the vocabulary of liturgists and students of ecclesiology. A small collective of critics of the modern Church arose from Benedict’s pontificate. These men tended to have been ordained from the time of Paul VI and John Paul II, too young to remember the days before the Council and too old to be caught up in the post-Summorum traditionalist movement; the outlook on what went wrong always included the liturgy, although agreement on what was never universally agreed upon. The one consensus of their liturgical critiques was that the Mass of Paul VI had been misapplied, that those who brought “Pope Paul’s New Mass” into parishes did so with the “hermeneutic of rupture” rather than continuity. In Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI Anthony Cekada personifies this generation of priests as “Fr. Retreaux,” who believes the reformed liturgy requires an ars celebrandi as buttoned up as an Italian cassock.

During Benedict’s papacy a style of Mass emerged in a handful of parishes in every diocese called “Reform of the Reform.” Just as the hermeneuticists of continuity could not agree with what was defective in modern liturgy, they could not agree on a consistent fix. Several different reformed styles of celebrating the reformed Mass proliferated. They included Latin chants for the ordo Missae, use of the Roman Canon, fiddleback vestments, canonical digits, singing of the propers, male altar boys, birettas, six candles around a central crucifix atop the altar, and, when possible, Mass versus Deum.

These applications of the pre-Conciliar praxis to the new Mass reflect an outlook already held by English Oratorians since the 1970s, although the Oratorians’ independence allowed them to anticipate the Reform of the Reform more thoroughly than most diocesan ordinaries will permit their pastors.

Even before the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, interest in the Reform of the Reform waned. No one declared it dead or read its obituary at a CMAA conference, but there was a subtle realization that “Blessed are You, Lord God of the Universe” is a Seder Meal prayer, whether in Latin or Latvian. Moreover, the assertion that Paul VI meant for the reformed Missal to be celebrated like an Institute of Christ the King Mass has no basis in the historical record. The three trial run demonstrations put on for the 1967 synod of archbishops in the Sistine chapel were a low Mass, a low Mass with hymns, and some sort of “high Mass”, all on a free standing table. Paul VI celebrated a hybrid Mass in Italian and Latin versus populum the first day the law permitted in 1964 following the changes of Inter oecumenici.

The faithful welcomed or sought improved celebrations of the Mass of Paul VI, but by 2013 few were still extolling its inherently ceremonial character. If the election of Francis did not end the Reform of the Reform, time would have. The Oratorian celebration of the Pauline Mass can be an aesthetic apotheosis that few bishops would permit; it was easier to celebrate a 3PM indult Mass for the hundred people who want it than to celebrate an improved new Mass as the primary service of the day in full view of a thousand donating parishioners. With the election of Francis to the Petrine See and the conversion of several Reformers of the Reform (notably Thomas Kocik) to the old Mass the movement to celebrate the new liturgy as if it was the old lost momentum.

No broad movement has been born out of the publication of the finalized Ordinariate Missal, but significant anecdotal discussion has come out of it and what it might imply for the Roman rite said in 99% of parishes throughout the world. A celebratory change in the new Mass could only accomplish so much without becoming awkward and uncharacteristic of its intent. The Ordinariate Missal offered something Benedict’s outlook did not, the possibility of fundamental changes to the text in the post-Conciliar Missal. Few if any are interested in the uniquely English flavor of the translation, ceremonial movements, or the character of those for whom it was ratified, merely how it might prove a useful precedent for improving what people have to sit through one hour a week.

What did attract the attention of post-Benedictine Catholics were the Anglo-Catholic features of the Missal, namely the prayers before the altar with the double Confiteor, the Tridentine offertory, the restriction of Eucharistic prayers with an explicit preference for the Roman Canon, and the Johannine prologue at the end of the Mass. All traditional elements of Roman worship present in a ritus for former Anglicans and all absent in the Missal of Paul VI.

So the question arises, could the Mass of Papa Montini effectively remain as is in its lectionary and sacramentary, but find the eventual additions of certain elements from the old Mass, saved only by the miracle of the Ordinariate? Or, put another way, could the Ordinariate Mass, sans its many Anglican texts imported from the Prayer Book, be a template for how the new Mass might look in twenty or fifty years? Is the Ordinariate a typos of the general Roman Church’s future?

No, it is not, but the future is increasingly difficult to ascertain.

The Road Ahead

There are a few hundred traditionalist Mass centers, regular or irregular, in the United States. There is a similar figure in France, which comprises a significantly higher percentage of practicing Catholics in that country. Currently there are a humble 43 Ordinariate parishes in North America with similarly modest figures in England and Australia. Along the same vein various Oratories of Saint Philip Neri have appeared regularly in the Anglophonic world, always styled after their English counterparts rather than their Continental ancestors.

These groups collectively make up a fraction of a percent of the Roman Church throughout the world, yet discussion about the future of the Roman Church tangibly looks at little else if only because there are few other places to look. Countries which once propagated Catholic culture are now utterly bereft of it. The land of Ferdinand and Isabela championed gay marriage long before most European nations would touch the issue; 17% of Spaniards attend Mass. The Fraternity of St. Pius X has served a few Mass centers in Portugal for nearly five decades and has never had a vocation from that country; 19% of self-identified Catholics hear Mass on Sundays. The most stunning collapse of Christianity has transpired in Ireland, where, in the wake of institutional protection of pederast priests and an economic boom in the years after the birth of the Common Market, Mass attendance has dropped from 90% to below 30%; Maynooth seminary operates at 10% its intended capacity. Hardly any of those who still attend Mass go parishes staffed by Ordinariate priests, traditionalists, hermeneuticists of continuity, or reformers of the reform. Yet this topic must necessarily revolve around those very people.

The shortage of vocations to the priesthood in more troubling that the decay of Mass attendance, if only because it offers fewer opportunities for those weak in faith or who attend Mass for habitual reasons to remain somewhere near the bosom of the Church. Jansenism is for the devout, the Church is for all. While Rorate-Caeli could hardly suppress its Alleluias that every parish in Limerick, save for the Institute of Christ the King, will be without Mass every other Sunday, others understand that this marks the beginning of the end for a highly structural, NGO institutional Church that emerged after the 19^th political revolutions and normalization of Catholicism in non-Catholic countries. There are enough faithful to justify a few Sunday Masses, but fewer and fewer priests to celebrate them.

Progressive relics from the ages of Paul VI and John Paul II, who for years yearned that the laity might have greater participation in the “ministries” of the Church, may finally get their hearts’ desire, the priestless parish. Meanwhile, the real battle should be over what emerges among those who do celebrate Mass, barring a drastic change in paradigm such as the normative ordination of married men in the West.

Among priest-filled parishes will emerge destination churches, the kinds of parishes people seek in preference to the nearest convenience. Traditional forms of Catholicism are not merely the fastest growing in vocational numbers, they are the only places where there is growth. These various expressions of traditionalist or conservative parish life invariably favor some brand of liturgical orthopraxy, numerous priests living together under one roof, and offer more programs than the average parish. These parishes appeal to a broad range of faithful, from aesthetes to families with children, the simple and the over-educated. Parishes like this currently struggle in bringing the middle of the Church through their doors, the weekly Mass and little-catechized people in suspect marriages. However, as clergy fade without replacement and the less anchored lamentably lapse, the “remnant” may not have much choice but to embrace these destination churches.

In France there are already less than a hundred priestly ordinations a year, between seventy and eighty when excluding the archdiocese of Paris. Various purveyors of “destination parishes”—FSSPX, FSSP, ICRSS, IBP, Communauté de Saint-Martin, the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, and traditionalist monasteries—gradually occupy a larger and larger percentage of the declining total. A similar effect might eventually take root in less “integrist” lands where one off communities like Oratories or canonries become thriving focal points of dioceses, even if they do not make up a significant portion of priests. Destination parishes will never make up the majority of the Roman diocesan churches, but then again neither did the Dominicans, Franciscans, Oratorians, or Augustinian Canons. Movements are never effected by majorities, but vocal minorities whose vigor convinces a surplus to throw in with their cause or become amenable to their view.

The surplus in this case is whatever remains of the diocesan priesthood, men who survive seminary formation and who are spread thin like butter over too much bread in a cluster of parishes in France or alone in a rectory built for five in Ireland. Diocesan formation is as mediocre as it has been since the 1970s, save for a few reputable programs. The “JP2 generation”, however, does not share the political views of its antecedents and often not its liturgical views either. Anecdotally, diocesan seminarians are either friendly to traditional liturgy or indifferent on the matter with the former more resolute in its interest than the latter in its disinterest. This hardly constitutes a movement, but it does constitute a group of people who can be moved, especially if they already have something in common with more vibrant destination churches than they do with those where the weak continue to lapse.

The Growing Rift

The failure of the Reform of the Reform or improved celebrations of the Mass of Paul VI to take root originate in two distinct places, the nature of the new liturgy’s introduction and its regulation.

Conventionally, attempts at Tridentinizing, medievalizing, or simply making more reverent the common celebration of the Montinian Mass came from desire to continue a pre-existing liturgical maximalism in an age where the ceremonies and texts did not agree with symphonic Masses or Palestrina’s motets. This was certainly the case with Msgr. Schuler or the Brompton Oratory. The purpose to prolong a certain liturgical style characteristic to a parish did not apply to the majority of churches after 1970. More relevant today is without formation in the old liturgy few clerics feel compelled to sublimate its genius in the context of the new liturgy.

The other impediment to the various essays at “enriching” the new liturgy is that organic development is both unknown and illegal in the modern liturgy. The new Missal is without essential change since its introduction, not unlike the Roman liturgy from the time of Trent until the nineteen regrettable years of Pius XII. Celebrants follow an intuitive combination of what is in the book and what they have watched since childhood. The ritual imitation of the old rite once called Reform of the Reform comes across as stilted, misapplied, and out of place. It is even more difficult to imagine a textual enrichment of the new Mass from the old, or from other sources, in the current milieu. The books of the reformed liturgy are regulated and published by the Congregation for Divine Worship without the input or approval of local priests, who habitually follow its familiar gestures.

While the number of priests continues to contract and the number of more traditional (broadly understood) Masses proliferate, the very barriers to the long desired “mutual enrichment” remain, the barriers of inorganic formation and of the centralization around the new rite. Diocesan clergy who wish for more to their new rite Mass than the odd Latin Agnus Dei at Christmas may find it easier to throw in their lot with the “stable groups” who want an old Mass or with destination parish clergy who have adopted a different outlook altogether.

One might optimistically tend to think this would eventually effect a more traditional version of the new liturgy. It will not. Unlike diocesan clergy, bishops are selected abroad from among men whose dedication to the current causes of national conferences and Rome outweigh their sympathy for the interests of parish liturgy. As long as this remains true the new Missal will remain as is, without any mutual enrichment, Tridentinisms, or new developments of its own accord.

What might this mean in a world of fewer priests and less ecclesiastical structure to watch over those who remain in parishes rather than in the growing fraternal communities? Diocesan clergy who were interested in the old liturgy, in part or whole (a sizeable minority from purely anecdotal experience), but who were not interested in leaving their hometowns for ‘50s-ism or Nerian spirituality, may find themselves free to expand their offering of the old Missal rather than toy with what they know they may not change. As peculiar as it sounded ten years ago, traditionalist communities have expanded modestly, but diocesan Latin Masses have grown by a multiple. Many remain at odd times for small groups, but the growing normality of the [putative] 1962 Missal could well justify a liturgically-minded pastor’s expansion of his Mass schedule to include a Latin Mass at 11AM rather than at 2PM, especially if he is the only priest in a parish.

The danger in this emerging trend of traditionally minded seminarians, priests, and priests of what we have termed destination parishes is that the Roman Church’s internal divisions would become externally manifested by liturgical praxis. If the French trend continues and diocesan interest in the Latin Mass increases, a third of French clergy may be Tridentine Mass-saying integrists who support the National Front while the other two thirds wear golf shirts around town between celebrating one monthly Mass at each parish in their clusters. Bishops, again, almost always strangers to their own flock, will have less and less in common with a growing segment of their own clergy. What are they to do with such priests? Ghettoize them? Leave them be? Promote them to larger parishes on merit?

Reform or Return?

1982 might have been the optimal year to re-instate the pre-Conciliar Latin liturgy as the normative Mass in the Roman Church. John Paul II re-established a nominal orthodoxy regarding sex, the roles of the sexes, and basic doctrines that were ignored during the stagnant post-Conciliar days of Papa Montini. Regardless of his phenomenology the Polish Pope created an externally sound perception to the Church that hid the liturgical abuse so arrant to those inside. Liturgical experiment continued in some circles, but a general mediocrity, born in suburban American parishes, became the international standard. So why would 1982 have been the best year to return to the old Roman ways?

In that same year The Tablet published results of a poll of English Catholics concerning the liturgical reform. Over 40% desired a return to the old Mass; the next largest block were indifferent; only a quarter preferred the new Mass to the old. The new liturgy’s novelty factor had run its course during an age when the former ways were still within living memory of most priests and laity. A return would have been difficult, but far easier than either a return to the old rite or a revitalization of the new rite has proven today.

There also existed the issue of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who, for what good he did, missed a grand opportunity at this juncture. He founded the Seminary of Saint Pius X in 1970 with permission of the diocesan bishop for the formation and ordination of priests. Doctrine concerned the French archbishop as did clerical education. Liturgy ranked lower on his list of priorities. Originally, the Seminary of Saint Pius X, and the associated priestly fraternity that governed it, was intended for the training of clergy who could return to their home dioceses for regular parish work; Cardinal Siri sent men to Econe in the early years and incardinated a few into his diocese, presumably celebrating the “illegal” Latin Mass until Paul VI noticed. If he had qualms about the new rite, then those qualms arose from what the new rite represented more than the integrity of the rites themselves; how could he celebrate the 1962 rite otherwise? After his 1976 suspension by Paul VI the “rebel archbishop” found himself the subject of religion segments in the newspapers and the topic of shorts in international news. During the same period a significant number of clergy in the United States and Europe, some retired and some forced into “independent” ministry, could have reverted to the old rite with the inspiration that a charismatic, orthodox figure could imbue. As a former missionary who baptized thousands of Africans, Msgr. Lefebvre should have been that very figure. The requisite inspiration never came, and the old Mass remained a symbol of opposition to Dignitatis humanae and French democracy. At the peak of his potential influence Lefebvre quietly began to work with the Vatican for a successor bishop and in the process forced the entire non-Francophonic populace of his Fraternity into adopting the 1962 liturgy over the pre-Pius XII book in force; it seems “pre-Vatican II” and “Latin” were more operative in the Fraternity’s liturgical outlook than “tradition.” Lefebvre never lawfully received his successor bishop; the June 30, 1988 consecrations and the following Vatican pseudo-liberation of the 1962 Mass in Ecclesia Dei adflicta all but ensured the old liturgy would stay in the realm of ghettos for those who could not move on.

Spiritual Health

While a wholesale return to the old liturgy remains an elusive dream, the prominent return of older rites in a larger portion of the Church remains more probable than a reform of the Pauline Mass along the lines of the Ordinariate Missal or a better practice of the current Novus Ordo liturgy. On its own, diverse rites cause little trouble; Lebanese Catholics attend rites based on whether they live in a Maronite village or Melkite village. However, liturgical diversity within narrow geographies, when the liturgical boundary is not also a national or cultural boundary, has a checkered history on a larger scale. Melkite Christians lost their original Antiochian liturgy and were compelled to adopt the Byzantine rite. Roman missionaries in Ethiopia attempted to foist the Roman rite on the locals and separate the priests from their wives. In a divided Church liturgy has historically been used as a symbolic weapon against those with a different idea of how to be a Catholic. Given the turbulence of the contemporary Roman Church the Pauline Mass, old Mass, and reformed new Mass—if the latter two gain sufficient “market share”—may provide visible markers of division between contrasting opinions of what constitutes a Catholic.

In a normatively Catholic world justice would demand those who believe themselves in the right to combat those in the wrong at the parish level as Athanasius did against the Arians and Augustine against the Donatists; even the Great Western Schism, which controverted the legitimacy of the rival popes more than any doctrine, was reduced to the local church with rival bishoprics. We do not live in a normatively Catholic society anymore, any further diversity risks creating an Anglican menagerie if the liturgy merely becomes a banner for other causes.

The broad mission of liturgical restoration must make inroads with seminarians and celebrants for diocesan churches in order to be anything other than a sect within a sect. Anything less than meeting Catholics where they are—poorly catechized, in dubious marriages, and agnostic to Latin—will only succeed in creating more minute groups dedicated to long dresses, home schooling, lace albs, and the National Front. The new liturgy has too little history and too much centralization to reform itself organically while the old is too different from the new to be introduced in a broad stroke; with these challenges, champions of reform—or, more accurately, restoration—would be wise to let reverent liturgy inform the culture of a parish rather than force an arbitrary culture on those who seek reverent liturgy.

Benedict Revisited: Felix Culpa?

Four weeks ago more Roman Catholics celebrated the traditional rites of Holy Week than at any other point since 1955. Deacons sanctified the Paschal candle by inserting blessed incense into the torch that burns with the uncreated light. During the blessing the Levite remembered God’s permitting the Fall of Adam: “O felix culpa quae talem et tantem meruit habere redemptorem.” God, wrote Saint Augustine when he coined the term felix culpa, does not create evil, but he does allow it if a greater good might prevail.

Never before have the futures of both the liturgy and the institutional structures of the Church been less certain. Past attempts to focus the reformed liturgy through the lens of tradition belong to extenuating circumstances in an era gone by, while current attempts, exemplified by the Ordinariate liturgy, are bound to be thwarted by the bureaucratic root of the contemporary Mass. Groups desiring more orthopractic liturgical forms have experienced modest growth, but the most startling numbers lay in the growth of vocations in these “destination” communities, which figure to make up a sizable minority of the shrinking institutional Church within a few generations. Those favoring older rites have a clearer path to influence than Reformers of the Reform, although they lack any clear route to the restoration they so desire unless they are willing to engage younger diocesan celebrants who are amenable to tradition and not weighed down by the baggage of post-Vatican II Traditionalism.

In a Church where some purport to speak for the Magisterium, some for God, some for Kasper, and all for Bergoglio, any liturgical revival threatens to become a battlefield for other conflicts that will make visible those divisions which have already insinuated the subterranean structures of Western Catholicism. Yet does not natural justice demand the right thing be done irrespective of circumstance? It does, and targeting strife within the Church is far apart from trying to survive it. Laity, unfortunately, suffer more than clergy amid disputes between Churchmen and their causes, as happened during the Great Western Schism, the Reformation, and the 20^th century liturgical revolt.

Benedict XVI’s liberalization of the 1962 liturgy may well have been a felix culpa in clarifying competing factions and the struggle for the Church’s temporal future. More importantly Benedict’s motu proprio led to a dual effort to revive the ’62 rite and improve the new rite using its existing text. The abandonment of the Reform of the Reform and visible trend to pre-Pacellian rites among diocesan Traditionalists can only mean people have looked at the existing Roman liturgy in both “forms” and found it wanting. While the future is less certain than ever the current revival of the old rite and trend towards the un-revised Roman liturgy represent the first genuinely organic, non-committee driven liturgical movement in the Roman Catholic Church since the original Liturgical Movement a century and a half ago. A grassroots transition through an Ordinariate-style Missal would benefit the faithful, but there exists no viable channel for such a transition.

Liturgical Reform in the Orthodox Church

Left to right: Robert Taft SJ, Met. Kallistos Ware, and Vassa Larin
source: olconference.com

What is the most expensive war in human history? No, it was not the weapons race of the Cold War, which in some ways paid for itself by producing technological shocks that could be exported to private industry. No, it was not World War II, which, until quite late, relied on mass production on conventional weapons like guns, tanks, planes and battleships. And, no, it was a war of any of the empires of history, which, again, were fought with traditional, low cost weapons and paid for themselves by opening trade routes. The most expensive, and maybe least fruitful, war in history in the American War on Poverty, inaugurated by Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" program. Trillions of dollars have been spent on the welfare state to aid impoverished groups, usually racial minorities, in the United States. Today, the average black is really no better off than he was in 1965; perhaps he is worse off, when considering the dissolution of the family that followed the Great Society. A direct transfer of wealth from the top earners to the lowest earners would have accomplished more than this malaise, a malaise created by scholars.

John F. Kennedy insisted on hiring the "best and brightest" when he became president, a departure from the career politicians and political aristocracy of prior administrations. My father personally worked for one of Kennedy's economic advisers, who also held key positions at several international banks, affording a unique view of what transpired. Kennedy's "best and brightest" of academia created the Great Society, but the Bostonian lacked the political capital to implement it. His successor, Johnson, lacked scruples, but not political leverage. And so the most pathetic war in history, one created a priori by postmodern scholars, was put into place.

The other day, His Traddiness was listening to a lecture by Sr. Vassa Larin, a Russian Orthodox liturgiologist trained under Robert Taft, SJ. Sr. Vassa came by way of recommendation from an Orthodox friend. Her daily "Coffee with Vassa" podcasts are light and edifying presentations on basic Christian matters. Her lectures, however, leave much to be desired and much to be concerned about.

Her mentor, Robert Taft, was reared in the Society of Jesus during the liturgical revolt of the 1950s and 1960s, which he acknowledges was "an overwhelming success." Today, Sr. Vassa takes great strides to establish the necessity of scholars—liturgical specialists by any other name—in order to understand the Byzantine liturgy with an eye towards reforming it.

Much of the Byzantine liturgy, Vassa maintains, is "incomprehensible" without a scholarly background. Indeed, some parts of the liturgy have no real meaning, she expounds. One example the nun gives is the moment when the deacon waves his orarion (deacon's stole) towards the people and finishes the priest's prayer with "And unto the ages of ages" before the Trisagion. Commonly, people bow in reverence. Vassa thinks this silly; this gesture is meaningless and originated as a signal to the choir in the Hagia Sophia to begin the Thrice Holy Hymn. She also has an issue with the accusative case replacing the nominative declension in "Mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise" before the anaphora.

The liturgy is arrantly symbolic and symbols cannot be understood through veils, barriers, arbitrary customs, sacred languages and strange translations, or silent prayers. Everything, including the anaphora, should be done as it was in the primitive Church: aloud and in the vernacular. Vassa dilates at length about her concern for the disinterest of younger Orthodox faithful, who lose their intention to attend the Liturgy on Sundays when reaching their teenage years. The Liturgy is not catechetical enough, too immersed in customs that detract from focus on Christ, such as women wearing veils. "This is the state we find ourselves in," she says.

Sr. Vassa could be just one liturgiologist with views tending toward unstable reforms if not for Taft. Vassa, Taft says in his introduction, is one of the few students he met in his 46 years teaching who could be a truly great scholar. Both of them are positively exuberant that discussion of liturgical reform, impossible a century ago because uneducated people craved stability, is now possible in the Orthodox Churches. Taft himself related an invitation to a conference on reform hosted by the Greek Church. Vassa herself has lately been taking her lecture on liturgical history and the problematic nature of the Divine Liturgy on tour. Why?

Vassa recalls that a poll of Orthodox Christians in the United States revealed most believers want more money in their parishes' coffers; desire for liturgical reform only garnered 10%, to the nun's confusion. Orthodox Christians are leaving Orthodoxy just as fast as white American Catholics lapse when graduating high school. Can anyone really claim the Divine Liturgy's supposed textual inconsistencies are to blame? I have never heard of an Orthodox Christian leaving his church because he sees the priest prostrate during the anaphora without hearing the epiclesis. The Orthodox Churches are national religions removed from their home countries. Young men and women are tempted to look at their churches as ethnic associations their parents frequented and which they have outgrown. They cease to be Orthodox because they want to be modern, not because "Mercy, peace...." has mutated into "Mercy of peace...."

As attendance drops, both in the old world and in the Orthodox "diaspora", the leaders of that communion may be drawn towards the apparent fix of liturgical reform, which intellectual and spiritual successors of Taft will be eager to eventuate. Orthodox Christians should be very cautious of this, given that the first suggestion of a reform is never the last.

The early Liturgical Movement in France did not seek to replace the existing Roman rite, but to practice the existing rite to its full potential. France saw a resurgence in high Mass, public celebrations of the Divine Office, and the innovation of readings in the vernacular. The 20th century liturgical reforms found no stronger opposition than in France, which produced the Fraternity of St. Pius X, Opus Sacerdotale, and one-off dissidents like Quintin Montgomery-Wright. The early Liturgical Movement's legacy is more honestly found in St. Nicolas du Chardonnet than in the average parish, which is the point. True reforms do not restore the liturgy to an imaginary state of pristine order or refashion it according to contemporary needs. It cleans the liturgical lens so that people may peer more easily at God through it.

Does the Byzantine liturgy need an overhaul? Perhaps a scrub, but not a general reform. The Greek rite does not know rubrics in the Latin sense, which might be a good thing, but some unified guidelines would be helpful. A suggestion for a unified Slavic or Greek ritual would not harm the Eastern Orthodox, but this small reform group does not stop there. There is the ringing insistence that the liturgy has textual problems that only they, as scholars, recognize, which is disconcerting.

Do not believe for a minute that Vassa Larin, or those who think like her, is a "modernist" who knows better and who is hell bent on destroying the Byzantine tradition. If a reform movement accumulates, it will be because specialists with little to no parochial experience have convinced the hierarchy that amending perceived defects is the last option to restore church attendance and usher in a revival of Eastern Christian practice. Scholars rarely see past their own desks, and those bowing at the deacon's orarion should keep their heads low, lest well intentioned reformers accidently sever them when trimming excesses.

Ethnocentricism, political relations, a skewed view of the Latin Church's history, and poor catechesis are all legitimate criticisms of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Divine Liturgy is one thing is clearly not wrong in the Orthodox Church.

Binary Barrier: Sacra Liturgia Conference

John R has published his account of the speakers at the Sacra Liturgia conference in New York City. Conferences and other forms of controlled mob interaction allow leaders to influence their potential cliques, for the cliques to share their ideas, for prejudices to be confirmed, or for new ideas about piety and theology to be inculcated. This year's conference is interesting both for what it discussed and what it failed to discuss.

A constantly reiterated goal of this blog is to broaden conversation about the Catholic Church's liturgy beyond the duality of the "OF" and "EF" Roman books—the liturgy of Paul VI and the rite of Econe John XXIII. The 1962 liturgy is not an accurate reflection of the Roman tradition nor is the Roman tradition the only legitimate liturgy in the Latin Church, much less in the Church universal. The speakers at the Sacra Liturgia conference seem blissfully aware of this pair of simple facts. John recounts that all the speakers on the docket engaged in the same predictable and tired lecture formulae that we have heard since mid-2007: commence with turgid quotations from Sacrosanctum Concilium, explain how the glorious document was ignored, commend the reverence of the "EF", speak at length about how the "OF" can learn from the "EF," and gratuitously add that the "OF" does have a number of significant improvements that could benefit the "EF."

Every supposedly traditional liturgist has some item on the list wherein they believe that the "OF" praxis could improve the "EF", yet they never have a consensus as to what. Dom Anderson OSB favors the variety of prefaces in the Pauline rite. Other writers applaud the Pauline lectionary for "opening" Scripture to the people. The local tongue allows for greater participation. It is almost as though to baptize one's views on the "EF" one must agree that the "OF" has something to offer the Church not contained in the other rites practiced now or in history by the faithful.

Only Alcuin Reid broke beyond this binary set of numbers, and he did so because he wanted to prevent a third figure from entering his set of 1s and 0s. At the local level, priests and some laity are increasingly interested in the genuine old rite, particularly in the un-Pianized Holy Week. This past year saw a proliferation in Holy Week celebrations according to older usages, celebrations wisely un-publicized by the faithful. The diocesan bishop is unlikely to care, but the district superior of the FSSP is. 

Reid spoke of the improvements wrought by Pius XII which ought not be undone. The veritas horarum meant that the "Easter Vigil" was "restored" to the right time, and hence it properly should conclude with Lauds as the liturgy welcomes the morning of the Resurrection rather than the nightfall of Vespers (one wonders if he has read any medieval accounts of Holy Week or attended the Vesperal Liturgy of St. Basil the Great). Communion ought to be given on Good Friday, even if it was not done anywhere else East or West. The celebrant need not read texts already read by other ministers—as though it detracts from the celebration in some way. Reid emphasized  that the "Liturgy is not frozen in amber and one cannot glorify a certain year or cut-off point for pristine Liturgy." Reid is right, but does not mean this in the same way that I would mean this. Reid is warning people not to nurture too strong an interest in the liturgy as it existed before Pacelli. He wants to preserve the binary barrier.

This is at the heart of the conference's short-comings and the defect in modern scholarship on the Roman rite. With rare exception, clerical and mainstream commentators are inextricably linked to the rite of Paul VI and of Econe John XXIII. They love one and hate the other. They love one and like the other. They are "pro-Benedict" and "anti-Francis." No one asks what the Roman liturgy actually is or why it matters. They will adumbrate their points with favorable quotations from Byzantine liturgists to reiterate the necessity of tradition without actually understanding what their liturgical heritage is.

The Roman liturgy is the liturgy used at St. Peter's basilica and by the Popes of the mid-first millennium. It consisted of the major hours of the Office to praise God throughout the day, not to "get graces," but because He is God and He deserves it. It also consisted of the Mass, served by the Pope and his ministers and centered on the ancient and venerable anaphora, the Roman Canon. Devotion and maximalism on the part of the Roman laity and monastics throughout Europe augmented the hours, added to the ritual of the Mass, and made of the tone of the Roman rite more reflective and subtle than those of its oriental counterparts. Reverence for the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles and expediency popularized its celebration throughout Europe. Ss. Gregory VII and Pius V tinkered with the ritual and with psalter a bit. It permeated the lives of the monastic and ordained faithful, many of them saints, for fourteen centuries. They did not write about it, nor did they hold conferences to debate how much of it was worth keeping. They prayed it and they lived it. Throughout those centuries, the local furnished the office with hymns, added prayers to the Mass, and created extravagant variations on the ritual. None of them dared to remove the essentials, though. 

I often muse that had I entered Canterbury Cathedral during the age of Innocent III and bad king John, I could approach a monk about to celebrate his daily Mass. He would probably concede that many of the ecclesiastical issues of the day were open to debate: whether the pope was right to excommunicate John, whether the local embellishment of readings was legitimate, whether the resident cardinal or the Archbishop of Canterbury had primacy in England. He would scoff, though, at the idea he or anyone could alter the hours or the Canon of the Mass. Similarly, he would scoff at the idea every gesture at the hours or Mass was subject to regulation, either by Rome or by freestanding conferences. 

Perhaps a future conference will delve into the depths of the Roman liturgy and explore what fruits it could offer to us today in our daily lives, how it can permeate the parish like it did the lives of the saints. Has anyone mentioned the simplicity of pre-1911 Compline? The same psalms and antiphons more or less every day with minimal variation? This would be an easy accommodation to the local church. Coped cantors in the sanctuary? An easy way to assimilate men into the choir who do not want to join the female clique in the loft. Octaves? A protracted celebration of the great feasts which aids us in understanding the magnificent things Christ has done for us. The old Holy Week times? Very helpful for families. 

Above all, the Roman rite is not to be found in a set of particular books, but in a set of features (the kalendar system, the psalter, the Canon, and the rites for the great feasts). A deeper understanding of its origins and the near-constant veneration of it might give future speakers reason to pause before consigning portions of it to the dustbin because it does not belong to their binary number set.

New Series: Missing Octaves

Since J.'s recent liturgical addendum to the Josephology series sparked discussion and corrections concerning the feast and octave of "St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church," I thought it appropriate to begin a little series of my own on the missing octaves of the modern Roman kalendars, both 1962 and 1970. I would cover the subject in part on:

• The octaves of the Comites Christi: Ss. Steven, John, and the Holy Innocents
• Epiphany and its octave day, the Baptism in the Jordan
• Octaves of the Virgin (Assumption and Nativity, later Immaculate Conception, too)
• Holy men of the Lord, the lost octaves of St. John the Baptist and Ss. Peter & Paul
• Octaves of the Lord, Corpus Christi and Ascension
• The greatest Roman octave: Pentecost
• Local octaves: patronal feast of the parish etc.

Look for words on the Comites Christi in the near future!

Blessed Are They Who Hear the Word of God

source: newliturgicalmovement.org

Never has the Word of God been more discussed than in the last two centuries. Vatican II's Dei Verbum is an entire document on interpreting it. Protestantism is an entire religion founded on most of it. Nineteenth century German biblical scholarship assured us it was mostly second century bosh while late twentieth century scholarship has shown it originated frighteningly proximate to Christ and the Apostles. The average American household owns four copies of it. Never before has it been more read, more discussed, and less heard.

Our modern relationship with Scripture is abecedarian. A layman sits at his reading desk or cozies himself in his arm chair in quiet repose, opens his Ignatius Study Bible to whatever section of the Johannine gospel looks interesting, and reads while imagining the events described, as though he is the woman at the well. Could anything be more Ignatian? Could anything be more modern? Could anything be more removed from how our fathers in the faith interfaced with the Word of God?

The dispute over the place of liturgical theology and the value of the pre-20th century Roman rite—the real thing, I call it—is closely related to a long lost dispute over the place of Scripture in the liturgy. The Byzantine rite long replaced most of the Scriptural portions of the liturgy with hymns and symbolic gestures, although readings of substance remain at Vespers for great feasts and the pre-Sanctified weekday rites of Great Lent. The un-reformed Roman rite retained the place of Scripture from ancient times, although some abbreviations took place, such as the reduction of the psalm verses in the introit. Holy Writ narrated the Mass and the Office. The liturgy was how people encountered what we call the Bible. Liturgical worship outside the Eucharistic sacrifice culminated in the reading of the words of Christ by the herald of the Gospel, the deacon, from a lecturn or ambo in the midst of those destined to hear it. In the Roman rite this singing of Christ's words took place in medio choro, in the Greek rite from an enormous stone ambo in the center of the Hagia Sophia.

In neither of these settings was the place of proclamation a rival or equal to the altar of sacrifice that so much heterodox architecture now presents it to be. The Gospel was sung from a prominent place amid the congregation. The Eucharist is offered from the most prominent point, somewhat veiled, and removed from the congregation until Holy Communion. The Word anticipates the Sacrament as it did for the Israelites in the desert of Egypt.

source: lamprotes1 on YouTube

The Gospel was sung either in vernacular or in a mostly intelligible language proximate to the common tongue. Slavonic is near enough to most Slavic languages as is Latin to French and Italian. If not directly understood, the gospel readings would be comprehended to some degree and decorated with some ornament of mystery. A few oddities did and do exist, like Classical Arabic, which is far removed from vernacular Arabic. We Anglophonic men also seem to have been born outside of the Lord's good liturgical graces, condemned to a bastard Germanic language well removed from the tongues of liturgy.

Above all the reading of the Gospel was the greatest encounter with the spoken word of God a human being would have. God the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets and Christ spoke to the Apostles His commandments. Christ wrote nothing, but He did say, "Blessed are they who hear the word of God and who keep it." The extravagant actions of the Greek rite and the Scriptural narration of the Office and fore-Mass in the Roman rite climaxed with the solemn speaking of God-made-Man. The words of Christ and the actions of Christ are renewed in the presence of the faithful for their edification and holiness. Previous generations, enriched in their poverty of electronic entertainment and television, understood that anticipation and fulfillment meet the imagination's ideas about God. Gestures, actions, and words together synthesize into a taxis which follows the plan of Revelation: the anticipation of the prophets and the fulfillment of Christ.

The marriage of Protestantism and book-printing changed the purpose of the word of God in people's minds. What was something sacred and removed became a pocket-size product for individual interpretation and personal consumption. A Romanian friend once confided that his mother had never heard of a Bible before she came to America: "Oh yes, we have the prophets and the gospels, but not everything bound up in one nifty package." St. Augustine recalls in his Confessions that when the child said "Take and read" he picked up the letters of St. Paul, not the Revised Standard Version. There is nothing wrong reading the Scriptures on one's own outside a liturgical setting for knowledge or spiritual meditation, but who will deny that generally the accessibility of the words of God has resulted in a decline of reverence for those words. God's word has become my Bible. Some well meaning but very lost celebrants of the Pauline spoken Mass try too hard to imbue rediscovered significance in the spoken Gospel by "proclaiming" the "Good news" in theatrical voices punctuated by long, awkward pauses and eye-piercing stares at the congregation. Father, you are trying too hard. The religion founded on [most of] the Bible has reduced the Bible's gravitas. Combined with emotionally and intellectually dulling forms of entertainment like television, the abecedarian approach to Scripture given to us by the Protestants has removed our awe in encountering and keeping the Word of God when we hear it.

In spite of these losses, hope is not gone. Even in the reformed rites of Holy Week ('62 or Pauline) people find the non-Sacramental gestures and readings powerful. People attend these rites for these ceremonies and readings almost exclusively. Were Thursday of Holy Week just a Mass, how many would attend? Most go because of what makes it unique: the reading of the Mandatum periscope and the washing of the feet. The same is true for the singing of the Passion and the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday as well as the blessing of the fire and the prophecies on Holy Saturday. They are going to find Christ in His words and actions, something previous Catholics were able to see more regularly than we can, who Platonically peer into the water which reflects the Sun those before us saw so brilliantly.

 

source: the Pit

 

Liturgy & Tradition: Sensus Fidelium

"When the Church is self-referential, inadvertently, she believes she has her own light," Cardinal Bergoglio said to the College of Cardinals before the Conclave that elevated him to the Petrine See. Bergoglio's message continued the engagement with existential modernity begun by other dubious figures like Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Rudolf Steiner decades earlier, but this isolated statement reveals a rare moment of clarity from the modern Roman See. When the Church is self-referential, she disables herself from spreading the Gospel because she does not know what she is or what she does. 

Such is the contemporary state of the Roman liturgy. Many readers have asked over the last two years what the point of the liturgy is. They are being cynical. The question carries the utmost gravity. Is it a divinely imparted ritual with its own powers? Is it a set of didactic actions that ornament the more important mechanical acts of transmitting grace? What is it? If we do not know what the liturgy is, then we are truly lost. The liturgy, in my own private opinion, is the sensus fidelium of the Church expressed according to separate, non-contradicting traditions and lived out in the Church universal. There is no citation for this definition in an ecumenical council—nor is there a definition of the Resurrection. Previous generations needed no definitions or binding statements to understand the relationship between the liturgy and the faith. If they believed it, they prayed it. They did not leave what they believed out of their worship, nor did they believe in novelties unfounded in the traditions of the Church. Liturgy does not merely teach belief and transmit grace. It revives and renews the sacred mysteries of Christ in time for the faithful. In doing so, one encounters Christ, the angels and saints, and glimpses into the greater spiritual reality of the Lord while remaining on earth, blurring the lines which separate the eternal and the temporal. One leaves the liturgy and the "mystical supper" of Christ not only having learned what to believe, but also how to believe when he returns to the world outside the temple.

Christ taught simply. His teachings tell the listener as much about how to engage Him as much as they do what to think of Him. Chesterton wrote that when he first read the Gospel, contrary to everything he was told about a kind rabbi divinized by his followers, Jesus spoke authoritatively as God. As God, He commanded love, fidelity, and trust in Him as well as care and attention towards one's neighbor. Above all, He taught the forgiveness of sins and the metanoia of the sinner. The last part concerns us. How does one orient one's self to God and away from sin? How does one see the world and God as He wishes? In conjunction with being the setting for the Sacraments, where the Holy Spirit acts and makes the work of Christ immediately accessible to the believer, the liturgy shows us this. It only makes sense. When a friend asks about the Catholic faith, one does not give him a catechism. One takes him to Mass or the Divine Liturgy.

"I have passed on to you what I have received," St. Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth some time in the 50s, merely a generation after the Passion of the Lord. The Apostle to the Gentiles passed on to the Corinthians both the tradition of the Lord's work and the tradition of what He commanded His followers to do. The two were inseparable. Belief and the primitive liturgy were received by believers simultaneously. They did not remain static, however. Passing on something does not preclude its development, its clearer enunciation, its deepening. Chapter 23 of St. Vincent of Lerins' Commonitorium applies to the liturgy as much as to doctrine:

"But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning."

Local churches developed their liturgical rites around their own settings, needs, and cultural tendencies. The Roman rite is, to say the least, highly efficient. More so than the Eastern rites, replete with hymns and elaborate gestures, the Roman rite uses the words of Holy Writ as its almost exclusive textual basis for the propers and many of the prayers, reflective of the Roman legal tradition's emphasis on the binding power of authoritative words. The more philosophical Greeks had a mystical and excessive liturgy consonant with its philosophical tradition. And the various far Eastern rites too reveal their origins. The Roman Patriarchate tolerated variation more than any other patriarchate until Trent, permitting, often begrudgingly, "dialects" of the Roman rite like the French, English, and Portuguese uses as well as further departures like Toledo, Milan, and L'Aquila. The multiplicity of uses in the Latin Church multiplied the spiritual wealth of the Western Church and gave her saints and thinkers recognized across national borders. Uses were often suppressed, but local variety was accepted as the norm with Rome as the original, the standard, the canon. One can trim the branches of a tree, but not the trunk.

"That we may receive the King of All, invisibly
escorted by angelic hosts."
source: preachersinstitute.com

These various dialects teach the Christian to perceive the world in a divine language. Language, Noam Chomsky begrudgingly admits, is something for which human beings seem uniquely wired. Language creates learning, interaction, and introspection. The liturgy, in a very real way, makes all these things possible with the Holy Trinity. The liturgy of the Church, Alexander Schmemann taught, is the continued presence of the Lord in the world and in time. Laurence Hemming develops this idea and notes the medieval concept of the liturgy as the opus Dei, the work of God which man engages and shares. In prior times, the bells of monasteries and cathedrals signaled the various canonical hours and stages of the Mass in town. The liturgy was the pulse of the community, not a feature of it. Schmemann's interpretation of the entirety of the liturgy of the Church as Christ's continued presence is not verified by baroque and modern writers, but by the liturgy itself. In it, the Christian meets God as He is, not as He is imagined to be or desired. The understanding of God in the liturgy may be deepened or hallowed by previous generations, but the sensus cannot be changed. The literal encounter with God liturgically, but not exclusively in the Sacraments, finds confirmation in the oldest texts of the Church. On Holy Saturday the deacon, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, sings of "this night," not "a night we remember," as the night of the passage to salvation. Then the cynosures of pre-Incarnational salvation history are recounted by the lectors, the story of the fall of both Man and creation. Then, water, a symbol of creation and the fundamental element of creation itself, is blessed and made into the matter of our salvation in Christ, Who Himself first made it holy in creating it and then re-sanctified it by seeking St. John's baptism in the Jordan. He brought the world back into Himself in that act and segmented a new creation that the baptized join. So water is blessed and sprinkled on the faithful. Catechumens join that new creation in Baptism themselves. This transcends decoration around simple Sacraments of Baptism and Communion. Indeed, it is this liturgical context that those Sacraments make sense. The re-visitation of the divine mysteries continues in the morning with the Mass, "I am risen and am still with you." The Church uses the psalm in the present tense and does not adapt it to a commemorative tone. Similarly, the collect of Pascha refers to the Resurrection as having transpired hodierna. The Byzantine rite also speaks of the Resurrection as a current reality, singing countless times "Christ is risen from the dead...." On Holy Saturday, Pascha, and the other Sundays, ferial days, and feasts of the year, the faithful see the Trinity, the Sacraments, and the Saints as they really are and are united to heaven in the sacred rites, when God comes down from heaven and gives the Christian a glimpse above in a heavenly tongue.

"All of Paradise is close to the altar when I celebrate Mass. The angels
attend my Mass in legions. The Virgin assists me."

To those who think this "high" interpretation inappropriate or misguided, the author poses the question: why consecrate a church? The objection to interpreting the liturgy as a very real thing which imbues the sensus fidelium by bringing the faithful to the sacred acts of Christ usually rests on the misguided belief that a religious act is either real or symbolic, but never both. Yet Baptism is both real and symbolic. It symbolizes creation, restoration, the eighth day, the Divine Adoption, and the cleansing of spiritual dirt. And still, it actually accomplishes all these things and incorporates a person into the Body of Christ, the Church. The Cathedral of Our Savior at the Lateran palace in Rome was the first church ever to be consecrated in the sense that churches are consecrated. It is not a Sacrament and the rejection of a high view of the liturgy would necessarily elicit one to interpret the actions as a series of exorcisms and drawn-out, pious actions of instruction. Does the church then become a house of God? Can there be such a thing as a house of God in a post-Mosaic Law Church without the authority of the Church to develop and deepen its tradition to allow for such an act of consecration? The Church does indeed symbolize the Temple of Jerusalem and the future New Jerusalem of heaven, but it is actually a very real house of God where, as in heaven, God lives and dwells and, for a few hours a week, acts. If the liturgy is anything less, then it is just bad literature.

The purpose of the liturgy, especially during the great periods of the year, is to unite the faithful to God so that they might know Him and save their souls. He gathers them to Himself and to His new Jerusalem, the Church, and to His Body, again, the Church. The belief and the sensus fidelium of the Church is diffused among the various rites and usages the Church enjoins and has practiced through out the ages. Christ's Body, the Church on earth, is much like His physical body when He was present among us in flesh in that it is organic and prone to growth. I recall years ago reading interviews with both a prominent sedevacantist and a priest of the FSSPX. Both were asked if a pope could create a new rite of Mass and both answered "In theory, yes, but the New Mas is bad, so we reject it." I think a more prudent reply excludes the possibility that the pope, or any bishop, can create a new liturgy or discard large portions of the old liturgy. Many of the additions to the Roman rite over the years—introductory rites in the Office, hymns, prayers before the altar, the offertory, the monastic choir ceremonies, the Eastern feasts imported etc—were just that, additions, neither replacements nor fabrications. If we concede this point, then we lose part of the sensus fidelium and instead embrace the inner-mind of some dodgy bishop. Worse yet, we lose the greater meaning of the mysteries and lessen the Sacraments, turning them into transmission channels for grace and nothing more. To retain the sensus fidelium and keep the faith, we ought to guard the liturgy of the Church with Davidic fortitude lest we embrace Christ as we want Him to be and not as He actually is.

My fellow Americans: Happy Thanksgiving. Fast tomorrow!

The New Mass & "Paschal Mystery"

So what is the deal with traditionalists, the new liturgy, and the "Paschal mystery?" Fr. Zed has recently posted several things that indicate Cardinal Muller and Bishop Bernard Fellay are still talking with some regularity and that hopes for "reconciliation"—whatever that would mean—are not necessarily dashed with Francis' papacy. One commenting reader said on several of these posts that the FSSPX must accept something called "the Paschal mystery" in order to be reconciled. What is the Paschal mystery? 

To the best of my knowledge, Lefebvre's Fraternity does observe the Resurrection on the Sunday after Holy Week. No internet search yields clear results as to what the Paschal mystery is, but it does reveal a few articles from the Fraternity's website and another elsewhere by Fr Peter Scott about the problems of "Paschal mystery" theology in the Pauline Mass. The objection seems to be that the "Paschal mystery" is too focused on God's love and kindness, too little how offended He is by sin and demanding of propitiatory sacrifice to placate Him. The last part of this is a very sore spot for traditionalists whose view of tradition narrowly corresponds 19th and early 20th century Catholicism. Session 22 of Trent was crystal clear that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. People do seem to forget why. If the Mass is an anamnesis of Calvary, the same sacrifice of the Cross is the sacrifice of the Mass. It was a sacrifice for our sins which is made present again on numerous altars throughout the world daily. Calvary was an act of love. We are not Puritans who are aroused by the likes of Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, a God so offended by sin that He dangles over the fires of hell as a spider dangles from his thread. The reduction of God's hatred of sin to a debt repayment alone, ignoring the proactive love of God the Father, gives one the impression that God is infinitely offended, that we have an enormous debt to pay, and that Jesus was the only one who could pay it. Why is the need to make reparation to the Father and to do penance in contradiction to God's love? Why are the two exclusive to each other? While certain prayers of the Mass do emphasize propitiation (the Roman offertory, the Placeat tibi at the end of Mass), a greater number of the orations emphasize love, teaching, and forgiveness. Liturgically, the Church's mind is that the two are inseparable, neither contradictory nor separate things.

The Eastern rites are far more Paschal than the Latin rites. In the Byzantine tradition, the troparion and kantikon on most Sundays is about the Resurrection. During the equivalent of the Preface, the celebrant says "You brought us from nothingness into being, and when we had fallen raised us up again, and left nothing undone until You brought us to heaven and granted us Your future kingdom." The nearest thing to propitiation in the Greek tradition might be "We offer You Your own from what is Your own, from all and for the sake of all." If we are to apply St. Vincent of Lerins' test that for something to be a teaching of the Church it must be believed always, everywhere, and by everyone, the idea of the Eucharist as an exclusively, or even primarily, act of propitiatory satisfaction fails. Canons I and III of Trent, session 22, condemn the idea that the Mass is a human act of praise that does not have sacrificial value to God, which is absolutely heresy. To limit our understanding to a condemnation though is narrow if not dangerous.

Again, not knowing much about the "New Theology" in vogue during the Pius XII and Paul VI years, I cannot comment of the "Paschal mystery," but as a Catholic I can say something about the exclusion of love from the focus of the liturgy. Perhaps this "Paschal mystery" idea was a Trojan horse to water down the sacrificial aspects of the Roman Mass and the inconvenient difficulties of judgment, sin, and hell. If so, commentators should write with more perspective.

Latin Offertory

source: newliturgicalmovement.org

An interesting and brief article on the history of the various offertory prayers used by priests through the history of the Latin Church. Well worth the five minutes to read about the creation and spread of offertory rites throughout the Middle Ages.

Pentecost: Old Rite, EF & OF

A correspondent and I were recently musing over the abolition of the vivacious, rich, and Paschal-like Roman vigil Mass of Pentecost in the "EF" rite, the 1962 liturgy. As one familiar with both the Pauline and the Pian/Johannine books will know, the 1970 books removed much ancient material and yet, in a twist of irony, re-inserted some other texts and rites that were cast aside under Pius XII. Pentecost exemplifies this queer phenomenon.

In 1951 Pius XII created the Easter Vigil as we know it today. He and his commission revised it the following year. Originally the Easter Vigil eliminated Vespers entirely in favor of a Communion verse. The renovators put psalm 116 back into the rite in 1952, but turned it into Lauds (????) and scrapped Compline, Mattins, and [real] Lauds. Also in 1952 celebration of the Pentecost vigil was automatically suppressed whenever the Easter Vigil had been celebrated, likely to avert Catholics from the fact that the sacred rites of Pentecost resembled most closely the sacred rites of Holy Saturday. Everyone would favor the shorter, easier Pian novelty, making the elimination of the old rite's unique ceremonies seamless.

Now the Pauline Missal allowed for an "extended" Pentecost vigil Mass with four Old Testament prophecies, something of a restoration in principle, although given the very different Ordo Missae one can hardly call it a complete restoration. Buyer's remorse?

Then there is the elimination of the octave in the Pauline rite, preserved in the 1962 rite. It was the second most important, and certainly the most beautiful, octave after that of Pascha. My correspondent did note the logic in axing the octave, that Pentecost is the 50th day and not the 51st, 52nd, 53rd etc. I would respond by noting that an octave is an extended celebration of one feast and that Pentecost, above any other feast, deserves an octave celebration. It is the Holy Spirit creating and re-creating for the first time since the creation of the world. The Resurrection happened on the eighth day of the week and Pentecost, as I said two posts ago, makes the Resurrection permanent in the world. The plunging of the Paschal fire into the Baptismal font means all who bath in the waters of regeneration are plunged into the Resurrection. We eventually agreed upon the matter.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why must we have either the old Ordo and octave with no vigil or the new Ordo with a vigil and no octave? Were I a parish priest, and I am certainly not, I would not have the slightest hesitation about observing the un-reformed vigil and the full octave!

Book Review: Interpreting the Liturgy, Nicholas Cabasilas, the Divine Liturgy & the Roman Rite

During the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire Eastern Roman culture underwent a resurgence in art and philosophy which was both introspective and nostalgic. As the Serbs and Ottomans shrank the outer realms of the remnant of the Roman Empire, the spiritual eye turned inward, towards things of religion. During these last years the Greek Church experienced the Hesychast movement and the accompanying Christian renaissance. New writings on religious subject proliferated as did scholarship of past texts. Ironically, this new found vibrancy served to stagnate Byzantine Christianity in the form of the age, much as Counter-Reformation legalism did with Roman Christianity. Men like St. Gregory Palamas, Mark of Ephesus, Nilus Cabasilas, and others created the expression of Greek Christianity that now survives as the Orthodox Church.

During this period the Byzantine liturgy evolved from a long, mystical, public action to a symbolic action adaptable to various settings, perhaps the reason why Byzantine Christianity, although rarely missionary is never the less durable under persecution. This process involved a spiritual imagination. An example of this transformation can be seen in the world of iconography. The icon of Christ above currently resides on Mount Sinai, but originates in 6th century Constantinople. In contrast the icon is fairly indicative of modern non-Russian iconography. Which looks more realistic? Precisely. Contrary to the wide-spread belief that icons are unrealistic, ancient icons were highly realistic and attempted to give hue and color to the flesh of Christ and the saints. The inward seeking renaissance, like most revivals, romanticized the past to some extent and made the icons less realistic and more mystical. The same could be said of the Divine Liturgy. Many practical things became imbued with spiritual meaning. For instance, the bread to be consecrated was hidden under a small cage called an asterisk (used in Papal Mass, too) which protected it from the cloth which covered the elements. Our feature today interpreted the asterisk as a mystical symbol of the star which covered over Bethlehem during the Nativity of the Lord. What is wrong with this interpretation? Nothing at all, and that is something liturgical critics must recognize. Praxis derives from meaning and the synthesis of various elements of rite clarifies that meaning.

Today let us consider Interpretation of the Divine Liturgy by the Greek saint Nicholas Cabasilas. Nicholas was born in the early 14th century in Thessalonica and lived most of his life as a layman. Contrary to what some believe, he was never a bishop. Robert Taft SJ believes that later in life he may have lived as a monk in Constantinople. His brief work, Interpretation, is hardly long enough to be considered a book, but we will review his essay and use it as a conversation piece to discuss the Roman liturgy.

He begins by taking the liturgy as a given, as something received and to be esteemed in virtue of what God does during its course:

"The prayers, chants the scriptural readings and all those things that are performed and said during the liturgy aid this work and purpose. In these it is as if we are seeing the whole life of Christ depicted in painting, from beginning to end. Because sanctification of the gifts, the sacrifice itself, in other words, proclaims His death, resurrection, and ascension. Since these gifts are changed into the Lord's body itself, into that which was crucified resurrected and ascended. Whatever precedes the sacrifice, reveals the events that happened before the Lord's death, that is His coming into the world, His public appearance, His miracles and teaching. The things that follow the sacrifice, symbolize the Holy Spirit's descent on the Apostles, people returning to God and their communion with Him."

Nicholas first considers why bread and wine are used as the elements of the Eucharistic liturgy. He concludes that it is because these two things are essential foods, for "when one offers food, it is like offering life itself" because life depends on material sustenance. Christ "wanted us to offer Him temporal life, and He would offer us back eternal life." Yet the Eucharist is not merely an offering of bread and wine. It is a sacrifice which remembers, in the most mystical and vividly real ways possible, the sacrifice of the Cross:

"How shall we remember the Lord in the Liturgy and what will we narrate about Him? Maybe those things that prove He was the almighty God? That, in other words, He resurrected the dead, granted light to the blind, commanded the winds to cease, fed thousands of people with a few breads? No, Christ did not ask us to remember these things, but rather those things that revealed the weakness, that is the crucifixion, the passion, the death. Because the passion was more necessary than the miracles. The sufferings of our Christ cause salvation and resurrection, whereas His miracles prove only that He is the true Savior."

Contextually, the writer comments on the proskomide, the rite by which the bread and wine were prepared in the sacristy of Hagia Sophia for the Divine Liturgy, or later in a table to the left of the altar in the Holy Place. The priest cuts out a large piece from the loaf called the "Lamb," symbolizing Christ, the innocent "led to the slaughter" (Isaiah 53:7). The prayers over the Lamb do not consecrate, but prayers such as "The Lamb of God is sacrificed, Who takes away the sins of the world" clearly anticipate the sacrifice much as the pre-Pauline offertory prayers did in the Roman rite.

The Divine Liturgy commences with the familiar "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen." Then follows the Great Litany of Peace. The first petition is "For peace from on high and the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord." Why? Nicholas writes that the purpose is to ask for the Christian idea of peace to prevail among the congregation. Peace "does not only [mean] peace between us, when in other words, we do not have animosity against others, but also peace towards our own selves, when, in other words, our heat does not accuse us of anything."

Then follows the antiphons, taken from the psalms. These are both instructional and prophetic. They sanctify and prepare the believer for the mystery and harkens the believer to Christ's life before His ministry, when He would have prayed to the Father with the psalms of David, and even further back to those who awaited the coming of Christ. The writer underscores the importance of psalms, texts of prophecy, being sung during the synaxis. They could not be sung in full during the second half of the liturgy because Christ, at that moment, has come.

The antiphons give way to the small entrance and the Trisagion. Then the faithful come to the readings. Nicholas reflects that the deacon instructs "Wisdom" and the priest "Let us be attentive" because "he reminds the believers of the wisdom with which they must participate in the Liturgy. These are the good thoughts that those have who are rich in faith and foreign to everything human. It is truly necessary for us to attend the Liturgy with suitable thoughts, if we want, of course, not to spend our time in vain." Could there be a better definition of participatio actuosa?

A sermon traditionally follows the Gospel and then comes the great entrance and the "symbol of faith," the Creed. Nicholas' commentary on this section again indicates the spiritualizing of once practical actions. The exhortation "The doors! The doors! In wisdom, let us be attentive" once expelled the catechumens and shut the doors behind them, restricting the miracle of the consecration to the faithful. Nicholas interprets it as meaning "Open wide all the doors, that is, your mouths and ears."

The Thrice Holy Hymn is then sung followed by the anaphora. The beginning of the anaphora is a thanksgiving for all that was done for mankind's sake. The "Lord's words" from the Last Supper are repeated as a justification and narration as to why the Eucharist is celebrated. This gratitude culminates in the priest's turning towards the Father and saying "We offer You Your own from what is Your own, from all and for the sake of all." It is the offering of Christ, without human change or touch. The Father is given the most precious thing He gave mankind, His Son. This divestment from human intervention is critical to Nicholas, who writes "Neither is this manner of worship our own intervention, but You taught it to us and You urged us to worship You in this manner. For this reason, all that we are offering You is completely Your own." The priest, who Nicholas calls the "liturgist," then invokes the Holy Spirit to change the species. The commentator's reflections are entirely familiar to Roman ears at this point: "The sacrifice took place! The great victim and slaughter which was sacrificed for the sake of the world is found before our eyes, on the Holy Altar Table! Because the bread is no longer a type of the Master's body. It is the all holy Body of the Lord itself."

The Holy Spirit is given to the priest as a strength, a confirming grace to perform the divine mysteries. The priest is the servant of the Holy Spirit, not offering anything of his own. Consequentially, the validity of the Sacrament, Nicholas writes, has nothing to do with the priest's personal condition or worthiness. Indeed, the change of the species into the Sacred elements can happen in spite of the priest's sinfulness. The priest, before preparing for his own Communion, shows the Body to the faith, almost as to say "Here is the Bread of life! You see it, so run to commune of it. Not everyone, however, but whoever is holy. Because holy things are allowed only for holy people." By "holy" he means the baptized.

The priest pours warm water into the chalice, symbolizing the descent of the Holy Spirit into the Church, the Body of Christ. Then comes the Communion of the congregation:

"Christ's Body and Blood are true food and true drink. When one communes of them, they are not altered into the human body, as happens with customary foods, but the human body is altered into them, just as when iron comes into contact with fire, it also becomes fire. It does not make the fire iron."

The people communicate. The priest gives the dismissal and the blessing. The faithful partake of antidoron, a blessed bread left over from when the matter for the Eucharist was cut out prior to the Liturgy.

Here, if anywhere, is an argument against the typical "East vs. West" badinage spouted by elitists on both ends. Roman and the Greek Church were both under one cultural and political system for centuries, so one would expect the liturgy and the liturgical theology to be very similar. Indeed, their Holy Week rites were virtually identical until the deforms of 1955. Common concepts abound: the Eucharist as a sacrifice instructed by God the Father of God the Son, Communion as sanctification by union with Christ, participation as a frame of thought and not just mouthing the words, the priest as the servant of God and not his own person, and Christ as a victim on the altar. Particularly worthy of attention is the concept of the priest as servant of the Holy Spirit. The old Roman consecration rite for bishops revolved around the phrase "Receive the Holy Spirit," which many thought was the formula of ordination until Pius XII decided it was something else. Even the phrase Pius picked and the formula his successor Pope Paul VI promulgated reflect a similar theology of priesthood—ironic given the 20th century reformers' efforts to further distinguish the priesthood from the episcopacy. 

A point of difference between the two is that while the vibrant East spent the waning years of Byzantium spiritualizing the practical in its praxis, the Roman Church, just as liturgically vibrant and alive, both retained ancient practices and added new ones with specifically spiritual aims. There is not, nor was there ever, a "practical" point to the prayers before the altar or the Johannine prologue at the end of the Mass. These elements were enhancements which completed the Ordo Missae, which perfected it as a literal symbol of the work of Christ, beginning with sinners pleading for mercy, the Incarnation amid cries of "Glory be to God in the highest," the preaching ministry of Christ, the Cross and Resurrection, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the sending of the Apostles into the world. As with the practical elements in the Byzantine rite, many integral parts of the Roman Mass came to their place by happenstance. The Gloria was once an awkward interpolation into the Mass reserved to the Pope. Yet, like the Byzantine liturgical praxis, it became something coherent with an underlying spiritual order which reflects the work of Christ. Why can the Roman Church not do the same with its Ordo Missae and, particularly, with the rites of Holy Week and the Divine Office.

The growth of the Roman liturgy during this period remains something of a sore spot to me precisely because it stopped with Trent. The Office of the Blessed Virgin, the Office of the Dead, the rites of Pontifical Mass, the ceremonies of Holy Week, the hourly and seasonal pattern of the liturgy, and the synthesis between these features with art and music all occurred from late antiquity through the high Middle Ages. Many local rites kept parts of the pre-Gregory VII Roman rite, such as Sarum having more than one psalm verse in the Introit or Lyons retaining use of the Apocalyptic seven candles held by acolytes, while fostering new liturgical expressions based on a reverence for the received Order. This, if anything, is what Geoffrey Hull called "authentic" liturgy in his masterful Banished Heart. The liturgical fallout also underscores Hull's thesis that the Rome-Constantinople schism has been an unmitigated disaster for the Roman liturgy, having lost the "heart" to the "head."

Trent did not smash all of this to bits. Trent simply froze the liturgy in place, or at least chilled it. Some trimming was due, such as feasts of local saints and excessive local use of octaves, but was too much lost in the process? The liturgy became something administered by an office in Rome rather than something held dear by the various intimate communities (dioceses and monasteries) that used it. The liturgy fell out of use and no one opposed the new Divine Office of 1911. Some opposed, rightly, the Pian Holy Week. Then of course came the Pauline Mass the following decade. Could any of this have happened had not the old liturgy froze and then shattered like grass on a cold New England morning? The greatest of these ironies is that the Greek liturgy changed quite a bit when strong authority existed in the Byzantine Church and the liturgy has remained ossified since that authority disappeared, whereas the Roman liturgy thrived locally without centralized authority, but was stilled and killed with it.

For deeper thoughts about how to read the liturgy spiritually, for an understanding of liturgical theology, and for material on the commonalities of Byzantine and Roman liturgy read Nicholas Cabasilas' Interpretation of the Divine Liturgy, available online for free.