Learned Blunders: The Impact of Flawed Scholarship on the Liturgical Reforms of the Twentieth Century

Most of the debates about the liturgical reforms of the twentieth century are understandably concerned with theological or ideological elements. Critics of the 1962 Missal worry that the old Mass is too hierarchical and too aligned with an outdated political ideology, a relic of the days of the Ancien Régime. Critics of the 1969 Missal, on other hand, wonder if the new Mass is too egalitarian, modernist, Protestant, Masonic, etc. My goal in this essay, however, is to focus on the role that honest mistakes about historical facts may have played in the formation and implementation of the 1969 Missal.

Honest mistakes about history are different from theological and ideological convictions, although there can be a thin line between the two, and they often influence each other. It is one thing to believe that Mass facing the people is a better way to worship because it is less alienating and more inclusive; it is another thing to believe that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people. One is a theological opinion that may or may not be true and may be contingent on circumstances; the other is a historical claim that either did or did not happen – period.

But if I believe that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people, then I might be more inclined to conclude that the Church today should do so as well: in this case, my grasp of the facts shapes my opinion. On the other hand, if I fervently believe that the Church today should have Mass facing the people, I may become predisposed to interpret some archeological data as evidence that the early Church celebrated Mass facing the people; in that case, my opinion shapes my grasp of the facts.

Granted, the adjective “honest” makes my task more complicated, for it presumes to assess the purity of another person’s intention. To avoid any cynical presumption, I will simply assume that the scholars involved in the following blunders acted in good faith.

1. A Patristic Golden Age

A common feature of twentieth-century liturgical scholarship is the conviction that the liturgies of the Patristic era, from the second to the fifth centuries A.D., constitute a Golden Age of sacred worship. I do not know if this belief is an honest historical mistake or a theological conviction or both, but either way it must be mentioned because it influenced and gave great weight to the other mistakes that I will discuss: indeed, it influenced the Council itself. Paragraph 50 of Sacrosanctum Concilium states:

The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved. For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance; elements which, with the passage of time, came to be duplicated, or were added with but little advantage, are now to be discarded; other elements which have suffered injury through accidents of history are now to be restored to the vigor which they had in the days of the holy Fathers, as may seem useful or necessary.

The Latin is even stronger: instead of the “vigor” of the holy Fathers, the document states that certain liturgical elements are to be restored to the “pristine norm” (pristina norma) of the holy Fathers.

While this passage does not explicitly state that the Patristic era, i.e., the time of the Church Fathers, was a Golden Age, it can easily be used to support such a belief, and as such it stands in tension with Pope Pius XII’s 1947 Mediator Dei, which warns precisely against this lens of interpretation:

The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man (61).

Pope Pius XII lists examples of decisions that would be wrong-headed: the return of the altar to a primitive table form as well as the suppression of black vestments, sacred images, statues, crucifixes of Christus passus, and polyphony (see 62).

The Holy Father offers a theological reason for rejecting Golden Ageism, namely, that it discounts or even denies the ongoing inspiration of the Holy Spirit on liturgical development—that is, it discounts a providentially guided organic development. Golden Ageism is, at the end of the day, an arbitrary attachment, not a historical fact. Objectively and dispassionately speaking, how do we know that one age is better than another, liturgically or otherwise? I had a wise liturgical studies professor who once said that the difference between Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic fundamentalists is that fundamentalist Protestants try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the first century while Catholic traditionalists try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the thirteenth century. Fair enough, yet did not so many twentieth-century liturgical reformers try in vain to leapfrog over history and return to the third or fourth century? Perhaps we all need to stop leapfrogging and recognize that we are the beneficiaries of an ongoing and inspired sacred history.

The tug to the Patristic era was strong. The general consensus in the early- to mid-twentieth century was that the early Church was more communitarian, more egalitarian, and more participatory, and that later developments were misguided and alienating “barnacles” on the Barque that obscured the liturgy’s original vision and purpose. Although there are still stalwart proponents of this view (even in the highest echelons of Church leadership), few dispassionate and serious scholars hold it today. In the understated assessment of Albert Gerhards and Benedikt Kranemann:

This idea was often based on the hypothesis of a degeneration in which the “golden age” of patristics was followed by the “dark Middle Ages” leading to a “rigid standard liturgy” in the period between Trent and Vatican II. This way of looking at the history of liturgy is being radically called into question today. [1]

2. Liturgical Orientation

Because of Golden-Ageism, with its myth of a pristine Patristic norm, any mistake made about how the early Church worshiped was given undue weight by scholars in their reconstruction of the past and in their recommendations for the present.

That is certainly true of the orientation of the priest at Mass. The consensus of scholars in the 1930s was that the Church originally had Mass “facing the people”. This consensus was no doubt influenced by ideology, some of it egalitarian and some of it anti-sacrificial – the idea being that “when” the Church thought of the Eucharist as a meal, it had Mass facing the people, and when it came to think of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, it had Mass facing the apse. [2]

But at least two archeological data also shaped opinion: the existence of free-standing altars in ancient churches, and the fact that some of these churches were built on a west-east axis, with the entrance and façade on the east and the sanctuary on the west. In the latter churches, if the priest were to face East to confect the Eucharist, he would have to “face the people” to do so. What they did not consider (which later scholarship discovered) was the possibility that during the Consecration, the people turned around and faced the East, with the Sacrifice taking place behind them. At that moment the priest and congregation resembled sailors on a ship, with the captain at the helm in the rear as they sailed to meet their Lord, who is to come again from the East. Perhaps that is why a church nave takes its name from the Latin word for ship, navis.

The Second Vatican Council only states that future churches should be built with free-standing altars, and the General Instructions for the (new) Roman Missal presupposes that the priest is turned towards the Lord and not the people during the Consecration. Nevertheless, “Mass facing the people” has been treated as a cornerstone of liturgical renewal, with bishops forbidding priests from celebrating in the traditional manner.

Scholarly doubt about the versus populum position began to emerge shortly after Vatican II. The prominent liturgist Fr. Josef Jungmann dismissed it as “a legend” in 1966. That same year, a member of the Concilium that created the Novus Ordo, Fr. Louis Bouyer, rejected the meal vs. sacrifice dichotomy, pointing out that in antiquity “the communal character of a meal was emphasized…[by] the fact that all the participants were on the same side of the table.” [3] Moroever, Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s Die Reform der römischen Liturgie (The Reform of the Roman Rite) includes a scathing critique of both the theological and historical arguments favoring versus populum. But the definitive treatment of the subject came in 2009 with Fr. Uwe Michael Lang’s Turning towards the Lord, which demonstrates that there has always been a tradition of facing East during liturgical prayer and never a tradition of priest and people facing each other. The book received the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. More recently, Luisella Scrosati has a series on the orientation of Christian worship in Italian that was translated last year into English for the New Liturgical Movement website (see here).

3. Concelebration

Twentieth-century liturgists were so convinced that the early Church has Masses regularly concelebrated by two or more priests that the Second Vatican Council was moved to make the following changes:

Concelebration, whereby the unity of the priesthood is appropriately manifested, has remained in use to this day in the Church both in the east and in the west. For this reason it has seemed good to the Council to extend permission for concelebration to the following cases (Sacrosanctum Concilium 57.1).

The Council goes on to allow concelebration for both the Chrism Mass and evening Mass on Holy Thursday, for Masses during Bishops’ meetings, and for Masses for the blessing of an abbot. It also gives Bishops the authority to allow concelebration at parish Masses, and it calls for a new rite for concelebration to be drawn up and inserted into the Missal and the Pontifical (58). The Council Fathers declare that “each priest shall always retain his right to celebrate Mass individually” (57.2), but many priests today feel pressure to concelebrate every Mass they attend.

There was no definitive or extensive study of concelebration prior to the Second Vatican Council; one wonders how everyone was so confident about a conviction based on so little research. Finally, in 1982, Carmelite Father Joseph de Sainte-Marie published an almost 600 page book entitled L’eucharistie salut du monde, which in 2015 appeared as The Holy Eucharist – The World’s Salvation: Studies on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, its Celebration and its Concelebration (Leominster: Gracewing, 2015). The magnum opus covers a range of topics, such as the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, but it is especially concerned with separating fact from fiction regarding concelebration.

Sainte-Marie’s conclusion, as the back-cover puts it, is that the “present practice of daily concelebration, especially among simple priests without their Ordinary presiding, far from being a return to an ancient norm, is in fact a new development.” Earlier liturgists made a crucial mistake, failing to distinguish between ceremonial concelebration and sacramental concelebration, when two or more ministers confect the same sacrament. Sacramental concelebration happened on occasion, especially with a Mass led by a bishop, but in both the East and the West, the preference was for ceremonial concelebrations and for individually celebrated Masses, which multiplied graces flowing into the world.

Sainte-Marie researched the debates the Council Fathers had about concelebration, and he shows how the Council Fathers were unaware of this distinction. If concelebration remains “in use to this day in the Church both in the east and in the west” as the Council claims, then why do most Orthodox churches refuse sacramental concelebration on principle, and why are the only Eastern Churches that practice sacramental concelebration the ones that are in union with Rome, and even then only beginning in the eighteenth century and only under Western influence?

The World’s Salvation did not come out in time to stop the campaign to make concelebrated the Masses norm, especially in religious communities, but it was able to stop further damage. I am told that plans were being made to make it a requirement of Canon Law that all members of a religious community concelebrate the same Mass, but Sainte-Marie’s scholarship changed their minds.

Unfortunately, the Vatican has recently doubled down on this flawed scholarship by forcing the Anglican Ordinariate to adopt concelebration. For recent treatments on the subject, see here.

4. Ordinary Time

Contrary to a popular misconception, Ordinary Time in the new calendar is not “Ordinal” Time but an Ordinary of Times. [4] Ordinary Time was designed to be a generic season in contrast to the special seasons of Christmas and Easter. The architect of this new schema was Fr. Pierre Jounel, who believed that the Masses of the early Church outside the Christmas and Easter cycles had no special “theme” and that the modern Church should return to that model. Each of the new Sundays in Ordinary Time, he writes, “is a Lord’s Day in its pure state as presented to us in the Church’s tradition,” that is, the state in which the primitive Church celebrated it.

The problem with this thesis is that we do not know for certain what the primitive Church did. Second, Jounel linked indistinction with purity and purity with the early Church, but both assumptions are questionable. Third, he is guilty of archeologism or Golden Age-ism, for Jounel wanted to return to a third-century practice and ignore seventeen hundred years of valid development. Fourth, Jounel is also guilty of novelty (ironically), for the way he endeavored to return to “the Lord’s Day in its pure state” was to invent an entirely new season that not a single soul in the Patristic era would have recognized, for no liturgical calendar prior to that of the Novus Ordo had a single-block season that is “interrupted” by the Easter cycle and that then picks up where it left off. Fifth, despite Jounel’s claim that the new season is indistinct, the final Sundays of Ordinary Time retain the distinctive theme that they had in the previous calendar, that of the End Times.

The 1962 Missal

My criticisms have centered on the scholarship that shaped the 1969 Missal, but that does not mean that the 1962 Missal is flawless. I will mention three, though no doubt there are more.

First, the feast day of Pope St. Felix I (269-274) was mistakenly assigned to May 30 instead of December 30 (the day of his martyrdom) because a medieval scribe wrote “III Kal. Jun.” (third day to the calends of June) instead of “III Kal. Jan.” (third day to the calends of January).

Second, according to tradition, September 14, 326 is the date that St. Helen discovered the True Cross during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and September 14, 335 is the anniversary of the consecration of her son Constantine’s basilicas of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary in Jerusalem. September 14 was thus celebrated as the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross. May 3, on the other hand, was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, celebrating the return of the Cross to Jerusalem in 629 after the Persians had stolen it. Over time, however, the two dates were confused and May 3 became the Feast of the Finding of the Cross and September 14 the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The May 3 feast was dropped in 1960, and both the 1962 and 1969 calendars still have September 14 as the Feast of the Exaltation or Triumph of the Cross.

Third, the Tridentine Missal’s use of the Vulgate for its biblical readings is not without controversy, for although we have it on the authority of the Council of Trent that the Vulgate is “authentic,” we also know that “authentic” does not mean “infallible,” nor did Trent tell us which edition of the Vulgate was authentic, and there were several competing versions at the time. In the 1962 Missal, the Epistle reading for Low Sunday (1 John 5, 4-10) is different than what are considered the most reliable Greek manuscripts of that passage, particularly verse 7, which does not exist in the oldest manuscripts. [5]

What I find interesting about the errors in the 1962 Missal is that they seem to be mostly the result of failed efforts to retain, while the aforementioned mistakes from the twentieth century are the result of failed efforts to rediscover. The latter is by its nature more fraught with risk and uncertainty, and so it is not surprising that the failures, when they happen, are more egregious.

Conclusions

Two final clarifications are in order.

First, in and of themselves scholarly mistakes do not disqualify a liturgical practice. It is entirely possible that even if something was done in error, it could turn out to be providential, a sort of felix culpa. That said, when new discoveries expose old mistakes, they should be used to consider – with a grain of salt, of course, lest we keep the same slavish mentality to the “experts” – how to move forward. At any rate, since the cure always begins with an accurate diagnosis of the disease, we need to admit that we live in a world of liturgical upheaval, as Peter Jeffrey puts it, “with its own excesses of competing and fanciful historical claims.” [6]

Second, we should not banish scholarship from liturgical decision-making simply because of these mistakes. Scholarship may have been the rope with which we used to hang ourselves, but it is also the same rope that can pull us out of the ditch. Every example of flawed scholarship that we have mentioned has been brought to light by good scholarship, so scholarship per se is not the problem. Scholarship is simply a form of human inquiry, and like any other temporal good, it is subject to abuse, especially in the hands of the proud. And even if it does succeed in creating an accurate view of the past, that does not necessarily mean that it should be used to overthrow later developments or practices. Let the Holy Spirit and not the absent-minded professor have the final say on what goes on in Christ’s Church.

We will look at more learned blunders at a later time.

This article originally appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:1 (Spring 2025), pp. 38-42. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its republication here.

Notes

[1] Albert Gerhards and Benedikt Kranemann, Introduction to the Study of Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 2017), pp. 81-82. Gerhards and Kranemann argue that Vatican II avoided “Golden Age-ism” by quoting SC 21, that the liturgy “is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change.” One can hold this view, however, and still believe that the Patristic era was the high watermark of liturgy. Moreover, the authors ignore the implications of SC 50’s language of the pristine norm of the Church Fathers.

[2] Such is the contention of Otto Nußbaum, but it is false. The earliest references to the Eucharist, from the second century, refer to it as a sacrifice.

[3] Louis Bouyer, Eucharistie: Theologie et spiritualite de la priere eucharistique (Tournai, 1966) [trans. Charles Underhill Quinn as Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (Notre Dame, Ind., and London: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1968)], p.55-56, quoted in Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger Collected Works: Theology of the Liturgy.

[4] See my “The Origins and Meaning of Ordinary Time,” Antiphon: A Journal of Liturgical Renewal 23:1 (2019), pp. 43-77. A revised version in two parts also appears on this website, here and here.

[5] Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in caelo : Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus : et hi tres unum sunt. “And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one.”

[6] Peter Jeffrey, “Eastern and Western Elements in the Irish Monastic Prayer of the Hours,” in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, eds. Margot A. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (Oxford University Press, 2000), 134.

Why Look to the East?

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship with her sixth part, “Perché guardare ad est“, originally published in Italian on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on December 14, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5)

Why did Christians insist so much on praying towards the east? Why did they do everything possible to build churches and altars oriented in that direction? Why so much attention and insistence?

Before investigating the rich meaning of the orientation of prayer, which we have already presented in part (see here), it is necessary to recall a fundamental principle that we have forgotten in the spiritualism that has invaded the Catholic world, a spiritualism that translates into an exclusivity of interiority to the detriment of exteriority. Damascene writes:

It is not without reason or by chance that we prostrate ourselves in adoration towards the east, but it is because we are constituted by visible and invisible nature, that is, intelligible and sensible, so that we perform a twofold adoration directed towards the Creator. (Exposition of the Faith, 85)

Our human nature has this twofold dimension; it is in its integrity that it is called to worship God. It is quite evident to contemporary man that a division that sacrifices the invisible and intelligible aspect of worship can lead to a purely formal, sterile, and empty worship; on the other hand, the opposite seems less felt and understood, namely, that the elimination of the visible and sensible dimension in worship creates no less of a problem. Whichever way you look at it, a “schizophrenia” in worship always entails a sickness of the religious man.

Faced with the complacency with which some today would dismiss the problem of the orientation of prayer – the kind of person who says “the important thing is to pray” (and nothing else) – the Christians of the centuries that preceded us, up to the dawn of modernity, knew very well that this physical orientation expresses and conditions the inner orientation of life.

In his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, to which I already referred in the previous article of this series, William Durandus summarizes the stratification of meanings and mysteries that oriented prayer confesses, and recalls the power and simplicity of a bodily posture. We look to the east, primarily because our whole being is turned toward Christ, “the splendor of eternal light,” who visited us like the sun rising from on high to enlighten us, immersed in darkness and the shadow of death (cf. Luke 1, 78). Turning our bodies toward this earthly light, which since creation has been a sign of the light of Christ the Redeemer, we are also exhorted, Durandus explains, “to turn our minds to higher realities.” In this latter respect, looking toward the east has the same meaning as turning our gaze upward in prayer.

The third reason he offers is a curious one: “because those who want to praise God must not turn their backs on him.” Who knows what Durandus would say about our liturgical gatherings! In reality, it is the “negative” corollary of the first two and further emphasizes the importance of the bodily gesture. Paying attention to orienting one’s body in a certain direction, a gesture that reminds the soul that it too is called to orient itself, to tune in to God, means at the same time spurring it not to forget God by turning its back on him.

It is interesting to note that in the rite of Baptism, the catechumen was asked to confess his faith by turning to the east, while turning his back on the kingdom of darkness, symbolized by the west, which he was determined to renounce forever. This rite is like the photographic negative of what Durandus expresses and marks once again that Christian life is essentially a turning towards the light of Christ: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom 13, 12).

Durandus, who is generally inspired by St. John Damascene on this theme, explicitly refers to it when he indicates the orientation of prayer as the search for our true homeland.

Scripture adds: “Then the Lord planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and placed there the man whom he had formed” (cf. Gen 2, 8) and who, having violated the divine command, was banished from the delights of the garden, evidently to the West. Seeking our original homeland and keeping our gaze fixed on it, we worship God. (Exposition of the Faith, 85)

Orientation is decisive in constantly reminding man that he is in search of another homeland, that his heart must not settle for the false delights of this world: his original condition is different, and so is the eternal destiny to which he is called. Every time we look to the east, we confess the infinite goodness of God who created us in integrity and grace, and we shed tears of nostalgia for our lost condition and of desire for the true homeland that is promised to us. Looking to the east therefore means rejecting any attempt at a worldly Christianity, a Christianity that presumes to build the city of man, forgetting the City of God, the “new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness shall dwell” (2 Peter 3:13).

Looking to the east, we also meet the gaze of Christ who, from the cross, “looked to the west,” toward that kingdom of darkness from which he was about to rescue us with the Cross. Meeting this gaze softens the hardness of the heart and causes new tears of gratitude and repentance to flow, while we await his return as judge with fear and hope. In fact, says Damascene,

Christ, rising up, ascended towards the East, and in this way the apostles worship him, and so he will come again in the way he was seen departing towards heaven…. Therefore, ready to welcome him from the East, we turn towards it and worship him. (Ibid.)

By this gesture we confess that history does not lead to absurdity, does not lead to the triumph of evil, despite appearances to the contrary; nor is it a circle closed in on itself and always the same. It goes towards the infallible and unappealable judgment of Christ, who will reveal the thoughts of every heart.

The orientation of prayer thus synthesizes the entire Christian revelation on the origin of man and his redemption, on his eternal destiny, on the direction of history, uniting it with the symbolic reality of creation.

Few other gestures can hold so many meanings and unleash their power. Every time the Christian people (and each individual) remembers to turn towards the east for prayer, they confess and reinvigorate the great hope of the Church, which awaits, renewed by tears, the arrival of her Bridegroom, who “comes forth from his bridal chamber” (Ps 19, 5), like the sun peering over the horizon in the east.

The hour is uncertain but the coming is certain – the moment when, suddenly, we will hear the voice that will shake us from our sleep: “Behold, the bridegroom! Go out to meet him!” (Mt 25, 6). And blessed are those who, with readiness, will turn toward the east to welcome the coming Christ.

The Peculiarities of Constantine’s Basilica of St. Peter

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship with her fifth part, “Le singolarità della basilica costantiniana di San Pietro”, originally published in Italian on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on November 30, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4)

The rule of praying towards the east, which determined the orientation of churches, had some exceptions. This is neither surprising nor scandalous. It has already been mentioned that the east-west axis was sometimes not feasible, either because the buildings already existed and were converted for religious use, or because new buildings had to take into account the presence of roads and other factors that made traditional orientation impossible.

Karl Otto Nußbaum argued (see Part 4) that Italy, and Rome in particular, had no traces of oriented prayer, at least until the eighth century. On the contrary, Monsignor Stefan Heid has shown that evidence of such exists both archaeologically and literarily.

The churches of Rome deserve special attention, particularly the Constantinian Vatican Basilica. Guillaume Durand (1230-96), bishop of Mende, who lived for many years in Rome in the service of Clement IV and Gregory X, stated in his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (V, 2, 57) that “although God is everywhere, nevertheless the priest at the altar and in divine offices must pray towards the east, by order (ex institutione) of Pope Vigilius.”

He explained more precisely that in those churches where the entrance was located to the west, and therefore the priest celebrated facing the apse, he had to turn towards the faithful for the liturgical greeting (Dóminus vobiscum); if, on the other hand, the entrance was located to the east, it was not necessary for him to turn towards the faithful, since he already had them in front of him.

The reference to Pope Vigilius indicates that, as early as the sixth century, prayer in Rome was also directed towards the east. The expression ex institutione does not necessarily indicate that he was the first to establish this rule. According to Heid, it is possible that the provision arose from the fact that this rule was not universally followed, not so much because someone celebrated “towards the people,” but rather because some priests celebrated facing the apse, and therefore with their backs to the faithful, even when the entrance was to the east. It is also unclear whether Pope Vigilius’ provision was addressed to the churches of Rome or the churches of Gaul.

It seems clear, however, that Vigilius wanted prayer to be directed towards the east, regardless of where the entrance (and therefore the nave) was located; and it seems rather unlikely that he gave this instruction in opposition to a previous tradition, rather than to restore a practice that was no longer understood and was partly disregarded, in Rome or in Gaul.

In fact, in the wooden door (5th century) of the early Christian basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill, we find a panel depicting the Parousia. The woman, placed between Saints Peter and Paul, symbolizes the Church in prayer, recognizable by the position of her hands, awaiting her Lord and facing the sun, the east. This important relief testifies that the orientation of prayer and its meaning were also well established in Rome.

Complicating the understanding of liturgical orientation in the ancient basilicas of Rome is the fact that they contained a singular “pole” of orientation, namely the tombs of the martyrs. Churches had to be built in such a way as to combine the orientation of prayer with the possibility of celebrating super corpora martyrum.

If we consider the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican from the Constantinian era, we can note some peculiarities. It is well known that the basilica had (and has) its façade facing east; on the western side there was a mosaic apse, with the traditional depiction of the Traditio legis in the center, that is, Christ, between Saints Peter and Paul, offering the scroll of the new law to the former. A few meters from the apse, where the altar is normally located, was the Trophy of Gaius, a small funerary aedicule indicating the location of the tomb of the Apostle Peter, protected by a marble structure with a pergula, almost a sort of early Christian canopy. The structure was about 3 meters wide and high and 1.80 meters deep. The aedicule appeared lower because the new flooring had raised the level by 35 centimeters, thus incorporating part of the Trophy, which now rose just over a meter above the floor.

It is not at all clear where the altar was located, nor whether it was fixed, but it is more than likely that, due to the extreme importance of the presence of Peter’s tomb in the basilica, celebrations were held not towards the east but towards the monument, thus ending up accidentally facing west. To hypothesize a celebration towards the east, in the architectural context of Constantine’s basilica on Vatican Hill, would have meant turning one’s back on Peter’s tomb; it is therefore understandable that the focal point of the liturgical celebration was the tomb of the Apostle.

There is no shortage of evidence to support the idea that the travertine slab of the first aedicule was used as an altar; the celebration would thus have taken place inside the shrine that incorporated the Trophy, right above the tomb of the Apostle. The importance of the celebration super corpus should not be underestimated, as evidenced by the clash between the presbyter Vigilantius and St. Jerome. Among the practices in use in the fifth century that were challenged by the presbyter was the custom of offering the Holy Sacrifice over the bones of the martyrs. In Contra Vigilantium 8, Jerome asks rhetorically whether perhaps the popes were wrong to offer sacrifices to the Lord above the venerable bones of Peter and Paul – thus supporting the hypothesis that, at the time, in the Vatican basilica, the celebration took place inside the shrine itself and not simply in its vicinity.

Whatever the case, in the fifth century it was not possible to celebrate towards the east in St. Peter’s because of the location of the Confession. It was only with the elevation of the altar that both the super corpus celebration and the correct orientation could be preserved.

An interesting hypothesis is that Pope Vigilius’s decision, mentioned above, may have been motivated by the need to correct incorrect prayer orientations, which arose from the fact that the pope himself celebrated facing west in the Vatican basilica. The misunderstanding of why, in St. Peter’s, the pope had to celebrate in the opposite direction to the traditional one may have led others to celebrate towards the west in churches with an east-facing façade.

Ancient Altars Facing the People? Nußbaum’s Misinterpretation

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship, with her fourth part, “Altari antichi verso il popolo? L’errata interpretazione di Nußbaum”, originally published in Italian on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on November 30, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2; Part 3)

A constant feature of revolutions in the liturgical sphere is the encounter between novelty and antiquity, the convergence between progressivism and archeologism.

In the recent book dedicated to the practice of Communion in the hand, Il cibo dei Serafini. Comunione sulla mano, sì o no? [The Food of the Seraphim: Communion in the Hand, Yes or No?], an attempt was made to show how this phenomenon came about precisely through a misunderstanding of the meaning of ancient sources, interpreted in the light of ideological convictions completely foreign to that context, resulting in a new ritual form that has very little to do with the Church of the early centuries, but much to do with more modern heterodox ideas.

Something similar has also happened with regard to the orientation of prayer and sacred buildings. This misunderstanding was reinforced by a great scholar, Karl Otto Nußbaum (1923-1999), professor of liturgy at the University of Bonn and author of a highly erudite two-volume book published in 1965, Der Standort des Liturgen am christlichen Altar vor dem Jahre 1000. Eine archäologische und liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchung [The Position of the Celebrant at the Christian Altar before the Year 1000. An Archaeological and Liturgical-Historical Investigation].

Nußbaum recognized that the first Christian churches were built on an east-west axis, with the apse or façade facing east, but he came to the incredible conclusion that “when proper religious buildings appeared, there were no precise rules determining which side of the altar the celebrant should stand on. He could stand either in front of or behind the altar.”

In practice, for Nußbaum, the almost universal orientation of churches did not necessarily indicate an equally universal orientation of prayer and, therefore, of the location of the celebrant, who could freely stand in front of or behind the altar, facing either east or west. According to him, when the apse was located to the east, the priest could celebrate either towards the people or towards the east; however, when the entrance faced east, the priest always faced the people, with the altar between the celebrant and the assembly. It was only from the sixth century onwards that things changed and the priest ended up between the altar and the assembly, facing the apse.

Reviewing Nußbaum’s book in the journal of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Innsbruck, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie (no. 88, 1966), another great expert on the history of liturgy, the Tyrolean Josef Andreas Jungmann, a member of the Liturgical Commission during the Second Vatican Council, had no hesitation in declaring that “the often-repeated assertion that the early Christian altar presupposed as a rule that it should face the people is a legend.” A scathing criticism.

In fact, Nußbaum did not conclude in favor of celebrations facing the people on the basis of unequivocal archaeological or written data, but on the basis of highly questionable interpretations of some of this data. For example, the existence of the cathedra and the steps for the presbytery in the apse would, for him, be proof of the celebration versus populum. But this location (see Part 2), provides indications about the first part of the Divine Liturgy, dedicated to singing and listening to the Word of God, which took place from an ambo usually located between the nave and the presbytery, but does not testify to anything relating to the liturgy of sacrifice itself.

Another example of a free interpretation: he believed that the church of Kalat Siman, built on the site where St. Simeon Stylites lived, 30 kilometers from Aleppo, was an example of celebration towards the people, although the archaeological remains do not allow the altar to be located with precision, and although the most likely hypotheses place the altar very close to the apse wall, suggesting that the celebrant had to stand on the west side of the altar, facing east.

It is quite evident that Nußbaum’s interpretation of the archaeological data is strongly influenced by prejudice, which, among other things, clouded his view of the numerous written testimonies according to which the orientation of prayer was an established fact, and even attributed to the teaching of the Apostles themselves. Suffice it to consider his reading of the presence of the remains of two churches in Abu Mena, Egypt: although both have their apses facing east, he believed, without any solid evidence, that in one the liturgy was celebrated facing east and in the other facing west. Or to the interpretation that the orientation of churches, particularly the basilicas in Rome and North Africa, with their facades facing east, was evidence of a celebration facing the people.

But what was this prejudice? 

The logical justification given by Nußbaum for systematically giving priority in his theory to the versus populum celebration is that it was “the original form of the Eucharist.” Nußbaum believes that the early Christians participated in the Liturgy of the Word in the temple, but celebrated the Eucharistic banquet in their homes. When the two forms of worship were finally united, it was customary for the presider to stand behind the sacred table, facing the people like an orator in front of an assembly. (Uwe M. Lang, Facing the Lord. Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, 2006, p. 45)

And so we return to where our investigation began: the myth of the domestic church (which I discuss here) and of tables as communal tables (see here, here, and here). Once they had places of worship, the early Christians would (on this theory) have celebrated facing the people, because the Eucharist had been celebrated in homes as a fraternal meal in memory of the Lord. The Lord’s command at the Last Supper – “do this in memory of me” – would have been understood as the perpetuation of the convivial model, in which, of course, all the diners face each other. Only later, when the convivial model was joined by, and then superseded by, the sacrificial model, did the celebrant end up turning his back on the people.

The problem with this interpretation is that, although it is now widespread in the common imagination, it is not based on solid evidence. Instead, the evidence points to an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice (and therefore also as a sacrificial meal) from the beginning, testifying to buildings dedicated to worship and not to common dining rooms, and to actual altars and not to dining tables.

Similarly, there is a great deal of evidence confirming that the orientation of the Church’s prayer since the early centuries was towards the east and was by no means ‘free’. The exceptions, as we shall see, can be explained by specific circumstances that have nothing to do with a celebration facing the people.

The Altar Facing the People — A Novelty of Our Time

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship with the third part, “L’altare verso il popolo, una novità della nostra epoca,” originally published in Italian on November 23, on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2)

If there is one thing that emerges very clearly from the study of churches and Christian texts from the earliest centuries of the Church (see here), it is the fact that places of worship were built, with a few exceptions, on an east-west axis, with the apse mainly facing east. The altar was positioned so that the bishop and priests could offer sacrifice facing east: when the apse was on the eastern side, the ministers also faced the apse; when, less frequently, the apse faced west, they celebrated facing the front of the church, which was located on the eastern side.

What does not emerge at all from these historical reconstructions is that there ever existed a celebration “towards the people” and, consequently, an altar “towards the people.” In other words, the people were never considered the point of orientation for the public prayer of the Church, nor for the prayer of the faithful. That the Church as a hierarchically ordered people was the subject of this prayer was beyond question; but, precisely for this reason, its point of orientation was not in itself, but in God.

One could object – and in fact one does object – that “God is everywhere”, and therefore it would make no sense to physically orient prayer. But this was not at all the belief of the Christians of the early centuries, not because they did not believe in divine omnipresence, but because they were much more aware and attentive than we are in recognizing cosmic symbolism, a consequence of the creative act of eternal Wisdom, and its importance for the homo religiosus.

The sign of the sun did not leave any ancient people indifferent, not even Christians, who by then knew the full meaning of this cosmic sign, in its expression of the power of the risen Christ as well as the orientation of all human history towards the Parousia. The meaning of the orientation of prayer, and therefore of sacred buildings and altars, is certainly not understood starting from divine omnipresence, but rather from our humanity, which is located in a symbolic universe, coming from God, eternal Wisdom.

A mosaic of Christ with the attributes of Apollo, the Greco-Roman god of the sun, from the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th century, discovered in a mausoleum within the part of the Vatican necropolis which is now under St Peter’s basilica. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) 

Our time finds it tremendously difficult to comprehend this truth, because our relationship with the universe has been drastically reduced to its use and consumption or, at best, to its “understanding” in purely physical-mathematical terms. The reality, however, is that worship and the cosmos meet and illuminate each other precisely in their intimate reference to the transcendence from which they derive and to which they tend. And so geographical east and the orientation of prayer come together harmoniously.

Therefore, until very recently, there has never been an altar oriented towards the people, nor would such an orientation have been understood. Even when the sacred minister was actually facing the nave, he did so because the Church faced east rather than west. The reason is elementary even for religious people and for Christians in particular: prayer is addressed to God, the sacrifice offered by the priest rises before the Most High, the altar is a sign of the altar of Heaven that stands before the divine Majesty: only God is the point of orientation of the Church’s prayer.

Therefore, the physical point of this orientation must be capable of expressing this transcendent reality, according to a universal cosmic language. And the “people” certainly do not have this characteristic. The misunderstanding of this point is now so deeply rooted that even the traditional orientation towards God/east is understood only negatively, as “turning one’s back” on the people; an interpretation that further confirms how the people have now become, for the first time in history, not only of the Church but also of religions, the focal point of worship.

From our recent article on the solemn Mass celebrated on Sunday, December 15, in the basilica of St Ambrose in Milan. 

So where does this idea of an altar facing the people come from?

The answer to this question (which will continue in the next article of the series) must first clear the field of a persistent cliché, namely that this new orientation was desired by the Second Vatican Council. In reality, it happened did many other liturgical changes: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), does not say a single word on this subject, neither regarding the orientation nor regarding the construction of new altars.

It was the Instruction issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the Consilium for the application of the liturgical Constitution, Inter Oecumenici (September 26, 1964), that took the liberty of introducing for the first time the expression versus populum in reference to the liturgical celebration: “It is good that the main altar be detached from the wall so that it can be easily turned around and celebrated facing the people.”

It is not clear which point of SC is being applied here, since, as we said, the liturgical Constitution does not mention it at all; in any case, it can be noted that the Instruction still speaks of a possibility, not an obligation. The text was incorporated into the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and, in its edition still under study in 2000, includes the apparently restrictive addition, “which is desirable wherever possible.”

The non-obligatory nature of altars detached from the wall and of celebration facing the people had already been highlighted by the then-president of the Consilium for the application of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, who on January 25, 1966, explained to all the presidents of the national episcopal conferences that “for a true and participatory liturgy, it is not essential that the altar be turned versus populum: in the Mass, the entire liturgy of the word is celebrated from the seat, the ambo, and the lectern, which are therefore turned toward the assembly; as far as the Eucharistic liturgy is concerned, loudspeaker systems make participation quite possible. Secondly, serious consideration should be given to artistic and architectural issues, as these elements are protected in many countries by strict civil laws.”

Said – and then denied: in all churches, the altar versus populum was in fact imposed, even leading to the abandonment and demolition of ancient altars.

The non-mandatory nature of this change also emerges from the response of September 25, 2000, from the Congregation for Divine Worship, which clarified that the indication in Inter Oecumenici “is not a mandatory form, but a suggestion.” Reflecting on how various factors may discourage making these changes, it concluded that “the position facing the assembly seems more convenient [...] without, however, excluding the other possibility.”

The rubrics of the current Roman Missal require that the priest, at the moment of the Orate, fratres, the Pax Domini, the Ecce Agnus Dei, and the Oremus that introduces the Prayer after Communion, be “facing the people” – a rubric that would make no sense if the entire celebration were necessarily already facing the people.

We can therefore observe a pattern to which we are unfortunately accustomed when it comes to liturgical reforms:

1. Vatican II does not speak of the altar and celebration versus populum;
2. the Instruction, which should simply apply the document on the liturgy, introduces the possibility;
3. Bishops and liturgists impose the obligation, prohibiting the traditional orientation, which for convenience we call ad Deum.

It goes without saying that the refrain today and then is nothing more than that of a presumed better participation of the people, so that those who defend the classical orientation can and must be opposed as “enemies of the people.” This, too, is a déjà vu of every self-respecting revolution. However, it must not lack the support of plausibility offered by science, as we shall see...

The Orientation of Ancient Churches

We continue with the second part of Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship, “L’orientamento delle chiese antiche”, published in Italian on November 16 in La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, and reproduced here in translation with the kind permission of the editors. (Read Part 1.)

Prayer directed towards the east. The altar oriented towards the east. The priest standing before the divine Majesty, positioned in front of the altar and facing east.

Martin Wallraff, a Protestant professor of ancient church history at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, in his monograph Christus verus sol. Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in der Spätantike [Christ, the True Sun. Sun Worship and Christianity in Late Antiquity, 2001] summarized the importance of the orientation of prayer in the early centuries of Christianity:

Christians pray facing east. This principle was taken for granted throughout the early Church. Evidence of this is widely scattered throughout time and space. Nowhere is there any trace of Christianity without this tradition or with the custom of praying in a different direction.

This characteristic, so evident, which structures both personal and collective prayer, and so universally widespread, could not fail to determine the criterion of orientation in the construction of churches, which had to favor and almost embody this posture.

And in fact, the churches of antiquity, whatever their shape, were built on an east-west axis, so that the apse, near which the altar was placed, was usually located to the east. Sometimes, the apse could be placed to the west, but even in this case, the priest still celebrated facing east, thus turning his gaze in front of him, towards the facade of the church.

Problems in applying this fundamental orientation could arise especially when churches were built in urban contexts where existing streets “forced” the orientation of the building, or when secular buildings were converted into Christian places of worship. In these situations, it is quite obvious and understandable that the east-west orientation was not strictly adhered to. However, these are exceptions to the rule, due to contingent and insurmountable causes.

Baptisteries also followed the east-west axis, with the apse (when present) mainly facing east. In this case, the orientation served not so much for prayer as for the confession of faith. Before receiving the sacramental baptism, the catechumen had to confess his faith facing Christ (east), leaving behind the decadent world (west) of sin and paganism.

The eastward facing baptistery of St John in the Lateran in Rome, photographed by William Henry Goodyear (1846-1923); from the Brooklyn Museum archives via Wikimedia Commons.

Monsignor Stefan Heid (Altar and Church. Principles of Liturgy from Early Christianity, 2023) presents a broad overview of churches in different geographical areas of ancient Christianity, focusing precisely on their orientation. When we look at the Byzantine world, and more generally at the Eastern world, including the churches of Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan, the evidence that the church and prayer faced east is overwhelming.

In general, the buildings were structured in such a way that the faithful were already oriented towards the east, while the bishop’s chair and the presbyters’ seats were adjacent to the apse, thus facing west. This location has misled many, leading them to believe that the celebration took place facing the people. But this is a rather gross misunderstanding. In reality, the chair and seats were oriented towards the ambo or bema, which was usually located near the presbytery, in the center.

The building was therefore structured as follows: moving from west (entrance) to east, we find the nave, the ambo (which was not a simple lectern but a structure with steps), the presbytery with the altar, the apse with the episcopal chair and the seats of the presbyters. Therefore, during the singing of the pericopes taken from the Holy Scriptures, the bishop and priests faced the ambo (and therefore also looked towards the nave); but when the sacrificial part of the Divine Liturgy began, they descended to the altar, placing themselves in front of it, on its western side, and looked towards the apse, to the east.

It is interesting to note that there is evidence that, at this moment, the deacon exhorted the faithful to stand up and look to the east. This would give rise to the introductory dialogue of the Preface, in which we are urged to lift up our hearts (and therefore to stand upright) and turn them ad Dóminum, to the Lord, which in the liturgical context undoubtedly means towards the east. The exhortation to stand up was addressed to everyone, while the exhortation to turn towards the east was mainly addressed to those who, during the singing of the Word of God, sat along the perimeter walls, thus looking towards the interior of the nave. From that moment on, every member of the congregation, together with the sacred ministers and the bishop, had to look towards Christ—that is, towards the east.

Confirming this, many churches have a rather narrow space between the altar and the apse, while the space between the altar and the iconostasis is wider. Also noteworthy is the presence of a cross in the apse dome, indicating the point of orientation of the celebrant’s gaze, or the presence of a slab on the floor, on the west side of the altar, indicating the site of the celebrant while he was at the altar, or a mosaic carpet that was to be seen from west to east. However, there is no archaeological evidence for celebration towards the people.

Archaeological evidence is rarer in Western churches, due to the fact that there are few examples of altars dating back to the early centuries of the Church. However, where such evidence does exist, as in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Grado or in that of San Vitale in Ravenna, it attests to the apse being located to the east and the altar being placed very close to the apse wall, a sign that the celebrant was located on the opposite side of the altar, which was more spacious, facing the apse.

No less significant than archaeological evidence is St. Ambrose’s commentary on Psalm 118, in which he compares the Christian to a sacred building and states:

If, therefore, you have the building of God within you and your windows are always open to the east, behold, the Word comes. Behold, it stands upright behind that wall [...], behold, it looks inside, through your windows. (Commentary on Psalm 118, Vau, 19)

Ambrose is suggesting a spiritual interpretation based on an established fact and common experience: in the church, the windows are open to the east so that the eyes of the rising Sun, Christ the Lord, can look through them and meet the eyes of his faithful, who are oriented toward him.

The Orientation of Prayer

Luisella Scrosati is one of the finest Catholic journalists in Italy at this time. She often writes articles of considerable interest on liturgical topics. With the permission of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, we offer NLM readers the following translation of her article series on the topic of spiritual, architectural, and liturgical orientation, beginning today with “L’orientamento della preghiera”, originally published in Italian on November 9 of this year.

No religious man, whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian, neglected the posture of the body in prayer, and especially in the presentation of offerings to the deity. In particular, three aspects appear especially well documented in writings and visual representations: standing posture, raised and open hands, and eyes turned toward the sky—characteristics that were common to both the faithful who presented offerings and prayers and the priest who sacrificed them to the deity.

These bodily attitudes express a clear aspect: prayer and the offering of sacrifices are performed in the presence of God; the body is called to present itself before the deity, adopting appropriate postures, while orienting the deep intention of the heart. This participation of the body in prayer is a typically and exquisitely human characteristic: when we address a person with respect, we also turn physically towards them, we seek their gaze with our eyes, we assume a suitable posture.

But there is another significant aspect that marks the orientation of prayer. In pagan cults, images of idols played the role of focus of orientation. The person praying turned toward the image and stretched out their hands in that direction. The same was true for sacrifice: the offerer and the priest were oriented toward the image.

This led to an interesting fact: the altar had a direction, that is, it had a front and a back, so that the priest offering the sacrifice stood in front of it, oriented toward the image of the deity. Stefan Heid (Altar and Church, pp. 236-237) points out that, according to the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the altar had to be located outdoors on the western side of the temple, facing east, so that the priest could offer the sacrifice with his gaze turned towards the sky, in an easterly direction, in front of the image of the idol. Clement of Alexandria also confirms this orientation: “This is why even the most ancient temples faced west, so that those who stood in front of the statues of the gods would be led to turn towards the east” (Stromata, VII, 43, 7).

In Judaism, too, orientation was fundamental. The prohibition against making images of Yahweh prevented there being statues and representations similar to those of the pagans, but this prohibition did not cancel out the importance of the correct orientation of prayer and sacrifice. Referring to the sacrificial offering, God commands Moses: “This is the perpetual burnt offering for your generations, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, in the presence of the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak with you” (Ex. 29, 42). The sacrifice of animals took place on the bronze altar, inside the sacred enclosure, but outside the Holy Place. The sacrifice had to be offered by the priests “in the presence of the Lord,” that is, facing the Holy of Holies. The sacrifice of incense also had to be offered “before the Lord”: “He shall burn it at sunset, when Aaron fills the lamps: a perpetual incense before the Lord for your generations” (Ex. 30, 8). Every sacrifice offered by the king and the people was offered “before the Lord” (cf. 1 Kings 8, 62).

This expression is found in many passages of the Old Testament to indicate not so much an inner attitude as a physical orientation, closely linked to the orientation of the altars. No Levite would ever have offered a sacrifice standing between the Holy of Holies and the altar, and no Jew would ever have prayed with his back to the Temple—something expressly condemned by the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel (cf. Ezek 8, 16).

For Christians, too, the exercise of the priesthood is synonymous with standing in the presence of God, standing before God, standing before his face, presenting oneself before the eyes of the divine Majesty. In conspectu Dei stare, coram oculis Dei, astare coram te, adstantes ante tuam Maiestatem, are expressions that are found in abundance in ancient liturgical texts and in those of the Fathers. Expressions that, once again, are not intended to express mere inner recollection, but a concrete bodily orientation: the priest stands before God because he stands at the front of the altar (ante altare stans), facing the image of Christ and the East—a cardinal point also present in pagan cults, which takes on a new meaning for Christians.

The priest who sacrifices and the faithful who offer are “on the same side,” in front of the altar, and they stand before God, looking at Him, represented in an image, as seen in numerous mosaics and apse frescoes; or simply towards the East, the cardinal point considered most noble by nature, an expression in creation of the Sun of righteousness (Mal 4, 2), the rising Sun (Luke 1, 78), Jesus Christ our Lord.

There are countless texts of the Fathers that indicate this custom of praying facing the East, that is, oriented, as coming directly from the Apostles. St. John Damascene, after explaining the reasons for this orientation, writes that “this tradition of the Apostles is not written; in fact, they have handed down to us many things that are not written” (The Orthodox Faith, IV, 12). St. Basil the Great gives as an obvious and established fact that prayer rises by turning to the East, although few now remember the reason: “This is why we all look to the East when we pray; but few know that we are searching for our original homeland, the paradise that God planted in Eden, in the East” (The Holy Spirit, XXVII, 66, 60).

In prayer and sacrifice, Christians and priests therefore face the East, often looking at an image of Christ. The altar is also oriented in this direction. It is important, in this regard, to clear up a misunderstanding: the oriented altar has often been confused with the “wall” altar, i.e., the altar that has only three sides free and is set in a more complex structure; the altar free on all four sides has been considered a sign of free orientation, imagining that the priest could stand facing the faithful. However, this is not the case: the altar was always oriented, i.e., it had a front and a back, and the priest stood at the front [i.e., the western side, facing east], even when the altar was free on all four sides.

This theme of the orientation of prayer introduces us to another important question, that of the orientation of sacred buildings. We will discuss this in the next installment.

Footage of Mass in Vietnam, circa late 1960s

The following video contains public domain footage shot in Vietnam between 1968 and 1971, showing a priest blessing American troops and offering Mass for them.

It is accompanied by the song “Sky Pilot,” a 1968 hit by Eric Burdon & the Animals, released on the album The Twain Shall Meet. I’m not a big fan of the piece (to say the least; my band would be called “The Rational Animals”), but one can see why it was chosen: “sky pilot” refers to a military chaplain, and “the song is a balladic slice of life story about a chaplain who blesses a body of troops just before they set out on an overnight raid or patrol, and then retires to await their return” (source).

Personally I would have been much more interested in hearing what the chaplain was saying, but it may be presumed, by this time, that he is doing the blessing and Mass in English. It is hard to tell what rite he is following. The fact that he is turned toward the troops does not in and of itself determine between the hybrid rite of 65/67 and the Novus Ordo, as by the mid-60s nearly everyone was doing Mass versus populum. The fact that there is no genuflection immediately after the consecration of the wine (as it seems to me), and that there also seem to be no altar cards, would argue in favor of this being the Novus Ordo.

I would certainly be interested in hearing more from readers who know about how the liturgical reform played out in the military chaplaincy during this period of upheaval on the Catholic Church.

With all the respect in the world for both the soldiers and their chaplains, one cannot help contrasting this scene of postconciliar liturgy with some of the many striking images we have of the traditional Mass being said on the battlefield earlier in the twentieth century.

Famous image of Fr. Kapuan, celebrating "ad orientem" on a jeep; at this moment he is turned to the people to say "Dominus vobiscum"

Some more great photos here.

One last war-related matter. Years ago I remember reading an article about a man who had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam for a good many years. The years he was in camp corresponded to the rollout of the liturgical reform culminating in the Novus Ordo. When he was released and returned to the United States, he had a sort of Rip van Winkle experience: nothing was the same as he remembered it. When he had left, Mass was still the Roman Rite in Latin, ad orientem, communion kneeling, etc.; and when he returned, it was the Modern Rite, in English, versus populum, communion standing, etc.

He was confused and distraught, but as his faith had never wavered, he continued to go to Mass. Nevertheless, he admitted in an interview that the only way he could get through the Mass each Sunday was to employ the same mental techniques of blocking out his surroundings and enduring deprivation that he had had to learn in the prison camp (one either had to learn to cope, or perish). He confronted the mental torture with the tools he had acquired. Then, decades later, he discovered quite by chance that the Latin Mass was still being said in a nearby city. He began to attend it, and said it felt like being released anew from prison.

If that is not a striking story, I don’t know what is.

Pope Francis Mandates Ad Orientem Worship

Our readers will perhaps remember that in 2016, His Eminence Cardinal Robert Sarah, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, called upon the Church to return to its authentic custom of offering the Mass ad orientem, as a way of “putting God back at the center” of Christian worship. (Original interview in French here: https://www.famillechretienne.fr/vie-chretienne/liturgie/cardinal-sarah-comment-remettre-dieu-au-caeur-de-la-liturgie-194987.) They will also likely remember that was met with a swift Papal intervention on behalf of retaining the inauthentic custom of worshipping versus populum, which cannot perish soon or thoroughly enough.

This controversy does not impinge solely on the Roman Rite. The Syro-Malabar Church suffered a number of very unfortunate Latinizations in the 20th century, which the Congregation for the Eastern Churches has spent a good deal of time undoing, in obedience to the one decree of Vatican II that the Vatican itself seems to take seriously these days, Orientalium Ecclesiarum. In recent months, this has become such a very sharp controversy that (lamentabile sane dictu!), some members of the faithful even went so far as to publicly burn in effigy the prefect of the Oriental Congregation, H.E. Leonardo Sandri, and the Major Archbishop of the Syr-Malabar Church. H.E. Mar George Alencherry. In January, over 100 Syro-Malabar priests staged a protest and hunger-strike in front of Cardinal Alencherry’s residence in favor of the continuation of the inauthentic custom.

Given the events of 2016 in regard to the Roman Rite, we are very pleased to be able to report via the German website katholisches.info (brought to my attention by Peter) that the Pope has now changed his mind, and ordered the Syro-Malabar in toto to accept the proposed return to the authentic custom of the Church. Like the recent denunciation of the Novus Ordo by Abp Roche, we can only say that this bodes well for the future!

“Pope Francis settled a dispute by ordering that all (Syro-Malabar) diocesesthroughout the Church celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass ad orientem, versus Deum. Together, Francis said, priests and people have to look to the East, from where, according to apostolic tradition, the Second Coming of the Lord is expected. No satire. You read correctly. But how can this be?” Read the full article here: (German is a language which the automatic translator of Google Chrome handles very well.)

https://katholisches.info/2022/05/19/papst-franziskus-ordnet-an-ad-orientem-zu-zelebrieren/

His Excellency Mar Joseph Pallikaparampil, bishop emeritus of the Eparchy of Palai in India, celebrates the Holy Qurbana ad orientem in the grotto of St Peter’s basilica in 2015. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Emmanuel Parekkattu, CC BY-SA 4.0)

“The Sacrifice of Praise and the Ecstatic Orientation of Man”: Dr. Kwasniewski’s Davenport Lecture

The following lecture was given in Davenport, Iowa, on March 2, 2022, at the invitation of Una Voce Quad City. I am grateful to the organizers for making a video, which is now on my YouTube page.

I am convinced that one of the greatest errors we are facing in the Church today—and one that, in a hidden way, drives a lot of other problems we are suffering under—is the dominance of an activist, utilitarian, this-worldly notion of what Christianity is all about. It’s taken for granted that religion is for the sake of social justice and improvement of quality of life, that it’s a matter of being busy with charitable projects, of making ourselves “useful,” and so forth—quite as if God is not very good at ruling His universe and needs a lot of help from us (“excuse me, Lord, let me step in and take care of this disaster”). At its extreme, as we see it too often in Vatican documents and activities, Catholicism looks like an interreligious, humanitarian social services operation, the “chaplain to the United Nations” as some wags have put it.

In my talk this evening I would like to present to you a totally different way of thinking of the meaning of Christianity and of the purpose of human life. I will offer you the traditional vision, which, needless to say, is not well understood. And I will do so starting from a book of the Bible that used to be at the heart of all of theology but has suffered enormous neglect in the modern Church, namely, the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is all about priesthood, sacrifice, and heaven, and the very title of which underlines the profound continuity between the worship of Israel instituted by God through Moses and its fulfillment in the worship of the New Israel instituted by the God-man Jesus Christ.

In this Epistle, whose author I will take to be St. Paul or certainly of St. Paul’s circle, a climactic verse of chapter 13 exhorts us: “By Him [our Lord Jesus Christ], therefore, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is to say, the fruit of lips confessing to His Name” (Heb 13:15). Given the relative paucity of explicit references in Hebrews to the Christian liturgy and how it is to be conducted here on earth,[1] this exhortation rings out all the more loudly, summoning us to a certain way of life: one in which we offer unto God, continually, the “sacrifice of praise,” which is the fruit of interior faith and its verbal confession. One might ask: Why does St. Paul sum up the Christian religion as a sacrificium laudis? What might we learn from the emphasis on praise?

Before digging into that question, it is worthwhile to point out how frequently Sacred Scripture uses this language. Apart from Hebrews 13:15, here are some other instances:

Offer to God the sacrifice of praise: and pay thy vows to the most High. (Psalm 49:14)

The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me: and there is the way by which I will shew him the salvation of God. (Psalm 49:23)

And let them sacrifice the sacrifice of praise: and declare his works with joy. (Psalm 106:22 )

I will sacrifice to thee the sacrifice of praise, and I will call upon the name of the Lord. (Psalm 115:8)

And offer a sacrifice of praise with leaven: and call free offerings, and proclaim it: for so you would do, O children of Israel, saith the Lord God. (Amos 4:5)

But I with the voice of praise will sacrifice to thee: I will pay whatsoever I have vowed for my salvation to the Lord. (Jonah 2:10)

And thou hast taken pity upon two only children. Make them, O Lord, bless thee more fully: and to offer up to thee a sacrifice of thy praise, and of their health, that all nations may know, that thou alone art God in all the earth. (Tobit 8:19)[2]

And there are countless verses that suggest the same in different language. We have, for instance, Psalm 70:8: “Let my mouth be filled with praise, that I may sing thy glory, thy greatness, all the day long”—a verse, incidentally, that is sung in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom immediately after the reception of Holy Communion, in a way identifying Our Lord with the very act of praise: “Let my mouth be filled with praise.”[3] The Prophet Jeremiah says: quoniam laus mea tu es, “for Thou art my praise” (Jer 17:14).

Of all forms of prayer, praise is the one most “for its own sake.” In a sense, it is useless, in that it has no further ulterior motive or result we are seeking out of it.[4] Praise looks to the greatness, glory, beauty, and worthiness of the one praised and seeks to render to him a selfless homage; in the words of the Gloria, propter magnam gloriam tuam, or in the words of the final Psalm: laudate eum secundum multitudinem magnitudinis eius, “praise him according to his exceeding greatness!” (Ps 150:2). All forms of prayer, of course, are directed towards God, this being part of the very definition of prayer. That explains why the publican in the parable went home justified rather than the Pharisee, since the publican actually turned to God in self-abnegating repentance, whereas the Pharisee turned to himself in admiration of his own excellence.

All the same, other forms of prayer besides praise are unavoidably wrapped up with oneself. When we give thanks to God, we are recalling the good things He has done for us. When we supplicate Him, it’s about our own needs or the needs of others, and that’s perfectly fine; we are needy creatures, and the worst thing we can do is to pretend otherwise. When we accuse ourselves of wrongdoing and repent of it, we are recognizing that we have failed to live up to God’s just expectations of us, that we are at fault and deserving of punishment, and we beg for pardon. But when we praise, we are lifting up our hands, our voices, our minds, towards God who is almighty, all-glorious, awe-inspiring, worthy in Himself of the homage of the entire cosmos for all eternity, worthy of the total surrender of myself to Him. In a short story called “The Castle: A Parable,” George MacDonald gives us this magnificent prayer:

We thank Thee for Thyself.
Be what Thou art—our root and life,
our beginning and end, our all in all.
Thou livest; therefore we live.
Thou art—that is all our song.[5]

In order to have a concrete model in front of us, we might think of the sequence of psalms in the office of Lauds in the monastic tradition. On Sundays of Paschaltide, on Sundays in special seasons, and on Solemnities, Lauds is a time of prayer given over entirely to the pure praise of God: Psalms 66, 62, 92, 99, the Benedicite, and Psalms 148 to 150 (from which Laudate psalms the office derives its very name).[6] In contrast, when we look at Prime or the Little Hours, we can see how concerned they are with the labors and trials of the day, the ongoing struggle with our enemies who seek to surprise us and capture us, the need for help, mercy, and consolation in a time of exile or pilgrimage. While not excluding these themes, Lauds is principally a “sacrifice of praise,” a burning up of the incense of our time and of the fruit of our lips. It is an office we perform not in order to “get” something, but propter magnam gloriam tuam. May all the earth praise the Lord: every creature, every order of being, every man, woman, and child. We will stand in for them, voicing the praises of creation; we will announce and obey the divine imperative, laudate Dominum; we will give utterance to a sleeping world on its behalf.

As with the religious life in general, Lauds is not concerned with going out into the streets, knocking on doors, engaging in conversations, making the Gospel relevant or intelligible. Those things are important and have their place, but first comes praise, the precondition and promise of the fruitfulness of anything else we may do.[7] A priest once wrote to me these words:

I know of no great thinker, no great advocate of justice or mercy or great keeper of an institution, who was not first an ardent laudator (giver of praise). I also do not know true intercessors who did not do this ministry in the context of praise. Self-forgetting praise is our foretaste of Heaven.[8]

This is the message we modern Christians need to hear in the expression “sacrifice of praise.” We are steeped in a world of pragmatism, utilitarianism, and activism, where we place such a high premium on doing and making, where we ask “what good is it” and “what’s in it for me,” where we look for results, the bottom line, the cash value, the pay-off. It is so interesting to see how Our Lord in the Gospels repeatedly refuses to lower Himself to the level of quick victories over the roiling crowds, how He insists on the disciples taking time off to recollect themselves and to pray, and, most mysteriously of all, how He Himself spends whole nights in “the prayer of God,” as St. Luke says.[9] He who, as God, could not pray to Himself; He who, as man, was hypostatically united to the Word and therefore perpetually and perfectly communing with the Most Blessed Trinity in His human mind and heart, nevertheless really and truly exercised all the acts of prayer, including praise.

In this way He revealed to us that prayer is not something superficial and optional to man but, rather, is constitutive of his inmost identity as a rational creature fashioned by God, dependent on God, and destined for God. The one who does not pray is not living as a man; in any case, he cannot inherit the kingdom that a saint—that is, a man of prayer—is competent to receive. Jesus showed His disciples that prayer is an activity as necessary and as refreshing as eating and drinking when the body needs nourishment, as vital and fundamental as breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.[10] The poignant little prayer before the Divine Office brings out this point: “O Lord, in union with that divine intention with which You Yourself praised God while on earth, I offer You this hour.” This short prayer addresses Our Lord as the one who first lived and always lives the sacrificium laudis with utter completeness, with inexhaustible superabundance; we wish to unite our will to His pure, lofty, all-sufficient intention.

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