First English Translation of Guéranger’s Liturgical Institutions Now Available

The publication of the first English translation of Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Institutions – in the abridged form prepared by Jean Vaquié in 1977, and now translated by Dr. David Foley and Gerhard Eger for Os Justi Press – is a moment of major importance for the Church’s liturgical and spiritual life.

For too long, Guéranger’s magnum opus, running to nearly two thousand pages and available only in French, has been a treasure beyond the reach of many English-speaking scholars and faithful. This edition brings to light a work of singular importance, serving both as a detailed history and a vehement defense of the Roman Rite in the face of corrosive innovation.

Dom Guéranger was no antiquarian. He was the founder of the modern liturgical movement, a man driven by the conviction that the liturgy is the living expression of the Church’s faith and the bulwark against the inroads of error. His prose – elevated, precise, yet burning with zeal – enfolds medieval liturgical devotion within the incisive reasoning of a modern historian. The translation by Foley and Eger preserves this spirit, restoring omitted passages and providing useful annotations and translations of Latin sources, making Guéranger’s thought accessible without diluting its force.

The Liturgical Institutions unfolds as a comprehensive narrative of the Church’s liturgical heritage, from apostolic beginnings through centuries of growth, local diversity, and, critically, the disastrous neo-Gallican reforms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These reforms were not benign liturgical experiments, but an assault on the Roman Rite’s unity, doctrinal integrity, and sacred symbolism – an assault tainted with rationalism, Jansenism, and Gallicanism, the spirit of French ecclesiastical autonomy, (living apart, if not formally divorced from, the universal Church) that Guéranger rightly identified as a poison within the Church’s bosom.

This historical analysis resonates powerfully with contemporary concerns. The liturgical upheaval of the twentieth century, particularly the post-Conciliar reforms, continue the pattern of distortion and disintegration that Guéranger identified as the “anti-liturgical heresy”, warning that it “seeks to silence this voice [of the Church] and tear up the pages that contain the faith of ages past.” This has become all the more relevant to an age which has witnessed the desacralization of the altar, the abandonment of sacred language, and the reduction of the Mass to a commonplace vernacular service – all characteristic moves of heretics, according to the plain-spoken French abbot.

To engage with Guéranger is to join a tradition of guardianship over the sacred rites that embody the Catholic faith. For those who seek a deeper understanding of the liturgical crisis and the means to restore authentic worship, this edition is an invaluable resource.

The Liturgical Institutions is available in hardback, paperback, and e-book directly from Os Justi Press, or from any Amazon site.

Those who would like to view the table of contents, foreword, and preface will find it here or here.

(In a future post I will discuss another new book just out, Lumen Christi: Defending the Use of the Pre-1955 Roman Rite, but for now I will only mention that the code RITESTUFF will unlock at 10% discount on both.)

Review of a New Reprint of an Old Edition of the Vulgate: Guest Article by Mr Sean Pilcher

Our thanks to Mr Sean Pilcher for sharing with us review of a new reprint of a very beautiful edition of the Clementine Vulgate. He is the director of Sacra: Relics of the Saints (sacrarelics.org), an apostolate that promotes education about relics, and works to repair, research, and document relics for religious houses and dioceses; last year we published a three-part article by him on that subject.

St Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible stands with St Benedict’s Rule and the Roman Missal as one of the most copied and circulated texts in the Christian tradition. It is surely a sign of the times, then, when the number of affordable editions of our canonical Scriptures wanes and the text accordingly loses its place in our daily lives. If we can wince at the scarcity of editions of these books, then we can also be encouraged when they return to print in useful, affordable, sometimes rather fine editions.

The Vulgate is the basis for most of our liturgical books, and is a locus of prayer, meditation, and commentary for so many saints and Fathers of the Church. It is the constant source of reference, and a primary text for lectio divina. In more recent decades, one of the most widely-purchased editions of the Latin Bible is the German Bible Society’s big green Bible.

This version is useful for scholars of manuscript variants and text history, but is not the common, ‘catholic’ Vulgate text. It contains many critical notes of variant readings, and can seem more like a car or computer manual than the inspired Word of God. It is perhaps not the kind of thing one would normally take up for devotional reading, and its physical presentation and strain on the eye do not encourage it. The text also lacks punctuation, as the oldest manuscripts of the Bible itself do. A new copy costs around $100, not an impossible price for a Bible, but considering its limited usability, I suggest another edition.

A more accessible edition for Catholics is the so-called Colunga-Turrado, named for the two principal editors, published by Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos (BAC): a workhorse that can be had relatively cheaply ($40-$90). The text is the Clementine Vulgate, the version used in the liturgical books. Earlier editions (bound nicely in cloth) can be found ‘used’ for an even more reasonable price, and some include helpful illustrations.

This Bible contains prefaces, some relevant decrees of the magisterium, and has a helpful index–all in Latin. I recommend this edition to students and people interested in having a reliable Bible for daily reference and reading. The notes are simple and not distracting, noting where one book references another, or where Our Lord or one of the apostles quote the Old Testament. They are helpful for study but easily ignored during quick reading or meditation. There are some spelling errors, but we shall notice this in most Bibles if we actually read them.

Most recently, Church Latin Publishing Company has reprinted a very nice edition of the same official Clementine Text, originally typeset and designed by Desclée and The Society St John the Evangelist in 1901. This book, even more than the BAC version, looks like a Catholic book. It contains clear, devotional line art very much in the tradition of older liturgical books; in other words, it looks like a prayer book, not a critical monograph. Each book or group of books of the Bible begins with an illustration of its author or principal figure, and each chapter has a very nice drop-cap letter to focus the eye.

St Jerome’s original prefaces are included at the beginning of the volume, which ends with some additional texts and indices. I emphasize that the book looks Catholic because so much of modern biblical study, and even publishing, follow protestant conventions. Biblical scholarship can certainly be undertaken by parties outside the Church, but if the way we treat the Sacred Scriptures, the names we have for the books, the critical methods we use, and even the physical books we print all resemble those used by protestants, we may be perhaps inclined to perceive the Bible as a ‘stand-alone’ or ‘independent’ text equally used by any ecclesial body.

The reason that the Bible should look and feel like a Catholic book is because it is a Catholic book–loved, preserved, copied, read, studied, and proclaimed by Holy Mother Church throughout the centuries.

Church Latin Publishing Company’s ‘resurrected’ edition of the Vulgate is a serious contribution to the shockingly small pool of editions currently in print, and as such, a good sign of renewal. Its appearance and construction inspire reverence for the written Word of God, and echo the text’s shared place in the Missal or the Breviary. Its competitive price ($100) and devotional character make it ideal as a gift or as a Bible for daily reading and meditation. The text, while ornamental, and if perhaps on the small side, is still suitable for study, and wide margins leave room for annotations or marking if desired.

Of course, having nice (or many) editions of the Bible does not do us any good if we do not make them familiar objects of study and prayer. We would do well to take up such a beautiful book and put it to use.

“Crebrius lege et disce quam plurima. Tenenti codicem somnus obrepat et cadentem faciem pagina sancta suscipiat. – Read often and learn all you can. Let sleep find you holding your book, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred page.” St Jerome, letter to Eustochium.

St Jerome in His Study, 1442, by the workshop of the Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck (1390 ca. - 1441; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Review of Harry Crocker, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church - A 2,000 Year History (Regnery, 2023)

Siege of Constantinople, Chronique de Charles VII by Jean Chartier

Harry W. Crocker III is no stranger to traditionalist debates and The Latin Mass magazine. In the 2002 Summer issue, Thomas Woods robustly endorsed his monograph Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church - A 2,000 Year History. In the next issue, he wrote a review of Vladimir Soloviev’s The Russian Church and the Papacy, which argues that Eastern Orthodox churches desperately need the papacy. His positive review drew the vehement ire of TLM’s few Eastern Orthodox readers and led to a lively exchange in the Winter 2003 issue between him and his critics. One can see why Orthodox feathers were ruffled. Crocker begins his review with: “As Newman might have said, but didn’t, ‘To be deep in history is to realize that the Eastern Orthodox are crazy.’ They are now, they were then, and they always have been.” [1]

Twenty years later, Crocker has published an updated and expanded edition of Triumph, with additions that cover the Francis pontificate. And the controversy continues.

In order to appreciate Triumph, one must understand what kind of book it is and is not. Harry Crocker is not a professional historian but an amateur (in the best sense of the word) who has deeply imbibed 2,000 years of Church history, ruminated on it, and summarized it for the general reader in light of his own judgment. For a history book that is replete with empirical facts and strives for impartiality, look elsewhere; for a history book that is unabashedly opinionated and never boring, look no further.

Every author must assume a certain persona, and Crocker’s is that of a stalwart Catholic and a somewhat aristocratic snob. He is willing to forgive popes with mistresses so long as they defend Church doctrine and attack the Church’s enemies. “On matters of sex,” he opines, “one can say that some of the Renaissance popes simply surrendered to their Mediterranean temperament or were premature Protestants” (258). And if selling indulgences is what it takes to cover Michelangelo’s salary, Crocker avers, it is money well extorted (258).

He also betrays an old-school belief that every ethnicity has its own distinctive character. Rather than shy from stereotypes, he indulges in them. After describing medieval tumult in the lands surrounding the Black Sea, Crocker quotes with approval Ambrose Bierce’s aphorism: “All languages are spoken in Hell, but chiefly those of Southeastern Europe” (224). And when commenting on the Franks’ attempt to control parts of Byzantium, he writes: “The French, however, continued to be hampered by there being too few of them—a crying need that the world has not often recognized” (180). Pope Paul II is described as “handsome and concomitantly vain” because “he was Italian, after all” (266).

And as one might expect from the 2002 Latin Mass magazine debate, Crocker saves his best zingers for our separated Eastern brethren. Before its conversion to Christianity, the Eastern Roman Empire was prone “to extremism and emperor worship” (40); afterwards, it was filled bishops who “bowed to imperial demands like reeds beaten by the winds” (106) and monks “prone to almost absurd acts of mortification” (112). Already in the early centuries of the Christian era, the Eastern churches had “febrile, hate-filled fissiparous tendencies” (119) that were only held in check when they were tethered to Rome. From the fourth to the ninth century, the East was in schism one third of the time; since it was but “a footstool for the Byzantine emperor,” it often followed the emperor’s heretical bent. The Crusaders were not impressed with the Byzantines when they first met them, regarding them “as gay Greeks—effeminate, scheming, and bitchy” (175). The sacking of Constantinople was not a travesty but condign punishment for the Byzantine court’s intrigue and backstabbing.

Crocker’s criticism of the schismatic East, incidentally, has new relevance today. Recent years have witnessed the rise of the so-called “Orthobro,” a single, usually bearded male from the Millennial or Generation Z generation who is a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and who spends most of his time trolling the internet and excoriating the Filioque rather than asking a girl out on a date. If you have an Orthobro in your life, I highly recommend that you give him a copy of Triumph and then sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Schadenfreude is not a sin when the suffering that you delight in observing is for their own spiritual good.

Crocker’s tendentiousness (much of which is deliberately provocatory and, he admits, satirical) [2] all but guarantees that the reader will sooner or later be offended (for me it was his line that Henry II’s conquest of Ireland was a “necessary project of civilization that remains uncompleted even a thousand years later” [192]). The overall effect of Triumph, however, is—at least for orthodox Catholics—quite satisfying. Although Crocker is imprecise at times and impolitic at all times, he almost always lands in the right place. The Renaissance, he charges, was not the rejection but the fulfillment of the Middle Ages, which also revered the classical world (259). His explanations of controversial topics such as the Crusades, the Babylonian Captivity, the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, the American Founding, and the Napoleonic era are excellent, and he is a fine raconteur, often weaving together different threads of a story out of their chronological sequence in order to tell a more vivid tale.

Crocker’s treatment of the twentieth century is also good. After summarizing the great works of the early- and mid-twentieth-century Popes (including Pius XII’s heroic actions to save Jews from the Holocaust), he moves on to the organizers of Vatican II, whom he characterizes as misguidedly optimistic. Oddly, he spends more time on Humanae Vitae than the Second Vatican Council, and he does not address at length the liturgical revolution that ensued except to lament illicit and unwelcomes innovations such as

hand-holding during the Our Father and cupping one’s hands in imitation of the priest—offenses that should have been dealt with under sharia law, adopting the Islamic punishment for thievery, as part of the Church’s new openness to other religions (516).

As for the Francis pontificate, he is surprisingly restrained. The author who lets loose the haymaker that the Sack of Byzantium should be made a feast day puts on kid gloves to describe Pope Francis “as a sometimes charismatic, generally well-meaning, but occasionally spiteful and authoritarian man of muddle, vulnerable to liberal flattery” (535-36). Not bad, but H. J. A. Sire’s 2018 The Dictator Pope, which Crocker did not consult, paints a darker but well-documented picture. Similarly, regarding the doctrinal controversies surrounding this Pontiff, he dances like a butterfly but forgets to sting like a bee, perhaps because he published this new edition before the promulgation of Fiducia Supplicans, which in the eyes of many is when the gloves of the current pontificate have finally come off.

That said, Crocker draws a wise conclusion from the bizarre chapter of Church history in which we find ourselves:

But if Francis’s pontificate made anything clear, it was that the Church needed to move on from the liberal platitudes about the spirit of Vatican II, platitudes that would (even if this was not his intention) have the Church conform to the liberalism of the world, the dictatorship of relativism, as the only acceptable dogma (536-37).

Not all of Crocker’s facts are straight. On page 330, he states Pope Paul IV excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, but ten pages later he states that it was Pope St. Pius V (the correct answer is Pius V). He also claims that the Church celebrates the Battle of Lepanto every year as the feast of the Holy Rosary on the first Sunday after October. In fact, the feast has been celebrated on October 7 since Pope St. Pius X changed the date in 1913. And his claim that Calvinism today is either moribund or dead is proof that he has never visited the campus of Baylor University or Wheaton College.

But overall, Triumph is an impressive achievement: a well-written, judicious, and entertaining presentation of 2,000 years of tumultuous Church history. I strongly recommend it to all faithful Catholics and sincere truth-seekers, especially those who feel embarrassed by the Church’s historical record or are disheartened by the Church’s current state of affairs. Triumph does not whitewash, but it puts the black marks in their proper perspective. Moreover, it cogently defends its main thesis, which is expressed in the final paragraph:

The triumph of the Catholic Church, from its beginnings with the Apostles filing out from the Holy Land, to its rising to be monarch over kings, to its continued survival and worldwide development against every conceivable persecution, is the most extraordinary story in the world (541).

“La Jérusalem céleste“, extraite de la Tapisserie de l'Apocalypse du Château d'Angers, France

This review first appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 33:1 (Spring 2024), pp. 60-22. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] “To Russia with Love,” TLM 11:4 (Fall 2002), 63.

[2] TLM [Winter 2003], 5.

A Beautiful Testimony to the Power of the Original Liturgical Movement

Newly released from Arouca Press in collaboration with Silverstream Priory, NLM followers will no doubt want to make a point of reading a book which combines fine art, hagiography, and sound spiritual advice: For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself. I greatly enjoyed and benefited from reading it and consider it to be one of those precious hidden gems, lost in a world of more superficial entertainment and NYT bestsellers, that readers will still be thinking about years after they read it.

The biography of a young Polish nun of the last century, it is a fascinating snapshot of the fruits of the 1950s Liturgical Movement at its finest. “There is a question of equilibrium, of balance, in the supernatural order, as in the physical universe,” writes Abbot Philip Anderson about this book. “It was the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who re-established this balance on the highest level, after sin had unleashed ruin upon mankind. But some souls are called to fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in their flesh for His Body, as Saint Paul tells us. How can this be? Let the story of Sister Maria Bernadette, who was surely one of those souls, lift a corner of the veil and draw you into the mystery. Maybe you too have a part to play.”

Known in the world as Róża Wolska, she was born in 1927. Reminiscent of Pier Giorgio Frassati in many ways, Róża was an avid athlete. In the early ’40s she was introduced to the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec. At that time Tyniec was in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement, in its healthy phase; under the monks’ guidance, Róża’s spiritual life flourished, as friendship, lectio divina, and the sacred liturgy revealed the beauty of God to her.
 

Somewhat of a surprise even to herself, Róża felt moved to enter the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration in Warsaw after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1951. Those years were very difficult for the monastery, which was being rebuilt after the being bombed in World War II; the Communist yoke weighed heavily on the whole country. During these years, outwardly quiet but inwardly eventful, Sr. Maria Bernadette, as she was known in religion, struggled with how to overocome the old Adam and put on the new; in particular, her secular training in art had to be sublimated to monastic purposes, and in this regard she eventually produced many striking images of various sizes and for varied occasions.
 

After about ten years of living the monastic life, Sister Bernadette’s health began to fail, and in 1963 she was admitted into hospital for surgery. While there, she offered her life in reparation for the sins of apostate priests about whom she had read, particularly the so-called “Patriot Priests” who were supportive of the Communist government. Complications arose but doctors declared them normal symptoms of recovery; they were mistaken. “Both the sick and the doctors cannot get over the fact that a nun can be so cheerful,” she wrote to her parents shortly before her death. “I think that the glory of the Bridegroom grows through this, so I don’t even care anymore that my stitches hurt from laughing.”
 

A prayer card by Sr. Bernadette: "I to my beloved, and my beloved to me, [who feedeth among the lilies]" (Song 6:2)

As her strength failed, the wistful Gregorian melody for the Magnificat antiphon for the Ascension ran through her soul: “O King of glory, Lord of hosts, Who hast this day mounted in triumph above all the heavens, leave us not orphans: but send unto us the promise of the Father, the Spirit of truth, alleluia.” Sister Bernadette died on April 30th, 1963, surrendering her life into the hands of God.
 

Page from a Gospel book illuminated and calligraphed by Sr. Bernadette

Sally Read, poet and author of Night’s Bright Darkness, writes of this book: “The life of Sister Bernadette of the Cross is vividly detailed here. Her role as a child of God, in a world ravaged and abused by war and corruption, comes across as both heroic and ordinary.”

For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is a new translation and revised edition of a Polish biography of Sister Bernadette. It contains numerous photographs and reproductions of her artwork, and extensive passages from her charming, humorous, and spiritually uplifting letters. “As we go through the pages,” Sally Read continues, “[Sister’s] very soul seems to be honed and polished before our eyes; she is both reduced and glorified by her pains. Her story is an illustration of what it means to suffer in Christ, and for the sins of others, and is given great immediacy and vitality by the examples of her beautiful art. Her words are meat for those who wonder about the role of suffering in life.” An epilogue in the book ponders the lessons of victim souls and how we are to make sense of this “scandal” in a world that has so much lost the understanding of the value of reparation and the practice of abandonment to the Father’s Providence.
 

A humorous drawing showing Sister's response to the psalm verse
"And he took me up from the deep waters"

Perhaps the strongest praise comes from Scott Hahn, who writes: “This book is a roadmap to true happiness, not only in the afterlife, but beginning here and now.” Drawing attention to the remarkable cheerfulness that suffused Sister Bernadette’s often difficult life, Dr. Hahn says: “Sister Bernadette was one of those souls who, while living with the Church, the liturgy, and the Scriptures, allow themselves to be led by the Spirit to pray and to suffer—generously and cheerfully. She made an offering of her life, and in these pages we can learn to do the same.”

For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself is available for purchase on Arouca Press’s website, on Silverstream Priory’s shop, as well as Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and other retailers. I hope that many will “take a chance” on this little-known story and find a special blessing in it.

A brief preview of the photos and artwork found in the book is available in a video released by Silverstream Priory: 

Book Review: The Way of the Cross for Priests

The following review was written by a parish priest.

The days of a widespread iconoclastic approach toward popular piety seem to be behind us. (The very phrase popular piety is no longer the slur it once was.) Happily, and despite the controversies of the day, a re-seizing of traditional Catholic liturgical life is taking place. Nevertheless, the right tools are needed in order for this rebirth to continue apace. I have one such tool before me at the moment in The Way of the Cross for Priests, by the monks of Silverstream Priory.

The preface to the volume is powerful in its own right; two themes are notable. First, the author cites the experience of the great Benedictine abbot, Columba Marmion (1858-1923.) “After the Sacraments and liturgical worship,” writes Marmion, “I am convinced there is no practice more fruitful for our souls than the Way of the Cross made with devotion.” For those who know this master of the spiritual life, that is endorsement enough. Second, we are shown how The Way of the Cross resembles the practice of lectio divina. Like this discipline of monastic prayer, The Way of the Cross is a rhythmed, ordered approach to the graces of Christ's Person.

The Way of the Cross for Priests has a number of other virtues. It is faithful to St Benedict’s injunction that prayer should be “short and pure.” Admittedly, some versions of the Stations tend toward the verbose. Yet the Passion is a heavy enough mystery as it is: manageable, but profound texts are what we need most. Silverstream’s Way provides this. Mimicking the genius of the classical Roman Rite, the texts are drawn from beautifully disparate places in the Old and New Testaments: Job, Isaiah, the Psalms, the epistles of St Paul, and the Gospels.

The Cenacle Press at Silverstream produces volumes of physical beauty, which is by no means unimportant. So the little book is a delight to behold and use. Also, the English translation of the Stabat Materis dignified and sung easily.

It is by no means the case that The Way of the Cross for Priests is suitable for the priest’s private prayer only. On the contrary, it will do much to mature and strengthen the Catholic faithful, who in our time have recovered the instinct to pray assiduously for their priests. Thanks be to God for that. Writes Marmion, “The Passion is the ‘holy of holies’ among the mysteries of Jesus, the pre-eminent work of our Supreme High Priest.” Any means which can drive us into this holy of holies is worthy of our serious attention: thus The Way of the Cross for Priests.

(sample page)

“Each Has Received A Gift”: Guest Review of Dr Kwasniewski’s Ministers of Christ

NLM is pleased to offer this review by Fr. John Henry Hanson, O.Praem., of St Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California.

Among his several recent books, Dr Peter Kwasniewski’s Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Manchester, NH: Crisis Publications, 2021) is remarkable for the lengths to which it goes in establishing correct Biblical and anthropological principles for why all-male sanctuary service has been the perennial norm for the sacred liturgy. It has always made intuitive sense to the clergy and faithful, so that the occasional admission of women to the sanctuary throughout Church history has been considered an abuse, and corrected as such by the hierarchy. Dr Kwasniewski includes a fine essay from Bishop Athanasius Schneider which surveys that history, showing the consistent disapproval of popes where the abuse has periodically (and infrequently) crept in. [1]

But Dr Kwasniewski’s book is more than an apologia for the restoration of all-male sanctuary service in the usus recentior of the Roman liturgy, not to mention the restoration of the minor orders. It is valuable on this score, to be sure, and leaves no doubt about the apostolicity of the practice, nor about the mind of the Church throughout the ages on the matter. In his typically sober and carefully argued way, he demonstrates not only how the current practice is clearly an aberration, but how it also ironically devalues women’s proper role in the Church.

Where the book really performs an invaluable service is its deeper look into the greatness and complementarity of maleness and femaleness with respect to Biblical revelation and the life of the Church. In fact, Dr Kwasniewski goes where few have the depth to go: into the nature of the human soul, which cannot be other than “bridal” in relation to God, and thus feminine in nature. This is a doctrine of great antiquity, the most famous Biblical example of which is the Song of Songs. Also of great note are the mystical teachings of Saints such as Bernard of Clairvaux (whose commentary on the Song is second to none), and John of the Cross, who takes this teaching for granted throughout his great works.

Why is this important?

In my experience as a priest and spiritual director, the idea of everyone, including men, having a bridal soul, although second nature to any devout woman, is often a real obstacle (even for devout men)—not surprising, since bridehood is written into a woman’s nature. Men espouse, women are espoused. So it is a significant and spiritually crucial leap for men to get there and feel natural both as men and yet receptive in spirit as women are receptive in nature. That Our Lady is the model disciple for both men and women comes directly from her complete and total receptivity to the word of God, her complete self-surrender to God’s plan for her and for the world. And this total openness is found in both male and female saints alike. You need look no farther than St Joseph for proof.

Photo courtesy of Allison Girone

But translating into practice what we know to be true in both natural and spiritual matters is where we have veered off the path taken by our ancestors. Under pressure from cultural factors, it would seem, the Church has seen fit not only to allow female altar service (under St John Paul II) but even (under Pope Francis) to normalize the practice. Dr Kwasniewski entertains the mild objection that, in fact, Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Spiritus Domini merely makes official what has become standard practice in most mainstream parishes. And there is some truth in that. But there is an enormous difference between a concession—an ad hoc role undertaken in the absence of an ordinary minister—and a statement that effectively eliminates the distinction between the sexes with respect to altar service. To equalize, in this case, does not mean ennobling one to the level of another. It means sending a message to women that confuses rather than elucidates.

It would seem that equalizing men and women in the sanctuary conveys to women, along with anyone paying attention in the pews, that the Church has caught up with modern times and decided that women are “just as good as” men. Girls no less than boys can be entrusted with handling cruets, ciboria, and missals, whereas before… they weren’t trustworthy enough or somehow good enough to do what boys have always done? Is this the (at least) visible message here?

Everyone knows that women are entrusted with the care of the most precious and delicate thing on earth: human life, from its most vulnerable stages. And women do this better and more naturally than men, which every man acknowledges. God has given women this capacity and men normally must learn from them how to be gentle, tender, sensitive toward what is most fragile. Clearly, the reasons behind exclusively male altar service stem from a source other than carefulness and responsibility, other than personal worthiness—and nothing even approaching superiority or inferiority.

As worthy or unworthy as men may be, they are sacramental images of Christ in a way women cannot be, just as women are sacramental representatives of Our Lady and the Church in ways that men can never be. Most generations of Christians have had no problem with that and have seen it for what it is: something beautiful, something divinely willed. I remember hearing a Carmelite nun recount how once when she was in an airport, a child pointed at her and said very audibly to its mother: “Look! It’s the Church!” From the mouths of babes.

Compare the sacramental worldview of the Church throughout the ages to the attitudes that surrounded John Paul II’s acquiescence to female altar servers. In an April 1994 front-page article, the New York Times quoted a Monsignor Harry Burns of the New York Archdiocese lauding the decision in terms far from the sacramental, and even far from the legal:

“Msgr. Harry Byrne, pastor of the Church of the Epiphany at 22d Street and 2d Avenue in Manhattan, has allowed altar girls for 12 years, and said he had allowed them in his previous Manhattan parish since the mid-1970’s. In some cases, girls assisted during Masses celebrated by diocesan officials, he said. ‘I feel very strongly about the question of equality of women in society and church,’ Monsignor Byrne said. ‘It’s in the interest of creating a climate where women would feel the church is being responsive to them.’ Monsignor Byrne, who has a doctorate in canon law and once served as Chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York, said the Vatican’s decision [i.e., to admit women to altar service] was similar to other instances in which the church reconciled itself with common practice—as when women were allowed to be lectors and read from the Scriptures. ‘Canon law changes by some people being out on the cutting edge,’ he said. ‘The practice may not be congruent with the regulations, but regulations catch up with custom.’ ” [2]

Not surprisingly, the same Times article goes on to quote others who see the move as an advancement for women. And this is where the catechesis so exhaustively presented by Dr Kwasniewski is so crucial. For women to take an equally physical role in the liturgy as men denigrates the gifts of nature and grace God has lavished upon them—almost as if just being a woman in a pew, praying, is not “good enough.” Women are the models, after Our Lady, of how to receive the mysteries celebrated in the sanctuary. Men should be able to see the veiled woman in church and know something about his own soul, his need to be under God, humble in prayer, and docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Photo courtesy of Allison Girone

Dr Kwasniewski’s pages on the veiling of women in church are a particularly powerful expression of this modeling. “This beautiful symbol,” he writes, “gives the wife [and all women, mutatis mutandis] an opportunity to live her vocation more fully by reminding herself, including her daughters, of its Marian character of humility and obedience.” [3]  Dr Kwasniewski further elaborates on a woman’s spousal nature—highlighting, again, how nature points to the spiritual character of the soul:

[T]he traditional custom of all females wearing a veil in church finds justification in the natural and supernatural ordering of each woman to be a spouse—be it as a bride of Christ in religious life or as a wife in a Christian marriage. Even before this ordering is actualized, and even when it is never actualized, it remains an ontological and spiritual reality that deserves to be recognized, honored, and placed within the great mysterium fidei celebrated in the Holy Mass. [4]

This is exactly the kind of catechesis needed in the discussion of women in the sanctuary, instead of leaving a vacuum of ignorance, abandoning the faithful to the implication that the Church is just as confused as everyone else about the proper roles of men and women (or if they have roles proper to them at all). The truest and most beautiful teachings about men and women and their divine vocation are found nowhere more complete and convincing than in the Catholic Church. When people are exposed to and educated in these truths, then the question of distributing liturgical roles ceases to be a question at all.

The difficulty we encounter is trying to help people think in other than crude, materialistic terms, not only about the liturgy and sexual differentiation, but about life in general. Truly did St Paul say, “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2, 14).

To have a sacramental worldview is crucial to living our Catholic faith with any measure of coherence in this material world. Otherwise, we fall into the mere functionality that afflicts Western society in general. The idea that men and women are interchangeable in so many departments of public life, be it the workplace or the military, easily enters a Church left undefended by decent catechesis on God’s revealed plan for men and women. Thinking in spiritual terms requires that we form our minds according to the Biblical worldview as handed on from age to age by the Church—and not only that we know the teachings, but pray and worship as though they are true.

A final point needs to be made regarding the clericalization of the laity, and it is one which Dr Kwasniewski spends much time making. He rightly acclaims Vatican II’s doctrine on the role of the laity in the modern world and their call, rooted in baptism, to holiness. It had always been true, but needed to be proclaimed anew in the context of the rapidly changing world of the 1960s. The Council’s teachings were crystalized after decades of increasingly organized lay Catholic involvement in the political and social life of many countries. The influence of St Josemaría Escrivá and Opus Dei is often rightly touted as the decisive, proximate influence on the Council’s pronouncements on the laity. Yet, what does the founder of Opus Dei say about the issue at hand? In a book of interviews entitled Conversations, St Josemaría addresses “Women in Social Life and in the Life of the Church.” [5]  While not approaching the topic of female sanctuary service—a notion he would have found unthinkable—he lays down principles relevant to it. I quote him at length. The saint is asked:

“Could you give us your opinion as to how the role of women in the life of the Church can best be promoted?”

He replies:

“I must admit this question tempts me to go against my usual practice and to give instead a polemical answer, because the term ‘Church’ is frequently used in a clerical sense as meaning ‘proper to the clergy or the Church hierarchy.’ And therefore many people understand participation in the life of the Church simply, or at least principally, as helping in the parish, cooperating in associations which have a mandate from the hierarchy, taking an active part in the liturgy, and so on.

“Such people forget in practice, though they may claim it in theory, that the Church comprises all the People of God. All Christians go to make up the Church….

“In saying this, I am not seeking to minimize the importance of the role of women in the life of the Church. On the contrary, I consider it indispensable. I have spent my life defending the fullness of the Christian vocation of the laity, of ordinary men and women who live in the world, and I have tried to obtain full theological and legal recognition of their mission in the Church and in the world. I only want to point out that some people advocate an unjustifiable limitation of this collaboration. I must insist that ordinary Christians can carry out their specific mission—including their mission in the Church—only if they resist clericalization and carry on being secular and ordinary, that is, people who live in the world and take part in the affairs and interests of the world.

“It is the task of the millions of Christian men and women who fill the earth to bring Christ into all human activities and to announce through their lives the fact that God loves and wants to save everyone. The best and most important way in which they can participate in the life of the Church, and indeed the way which all other ways presuppose, is by being truly Christian precisely where they are, in the place to which their human vocation has called them.…

“Women will participate in this task in the ways that are proper to them, both in the home and in other occupations which they carry out, developing their special characteristics to the full.

“The main thing is that like Mary, who was a woman, a virgin, and a mother, they live with their eyes on God, repeating her words ‘fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum—be it done unto me according to Thy word.’ (Luke 1, 38) On these words depends the faithfulness to one’s personal vocation—which is always unique and non-transferable in each case—which will make us all cooperators in the work of salvation which God carries out in us and in the entire world.”

Yes, in the end, the “main thing” is very simple. In fact, we are really talking about the Lord’s “one thing necessary,” the “better part” chosen by another Mary, yet surely in imitation of the Holy Virgin of Nazareth (cf. Luke 10, 42). When we keep our eyes fixed on God, all of the other things in life come into sharper focus. Gazing upon the sanctuary and the solemn rites of the liturgy, we lose interest in promoting one human thing over another, in competition, in making a point about equality or anything else.

Photo courtesy of Allison Girone

God gives His gifts unequally but wisely. It is for us to receive and cherish them, using them to increase His glory. Whether we call them talents or fruits, they are the Lord’s to give, ours to handle with reverence and a sense of mission, and so “as each has received a gift,” we may “employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Pet. 4, 10).

Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion may be purchased for $19.95 at Amazon.com (link; ebook also available) or from Sophia Institute Press (link).

NOTES

1. See Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s “The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy” included in Ministers of Christ in chapter 4.

2. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/endorsing-growing-practice-vatican-approves-altar-girls.html

3. Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion, p. 189.

4. Kwasniewski, p. 191.

5. Conversations, nos. 87-112. See especially no. 112. Online version may be accessed via Escrivaworks.org: https://www.escrivaworks.org/book/conversations-chapter-7.htm

The Ultimate Communion Antiphon Book for the Usus Antiquior

Most singers of chant will be familiar with the old workhorse Communio by Richard Rice (CMAA, 2008), my own copy of which is so well-thumbed and beaten up it’s a wonder it still holds together. Others may be familiar with the Solesmes publication Versus Psalmorum et Canticorum (repr. CMAA, 2008), which contains pointed psalm texts for the Introits and Communions of the entire liturgical year. Although I used both of these books for many years as a choir director, I have discovered a new volume that definitively surpasses them for Sundays and Holy Days.

In November of 2019, I visited Houston to give four lectures, and while there, I decided to “crash” the Schola practice on Sunday at the FSSP parish, Regina Caeli. The singers were gracious and let me join them for the High Mass. At one point, the director, Kyle Lartigue, handed me a book: Ad Communionem: Antiphons and Psalms (Justitias Books, 2016), which, I discovered, was Mr. Lartigue’s own production.

Unlike the other communion books available, which either lack the antiphons and full musical notation (Versus Psalmorum) or utilize the awkward and untraditional Nova Vulgata for the psalm texts, Ad Communionem includes the antiphons for all Sundays and first-class Holy Days, followed by the pertinent psalm from the preconciliar Vulgate, notated in square notes. (The old Vulgate verses are a breeze to sing for those who are familiar with the Missale Romanum and the Breviarium Romanum or the Breviarium Monasticum.) Ad Communionem also includes Psalm 33 and the Gloria Patri in all modes, and an appendix with the Adoro Te and Ubi Caritas. The antiphons are organized not alphabetically (as in Rice’s book, where one must rely on the index) but by Sunday and feastday in chronological order, which makes it much easier to use. While the Solesmes book is more comprehensive, it merely “points” the texts rather than musically notating them, and both the poor quality of the reproduction (many times removed from its original) and the typographical conventions contribute to confusion and stumbling performances.

It’s exactly what I’d want my own schola to have, and in fact when I returned from Houston I asked the pastor in my town if he would buy a bunch of copies for our choir loft. This book deserves to be standard issue for every TLM schola in the English-speaking world. (I should mention that the antiphons and verses are accompanied by an inline English translation from the Douay-Rheims, which closely matches the Latin sense.)
 

Having a Communion antiphon book with psalm verses (regardless of which of the above three options is used) allows the cantors and/or schola to sing however many verses may be needed to prolong or shorten the music for a particular occasion. Sometimes more than one priest is distributing communion and it goes quickly; at others times perhaps there is an overflow crowd and only one priest distributing, which can take quite some time. The chanting of psalm verses has many benefits: the texts are liturgically appropriate and the music is very much in the background, as it should be; the overall effect is calming and prayerful, but the recurrence of the antiphon adds a welcome contrast to the simplicity of the psalm tones, and impresses the repeated text and melody in the minds of all who listen to it. The format also allows for maximum flexibility in musical forces. One can arrange it this way: antiphon (sung by all); verse (begun by cantor and completed by schola); antiphon; etc. Or: antiphon (sung by all); odd verse (sung by cantor); even verse (sung by all); antiphon; etc. Or instead of cantor and tutti, the schola may be divided into two halves. The simple format allows for a ready use of isons and organum.

Now that the TLM is coming back all over the place, Ad Communionem: Antiphons and Psalms is, I would maintain, a required tool for everyone who sings the proper chants. It is one of two books I always carry with me to the choir loft (the other being my Liber Usualis). The book is available in paperback and hardcover. A large sample of the pages may be found here. An index may be found here.

Mr. Lartigue has also produced a number of other books: a newly-typeset Latin edition of the traditional Martyrologium Romanum (updated through 1961, with an appendix of saints canonized after that year); a two-volume edition of traditional Sunday Vespers; Holy Week chants and a complete Kyriale. All of these books are newly typeset and more affordable than their competitors.

Pay a visit to his website: https://justitiasbooks.com/.

The Prodigal Church, by Brandon McGinley: Review by Urban Hannon

Our thanks to Mr Urban Hannon for sharing with us this review of The Prodigal Church: Restoring Catholic Tradition in an Age of Deception by Brandon McGinley, recently issued by Sophia Institute Press. Mr Hannon studies theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, and has previously written for The Lamp and First Things, inter alia. He is also celebrating his name day today, the feast of Pope Bl. Urban II, and will be grateful for the prayers of our readers.

“The book you are reading is not a Vatican II book. In fact, it is anything but a Vatican II book.” And frankly, thank God. With all due respect for Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity—which is true as far as it goes and obviously preferable to the heresy-adjacent hermeneutic of rupture—I like to joke that I advocate instead for the hermeneutic of talking about something else. It’s 2020. My millennial peers and I did not live through the Second Vatican Council, nor the collapse of the Church’s midcentury structures in its aftermath. We were born in the ruins. And to be honest, we’re sick of talking about it. How I long for a day when someone will use the phrase “The Council,” and everyone will have to ask, “Which?” Consider: We are about to be as far removed in time from Gaudium et Spes as Gaudium et Spes is from Pascendi. Vatican II was an ecumenical council, to be sure, ratified by the holy father and protected by the Holy Spirit—and when random Twitter accounts show up in my mentions to suggest otherwise, I answer with an eyeroll, an “okay boomer,” and a block. But that said, Vatican II was also an ecumenical council which sought to address itself to the particular contingent problems of a world that no longer exists. Whether it did so with utmost prudence or not, we do not need to keep relitigating disputes that are over half a century old and increasingly irrelevant to our circumstances. That’s a pointless distraction. It is time to talk about something else.

This is what makes my friend Brandon McGinley’s new book The Prodigal Church so refreshing: its serene focus on the present moment, its gracefulness, its hope. “There are two basic prerequisites to allowing God’s grace to renew the Church,” says McGinley: “We have to want it, and we have to believe it is possible.” This excellent book checks both boxes. It asserts that grace is real, that God is in control, and that true renewal is achievable. Love is stronger than death, and grace is stronger than postmodernity. Thus does McGinley insist on “seeing in millennial and Gen-Z frustration, rebellion, and alienation an opportunity for evangelization rather than for mockery.” Right now, he says, “people are looking for big solutions to big problems, and big answers to big questions. This is our moment—if only we have the godly confidence to seize it by embracing the transcendent, incandescent authenticity of the Cross.” The Prodigal Church sets the example for such godly confidence.

Of course, McGinley is under no illusions about the challenges we Catholics face today, or about the sins and failings that have brought us to this point. But he is not especially shocked or scandalized by our apparently failing Church—remember it’s the only one we millennials have ever known—and he refuses to give sin the last word. The world as it is is a mess, but, he insists: “We don’t have to accept the world ‘as it is.’ This is a completely secular framing of human affairs, one that denies anything beyond wallowing in our brutishness. . . . Indeed, there is no greater acquiescence in secular ideology than to reject the truth that grace can and will elevate our possibilities.” McGinley knows how far we have fallen, that at this point ours is truly “a dissipated Church.” But he does not harbor a spirit of criticism, and he will not give up on God. Appropriately, John 6:68 is his favorite verse in the Scriptures: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

The Prodigal Church is a book in five parts: How We Got Here, The Church, The Parish, The Family, and Friendship and Community.

1. How We Got Here

St Adalbert’s Church in the South Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; photo by Brendan McGinley

McGinley’s retrospective on the Church in America takes an it-was-the-best-of-times–it-was-the-worst-of-times angle on the 1950s. On the one hand: “Sacraments galore! Priests and kids everywhere! Ministries and societies and sodalities, oh my! Silver screen hero priests! Hollywood beholden to Catholic principles! An archbishop in full regalia on prime-time TV! This was it! What else could we ask for?” On the other hand, it turns out that last wasn’t a rhetorical question: What else we could have asked for was faith, fidelity to the Church and her traditions before conformity to the mainstream American culture. “If midcentury truly was the heyday of American Catholicism,” says McGinley, “then we must say that it was also the triumph of the adjective over the noun—the moment Catholicism went native.” Or, as an older Fulton Sheen (the aforementioned prime-time pontiff) commented in hindsight, “[Religion in this period] began to give not theological insights into the meaning of life, but rather psychological and sociological views to accommodate the bourgeois good life to religion.” Material prosperity and social respectability replaced the sacraments and sanctity as the where-your-treasure-is of the American Catholic heart. In McGinley’s words: “We have dissipated our distinctive traditions in order to please the surrounding culture, but have lost both our patrimony and our position in the process.”

Thus the title of this book: Like the prodigal son, the Church in America has taken her inheritance and squandered it, and she’s starving. But that isn’t the end of the parable: The boundless generosity of our God before his repentant children is. This book is meant as an encouragement for us to return to our Father’s house.

2. The Church

Faithful Catholics may mock the “spiritual but not religious” line thrown out by so many of our secular contemporaries. But there is an insidious version of this same error to which the devout themselves often fall prey. “It is in vogue now,” says McGinley, “even and especially among Catholics, to speak of the institutional Church in the same way a civil libertarian speaks of the federal government: at best a necessary evil, a leviathan that needs to be reined in, even a threat to genuine faith and conscience.” (Or as he puts it elsewhere: “No one likes the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,” heh.) Against this temptation, The Prodigal Church recommends a rediscovery of the true identity of our holy mother the Church: “anchored in heaven but bound to earth, united to Christ but a vessel of sinners.” McGinley also celebrates the integral and consistent witness of the Church’s moral tradition—not focusing, for example, on sexual morality to the exclusion of economic justice or vice versa—for “a renewed Church is a consistent Church.” Regarding the economic libertarianism which plagues our society, McGinley calls the Church to speak out once more against usury and for just wages. Regarding the sexual revolution and its bitter fruits, he says, “It would be tragic indeed if the Church acquiesced to the new bourgeois just as it fell into disrepute, and just as her steadfastness might be rewarded.”

St Stanislaus Kostka, the mother of the Polish ethnic parishes in Pittsburgh; photo by Brendan McGinley

McGinley quotes St. John Chrysostom to great effect on the awesome responsibility of bishops for the salvation of souls, and reminds us that, “in the same way that the Church shouldn’t act like a corporation or an NGO, the bishops shouldn’t seem like CEOs or executive directors.” Especially important, in our moment, will be the willingness of bishops “to give up some secular respectability for the sake of the kingdom.” Here he recalls the witness of St. Ambrose condemning the emperor Theodosius, lest he should lose both the emperor’s own soul and those of his subjects. “I wonder what might have happened,” writes McGinley, “at that time and ever since, if a bishop had rebuked President Kennedy for his public and private scandals. But that would have threatened the mainstream acceptance we had worked so long to achieve. Ambrose weeps.” Yet rather than succumbing to impious disparagement of our local ordinaries, the successors of the apostles, McGinley invites us to prayer: “And so let all of us pray for our bishops, and for the elevation of good men to the episcopacy, and for the grace to recognize genuine holiness when it might not be obvious.”

The rest of McGinley’s treatment of Holy Church is a reminder that chancery bureaucracy is not her summit: Heaven is. “The invisible Church is our celestial anchor of holiness, the perfection to which we are called that is not a theoretical future possibility, but an ongoing present reality. There is no better cure for ecclesial despair than remembering, honoring, and relating to this cloud of witnesses.”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love: A Remarkable New Book from Angelico

The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love. The Eucharistic Message of Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament. Foreword by Dom Mark Kirby, OSB. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020. 184 pp. 978-1-62138-521-9 (paper), $16.95; 978-1-62138-522-6 (cloth), $25. Available from Amazon and its affiliates.

CATHERINE DE BAR (1614–1698), later taking in religion the name Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of the great teachers of the interior life in 17th-century France, in regular contact with all of the prominent figures of that very rich age of saints and mystics. She began in the order of the Annunciades but, due to the upheavals of the time, ended up staying for a long period at a Benedictine monastery, eventually becoming a Benedictine nun. In 1653, with the support of Queen Anne of Austria, she founded the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration, an order represented today by houses in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Germany, Uganda, Italy, and Haiti. The first house of Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration, Silverstream Priory, is located in Ireland.

Angelico Press has done yet another great service by bringing out the first book in English by and about Mother Mectilde, who is better known in the French and Italian spheres, where many publications have been dedicated to her eventful life and copious writings. The book consists of several parts. From Mother Mectilde herself we have excerpts taken from her many writings—conferences, chapter talks, letters, treatises—where she speaks about the greatest mystery of love entrusted to the Church. From other authors, we have a Foreword by Dom Mark Kirby, OSB (pp. 1–6); a probing commentary on one of Mectilde’s most famous pieces, “The Solemnity of Thursday” (pp. 11–14); a detailed biography by Canon G.A. Simon (pp. 113–51); and an essay by Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, on Mectilde’s place in the history of Benedictine spirituality (pp. 153–70). All in all, I find it a splendid introduction to a spiritual giant who deserves to be better known: as Dom Mark writes, “Catherine Mectilde de Bar is, I believe, a woman of the stature of a Gertrude the Great, a Teresa of Avila, and a Marie of the Incarnation” (3).

I had the good fortune of being able to read this manuscript carefully and found myself continually astonished by the author’s insights into the Holy Eucharist, her writing style’s unusual combination of lyricism and bluntness, and the spirit of refined courtesy and audacious zeal that shines forth from the pages. It is a book to spark wonder, feed prayer, and enliven adoration. I cannot recommend it too highly. (The blurbs from Fr. Jacques Philippe, Fr. John Saward, Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins, Mother Immaculata Franken, Sr. Julia Mary Darrenkamp, and Anthony Lilles speak for themselves.)

My article on May 8, “Contempt for Communion and the Mechanization of Mass,” closed with a quotation drawn from this new book:

Can there be anything greater? Has Our Lord not extended His love even to excess? Ah! If we had the faith to believe it, and if we would think about how we receive a God of infinite majesty as He truly is, would we not be overwhelmed with reverence?

I cannot help being struck by how relevant her words are to the current situation. As Dom Mark points out, she “lived in a time marked by superstition, sorcery, dalliance with the powers of darkness, blasphemy, and sacrilege. Distressing events in churches on every continent have demonstrated that global society today has more in common with war-torn 17th-century France than one might think” (5). The Huguenots of her day threw hosts to the floor and trampled on them. Today, more horribly because they should know better, there are Catholic clergy who, by means of communion in the hand, let the particles of the Eucharist be scattered hither and yon, to be trampled under foot, or who have arrived at the limit of impious techniques for “delivering sacramental goods.”

Here are several more passages that continue the same theme:

A God — greatness, power, richness itself — reduces Himself to nothing for us in the Host, and we think no more of it than one would of something commonplace and ordinary. O stupidity! Oh, the ingratitude of men! One does not think of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and, yet, is this not, of all mysteries, the most divine, of all marvels the most prodigious, the most inconceivable? What has anyone said of this divine mystery up until the present that in any way approaches the reality of it? (55)

All must remain in the silence of admiration. A God makes Himself our food! O astonishing prodigy! What are all the miracles worked by Jesus Christ during the course of His earthly life in comparison to this one? What a spectacle! What bounty! What charity! A God who gives Himself to us! O love! He who with three fingers sustains the universe is held by the priest. He who commands all of nature obeys a being who is nothing. He who is all-powerful makes Himself so dependent that He is in the power of His creatures; they carry Him, they bring Him wherever they choose. This is too much. Your charity, my Saviour, goes even to excess! O incomprehensible miracle! Mystery forever inconceivable! No, the thought of man would not know how to attain it. (53)

We must be very surprised to see with what boldness people enter churches and we ourselves enter choir, which is a place sanctified by the Real Presence of God. Oh! If we could see the posture of the angels and the saints before the adorable Eucharist, we would not be so bold as to enter without fear, without respect, and without amazement. It is here that we lack faith. (126)

The Mass is an ineffable mystery in which the eternal Father receives infinite homage: in it He is adored, loved, and praised as much as He deserves; and that is why we are advised to receive Communion frequently, in order to render to God, through Jesus, all the duties we owe Him. This is impossible without Jesus Christ who comes into us in order to accomplish [in us] the same sacrifice as that of the Holy Mass. (31)

There is so much treasure in these pages — I could quote and quote until your eyes wearied of scrolling. There’s a better solution: get the book and read it. Mother Mectilde’s teaching shone brightly in the gloom of her age and it continues to shine in ours, radiating fervor, joy, devotion, inspiring a charity that runs happily to excess.

Link to the publisher page.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website, SoundCloud page, and YouTube channel.