“Tuned to the Truth: The Catholic Triad of Faith, Life, and Liturgy” (Part 3: Conclusion)

We conclude our translation of P. Bernward Deneke FSSP's Pro Missa Tridentina lecture. Part 1 | Part 2. - PAK

 

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5. Separating the true from the good

Where the altars are no longer inhabited by the truth and Christian rites are no longer inspired by it, error and falsehood are imminent. Renouncing the truth has a corrosive effect. The symbolic, i.e. the composite, falls apart, degenerating into the diabolical.

Against this background, here are some remarks that concern more the personal religious life of individual Catholics than the situation of the Church. For although in circles of true believers one usually honors the truth, takes its moral implications (the good) seriously, and by no means considers the aesthetic side (the beautiful) to be of secondary importance, it can still happen here that the various areas become disconnected.

Thus, among conservative Christians, morality sometimes degenerates into a barren or even toxic moralism, robbed of its foundation in the truth of faith. It poses a greater danger to genuine morality as a whole than does open immorality. While the latter openly declares itself to be against the norms of morality and thus reveals itself as their enemy, moralism presents itself in the name of morality, but distorts it in a caricatural, sometimes downright malicious way, and thus brings it into disrepute.

The opposite danger is the separation of the true from the good and the beautiful, which becomes an end in itself. Not infrequently, the faith is present, but not strong enough to have a concrete effect on the way of life. From this point of view, for example, the liturgical celebration of this faith is either appreciated only from a taste point of view or, on the contrary, considered to be of low rank. Because the bond that should hold together truth, goodness and beauty is weakening, considerable tensions arise in the life of such a person, even to the point of inner contradiction.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Everyman, who is beset by death, is an extreme example of the power of holding on to faith without it shaping one's life. Everyman already has one foot in hell and is desperately looking for salvation. Faith in the form of a personification approaches him and says, “You have laughed at me all your life / And thought God's word was nothing worth, / Now in your hour of death / Is there another word coming out of your mouth?”

Everyman's “I believe – I believe” stammering is answered by Faith with the remark: “That's poor talk!” Whereupon Everyman begins to apologize: “Oh, that God has mercy on me! / I believe the Twelve Articles with diligence, / Which I know from my childhood: / What they represent entirely, / I accept as sacred and true.” But according to James 2:26, faith without works is dead, like a body without a soul. So Everyman is told about the first divine virtue: “Faith is a poor part. / Don't build any bridges over to the other side. / Don't you know better?”[1]

True faith, as the Council of Trent teaches, is fundamentum et radix omnis iustifications, “foundation and root of all justification” (Decree De iustificatione, chap. 8, DH 1532), of every supernatural, salvific life. But this foundation must actually bear something, allow the root to grow out of the juices and forces it draws from the earth; otherwise it is a matter of a fides non formata caritate, a faith that is not formed by active love and therefore remains ineffective.

For this reason, I am partly, but not entirely, in agreement with Nicolás Gómez Dávila, who is always worth reading, when he, as always with a sharp pen against the trends of the time, presents the provocative aphorism: “The corpulent and horny canon who believes in God is more indisputably Christian than the strict and careworn pastor who believes in man.”[2]

Dávila is right in that faith in God is a basic requirement for being a Christian and that a humanistic “belief in man” can never replace it. However, does not gluttony and lust in their own way also challenge the indisputability of this faith? At least according to Catholic teaching, faith is only salvific if it is connected with the divine virtue of love – and that means: with the will to live according to God's commandments.

Incidentally, the following incident shows how the traditional liturgy, as it were, sends out strong signals in the area of moral life. Many years ago, I met a gentleman who, having grown up Catholic, not only distanced himself from the Church during his student days, but also openly opposed it. In the left-wing circles in which he moved, this was taken for granted. Until one day, during a protest action against a church dignitary, he was awakened as if from a deep sleep and then quickly changed sides.

In short, he reconnected with his abandoned homeland, attended church services, and even went to communion despite not having gone to confession since his childhood. The conditions for receiving the body of the Lord were not mentioned anywhere, and there was nothing to indicate that he should receive another sacrament in his condition.

Until he happened to attend a Holy Mass according to the old rite, which was unknown to him until then. Fascinated, he followed the events. And when the moment of Holy Communion arrived, he remained in the pew with the intention of confessing first. Why? Not because the priest had given any indication in his sermon. Rather, it was because the whole liturgy, but especially the approach to Communion and the manner of receiving it, said to him: You are not worthy for the Lord to come under your roof; first he must speak the word of absolution, and so your soul shall be healed.
 

6. Veritatis Splendor

Those who prefer the traditional liturgy often sense a specific danger among the faithful: aestheticism, that is, the independence of that realm which is described with qualities such as “beautiful,” “sublime,” and “glamorous.” What can be said in response to the accusation of aestheticism?

First of all, it should be noted that an aesthetic view of the liturgy is entirely appropriate. As public worship of the visible Church, it is essentially sensual and thus falls within the αἴσθησις, perception. Its form, its structure, the atmosphere of its sacredness, the transparency of its rites and symbols in terms of their spiritual content, their sublimity – all this is, of course, the subject of aesthetic contemplation.

In this way, the traditional liturgy, whether in the rich unfolding of a pontifical mass or in the simple celebration of a requiem, will prove to be truly beautiful. For, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, beauty is that which delights the eye because it possesses perfection (perfectio), proportion and inner harmony (proportio, consonantia), as well as a certain splendor (claritas) (S.Th. I 39,8).

Who would claim that this does not apply (or should not apply!) to the Church's liturgical heritage? Her cult is indeed the perfect expression of the purest worship of God, harmonious in its inner and outer form and – as outsiders have often testified – radiant. In contemplating the liturgy, as St. Thomas again describes it as a peculiarity of the experience of beauty, human desire comes to a fulfilled rest in a knowing way (S.Th. I-II 27,1 ad 3).

This consideration of the liturgy from an aesthetic point of view must now be clearly distinguished from aestheticism, i.e. its reduction to the aesthetic sphere. To look at it in this way is forbidden by the liturgy itself. Its statements about the necessity of true faith and about the required right life are far too explicit for someone who sincerely engages with it to stop at its perceptible form.

Thus, the Credo is one of the essential components of Sunday and festival masses. The early church name for it is symbolon, meaning a “combination” of fundamental mysteries that represent pars pro toto the entire treasury of the church and are thus a mark of recognition of the true Christian. Furthermore, the liturgical prayers often ask for fidei firmitas, the “firmness of faith” (cf. the prayer of the Trinity Sunday).

Accordingly, the liturgy has faith as a prerequisite and also as an aim. It is, in the words of Klaus Gamber, “dogma celebrated.” As such, it emerges from the mysterium fidei and leads into it. To paraphrase an important remark by St. Clement of Alexandria about understanding the Old Testament (Strom. VII 17), one can say: Without right faith, the appropriate key is missing for understanding the act of worship; for with a bent or incomplete exemplar, lacking the appropriate "teeth," the lock of the sacred vault cannot be opened to access the treasures stored within.

Ultimately, the beauty of the liturgy is grounded in its truth. Beauty is veritatis splendor, the splendor of truth. According to Martin Heidegger, it is “the fate of the essence of truth, whereby truth means: the disclosure of that which hides itself”.[3] It would be better to say that not truth, but beauty is the “disclosure of that which hides itself”. In beauty, the mysterious truth is made luminously manifest, and this is particularly the case in the liturgy.
 

7. Conclusion

Truth is therefore the keynote of the Catholic faith, life and worship. The truth that reveals itself to us in the Christian mysteries of the triune God, of creation, incarnation and redemption, of the church, of sanctification and perfection. The truth that radiates into Christian activity, into the simple and heroic works of love, into the heart of individuals and into human communities. The truth that makes itself perceptible in acts of worship, in personal and especially liturgical prayers in their dignity, in their conciseness and abundance, their humility and solemnity, their inner abundance and outer splendor.

Without truth, morality becomes a moralistic system or a matter of mere sentiment; worship becomes a hollow, gutted externality, a mirage and, unfortunately, all too often a stage for human self-promotion. Through, with, and in truth, however, the various spheres find their place in the overall order.

That is why it is essential for the survival of Christianity to rediscover the keynote of the triad and to emphasize it, especially today. Even if the fifth or the third, the moral or the aesthetic aspect of our catholicity, is at times at the top or bottom of the chord and perhaps drowns out the main note, the whole must still be tuned to this, the truth. This becomes evident in the following encounter with the traditional liturgy of the Mass, which concludes these remarks.

In my youth, when I myself began to discover the rich heritage of Catholic tradition, I met a student who had found his way to the faith in an amazing way. At his university, a lecture was given by Max Thürkauf, a professor of technical chemistry in Basel who died in 1993 and was a convinced Catholic. With scepticism, yet also a certain fascination, the still unbelieving listener followed the lecture.

He was deeply touched by a poem that Thürkauf quoted at the end, the Adoro te devote latens Deitas, that hymn-like prayer to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, which in all probability was written by St. Thomas Aquinas and which in German reads: “Gottheit tief verborgen, betend nah ich Dir” (O Deity, deeply hidden, I adore You devoutly).[4] Although he was not at all familiar with the Church's Eucharistic beliefs, the student requested the text and guarded it like a treasure. He memorized the verses, even though he was not yet able to understand them. He began to search for what the Adoro te evoked, but he was unable to find it during his visits to various churches.

One day, he happened upon a service that was so very different from those he had previously experienced. It was held in the Latin language of worship and was pervaded by silence, reverence, and adoration. When the priest lifted up the consecrated host during this Holy Mass according to the traditional rite, the words came to the student's mind: Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas.

He had arrived where beauty bears witness to truth and love proclaims it. Here he did not experience a vague sense of the numinous, but recognized the One who is truth Himself. And so he was able to intone the triad with which the Holy Mass concludes, the triad of beauty of glory, goodness of grace, and the keynote of truth: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” plenum gratiae et veritatis (John 1:14).

NOTES

[1] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Jedermann. Das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes. In Dramen (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 10–71; here, 61.

[2] Nicolás Gómez Dávila: Einsamkeiten. Glossen und Text in einem. Trans. Günther Rudolf Sigl (Vienna, 1987), 88.

[3] Martin Heidegger, Was heißt Denken? (Tübingen, 1971), 8.

[4] Ed. note: see also Dominus vobiscum no. 25, p. 22-36 [in German], available online here.

“Tuned to the Truth. The Catholic Triad of Faith, Life, and Liturgy” (Part 2)

We continue our translation of P. Bernward Deneke FSSP's lecture. See here for Part 1. - PAK

3. The basis of the Christian creed

It is now time to examine the matter of truth within the sphere of the Christian religion. This should be done on the basis of the following problem: What is the answer of a serious Catholic to the question of why he professes and practices this faith, of all things?

Reasons of subjective utility, such as pointing to personal advantages, the resulting prestige and social advancement, do not come into question; they have been eliminated almost everywhere in our time. The days when one had to be baptized a Catholic in order to become General Music Director in Vienna, like Gustav Mahler, are over.

Instead, motives of personal preference may be offered as an answer, for example in the subjective form: “Catholicism is simply beautiful, it corresponds to my personal taste,” or in a more objective form: “The Catholic world of faith, life and worship meets the highest aesthetic standards, which are not found in any other Christian denomination or other religion.”

There are indeed sincere people who find their way to the Catholic faith on the via aesthetica. The fascination that emanates in particular from our liturgy is described with a strong autobiographical coloring by Oscar Wilde in the 11th chapter of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray:

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him. 

Ten years separated the scandal-ridden author, when he wrote this in 1890, from his own last-minute conversion: On November 28, 1900, Father Cuthbert Dunn in Paris admitted the seriously ill Wilde into the Church before he died on November 30 as a result of an inflammation of the middle ear with penetration into the midbrain.

It is deeply gratifying when, in Catholic worship, especially in the offering of the sacrifice and the adoration of the Eucharistic Lord, that beauty shines forth which – according to Dostoyevsky's famous saying – “saves the world”. But is that always the case? And is a great aesthetic experience enough to justify the most important, all-important choice in life?

Even a hyperaesthete like Oscar Wilde would certainly have answered in the negative at the hour of his conversion, which was carried out without liturgical pomp in the squalor of his sickbed. And those who have grown up in the Church and matured as Christians are also unlikely to cite beauty as the ultimate reason for their Catholicism.

Another answer comes from the moral sphere. It is said, for example, “No other worldview has such a high-minded and coherent ethic; in no other religion or Christian denomination does one resist relativizing trends that undermine and erode morality as in the Catholic Church.

The argument is valid in itself, but not without problems at the present time. In the present hour, when wafts of ambiguity have been cast over the monument of unambiguousness by statements from high places, the moral authority and superiority of institutional Catholicism appears questionable in the eyes of not a few observers.

Furthermore, an analysis of the morally good shows that it is not self-justifying, but rests on a deeper basis. In philosophy, there has been and continues to be extensive debate about whether the sphere of ought, that is, the morally good, is connected to the sphere of being – and thus of truth. Without burdening the reader with the arguments about David Hume's being-should fallacy and George E. Moore's natural fallacy, it should be noted that, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas takes the reference of the good to the truth for granted, which he also substantiates with arguments. The often quoted sentence Agere sequitur esse, “Action follows from being”, expresses the essential, as does the other: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, "Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.”

Josef Pieper, who has written a valuable booklet entitled “Reality and the Good” about the foundations of the “should” in being, summarizes St. Thomas' view as follows:

All ‘should’ is based on ‘being’. Reality is the foundation of the ethical. The good is in accordance with reality. Those who want to know and do good must turn their gaze to the objective world of being. Not to their own 'convictions', not to their 'conscience', not to 'values', not to arbitrarily set 'ideals' and 'role models'. They must look away from their own act and look at reality."[1]

What is important in our context: anyone who states that the ethical height, the moral claim, in short: the goodness of the Catholic religion is the reason for their decision in favor of it, has not yet stated the ultimate reason. Goodness presupposes truth. A worldview can only be truly good if it is really real, that is, if it corresponds to reality, and that means: if it is true.

Therefore, the answer of our serious Catholic to the question of why he has adopted this faith and no other is: “I am Catholic because I am convinced of the truth of the Christian religion.”

“Truth of the Christian religion” means nothing other than: This religion is objectively true. Its contents are facts even if no human being recognizes them. The events, teachings and institutions faithfully accepted in Catholic Christianity really go back to the one and only God and have validity before him.

It is obvious that this view corresponds to the biblical testimony. When the disciples on the road to Emmaus had hurried back to Jerusalem to the eleven apostles after their encounter with the risen Jesus to tell them about their experience, they learned there that the Lord had truly risen and had appeared to Simon (Luke 24:34). The true – in the original Greek text ὄντως, “genuine”, “real” – is emphasized. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul also insists on the reality of the resurrection, without which faith is in vain. Inspired by this, in the Easter season, believers of Greek tongue greet each other with “Christòs anésti – alithõs anésti”, and Russians with “Christos voskres – voistinu voskres”: “Christ is risen – He is truly risen.”

The Christian faith is thus based on the truth and veracity of this event, and, as logic demands, everything that the resurrection implies as a prerequisite and what it subsequently explains is also established. Prerequisites are truths such as the Trinity of God, the incarnation of the eternal Son in the virginal womb of Mary through a conception brought about by the Holy Spirit, and his voluntary surrender of life for us on the cross. In the wake of the resurrection, we recognize the mission of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the visible Church with its sacraments and the offices authorized to represent Christ, with its perpetual sacrifice, the lasting presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, with its authority to forgive sins, its inerrancy and indestructibility. And our prospect of future bliss in the presence of God is linked to the resurrection of Jesus.

All this and much more is, so the Catholic Christian is convinced, true and real. Because he accepts it as true and real by faith, he is a Catholic Christian. It is not goodness or beauty that forms the keynote of the Catholic triad, but truth. It carries goodness as well as beauty, allows it to be truly good and truly beautiful.

St Thomas teaching students

4. What is truth?

In view of this emphasis on truth, the question raised by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus may now arise. The Lord had given the following self-testimony: “Yes, I am a king. For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37) The governor reacted to this in a manner that, according to Carl Schmitt's apt description, was not a genuine search for truth, but rather a tired skepticism and agnosticism or the superior tolerance displayed by the ideologically neutral statesman.[2] However, this should not prevent us from asking the Pilate question with a genuine desire for knowledge: What is truth?

In a formulation that has become classic, St. Thomas Aquinas explains truth as an adaequatio intellectus et rei, as an “approximation of the intellect and a thing (or a set of facts)” (S.Th. I 21,2). If I think about something, let it be x, and if it is actually true that it is x, then my judgment is true. My thought is measured here against reality. If the two coincide, then there is truth.

What is important here is that the opposite is also true. It is not only the state of affairs that can be the measure of knowledge, but also knowledge that can be the measure of the state of affairs. Instead of speaking of a logical truth, we speak of an ontological truth, namely the truth that does not lie in the post-cognitive thought, but rather in the thing itself.

This sounds very philosophical and abstract and should therefore be illustrated. An artist has a certain image in his imagination, it captures him, awakens his creative urge and his creative powers. He wants to place what he has seen as a work of art in the objective world of the visible, so he reaches for his paintbrush and begins his painting.

This will now be “true” insofar as it corresponds to the artistic idea, but it will be “untrue” insofar as it either falls short of it due to a lack of skill or is overgrown in its authentic form by additions, perhaps details that are intended only to show off mere skill. If, for example, Caspar David Friedrich, whose 250th birthday we are celebrating this year, had added beach huts and ships to his Monk by the Sea (Mönch am Meer), even if they were perfectly depicted, it would certainly no longer have been about the original inner vision. The painting would have become “untrue”.

In a higher sense, this ontological truth applies to the relationship of all created beings to their Creator. Whatever is created has truth in so far as it corresponds to the original, archetypal divine idea. The truth of a tree, for example, lies in the fact that it is as God conceived it. The same applies to man, albeit with the difference that he is endowed with truth not only in the sense of an objective gift, but that it was also given to him as an objective task in life. We are to become what we already always are in the creative thoughts of God; in the words of Friedrich Rückert: “Before each stands an image of what he should become: / As long as he is not that, his peace is not complete.”[3]

It should be mentioned in passing that this view is diametrically opposed to the existentialism of a Jean-Paul Sartre and his descendants, according to which man has neither a predetermined nature nor a divine mission, but must rather design himself and realize this design himself. Between such a view and the Christian view there is an unbridgeable gulf, which remains even if some moral theologians of our time try to combine the two.

At this point, if we briefly apply the ontological truth to the exalted object of the sacred liturgy, we can say that it is “true” insofar as it corresponds to the divine original model, as it appears in revelation and in the proclamation of the Church. A rite of the Mass in which the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his Eucharistic presence are validly expressed and which leads the faithful to genuine worship of God and fruitful participation in the mysteries, is undoubtedly in accordance with God's thoughts. Therefore it is “true”. And so it is a sure guide for us into the truth of the mysterium fidei.

Truth is therefore a relation; a relationship between thought and reality. From here, we have a glimpse into the very foundations of truth. Where else should they lie but in God Himself? However, it seems important to me to correct the frequently heard statement that God Himself is the truth, the “absolute truth”.

St. Thomas Aquinas also argues in this direction when he writes in his commentary on John: “All truth that our intellect can grasp is finite, and therefore there must be a truth that transcends every intellect, that is incomprehensible and infinite, and that is God” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Prologue, 6).

On closer inspection, however, one is more likely to agree with St. Augustine when he distinguishes: “Truthful” (verax) is the Father, “the truth” (veritas), however, is the Son (Commentary on the Gospel of John V 1). While Scripture does not simply identify God with the truth, Jesus calls himself “way, truth and life” (Jn 14:6). This saying certainly requires a more extensive theological discussion, but this much is certain: the eternal Logos, from whom the Father was born before time and of one being with him, is from eternity "the radiance of his glory and the express image of his being“ (Hebrews 1:3) and as the incarnate Son, ”the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); whoever sees him sees the Father (14:9). Since the Second Divine Person is the perfect image of the First, having emerged from the latter's self-awareness, it is more appropriate to ascribe truth or “being the truth” not simply to God, but more precisely to the Son.

In any case, truth consists in agreement and has its ultimate reason in God. In the briefest formula, one can say: the divine truth is the Son, the Christian truth is Christ. Jesus could have answered the governor's question, “What is truth?” quite succinctly: “I am.” On the foundation of this truth, everything rests. It is both the supporting basis and the all-encompassing whole; the principle that gives meaning and purpose to everything, without which everything, including the good and the beautiful, would fall into meaninglessness and aimlessness.

To understand the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty, let us take a brief look at the divine archetype. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that the two inner-divine processes, the begetting of the Son and the breathing of the Holy Spirit, correspond to the knowing and the willing in God. There can be no process of love without a focus on the process of the Word, because the will only focuses in love on that which has been previously recognized. Although there is no before or after in God's eternity, the logical order of the generation of the Son must be attributed a priority (S.Th. I 27,3 ad 3).

Transferred to the relationship between the cognitively true and the volitionally good, this in turn means the priority of the true. As already stated: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, “Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.” But beauty also presupposes truth. More will be said about this at a later point in order to understand it.

(To be concluded next time.)

NOTES

[1] Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good (Munich, 1949), 11.

[2] Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes (Cologne, 1982), 67.

[3] Friedrich Rückert, Werke, vol. 2 (Leipzig/Vienna, 1897), 44.

“Tuned to the Truth: The Catholic Triad of Faith, Life, and Liturgy” — A Lecture by P. Bernward Deneke, FSSP (Part 1)

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NLM is grateful to Monika Rheinschmitt of Pro Missa Tridentina and Pater Bernward Deneke, FSSP, for their permission to publish in installments a translation of the lecture P. Deneke delivered for the PMT General Assembly on June 8, 2024 at Neviges. The original text may be found here. - PAK

Introduction

Decades ago, a priestly colleague told me the following story: For some time, he had noticed a young man of student age who occasionally turned up among the attendees of his Masses. This stranger attended the service but never received Holy Communion. He also quite obviously did not seek contact with the other believers, but quickly withdrew each time.

“That’s his right,” the priest thought to himself, but as an apostolically minded person, he wanted to at least make an effort to get to know the Mass-goer. So one day he caught up with him, had a rather superficial conversation with him, invited him to various spiritual events, and also tried to introduce this loner to some zealous Catholics his age. The young man’s reaction was extremely cool. A few days later, a letter arrived in which he explained himself.

He first let the priest know in no uncertain terms that he was not interested in any catechesis, prayer events or getting to know pious people. Then came the strange statement: “I may be a Catholic, but I’m no Christian.” He does not believe in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah and Son of God. Rather, his interest was focused solely on the ancient form of the mass. It gave him the experience of the sacred, the divine. In it, he sees a rite whose basic elements coincide with the sacrificial acts of archaic cultures.

For him as a European, something of the numinous radiates here in the midst of the industrialized and engineered environment and the intellectual atmosphere, which has been banalized and corrupted by egalitarianism, loss of identity, and arbitrariness. This is something that Africans, for example, could experience in their old tribal rituals. Therefore, it was only for this reason that he visited churches where the rite of the Roman Mass liturgy is performed in as traditional a manner as possible. He asked to be spared further offers in the future.

The Catholic liturgy as an experience of the divine, detached from Catholic dogma and ecclesiastical morality. As a medium through which the spirit of the Westerner can plunge into those primal depths of numinous human experience from which the various cultic traditions arise and in which they, the exoteric forms of the different religions, coincide esoterically... It would be an exaggeration to say that this “traditional” or “perennialist” view is widespread in our country. But it does occur. It places itself with us against the modern cult of arbitrariness and equality, but at the same time against us in our belief in Jesus Christ as the only savior of mankind.

The incident described makes it clear where one can end up without a reference to an objective truth, even in the context of tradition-oriented Catholicism: “Catholic, but not Christian.” The Catholic cult is no longer regarded as an expression and reality of the universal redemptive work of the God-man Jesus Christ. Rather, it represents the more or less successful epiphany of an indeterminate divine, which can also be found in other, possibly essentially different forms.

Such an inclination is unlikely to exist in the very few Catholics who show commitment to the Missa Tridentina. Almost without exception, our group of people shows a pronounced attachment to the Church’s doctrine and defends it against the widespread denials, reinterpretations, and silences on the part of official preachers. And yet, the danger of neglecting the question of truth and, as a result, of the various areas of Catholic life drifting apart is by no means averted. Even among adherents of the traditional form of the Mass, it can happen that reference to the Gospel and to religious doctrine takes a back seat to the aesthetic experience. Even among these people there are those who (as a fellow priest remarked wittily) advocate a liturgy before Vatican II but a morality after Vatican II. It therefore seems appropriate to focus on the matter of truth, the all-encompassing, connecting and permeating truth. I will start by giving a brief overview of the path to be taken:

1. The lost center. Pluralism and uniformism, these two contradictory tendencies of our time, have a common origin: the loss of the fundamental and connecting basis.

2. The triad. Truth, goodness and beauty sound harmoniously together, with truth forming the fundamental tone.

3. The foundation of the Christian creed. Neither utilitarian reasons nor aesthetic preferences nor ethical claims, but rather the truth is the ultimate reason for which one is or becomes Catholic.

4. What is truth? Pilate’s question is answered with a few philosophical and theological thoughts.

5. The separation of truth from good. Unfruitful faith and toxic moralism are the consequences. The traditional liturgy, in its truth, bears witness to the good.

6. Veritatis Splendor. Separating the beautiful from the true leads to aestheticism. On the other hand, the traditional liturgy makes it clear that beauty is the “splendor of truth.”

7. Conclusion. The triad of truth, the final chord of the Holy Mass, is the conclusion of this reflection.

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1. Lost Center

In conservative circles, it is good (or bad) manners to criticize two things. On the one hand, people are opposed to the religious and ideological confusion that dominates society and has also found its way into the Church. On the other hand, they denounce the egalitarianism that speaks sonorously of diversity but ultimately does not tolerate any deviation from a strictly prescribed opinions.

The two phenomena seem to be in opposition to each other. Those who demand and promote pluralism do not want uniformity. And those who affirm a total to totalitarian uniformity, marching in tightly closed ranks behind the banners of decency, composure, and wokeness, should not enjoy the potpourri of arbitrariness.

Strangely enough, however, the two contrary positions almost regularly converge. It is precisely the propagandists of colorfulness who insist on unquestionable convictions, non-negotiable values and a non-discussable scientific consensus. They therefore demand boundaries and restrictions, firewalls that must be maintained at all costs. For them, everything can and should be talked about, but the “limits of what can be said” (as it is almost poetically expressed) must not be shifted.

Where does this contradiction come from? Or is it none at all? Do pluralism and uniformism perhaps belong together somehow?

In fact, a more precise analysis could show that both arise from one and the same principle and have a common root. Or rather, their principle is precisely that they have no root, no truly supporting and unifying principle. The ideology of “diversity,” like all totalitarian efforts at unity, comes from a common source—namely, the deconstruction practiced by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and even theologians, who have set out to eliminate the previously generally assumed objective order in the realm of the mind.

In its place, there is now chaos, a yawning, empty abyss, similar to the Tohuwabohu before the creative, ordering word of God. Except that this present-day chaos does not want to find its way back to a cosmic order. Rather, the law of horror vacui applies here: a worldview void cannot persist. It absorbs, as it were, the nearest filler material into itself. And so the “loss of the center”, which Hans Sedlmayr described in 1948 in his book of the same name (still worth reading today), using the example of art, not only leads to a disintegration of previously connected elements; rather, other principles strive for dominance.

Biblically speaking, “powers and principalities” dominate things that have become rootless and directionless. Or, to quote Ernst Jünger’s much-cited words from 1943: “The abandoned altars are inhabited by demons.” But the work of demons is the illusory emancipation of man in order to lead him into bondage, from pluralism into total uniformism.

But instead of falling back on lamentations critical of modernity and pessimistic about culture, we want to go in search of the root. It is important to rediscover the unifying and pivotal point, that supporting, cohesive, and ordering principle that has been obscured by subjective, relativistic, and nihilistic cloud formations. It should become obvious what the seemingly lost but in reality always lasting center consists of. The abandoned altars must be cleansed and become again places of worship of the one true God and divine truth.

So what has been lost in the “loss of the center”? What has made the center empty? What is the missing element? To illustrate the gap, let us cite a successful contemporary author, the poet, Protestant pastor, and liturgy scholar Christian Lehnert. In his “Fliegende Blätter von Kult und Gebet” (Flying Leaves of Cult and Prayer), he describes the situation as follows:

Today, Christianity is moved by astonishing centrifugal forces. Everywhere groups and circles, individual devotions, syncretisms—nothing but “movements,” charismatic or liberal or conservative or esoteric preachers and healers and rememberers, nothing but brotherhoods and sisterhoods, be they interested in the Latin rite or in the ordination of women—make even monolithic Roman Catholicism tremble.[1]

It is disturbing that Lehnert places two very different aspirations side by side as if they were equivalent: the Latin rite and the ordination of women. How can a theologian, even if he is a Protestant and thus an outsider, place a venerable heritage on the one hand and subversive activity on the other?

In fact, however, this pairing makes sense where there is no fixed benchmark, no valid standard for judging the opposing views. In that case, it must inevitably appear as if we are dealing with charismatic, liberal, conservative, and esoteric movements simply as different currents within the no-longer-so-“monolithic” Roman Catholicism. The female rush into the traditional male domain of the sacrament of holy orders and the nostalgic-to-reactionary longing for the old rites might then be two opposing yet somehow related variations within the general centrifugal vortex.

In any case, the process does not cause Christian Lehnert to sound the alarm. Rather hopefully, he continues:

On the supposed “field of the dead” of Christianity, things are very lively. The agile, unchanging form of Christianity, its growth in depth and height, its incompleteness, its current form towards something that is always pending—this will only show what Christianity has always been: all its beauty and love.[2]

Christianity, even that within “monolithic Roman Catholicism,” is thus in a state of ferment. It is not a foregone conclusion how it will develop. Lehnert does not assume fixed constants. The only thing he is certain of is that from the seething process, Christianity will emerge more clearly and reveal itself as what it is at its core. What exactly will emerge? “All its beauty and love.”

The author was consulted here because he clearly expresses what is missing—but expresses it by remaining silent. For the gap opens up precisely where, in the context of religion, only “beauty and love” are mentioned. Both are certainly essential to Christianity: the engaging figure, the splendor with which it appears, and the love, the goodness with which it is effective in the world. But I suspect that most readers will miss an element where the good and the beautiful are mentioned: the truth.

“Truth, Beauty, Good” is proclaimed in large letters on the frieze below the gable relief of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. This triad is the ideal of Weimar Classicism, which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Epilogue to Schiller’s Bell from 1805 expresses in view of his poet friend who recently passed away:

Meanwhile his mighty spirit onward press’d
Where goodness, beauty, truth, for ever grow;
And in his rear, in shadowy outline, lay
The vulgar, which we all, alas, obey![3]

But long before that, in ancient Greece, the triad ἀληθές, ἀγαθόν, καλόν (alethés, agathón, kalón) could be heard, at least subliminally. It permeated the Christian Middle Ages as verum, bonum, pulchrum. And it has lost none of its significance to this day.

2. The Triad

It is tempting to speak of a triad here. This chord is a phenomenon whose importance for the entire development of music since the emergence of polyphony can hardly be overestimated. Its specific sound is so much a part of the fabric of all tonally bound music that we take it for granted from Palestrina to the regrettable popular music of the present day. It is difficult for us to understand why the interval of the third was not considered pure harmony until the beginning of the modern era, and why polyphonic pieces therefore ended either on a unison root or on the root with the fifth.

A triad consists of the root, the fifth, and then an added major or minor third, depending on the major or minor color sought. It can be played in different positions: in the root or third-fifth position, with the root at the bottom; in the first inversion as a sixth chord, with the root at the top; and in the second inversion, the fourth-sixth chord, in which the root is between the other two. Even someone who is unfamiliar with musical notation and has no knowledge of chords will readily perceive when listening to the three variants of the triad that the root note remains the same in each case and that its rank is in no way denied even when the fifth or the third is in the highest position.

It is only through the root that the other two notes are given their significance. Let us imagine a C major triad consisting of the root C, the fifth G, and the third E. Without the C, the mode (major or minor) and the key are not recognizable. E and G could also be the fundamental and third of an incomplete E minor chord missing the fifth, B. Only with the C does the G become identifiable as the fifth (and thus as the main note of the so-called dominant) and the E as the major third. Even C and E, when played together, do not provide sufficient information about which mode and which key are present, because if you add an A to the two notes, you get the parallel minor chord to C major, that is, A minor.

So much for a brief excursion into the superficial aspects of music theory. In our considerations, we are dealing with a triad that is quite different from the acoustic one. But because there are such obvious analogies between the two—the structure of root, the third, and the fifth on the one hand, and the triad of truth, goodness, and beauty on the other—and because some aspects that can be easily recognized in the musical triad will be discussed later, the detour was not nugatory.

Whether one speaks of the “true, good, beautiful” in line with Goethe or, with a slight modification, of the “true, beautiful, good” in line with the inscription at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, one has already decided which of the three elements is the main one. In both lists, the true comes first.

It is precisely this element that Christian Lehnert withholds when he says “what Christianity has always been” is “beauty and love” (or, let’s say, goodness).

My thesis is that the justly lamented “loss of the center” consists in the withdrawal of truth. The fundamental tone was taken from the triad. Without truth and the claim to truth, Christianity lacks the basis, the root from which it draws its life-forces and juices. A vacuum then opens up that virtually invites destructive powers and forces to penetrate and begin their work of destruction.

No matter how much love and beauty may be invoked and celebrated, without a religious connection to the Truth they will degenerate into more or less random products that arise from artistic talent or moral sentiment but will lack inner necessity and a clear sense of purpose. Only truth offers a guarantee of true good and true beauty.

(To be continued.)

NOTES

[1] Lehnert, Christian: Der Gott in einer Nuß. Fliegende Blätter von Kult und Gebet. Berlin 2017. S. 189.

[2] Ebd., S. 189f.

[3] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Gedichte in zeitli­ cher Reihenfolge. Hrsg. v. Heinz Nicolai. 10. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig 1997. S. 553