Abbot Primate of the Benedictines: “Mass in the Old Rite Can No Longer Be Eliminated”

We are very pleased to note the following from an interview which the Benedictine Abbot Primate, Dom Jeremias Schröder, gave to the German Catholic website katholische.de, which was published on Saturday. Dom Schröder comes from the archabbey of St Ottilien in Upper Bavaria; he was elected the 11th abbot primate on September 14, 2024. By a happy providence or coincidence, this is also the date that Summorum Pontificum became legally active in 2007, and the birthday of the Holy Father, Pope Leo.

When asked whether the co-existence of the traditional and modern rites created conflict among the Benedictines, Dom Schröder stated, “I don’t see a conflict there. Among us Benedictines, the traditional and modern liturgies coexist harmoniously. In our entire order, we have about ten abbeys that celebrate according to the old rite, most of them in France. These predominantly belong to the Congregation of Solesmes, where, however, the majority of monasteries use the new missal. Starting with the Abbey of Fontgombault, a group of monasteries has emerged that celebrate according to the old rite. They are fully integrated into their congregation. Then there is the abbey of Le Barroux with its daughter houses, which was initially Lefebvrian in orientation. After the illicit episcopal consecrations of 1988, the monastery returned to full communion with Rome and is directly under my authority as Abbot Primate. And then there is the community in Norcia. We all treat each other with respect.”

Then, when asked whether in this regard, the Benedictines “can serve as a model for the entire Church?”, Dom Schröder replied, “In a certain sense, yes, because we already practice this peaceful coexistence. I am very curious to see how Pope Leo will address the issue. After Pope Benedict opened doors here, it will no longer be possible to completely eradicate the old form. We have brothers and sisters who have built their religious lives on this form of prayer and Mass. This has now also gained a place in the Church and should be permitted, at least in some areas.” (In both paragraphs, this is Google’s automatic translation.) 

The text I have bolded above is of course an editorial “my emphasis”, but it is not just my emphasis. It is also the headline for the interview chosen by both katholische.de itself, and by Avvenire, the official news service of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, for summary of it given in Italian on their website. So in both cases, this was the main thing which the editors decided to highlight as the most notable aspect of the interview.  

It bears repeating in this context that both the German and Italian bishops as a whole, while not known for any particular sympathy to the traditional liturgy, have been for the most part blessedly indifferent to the most obvious failure of the previous pontificate. I also note that the abbot primate resides at the abbey of Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, and is chancellor of the its liturgical athenaeum, which has long been one of the centers of opposition to Pope Benedict and Summorum Pontificum. Both sites accompanied their articles with the same photo of the abbot standing in the abbey’s cloister. Perhaps, then, we may take this as another encouraging sign that the Church’s internecine conflict over the traditional liturgy, which was deliberate rekindled almost five years ago, will not last far into its sixth year. And in this regard, let us remember to pray continually for the Holy Father, that the Holy Spirit may inspire to make the right decision, and repeal Traditionis Custodes completely.

And I therefore also make bold to remind our readers of these prayers for the Pope which are traditionally said at services like Benediction, and can of course be said privately any time.

A Legend of St Helena, the Discoverer of the True Cross

The Basilica of the Holy Cross, the main church of the Franciscan Order in Florence, was founded on May 3rd, the feast of the Finding of the Cross, in 1294. Last September, on the Exaltation of the Cross, I posted pictures of the frescoes which the painter Agnolo Gaddi added to the main choir around the year 1385, a cycle that depicts the Legend of the True Cross. The Franciscans were extremely important patrons of the arts in that era, and the basilica is so rich in artworks that it would take several posts to list and describe them all. Here are some pictures from one of the side-chapels, which I am posting today because they are marginally connected to the story of the Finding of the Cross.

The Bardi di Vernio chapel, located in the left transept, is dedicated to Pope St Sylvester I, and was decorated with stories of his life around the year 1335 by Maso di Banco; very little is known about this painter, but he is generally regarded as one of the most talented of Giotto’s followers. (“Maso” was a common Tuscan nickname for “Tommaso.”) This fresco, which is obviously very damaged, depicts the story that the Emperor Constantine, still a pagan and a persecutor of the Church (which he never was in reality) had leprosy, and had been advised by his doctors to bath in the blood of infants to cure it. Many Romans did believe in this kind of sympathetic magic, and while this particular story is certainly a later legend, it is by no means wholly implausible on this point. In this version, which was also read in the Roman Breviary before the Tridentine reform, Constantine was so moved by the weeping of the infants’ mothers that he refusing to commit this terrible crime. One of the great innovations of Giotto’s painting was the use of facial expressions to tell his story, which we see here imitated by Maso in the group of mothers on the right.

The Apostles Peter and Paul appear to Constantine in a dream, and tell him to seek out the Pope, St Sylvester, who is hiding from the persecution on Mt Soracte to the north of Rome, and that the Pope will cure him of his leprosy.

On the left side, Constantine meets Pope Sylvester, who shows him an image of the two Apostles; since he recognizes them as the men who had appeared to him in his dream, he agrees to be baptized, at which his leprosy is indeed cured. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The story that follows (which in the chapel is directly beneath the previous one) is the part of the legend that connects with the Finding of the Cross. Constantine’s mother, the dowager Empress Helena, holds a debate to determine which of the two monotheistic religions, Christianity, represented by the Pope and his cardinals (on the left), or Judaism, represented by a group of rabbis (on the right), is true. When the rabbis have been bested by the Pope at every point in the debate (which is recounted at wearisome length in The Golden Legend), one of them decides to prove the truth of Judaism by whispering what he claims to be the Divine Name into the ear of a ferocious bull, which immediately dies. However, Sylvester then whispers into its ear “O name of cursing and death, go out by the command of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name I say to thee: o bull, arise, and return in all mildness to thy flock.” The bull immediately comes back to life and walks away. Helena and all those present, including the rabbis, become Christians; she then goes on her great expedition to the Holy Land, where she discovers the site of Mt Calvary and the relics of the True Cross. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Ss Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus

Today is the feast of St Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria and Doctor of the Church, the foremost champion of the true Faith during the great crisis caused by the heretic Arius in the 4th century. May 2nd is universally recognized to be the day of his death; there is a particular fittingness to celebrating him on this date, one week after the feast of St Mark the Evangelist, the founder of the See of Alexandria, as a sign of continuity between the Gospel and Nicene orthodoxy. The Roman Rite shares this arrangement with the Coptic calendar and the Byzantine, although in the latter, today is noted as the feast of the translation of Athanasius’ relics; his principal feast, which he shares with another Patriarch of Alexandria and Doctor, St Cyril, is on January 18th. Likewise, the western Church keeps the feast of St Gregory of Nazianzus on May 9th, a week after Athanasius, as a sign that he inherited his mantle as the greatest theological writer in the controversies over the Trinity and Incarnation. His feast is also kept one week after Athanasius’ in the Byzantine Rite, on January 25th.

Ss Athanasius and Cyril, from the Menologion of Basil II, 985 AD: public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

St Athanasius was always known to the western Church from his Life of St Anthony, which was translated into Latin close to the time of death in 373; St Augustine mentions it in the Confessions. However, many of his most important theological works were not known to the West until the 15th century; in the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, for example, St John Chrysostom is mentioned about 20 times more often. His feast does occur in western liturgical books of the pre-Tridentine period, but almost exclusively in France and Spain, and almost never before the later decades of the 15th century; it does not appear to have been kept at all in Rome.

Much the same holds true for St Gregory of Nazianzus. He was known to the West from the mentions of him in the writings of his student, St Jerome, e.g. in the well-known treatise On Virginity against Jovinian, and the book On Illustrious Men, in which he calls him “a most eloquent man.” But again, very little of his writing was translated into Latin, and he is mentioned by St Thomas even less often than St Athanasius. Before the Tridentine reform, his feast was kept almost nowhere outside Spain, and even there, only from the very beginning of the 16th century.

In 1568, when Pope St Pius V, fulfilling a request of the Council of Trent, published a revision of the Roman Breviary, both Saints were included not just as bishops and confessors, but also as Doctors of the Church, and at the highest of three grades of feasts. The same titles and rank were also given to Ss Basil the Great and John Chrysostom; among these four, only Chrysostom had been widely celebrated with a feast thitherto. Up to that point, the title “Doctor”, and the use of the liturgical texts associated with it, had been formally granted to only four Saints whose writings were always particularly influential in the West, Ss Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome.

In the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church was greatly concerned to assert that its traditional doctrines were those held “always, everywhere and by all”, and not medieval corruptions, as the early Protestants often claimed. The pairing of four Eastern Doctors with the traditional four Western Doctors therefore asserted the universality of those teachings which were held by Rome and defended by the Council of Trent, and also held by the Eastern churches. The inclusion of St Thomas Aquinas among them then asserted the continuity in teaching between the patristic and medieval Church, also frequently denied by the Protestants. Three of these new Eastern Doctors also have special connections to Rome and the papacy. During the second of his five exiles, St Athanasius was a guest of Pope St Julius I, who defended him against the Arian heretics; relics of Ss John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus were saved from the iconoclasts in the 8th century and brought to Rome, later to be placed in St Peter’s Basilica.

The Gregorian Chapel in St Peter’s Basilica, built by Pope Gregory XIII to house the relics of his namesake of Nazianzus, which he translated here from the Roman church of Santa Maria in Campo Marzo in 1580.

Furthermore, these same Fathers are witnesses not just to Catholic teachings that the early Protestants rejected, but to others like the Trinity and Incarnation, which they not only accepted, but considered necessary for salvation. This was of course one of the strongest points in the Catholic Church’s favor during the controversies of the 16th century: if one accepts Athanasius, for example, as a witness to the doctrine of the Trinity, on what grounds does one reject him when he says, “So long as the prayers of supplication and entreaties have not been made, there is only bread and wine. But after the great and wonderful prayers have been completed, then the bread is become the Body, and the wine the Blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ”? If one accepts Basil’s defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, on what grounds does one reject his teaching that “It is necessary to confess our sins to those whom the dispensation of God’s mysteries is entrusted”? And more broadly, once the Fathers have been admitted as witnesses to the Christian Faith at all, one has in effect admitted a tradition, by which the teachings of some Christians in antiquity are recognized to be true, and those of others false, a further undermining of the original logical impossibility known as sola Scriptura.

There is an aspect of St Gregory of Nazianus’ career in particular which is less well known than his role as a theologian, and which should perhaps be better known today.

For most of the half century after the death of Constantine in 337, the Roman Emperors were supporters of Arianism, rather than of the orthodox faith. It should therefore not surprise anyone that the see of the imperial capital was dominated for most of that period by Arian bishops. However, with the death in 378 of the Emperor Valens, an enthusiastic persecutor of the orthodox, and the accession of Theodosius I, the tide began to turn strongly against the Arians. St Gregory, having retired some years earlier from a bishopric which he had been practically forced into, was then living a quiet and contemplative life in a monastery near Seleucia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, over 400 miles away from the capital. A number of Catholic bishops, anxious to reestablish the true faith in Constantinople, suggested that he come to the city, not as its bishop, but as a missionary; as with his earlier bishopric, he was prevailed upon to take up this new role only with the greatest reluctance.

The consecration of St Gregory of Nazianzus as a bishop, depicted in a manuscript of his writings copied out in Constantinople between 879 and 883. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Grec 510, f. 452r)

Gregory was accepted by almost none of the city’s clergy, and had access to none of its many churches; as Butler’s Lives of the Saints puts it, he was a bishop in Constantinople, but not the bishop of Constantinople. He therefore opened a small chapel attached to the house of a relative, which he called “Anastasis – the Resurrection”, a sign that it would become the place from which the true faith would rise again. His preaching, and especially the series of sermons on the Trinity, was in fact incredibly effective; more and more people were attracted by his eloquence, and his flock began to grow.

This brought with it many difficulties, of course, including persecution from the Arians and other heretics, which more than once came to physical violence, as well as calumnies and insults. At the Easter vigil during his first year in the city, the Arians broke into his church; Gregory himself was wounded, and another bishop present was killed. But among his many disciples, he would soon come to number not only St Jerome, but also Evagrius of Pontus, who would himself become one of the most influential theologians of the era.

The following year, Theodosius, newly baptized by an orthodox bishop, issued the Edict of Thessalonica, recognizing as the true faith “that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria.” Towards the end of the year, on arriving in Constantinople, he expelled the Arian bishop for refusing to embrace the Nicene confession of faith, and set Gregory in his place. It may seem that this victory was short-lived; within a few months, in the midst of every sort of intrigue and new acts of violence, Gregory obtained the emperor’s permission to resign his see and return to Nazianzus. But in point of fact, it did not matter. At the very moment when it seemed that heresy had triumphed in one of the most important and influential sees of Christendom, the true faith was reborn from a single place, and largely through the work of single man. Nor was this the first or last time such an event happened in the life of the Church. Let it therefore be an object lesson to us, never to despair over the sorry condition in which the Church finds itself in a particular time and place, including our own.

Relics of the Virgin Mary and St Joseph in Rome

There is a famous Italian saying about Rome, “Una vita non basta – one life is not enough”, i.e., to see everything worth seeing in the Eternal City. Today I was reminded how true this is when I saw these images shared on social media by an old friend, Mr John Sonnen, he of Orbis Catholicus fame. Despite having visited all the major churches of Rome countless times, and many of the minor ones, I never knew that the basilica of Saint Anastasia on the edge of the Palatine Hill has these relics, which are purported to be part of a veil which belonged to the Virgin Mary, and the cloak of St Joseph, brought to Rome by St Jerome in the later fourth century. My thanks to Mr Sonnen for sharing with us his pictures of the reliquary, which has been exposed for the veneration of the faithful today, the feast of St Joseph the Worker. (The cloak is in the lower part.)

Francis X. Weiser, SJ, the Domestic Heortologist, Part Two: Liturgiology

Soon I discovered that most people have no clear notion of the origin, background, and true meaning of these customs which they observe in their homes. Since the great majority of our Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and other observances actually go back to the inspiration of liturgical thought and symbolism, I judged it a worthwhile subject to explain. Also a priestly subject; for, given the fact that our popular customs contain the radiation of the liturgy, the understanding of this radiation would make the celebration of our Christian feasts within the family warmer, holier, and more truly joyful. At the same time, a better grasp of the religious meaning and message of our family customs would give parents valuable help for the religious training of their little ones.

--Rev. Francis X. Weiser, SJ

Last week, we surveyed the life and writings of Fr. Francis X. Weiser, SJ, whom we have dubbed “The Domestic Heortologist.” This, week, we examine the principles undergirding his work on the liturgical year.

In the paragraph cited above, Weiser outlines four features of his liturgical works that are worth examining in detail (albeit in a different order): 1) an explanation of customs to correct widespread ignorance; 2) the formation of children; 3) the radiation of the liturgy; and 4) an emerging American melting pot of devotional practices. To these we add a fifth: Weiser’s relationship to the Liturgical Movement.

1. Correction of Ignorance

Weiser begins his Holyday Book thus:

“Many people celebrate the holydays and know their names; but of their history, meaning and origin they know nothing … Truly, such ignorance deserves to be blamed and ridiculed” – St. John Chrysostom … This book was written to provide the information which St. John would have wished the faithful to possess.

Like other voices in the Liturgical Movement, Weiser placed a premium on a historical understanding of liturgical and paraliturgical practices, and lamented the lack of historical accuracy in much of the literature on the subject. On one end of the spectrum are “viciously false” attempts to trace every Christian holiday to a pagan source; on the other are pious “etiological” explanations that substitute for careful historical research. Weiser sought a middle ground between these two extremes.

2. Formation of Children

In his publications and in his forty-year pastoral ministry to college students in Austria and the United States, Fr Weiser had an abiding interest in the formation of Catholic youth, and he saw his liturgical writings as a part of that apostolate. In one of his last books on the Church year, he writes:

Happy the children who grow up in a home that is rich in traditional celebrations! Their lives will be more full and radiant through the inspiration of this childhood experience. Faith, culture, emotional security, absorbing joy, satisfaction of mind and heart, a warm spirit of love and union in the family, sound development of character and personality traits, appreciation of true values: these are some of the fruits which a childhood of such joyful family celebrations produces.

Weiser also believed that filling a home with liturgical joy was a form of evangelization. In his most popular juvenile fiction novel, Das Licht der Berge, the initially agnostic narrator Fritz describes the effect that his cousin’s pious home had on his brother Otto. Their cousin’s family observes a traditional Christmas Eve, which includes elaborately decorating the manger scene. Fritz notes that “Otto went about the job with the utmost interest. I could notice how his soul was opening out as a result of the religious atmosphere he breathed in this house.” Fritz would eventually be caught up by the same breath as well.

3. Radiation of the Liturgy

The religious atmosphere that Weiser describes is one that is informed by sacred liturgy (its rites and calendar) but separate from it. A phrase that he uses to describe the relationship between the Church’s official ceremonies and the laity’s domestic devotions is “the radiation of the liturgy into Catholic homes.” As he explains:

The radiation of liturgy has created many symbols, customs, and traditions that have enriched the observance of festive days and seasons in home and community, and remnants of pre-Christian lore have, in most cases, assumed new meanings and motivations through the influence of liturgical thought and celebration.

Therefore, Weiser concludes, understanding

this radiation would make the celebration of our Christian feasts within the family warmer, holier, and more truly joyful. At the same time, a better grasp of the religious meaning and message of our family customs would give parents valuable help for the religious training of their little ones.

Weiser’s works have been described as a study of the paraliturgical, but since the word, for some at least, denotes practices in opposition to the official liturgy, perhaps the better term is “periliturgical,” that is, customs surrounding the liturgy, like rays around the sun. In any event, his interest in the subject was shared by many Americans in the post-war era. As Msgr. Luigi G. Ligutti, leader of the Catholic rural life movement in the United States, writes in his preface to Florence Berger’s 1949 Cooking for Christ:

This book is an extension of the Missal, Breviary and Ritual because the Christian home is an extension of the Mass, choir and sacramentals. … Liturgical seasons or feast days were intended not merely for church and cloister. To be fully effective and enjoyable, they have to wrap kitchen and commons in their colorful mantle. The motto of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference is “Christ to the Country and the Country to Christ.” We paraphrase it here by saying “Christ to the Kitchen and the Kitchen to Christ.” This is reverent as well as simple.

Berger herself is more succinct: “If I am to carry Christ home with me from the altar, I am afraid He will have to come to the kitchen because much of my time is spent there.” In many respects, Weiser wrote his liturgical books for readers like Florence Berger.

4. The Melting Pot

Weiser describes American holiday life as one that is “molded into one unit out of the best national Christmas lore of various immigrant groups.” Our author wished to contribute to this eclectic molding by making people aware of the Christian meaning behind ethnic lore. His writing is at times nostalgic, but it is not antiquarian or archeologist. Despite his fond boyhood memory of the visit of St. Nicholas, for example, he does not advocate the restoration of this practice but rather “a revival of the veneration and annual celebration of the Saint, who is still patron of little children.”

Weiser was hardly alone in trying to create an American melting pot from international Catholic customs. As early as 1941, fellow emigrees like Therese Mueller published her Family Life in Christ. Of her Claudio Salvucci writes:

Having watched European parents relinquish their children’s Catholic upbringing to religious institutions, only to see the secularization of those institutions, she was keen on giving Catholicism a solid grounding within the home, including celebrating feasts, praying the Office, and maintaining a home altar. Mueller popularized the German Advent Wreath in the United States and helped standardize its violet and pink candles as an antidote to the “horrible, secularized, commercialized Santa Claus, more and more shameful each year.”

An American development: the violet and rose Advent calendar

Possibly the most famous author of this period was Weiser’s friend Maria von Trapp, who in 1955 wrote Around the Year with the Trapp Family, a compendium of periliturgical devotions. Again Salvucci:

Like Mueller, she was a German-speaking emigrant from the Hitler regime, and she had an existing, deeply Catholic Austrian cultural bank to draw from that her American friends admired. They said to her: “These lovely old folk customs of yours–couldn’t they be introduced in our homes too? They really are not necessarily Austrian or Polish or Italian–they are Catholic, which is universal.”

Kathryn A. Johnson notes that this chapter of American Catholic history was marked by a “shift from ethnic communities with special religious traditions to a ‘melting-pot’ approach to family rituals” and that popular literature was an important catalyst in this transition:

In the mid 1950s, for example, two manuals, Rev. Francis Weiser’s Religious Customs in the Family and Rev. Bernward Stokes’ How to Make Your House a Home, were published as aids “for persons whose duty it is to shape and mold the character of children.” These books covered the teaching of both general customs, like the sign of the cross and the sacraments, and special seasonal rituals, including Christmas traditions, Holy Week, and the customs of Lent. These books, and literally thousands of other books and articles—the Family Life Bureau alone published five books on family liturgical practices—taught Catholic parents “modern” ways to incorporate older customs into their homes.

5. The Liturgical Movement

Just as Weiser was responding to a moment in American history, so too was he capitalizing on and contributing to a moment in Church history. The Liturgical Movement in the United States was enjoying unprecedented popularity, with a growing thirst for the kind of information that Weiser was providing. Weiser himself supported this movement, dedicating his Holyday Book to “the Liturgical Movement in the United States.”

But Weiser was also critical of certain strains of the Liturgical Movement of his time. In an article entitled “Some Observations on Recent Literature,” he warmly welcomes the flood of literature that, like his own, attempts to enrich family life with religious customs. But he also points out three areas of concern:

First, he did not approve of trends that blurred the difference between priest and laity, liturgy and domestic custom. Some contemporary authors were advocating that the father merely repeat the words and actions of the priest at home, even to the extent of blessing an object with holy water and calling it a “sacramental.” Weiser advises caution: “It is possible that Rome will approve this new procedure. On the other hand, it might be advisable to make sure of such approval before spreading the custom too far.” Instead Weiser recommends:

Let liturgy, its thought and symbols, inspire your celebrations in the home; but instead of using liturgical texts and symbols in a mere imitation of what the priest does, create new and different forms for these thoughts and symbols in your home. (This is the way most of our beautiful customs developed centuries ago.) Know the liturgy, explain it to your children, make them love it; but don’t “perform” it vicariously in your home.

Second, Weiser was wary of unwarranted innovation,

It would seem to be of special importance that, above all else, we present the true story of these established customs and make them understood again in their original meaning. Since they exist already in millions of families, it should be comparatively easy to get our population (and not only the Catholics) interested in such explanations. Thus the radiant light of liturgical inspiration and religious thought could be rapidly spread everywhere by explaining the “old” customs before we try to introduce “new” ones.

and especially wary of innovation that arose from ignorance or haste:

Many Catholic writers, not familiar with the true history and meaning of our established festive lore, too quickly propose ready-made changes, substitutions and suppressions. The result is a confusing variety of well-meant suggestions, often advanced with more zeal than knowledge or psychological insight.

As mentioned earlier, Weiser was a student at Innsbruck of the famous Jesuit liturgical historian Josef Andreas Jungmann, to whom he dedicated his Handbook of Christian Customs:

This book is dedicated, as a belated but sincere token of gratitude, to my former professor at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), the Rev. Joseph A. Jungmann, S.J. The lasting influence of his personality and example no less than his masterful teaching inspired me, as it did many others of his former students, to attempt a modest contribution to the great task of making the treasures of holy liturgy better known and appreciated. May this handbook not only be useful to anyone seeking information and understanding of our feasts and folklore, but also help toward a joyful and fruitful celebration in our churches, hearts and homes.

His sincere gratitude, however, should not be mistaken for complete agreement. Jungmann was convinced that liturgy had become a “lifeless act” through clericalization and thus he became an advocate for sweeping liturgical reform. Weiser, as far as I can tell, does not recommend a single change to the liturgy. On the contrary, rather than see the liturgy of his day as lifeless, he saw it as radiating life and continuing to inspire personal, domestic, and cultural development around the world. “The celebration of our Christian feasts within the family [can be] warmer, holier, and more truly joyful” not through liturgical innovation but through a recovery of understanding why we do what we do.

Rev. Josef Andres Jungmann, S.J.

Reception

Weiser’s works were generally well received in the 1950s and 1960s. Nash K. Burger wrote in the New York Times:

Since books about Christmas seem as inevitable as Christmas itself, it would be well if they were all as satisfying as Francis X. Weiser’s “The Christmas Book.” Seldom have so many aspects of the origin, observance and meaning of this important Christian holy season been presented in such attractive form.

America Magazine called Handbook “a very palatable and often engrossing introduction to the liturgy”—nay more, it was “an introduction to Christian culture” that is “engagingly written.” Oxford’s Journal of Bible and Religion voiced a similar sentiment about The Holyday Book, describing it as a “a most informative and at the same time delightful book” written in a “friendly, sympathetic style” by an author who “manifests an extraordinary knowledge of languages, folklore, customs, liturgy, and even of cooking recipes” yet who “wears his scholarship gracefully and lightly.”

Responding to these compliments, Weiser revealed the “secret” of his writing as well as his perennial concern for the youth and his own high standards:

Allow me to tell you a secret. I never had the benefit of “studying” English; never had a teacher or any formal instruction in this language. All the English I know, was-to use a popular expression-just “picked up” by reading good English books. (The word “good” refers to both English and books.) That is the reason why I am now so keenly and sadly aware of the incredible harm which the atrocious language and spelling of our comic books must cause to the minds of children. If reading “good English” books gave me my knowledge of the language, what kind of language habits will the comics produce in our children?

According to the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Weiser’s biographies of famous Jesuits are brief, accurate, and designed to excite zeal for the missions. They also do a fine job relaying the facts but do not use the critical method of historical scholarship. His liturgical books are “a sketchy but deftly written survey of nativity plays, flowers, symbolic lights and fires, and Christmas foods. Although more comprehensive studies of this fascinating subject have been made by popular writers for a general public, the Christmas Book will find many interested readers among laymen of the Roman Catholic faith.” “Folklorists,” writes one reviewer, “will wish for a more detailed, carefully annotated study. The reference notes serve as a somewhat insufficient guide to the sources used in compiling the data.” “This book [in the genre] of popularization pursues a pastoral goal and includes neither a bibliography nor critical discussion,” writes another.

Aside from his own personal observations or experiences, Weiser depended on the scholarship of others to compile his overview of liturgical customs. One drawback to such a dependence is that one’s “sketches” are only as good as one’s sources; when they err, so do you. In Handbook, for example, Weiser opines that pretzels derive their name from bracellae, a supposed Latin name for “little arms.” The problem is that no such word exists in Latin; it is more probable that pretiola (“little rewards”) is the source of the word “pretzel.”

The Post-Vatican II Era

Weiser’s last monograph on heortology, The Year of the Lord in the Christian Home, appeared in 1964. After that, and aside from some miscellaneous articles on the Church, he returned to German juvenile fiction and biography: between 1966 and 1974, he published seven more books and three biographical entries for New Catholic Encyclopedia. His last book to appear in English was Kateri Tekakwitha in 1971, a translation of his 1970 Das Mädchen der Mohawks, and his last book of all was his 1974 biography of Jesuit priest and explorer Pierre de Smet, In den Bergen von Montana (In the Mountains of Montana).

In 1970 at the age of sixty-nine, Weiser retired from teaching at Boston College and moved to Campion Center in Weston: a Jesuit retirement community, the center is located on the campus of the former Weston College where he had taught twenty years earlier. (Weiser’s retirement may have had something to do with the 1967 Age Discrimination in Retirement Act, which mandated retirement at the age of sixty-five). The year that he retired, “in recognition of his scholarly and literary achievements,” his alma mater the University of Innsbruck awarded him a citation of honor and the Jubilee Medal. Francis X. Weiser, S.J. passed away on October 22, 1986 at the age of eighty-five.

It is not known why such a prolific author stopped writing on the liturgy. There may be several reasons. First, Weiser may have said all that he wanted to say on the subject. The Handbook of Christian Customs is already a thorough compendium of the entire liturgical year, and his subsequent books on periliturgical practices cover all the essentials of domestic devotion.

Second, he may have recognized that the cultural conditions that made his works popular and useful were no longer as strong. The 1950s was a great melting pot moment; the divisive 1960s was not.

But perhaps the greatest reason for Weiser’s abandonment of heortology was the general reform of the Roman Rite that was already taking place in 1964 and that would culminate with the promulgation of a new Missale Romanum in 1969. The new missal included a significantly different calendar that at times makes difficult the implementation of Weiser’s assembled folklore. Gone were the customs surrounding Septuagesima and the customs surrounding saints’ feast days, such as St. Thomas the Apostle, whose feast (once rich in winter customs) was transferred from December 21 to July 3.

That said, Weiser’s work still contains valuable information that is relevant today [even for those observing the Novus Ordo]: almost everything he says about Advent and Christmas, for example, is still applicable, even for his beloved feast of St. Nicholas. Moreover, his work remains a model for us all, whether we are scholars or simply members of the Body of Christ trying to enrich our lives with the Church’s liturgy. As he writes: “When we Catholics write about our own religious feasts and customs, the goal is to present our very best, not only in devotion and inspiration but also in scholarship.”

A version of this article (with full annotation) appeared as “The Domestic Heortologist: An Introduction to Francis X. Weiser, S.J.” in Antiphon: A Journal of Liturgical Renewal 29:2 (2025), pp. 144-171. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

The Oldest Depiction of the Life of St Catherine of Siena

St Catherine of Siena died on April 29, 1380, the feast of St Peter Martyr, who at the time was one of only three canonized Dominicans, alongside Ss Dominic and Thomas Aquinas. After St Vincent Ferrer, Catherine herself would become the fifth in 1461, canonized by a former bishop of her native city, Pope Pius II. Her feast was therefore originally assigned to May 2nd, and only later then brought back to today. In the post-Conciliar rite, with the suppression of Peter Martyr’s feast (easily one of its most foolish mistakes), she was moved yet again, to the day of her death.

The first known cycle of images of episodes from Catherine’s life, a series of ten panels, was painted by a Sienese artist called Giovanni di Paolo (1403 ca. – 1482); the altarpiece to which they originally belonged was later dismembered, and they now are in several different museums. There is some disagreement among art historians as to the original nature of the commission. Some hold that the panels were made as the predella of an altarpiece of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (shown below), commissioned in 1449 by a guild called the Pizzicaiuoli, for their chapel in the great pilgrim hospice that stands in front of the cathedral of Siena, Santa Maria della Scala.

However, St Catherine is shown with a halo in all the panels, 11 years before her beatification. It is perfectly possible that this was done in anticipation of her inevitable canonization, but many scholars hold that the predella was only added to the Pizzicaiuoli altar after that event, while others believe that they were never part of it at all, and originally surrounded an image of Catherine which has since been lost. The episodes are all taken from the biography of her written by her confessor, Bl. Raymond of Capua, also a Dominican. The original placement of the panels seems also to be a matter of dispute, and I do not shown them here in any particular order.

St Catherine receives the Dominican habit from Ss Augustine (the bishop in the middle), Dominic and Francis. The first appears between the two mendicant founders as a sign of the Church’s authority approving the way of life which they established, since his Rule was used by many of the new non-monastic religious communities that emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries, including the Dominicans.

St Catherine receiving Communion from Christ Himself, who has brought the Host to her from the Mass which Bl. Raymond is celebrating behind her.

The mystical marriage between Catherine and Christ, who is placing a ring on her finger as the Virgin Mary and many other Saints look on. (Something similar is attributed to her namesake of Alexandria.) 

Catherine offers her heart to Christ, in the midst of a mystical vision, indicated by the fact that she is floating on a cloud.

St Catherine gives her cloak to a beggar, who, of course, turns out to the Lord; He then appears to her and gives the cloak back to her.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Relics of St Peter Martyr in Milan

St Peter Martyr was killed on April 6, 1252, but since that day so often occurs in Holy Week or Easter week, when he was canonized less than a year after his death, his feast was assigned to April 29. As we have noted several times in the past (see here and here), his relics are in the Portinari chapel within the basilica of St Eustorgius in Milan. Here is a picture the large reliquary containing his skull, taken in the basilica on Sunday by Nicola de’ Grandi.

In the background of this picture, we see the Saint’s monumental tomb of the type known as an ‘arca’ in Italian, which is deliberately designed so that the faithful can walk under it and touch the sarcophagus containing the relics. (The video below it was made a few years ago.)

An inscription which commemorates the dedication of a new altar for the chapel on the day before his feast in 1737.

Forming Families to Sing With Angels

A Template for the Song of the Domestic Church

Here is a presentation that I gave with Andrew Goldstein of the Vigil Project about our forthcoming book, Musica Domestica, to be published by Word on Fire Publications in November of this year. I begin by describing the concept and its origins. I talk of the importance of the Domestic Church and family prayer and song in the evangelization of culture. I focus especially on the singing of the psalms and on why I believe the Coverdale Psalter, a traditional English translation (in the 1928 revision) used by many Protestant denominations, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, can serve as a principle of cultural unity and regeneration in America.

Then, at the 20-minute mark, Andrew discusses the musical content, and describes how the book guides families in chanting the psalms. He tells us how we can involve the whole family, and even describes how his youngest child, who can’t read yet, joins in by humming along with the drone note. You can hear Andrew and his wife chanting the psalms in the Musica Domestica way.

Here is my opening statement: “You have heard it said that culture is downstream of politics. But we could also say that faith is downstream of culture, and worship is downstream of faith. If we worship well and in harmony with beautiful art, music, and architecture, we are supernaturally transformed into faithful Christian culture creators who can influence others through the joy and beauty of our lives. If we look to God first, all else follows. It is a generational task, but inevitably, if we take responsibility for our own lives and relationships, with God’s help, beginning at home, we will create a society that reflects the beauty of God, one personal relationship at a time.”