Marian Lent II

Here are today's chants for the Akathist to the Mother of God, the hymn sung in Byzantine parishes on Fridays of Lent to celebrate the Annunciation.

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"It would be foolish not to recognize that placing sacramental discourse prior to, above, and in a role which subordinates theology in the modern academic sense is a difficult if not incomprehensible move to many people. We generally think of the two sorts of discourse the other way around, theology coming first and sacramental discourse very much later as a possibly implied excursus off the former. Sacramental discourse in fact is often thought of as theological adiaphora best practiced by those with a taste for banners, ceremonial, and arts and crafts. It is regarded as an academically less than disciplined swamp in which Anglican high churchmen, Orthodox bishops, and many if not all Roman Catholics and other are hopelessly mired."

"The tradition has never seen the Church as having any purpose or work different from Christ's own. The Church's concerns have always been with the Gospel translated into act, matter, time, and space, with the various cultures the Church has touched being renovated as an inevitable result not directly stiven for. Not only is there little conscious reflection on culture as such in the pre-Renaissance Church, but there is surprisingly little ex professo writing about the Church itself distinct from World and City. Thomas Aquinas, certainly one of the greatest theologians of the Church East or West, wrote no self-contained tract on ecclesiology. Rather, what he does say about the Church is almost wholly contained in the third part of his Summa Theologiae, which is about the sacraments. It is as though until the modern era, the Church was considered simply as the city center of a restored World, occupied with doing the business of God by faith in Christ. It is now necessary to illustrate what this means in practice."

On Liturgical Theology, Fr. Aidan Kavanagh, OSB

Another EF Mass from 1965

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This one sends shivers down my newly Texan spine. An EF Mass from the 1965 film Change of Habit, featuring an offertory procession, local inculturation, and the sacred music of Elvis Presley. In a nod to modernity the stuffy old doubting priest at the end concludes his opposition to the renewal with the words: "He works in mysterious ways." One is tempted to thank God that this was not a real Mass, but the fact is that this sort of thing happened throughout the United States in the 1960s and beyond. In some places it still does. The relevant part begins at 2:23.

Modern Arians, the Fathers & the Trinity?

When first reading the Fathers of the Church one may be tempted to smile at the quaintness of those phenomenological writers of old and to congratulate more recent theologians for advancing from simplistic and obvious tenets of faith, like the Divinity of Jesus, to more complex and intellectually challenging fields like the mechanisms of justification and the temporal exchanges of merit concerning purgatory. Vatican I quoted St. Vincent of Lerins' Commonitory which gives a brief exposé on the development of doctrine, a concept which also influenced John Henry Newman in his conversion. 

However, intellectual fulfillment and spiritual piety will profit very little from advanced schools of theology in the modern day. Knowing the concept of a sacramental form and how to deduce it for Confirmation will not profit the soul of modern man, whose religious experience rarely extends beyond an occasional Christmas Mass and whose education is confined to the dullest and most monotonous of topics (specialized training, business courses, IT etc). What could appeal to these people?

The Church Fathers are the most obvious choice. The Fathers, particularly the Apostolic Fathers, did not rely as heavily on technical terms, particular philosophical traditions, and an established Christian culture as did the Scholastics, the casuists, the neo-Scholastics, and the manualists. Their own culture was marked by either persecution or confusion. A few of them came from neo-Platonist backgrounds (St. Augustine, Origen, and St. Dionysius), but even those writers' influence is inessential to accepting their claims. Another advantage of the Fathers is that they did not live in an orthodox Christian society. They were either persecuted by the Empire, fighting heresy, and persecuted by heretics. Their appeals were to laity in homilies and letters, and to other thinkers in tracts, although even their educated audiences were not "theologians" in the later sense of the word. Consequentially their language, framework, and approach is much more intuitive for modern readers, appealing to instinct rather than specialized traditions of logic. Also, their claims are easier to check. Every American home owns some sort of Bible and dozens of Bibles are available for free online in English alone. Finding a chapter of Mark is much easier for the lax modern man than finding and understanding the Common Doctor.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Fathers is that the bulk of their tracts and polemics focus on the consubstantiality of the Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Church may have settled this matter in the year 325AD, but Arianism is far from gone. One might say that the error of Arius is as prevalent now as it was in the time of Diocletian, and Christianity is more hated now than it has been in any time since Diocletian. Why should Catholics focus their sights on the Fathers and the Trinity? Because sacramental forms, transubstantiation, indulgences, propitiation, and Papal infallibility are all quite useless without a proper understanding of Who God is and Who Jesus Christ is. Case in point a dear friend of mine.

My friend, let us pretend his name is George, grew up in a gay household, was nominally Catholic, never received any form of religious instruction whatsoever, served 15 years in the military, was stationed at Ground Zero for the two weeks following 9/11, received a very prized but specialized education, and now works in the political sphere to promote American imperialism. What he has kept from the Church is an understanding of guilt. George is a good man and a good friend, but his understanding of Christ and Christianity is quite troubled. Like most modern Americans he accepts the existence of God and calls Jesus the "Son of God," but cannot identify Him with God. "Jesus" is George's "buddy" while "God" is George's maker. I once shared with George that haunting Byzantine petition "That the end of our life may be painless, unashamed, Christian, and peaceful, and for a good answer before the awesome judgment seat of Christ, let us ask! Grant this, O Lord!" "God" will judge George, but "Jesus" will intervene and assure George of his salvation.

Unlike the Arians, whose theological malice existed among a world familiar with Scripture and the Sacraments, George has no religious education and has been trained by the world to have no familiarity with the humanities or with the religious imagination. George has been molded in ignorance, but ignorance will not split the Trinity into three separate creatures. When I shared with George that eternal sentence of Our Lord's "Before Abraham was I am" (John 8:58) and intimated that, with no material objects Jesus could not have been fashioned but rather was "begotten," the poor man was horrified. He has thought, and might still, that "Jesus" was a super-special "Son" made by "God" for our benefit. The concept of Three Divine Persons in One God nearly caused his mechanistic, rational mind to explode—quite an accomplishment considering George's high IQ. He pondered the matter for a short time and then, as the world trains modern men to do, he swept the matter under the rug and forgot about it.

I have attempted the rationalized explanation of the Trinity before with George and gotten no where with it. A mind trained in logic normally can only function according to the assumptions accepted in its era. Although right wing politically, the assumptions of Goerge's era descend from the materialism of Marx, Engels, and the Capitalists, and from the science of Darwin, and from the pseudo-scientific "social sciences" of economists such as Keynes and the neo-classicists. The best path in my experience is to appeal to more basic and human elements when discussing the Divine, elements shared by most people. My conversations with the un-churched and un-believing are the primary sources of my frustration with legalistic theology which I voice here so often. St. Gregory Nazianzen's concept of the Trinity based on the process of thinking—wherein the Father is the mind, the Son is speech and words, and the Holy Spirit the breath flowing from the mouth—has been far more successful with George than most methods of teaching the Trinity since then. Similarly, explaining the Incarnation to George became easier with that aphorism from St. Athanasius, "God became man so that man might become God." After assuring himself that God had not smited us for such a "disturbing" thought, he began to understand the Church's teaching on the two natures of Christ and on the Trinity. Is this obsession over the Trinity too harsh given George's upbringing? Perhaps, but we Catholics must not forget that the un-revised Creed of Nicaea ended with "But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they are condemned by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."

As the world becomes increasingly secular few people will have the concerns of past times. In 1960 America, when Ike was cleaning out his desk draws to make room for Kennedy, most people asked whether the Catholics or the protestants were right about what Christianity is. These days the few curious people are asking if God even exists. Those who accept the existence of God construct a fitting God in their minds and a fitting Jesus, too. Lost in all this is the Trinity and the Jesus of the New Testament. Lost is God as He is. Before we can discuss the Immaculate Conception we must be able to communicate the most basic and absolutely fundamental parts of the faith, above all, Who God is. The Fathers can help.

A Marian Lent

The Byzantine tradition dedicates the first four Fridays of Great Lent to anticipating the Annunciation of the Nativity of Christ to the Mother of God, Mary. On Friday evenings at Compline Byzantine churches will sing an Akathist, a "hymn" consisting of opening rites, psalm 50, a few canons, the incensation of an icon of the Blessed Mother, and finally a series of chants which vary by week. This Friday, the first of Lent, we will sing the chants below. They are some of the most profound and beautiful liturgical texts I have ever seen and should help us peer into what the liturgy should be. The chants here are taken from a Melkite service book I borrowed from my previous pastor. Unfortunately I could not find any non-choral settings of the Akathist to publish here, but you can make up your own chant if you wish to sing these (someone made it up once, right?).

 

 

The Danger of Orientalism

Orientalism. The tendency of Westerners to look upon Eastern cultures with a derisive spirit and to feign a paternal interest in those cultures. British and American imperialists caused untold damage invading, pillaging, and re-constructing Asia along the lines those nations thought fitting for those lesser peoples. 19th century Americans spoke of their "little yellow brothers" in California. England more or less created the current debacle in the Middle East by agglomerating religiously and culturally diverse areas into single nations, such as Iraq, presuming that these novel nations would function according to the Western model. The United States took that bad situation and made it much, much worse.

St. Birinius. A well done modern rood screen.

As a Roman Catholic fond of the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine liturgy I attempt to taxonomize what the Roman Church can actually learn from or has in common with her Eastern relatives and what is distinct from the Roman way. Without this distinction we can create our own liturgical, theological, or disciplinary Iraq.

One facet of Greek Christianity that attracts traditional Roman Catholics is that the Greeks have managed to retain the essentials of their liturgical tradition, even fostering it in some places while retaining vestiges of other practices elsewhere. Some of these retentions and developments match the Roman tradition remarkably well. The sanctuary in the first millennium was veiled from sight for most of the Liturgy. In the Roman Church the veil disappeared, but the frame around it remained and the addition of sculpture and paintings transformed these frames into the Rood Screen. The Byzantine Church did not lose the veil until the 14th or 15th century, when, like in the West, artwork metamorhized it into the Iconostasis. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation destroyed the Rood Screen and, outside of some localized neo-gothic interest, it has not yet become common again in Latin churches. The separation of the sanctuary and the nave reflects a deeper common theology of the temple, wherein the fallen world is the narthex, the nave is earth restored—where God's renewed people worship, and the sanctuary is heaven. In the liturgy we join the saints and angels in praising the Holy Trinity but, owing to our lingering faults, we must do so through a veil until the end of time, when the heavenly liturgy described in the Apocalypse becomes true for us. The veil/Rood/Iconostasis is that divide and points toward a deep convergence between Greek and Latin theology, liturgy, and sensum fidelium. 

Elsewhere on this blog I have written about the common features of the Byzantine and un-reformed Roman Triduum rites (namely here). Those rites manifest a profound connection between the Roman and Byzantine understandings of Christ's redemptive work, of Baptism, of time, of the Eucharist, and of culture. Ignorance of these rites for a century or more, followed by their consignment to the dustbin by Pius XII, could perhaps be ameliorated by paying heed to the rites and liturgical theology of the Byzantine tradition, where our Roman tradition is still used (!). Indeed, I can conceive of no ecumenical gesture more genuine, lasting, and heartfelt than a revival of the old Holy Week in the Roman rite. 

And yet not all infusion of theological Hellenism into the Latin Church has been successful or even wise. The West could do with a heavy dose of theosis, appreciation of the Office, and the emphasis on experience that the East has to offer, perhaps a partial antidote to liturgical minimalism. Yet more than a few introductions of Eastern theology have been an utter disaster because they are not points of convergence.

The most obvious example is the theology of the Eucharist as a meal. This tradition, which neither excludes nor opposes the theology of the Eucharist as Sacrifice, goes back to the Passover (Pascha) meal of the Old Testament when the Israelites ate a sacrificed lamb and were delivered from death. At the Last Supper Christ instituted a perpetual eating of His perfect Sacrifice. The Roman Church, for whatever reason, chose to give special emphasis on the sacrificial aspect of Christ's command while the Greek Church kept a more holistic approach. In the Divine Liturgy we sing at Communion "Make me this day a partaker in Your Mystical Supper, O Son of God," still sung in the Ambrosian rite on Mandy Thursday. When many 20th century liturgical reformers became aware of the balanced Greek approach they assumed it was similar to the protestant "Lord's Supper," during which a president administers bread and wine to people as a memorial of the Last Supper. Even the ubiquitous Gregory Dix somewhat admitted to this nonsense when he sided with the then-trendy opinion that Mass was celebrated versus populum in the ancient Church. The reformers did not dig deeper into the historical ground of the liturgy and came away from their reading with the assumption that the Easterners had the ancient meal practice, that the protestants had recovered it, and that we Westerners still made use of a clericalized and paganized orientation.

A current occasion of orientalism is the hotly debated topic of Communion for the divorced-and-remarried. On his plane ride back from World Youth Day the Pope mused over the Eastern Orthodox practice of re-marrying the divorced and admitting them to the Sacraments through the economia of the Church. Cardinal Kasper no doubt has this very practice in mind when he speaks of God's mercy upon those who have failed in their marriages. What neither the Pope nor Cardinal Kasper mention, with any significant prominence, is that the Eastern Orthodox approach relies heavily on penance. A second or third Orthodox marriage is a penitential ceremony with no blessing or crowning. A common Orthodox saying concerning marriages is that they "Bless the first, witness the second, and tolerate the third." While I believe that the Orthodox practice is a departure from Apostolic practice and Church teaching, it is certainly grounded in a healthy spirit of self-deprecation and penance for sins. The Western Church does very little with penance these days and without penance admission of the divorced and remarried to Communion would only further erode the Church's teaching on marriage. The modern promoters of divorce and remarriage have no interest in penance. They want a justification for admitting the divorced and remarried to the Sacraments without the booming voice of their consciences in the backs of their heads. They look upon one practice in order to justify something entirely different, much like the Paschalism of the Pauline Mass, which replaces the old Roman emphasis on Christ's Passion, but does not replace it with the Byzantine joy of living in God's light.

Lastly, there exists a danger that the Roman Church sells itself short when it engages in orientalism. Did not St. Irenaeus write that "it is a matter of necessity that every Church agree with [Rome]" on account of its "superior origin," which empowered it to continue the Apostolic teachings? In the second half the 20th century a fascination with Byzantine Christianity arose during which some theologians assumed that whatever was Eastern was older. Byzantine theologian Robert Taft calls this approach "romantic rubbish," although for different reasons than I would. The Byzantine Divine Liturgy, particularly the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, did not solidify in its current form until the 7th or 8th century. Particularly interesting is the acquisition of the powerful epiclesis during this period. In the early second millennium the Church of Constantinople dropped its cathedral psalter in favor of the Greek monastic psalter. One could say that prior to the 20th century the Roman rite was set in its essentials (the Office, the Order of Mass, and the Canon of Mass) well before the Byzantine Church and was allowed to grow long after, not freezing its practices until after the Council of Trent. 

We Roman Catholics share much with the Byzantine tradition, but we ought not pick out bits of Greek practice and theology willy nilly, disregarding the very real contrasts between the two. Without prudence, adoption of Eastern practices could distort what we do not have in common and ignore the very real things we do.

Interesting Lecture

Above is an interesting lecture delivered by Dr. Laurence Hemming on the role of temple worship in Catholic liturgical life, particularly during the Middle Ages. Dr. Hemming, who is a deacon with the archdiocese of Westminster and who edited the excellent T&T Clark series on liturgy, draws interesting parallels between the Jewish temple system and the liturgical life that emerged in the Roman rite and how that liturgy was the "heart beat" of the local city. He mentions Mormonism (Latter Day Saints) often because he is lecturing in Utah (90% Mormon) and, sadly for us, Mormons are among the few other than Margaret Barker who still study the influence of the temple system in contemporary worship. The lecture makes me want to tell my local ordinary to found a chapter of canons and violate the Council of Baltimore! Anyway, click play and have a listen!