Liturgy, Authority, and Postmodernity: An Article by Dom Alcuin Reid on CWR

Yesterday, Catholic World Report published an article by Dom Alcuin Reid entitled “Liturgy, Authority, and Postmodernity”, originally delivered as the opening address at The Society for Catholic Liturgy’s annual conference, held this year in Philadelphia on September 28. Dom Reid addresses a number of very interesting questions, beginning, as he himself writes, with the following: “The liturgical reform which followed (Vatican II) was a self-conscious attempt to construct rites which would better reach modern people. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, ‘modern’ is modern no longer: we have moved beyond modernity into the “post” modern era. ... What does that mean for our modern liturgical rites and practices as they approach their fiftieth birthdays?” This question becomes all the more pressing with each passing day and year, as the “modern” man for whom the reform was purportedly created recedes ever further into the background of history, and “post” modern man’s lack of interest in it becomes an ever more seriously problem for the Church.

He also addresses the question of the Church’s authority to change the liturgy, a question whose importance is all the more crucial in light of the way the post-Conciliar reform was done, purportedly on the authority of Vatican II, but in open defiance of its intentions. As Fr Bouyer wrote in The Decomposition of Catholicism, a passage which Dom Reid cites, “Perhaps in no other area is there a greater distance (and even formal opposition) between what the Council worked out and what we actually have.”

“Where was authority in respect of the implementation of the liturgical reform? It is clear that the authority of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy itself was all too easily set aside as key players sought to have initiatives and even personal enthusiasms endorsed in its name, at times in spite of such initiatives having nothing whatsoever to do with the Council or the Constitution itself. First amongst these reforms aimed at creating a new liturgy for the modern world was the total vernacularisation of the liturgy mentioned earlier. The rapid promotion of Mass celebrated facing the people, the enthusiastic introduction of new Eucharistic prayers, and the creeping concession of permission for the reception of Holy Communion in the hand are but three other examples.

Each of these ‘reforms’ was effected, ironically, by the utterly premodern exercise of absolute papal positivism. For the papal positivist the Pope’s will is sovereign and unquestionable. This positivism (ultramontanism by another name)—which is alive and well down to our own times—is a critical factor in the study of the implementation of the reform. Paul VI personally approved the details of the reform in forma specifica. To obtain his signature was to win the day.

Too few people are aware of the extent of the politics and of the spirit of opportunism in which the reform was affected. Any yet it was a reality. ...

If we ask whether the resultant compromise, the Missal of Paul VI promulgated in 1970, is an example of authority acting in regard to the Sacred Liturgy in a manner that respects and is utterly consonant with its nature so as to optimise the good of souls, we must take pause. For there is much evidence that those responsible for what the supreme authority promulgated had their eyes fixed more on modernity, certain related ideologies, and their own personal preferences rather than on Christ alive and acting in the millennial liturgical tradition of the Church. The resultant product (we may even say “products”, for the same reality is more or less true mutatis mutandis of the reform of the other liturgical books) betray a self-conscious desire to conform to modernity rather than the pursuit of a judicious development of the rite so as to give it renewed vigor in the light of the circumstances and needs of modern times. The distinction is subtle, but real: in the liturgical reform following the Council the tail of modernity wagged the dog, and not the dog the tail.”

There is a great deal of food for thought in this piece, and very much worth your time. I add only this passage, suggesting that it be included in a future Magna carta for truly Catholic liturgical reform.

“Catholic liturgy, then, intentionally has its eyes firmly focussed on Almighy God and not modernity, postmodernity, or any other culture or philosophy. It has, as Sacrosanctum Concilium taught, a fundamental place in the Christian life as the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church (see: n. 10). Catholic liturgy is normative for the life of the Christian, and enjoys an objectivity in that its content is not subject to the passing fashions of each generation – or to the peculiar tastes of given priests or bishops – but is handed down in tradition with integrity whilst being proportionately persuadable according to true pastoral need.”

Card. Sarah’s Address to Conference Pulls No Punches

Catholic World Report has just published the text of an address sent by Robert Cardinal Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, to the 18th Cologne International Liturgical Conference. The subject of the conference, which concludes tomorrow, is the upcoming tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. His Eminence is extremely frank about the current state of crisis of the liturgy, indeed, no less frank than Pope Benedict was in the texts quoted by the Cardinal within the address. Here are some particularly interesting excerpts.

“...The particular care that should be brought to the liturgy, the urgency of holding it in high esteem and working for its beauty, its sacral character and keeping the right balance between fidelity to Tradition and legitimate development, and therefore rejecting absolutely and radically any hermeneutic of discontinuity or rupture: these essential elements are the heart of all authentic Christian liturgy. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger tirelessly repeated that the crisis that has shaken the Church for fifty years, chiefly since Vatican Council II, is connected with the crisis of the liturgy, and therefore to the lack of respect, the desacralization and the leveling of the essential elements of divine worship. ‘I am convinced,’ he writes, ‘that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy.’

Certainly, the Second Vatican Council wished to promote greater active participation by the people of God and to bring about progress day by day in the Christian life of the faithful (see Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 1). Certainly, some fine initiatives were taken along these lines. However we cannot close our eyes to the disaster, the devastation and the schism that the modern promoters of a living liturgy caused by remodeling the Church’s liturgy according to their ideas. They forgot that the liturgical act is not just a PRAYER, but also and above all a MYSTERY in which something is accomplished for us that we cannot fully understand but that we must accept and receive in faith, love, obedience and adoring silence. And this is the real meaning of active participation of the faithful. It is not about exclusively external activity, the distribution of roles or of functions in the liturgy, but rather about an intensely active receptivity: this reception is, in Christ and with Christ, the humble offering of oneself in silent prayer and a thoroughly contemplative attitude.

... it is necessary to recognize that the serious, profound crisis that has affected the liturgy and the Church itself since the Council is due to the fact that its CENTER is no longer God and the adoration of Him, but rather men and their alleged ability to ‘do’ something to keep themselves busy during the Eucharistic celebrations. Even today, a significant number of Church leaders underestimate the serious crisis that the Church is going through: relativism in doctrinal, moral and disciplinary teaching, grave abuses, the desacralization and trivialization of the Sacred Liturgy, a merely social and horizontal view of the Church’s mission. Many believe and declare loud and long that Vatican Council II brought about a true springtime in the Church. Nevertheless, a growing number of Church leaders see this “springtime” as a rejection, a renunciation of her centuries-old heritage, or even as a radical questioning of her past and Tradition. Political Europe is rebuked for abandoning or denying its Christian roots. But the first to have abandoned her Christian roots and past is indisputably the post-conciliar Catholic Church.

Some episcopal conferences even refuse to translate faithfully the original Latin text of the Roman Missal. Some claim that each local Church can translate the Roman Missal, not according to the sacred heritage of the Church, following the methods and principles indicated by Liturgiam authenticam, but according to the fantasies, ideologies and cultural expressions which, they say, can be understood and accepted by the people. But the people desire to be initiated into the sacred language of God.”

CWR Interview with Dom Alcuin Reid on Upcoming Sacra Liturgia Milan

Yesterday, Catholic World Report published an interview with Dom Alcuin Reid on this year’s Sacra Liturgia Conference, which will take place in Milan from June 6-9, and include a number of celebrations in both Forms of the Ambrosian Rite. Dom Reid outlines the conference’s liturgical program, and some of the topics which the invited speakers will address, among them Card. Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Cardinal Raymond Burke, and comments on the reception of Card. Sarah’s call at last year’s conference for a broad return to ad orientem worship. Here are a few keys excerpts.

CWR: So Sacra Liturgia Milan will feature the Ambrosian rite liturgy?

Dom Alcuin Reid: Yes, as at all our conferences the celebration of the liturgy is at the heart of what we do and because we shall be in Milan those celebrations, naturally, will be in the Ambrosian rite. The opening Solemn Vespers will be celebrated in the historic Basilica of Saint Ambrose; His Eminence, Cardinal Tettamanzi, has kindly agreed to celebrate for us.

So too, one of the conference Masses will be celebrated there in the modern Ambrosian rite by its Bishop-Abbot, Bishop DeScalzi, who has been very welcoming to us. His Eminence, Cardinal Scola, has facilitated our use of the beautiful church of St Alessandro for our celebration of Holy Mass in the ancient Ambrosian rite, and the conference will conclude in the Metropolitan Cathedral with Solemn Vespers, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and a statio at the altar of Blessed Ildephonse Schuster, the famous liturgist and Archbishop of Milan from 1929-1954. The Archpriest of the Duomo, who has also been very welcoming, will celebrate Vespers for us. ...

CWR: Robert Cardinal Sarah is once again a presenter; what will he be speaking on? Will his talk touch on the some of the matters he discusses in his new book, The Power of Silence?

Dom Alcuin Reid: His Eminence is speaking on “The Sacred Liturgy—Our Encounter With God: A Christological and Ecclesiological Perspective.” I cannot imagine that he would speak of our encounter with Almighty God without reflecting on the necessity of a fruitful silence and receptivity on the part of the Church and of each of us as we contemplate God’s saving action in the liturgy. But we shall have to wait and see what he says. Certainly the question of liturgy and ecclesiology is an important one and has been discussed quite a bit in recent years.

CWR: Another well-known cardinal, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, will be presenting as well. What is the focus of his address?

Dom Alcuin Reid: Cardinal Burke is speaking, ten years after its promulgation, about Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum and is presenting an assessment of those ten years as well as a prospective view of the future of the usus antiquior, the more ancient form, of the Roman rite. It promises to be an important address both in its analysis and in its vision for the years to come. ...

CWR: In his address at Sacra Liturgia London last summer (link in original), Cardinal Sarah suggested that Catholics consider a return to worship ad orientem. Overall, in hindsight, what sort of response was there to those remarks? What did those responses indicate to you, as someone who has been studying liturgical reform for many years?

Dom Alcuin Reid: Well, as we know, the responses were many and varied. Some—including responses from people in authority—were incredible in their naivety and lack of understanding of what the Cardinal actually said and indeed of the relevant ecclesiastical regulations. Nevertheless his message was not drowned by the noise created by its ill-informed critics. It reached the ears of those whose ears were indeed prepared to listen.

I understand that Cardinal Sarah has received many, many messages of support from around the world and that these far outnumber any criticisms he has received. And one continues to hear of more priests and parishes adopting his proposal to celebrate the Sacred Liturgy ad orientem; I have even seen reports of priests commencing this at the beginning of Lent because they judged it necessary to take a longer period to provide the catechesis necessary in their parish. This seems very wise and prudent.

In spite of the “dictatorship of noise” that attempts to rule liturgical discourse at times, His Eminence’s calm and considered message has in fact reached many people who are quietly getting on with the business of enriching the liturgical life of the Church according to a hermeneutic of continuity and not of rupture. His “still small voice” (cf. 1 Kings 19:12) rings true in the hearts and souls of many, and in time it will bear more fruit.

CWR Knocks It Out of the Park Again!

For the second time this week, Catholic World Report has published an extremely good and useful article on the topic of mutual enrichment, this time from the perspective of the Eastern Rites. It is the work of Dr Adam DeVille, Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Theology and Philosophy at the University of St Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As with the column published earlier this week by Nicholas Senz, I cannot encourage our readers strongly enough to click over to CWR to read the whole thing. Here are a couple of particularly good excerpts.

“... a counsel of negation for the Western liturgist. First, stop sneering and sloganeering (‘he’s not a liturgist!’) and pretending like you belong to some great guild of illuminati whose academic credentials qualify you and you alone to speak on these matters. Stop condescending to the people of God (link in original) by claiming they cannot possibly understand what ‘consubstantial’ or ‘oblation’ mean. Have you tried to teach them? (After just two sessions last semester, the Roman Catholic students in my Trinity class were confidently and intelligently discussing Greek terms like ousia, perichoresis, and prosopon.)

Have you, moreover, ever seriously consulted the people of God about liturgical reform? Or was it imposed from the top down by a papal fiat beholden to a commission of ideologues? ... Leitourgia is as much the ‘property’ of (and as much performed by) the untutored, semi-literate baba—who kept the faith in the Soviet gulag, or under Islamic domination, and taught her children and grandchildren how to pray—as it is of anyone else, especially the so-called experts. She (‘Mrs. Murphy’ as the Latin liturgist Aidan Kavanaugh famously nick-named her) has as much right to contribute here as anyone swanning about with a graduate degree from the Anselmo. ...

The West must therefore stop its psychologically destructive and perverse disdain for so-called useless repetitions. Repetition is the essence of liturgy and ritual. In this light, stop assuming a three-year lectionary is better than a one-year. It isn’t. One-year cycles mean more frequent repetition, which means a greater likelihood of people remembering the readings and calling them to mind later.

Hatred of repetition is invariably justified by self-congratulatory talk about ‘noble simplicity.’ It is neither. ‘Noble simplicity’ is just a sanctimonious display of bourgeois iconoclasm, ... ”

Alcuin Reid Interview on Cardinal Sarah and Sacra Liturgia

Catholic World Report has published an excellent interview with Dom Alcuin Reid, in which inter alia he discusses some of the issues that have arisen from Cardinal Robert Sarah’s proposal, made during the recent Sacra Liturgia conference in London, that priests exercise the use of a perfectly licit option and begin to celebrate Mass ad orientem more frequently. Dom Alcuin’s words are very useful in shedding the light of truth on some of the false statements, and calming some of the hysteria, that have arisen from the Cardinal’s perfectly reasonable words - it is very much worth your time to read the full text  linked above from CWR, of which we here reproduce some of the more excerpts.

CWR: Why did Cardinal Sarah choose to focus on the issue of orientation?

Dom Alcuin Reid: The Cardinal has emphasized the importance of facing East before – in the Vatican newspaper (June 12, 2005) and in the French journal Famille Chrétienne this past May. So it could be expected that he would speak on this again. Perhaps, though, his appeal to priests to adopt this beautiful practice “with prudence and with the necessary catechesis, certainly, but also with a pastor’s confidence that this is something good for the Church, something good for our people” from the first Sunday of Advent this year added an immediacy that his previous mentions of this did not have. I imagine that he wanted not just to talk about this, but to encourage priests to begin the necessary work of formation so as to implement it. ...

There are many, many other important things contained in the Cardinal’s Address. We should not forget that, as its title indicates, he was exploring ways in which we can be more faithful to the Second Vatican Council’s desires for the Sacred Liturgy. People should carefully read the full and official text which was published on Monday in English and French at his direction. It is a mine of profound insights and practical reflections on how to implement the Council more faithfully today. ...

CWR: Have you been surprised by the response outside the conference and by the Vatican’s “clarification”?

Dom Alcuin Reid: It has to be said that some responses on internet sites and even in prominent journals have been astonishing. To accuse Cardinal Sarah of lying in respect of what Pope Francis has said to him about continuing the work of the Pope Emeritus or about studying a possible reform of the reform, or to say that the Holy Father ‘slapped down’ the Cardinal, is patently absurd and utterly untrue. No one who has the privilege of knowing the man, or indeed who has read his recent book God or Nothing, could believe him to be a liar. A more humble and honest priest and bishop one could not wish to find! And there is no evidence from the Vatican’s statement, or elsewhere, that the Holy Father was either angry with him or rebuked him. It is quite normal to clarify false reports: that is what has been done – though the clarification itself could perhaps do with some clarification!

Cardinal Sarah remains in post and his Address has not been withdrawn. Indeed, it should be noted that he asked us to publish it after his meeting with the Holy Father, and he has withdrawn nothing of what he said in London.

It is clear, though, that his Address has touched a very raw nerve amongst those who have turned certain modern liturgical practices– such as celebrating Mass facing the people – or indeed the whole of the modern liturgy, into an idol. And it is well known that Curial officials have abhorred any use of the term “reform of the reform” for many years lest their idol be in some way impugned. Cardinal Sarah has dared to challenge such prejudices and, seemingly, those who murmur in the shadows have been busy whipping up a storm so as to distract from what the Cardinal in fact said. They have not responded to his arguments or his proposals with counter arguments. Rather, they have set up straw men and screamed hysterically at the sight of the creations of their own minds.

Once again I would say, and emphatically: read the Cardinal’s full text. Engage with what it says. Ponder the fact that this is not a point-scoring salve in the so-called liturgy-wars, but the profound personal reflections of a priest, bishop and cardinal who was called – apparently against his will – by Pope Francis to serve as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. There may well be other approaches, but those he propose at least deserve a respectful and serious hearing. (end excerpts)

Our writer Matthew Hazel was present for Sacra Liturgia; you can read his accounts of each days events at the following links. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4. Extracts from the various talks are also available via the Sacra Liturgia Facebook page.

Catholic World Report Interview with Dom Alcuin Reid on Sacra Liturgia 2015

Catholic World Report has posted an interview with Dom Alcuin Reid about the Sacra Liturgia Conference to be held from June 1-4 in New York City. Here are a few excerpts; you can read the complete interview at their website, in which Dom Alcuin also gives the list of speakers and liturgical events. (Also previously announced here on NLM.)

CWR: What do you hope to achieve through this conference?

Dom Alcuin: I think the reason people wanted a Sacra Liturgia conference in the USA was because they saw that what we did in Rome was to further peoples’ formation in what the Sacred Liturgy is, in how to celebrate and pray it, and in appreciating its utterly fundamental role in living the Christian life of witness and mission in the world of the twenty-first century. We did this at various levels—practically by the full and beautiful celebration of the older and the newer rites, academically through the presentations of many expert scholars and pastors which have done a lot already to move liturgical scholarship forward, and informally through the contacts and networks built up throughout the conference.

If our New York conference can continue that work of liturgical formation and sound scholarship and put people in contact with one another we shall be very pleased.

CWR: What place does this conference have in what has become known as the “new liturgical movement”?

Dom Alcuin: Certainly Sacra Liturgia wishes to be seen as something standing at the centre of the new liturgical movement. That is a phrase that comes from Pope Benedict XVI’s book The Spirit of the Liturgy, written as Cardinal Ratzinger before his election to the papacy.

We look to support all that is good and true in the liturgical life of the Church: we promote an authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council’s mandate for liturgical reform and an assessment of the implementation of its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that is faithful to the Council. We are open to an ongoing consideration of the value of a possible reform of the reform. Most certainly we work for the integral celebration of the usus recentior (the modern liturgy) with an optimal ars celebrandi—that way of celebrating the liturgy fully, beautifully and in harmony with its received tradition—as well as an openness to the value and riches of the usus antiquior (the older rites) in the Church today.

All of these are elements of the new liturgical movement. If we can move forward on these fronts Catholics will be able to draw ever more deeply from the source and summit of Christian life—which is what the Sacred Liturgy is—and our mission in the world will be stronger, more effective.

“Beauty and Tradition in the ‘Church of the Poor’ ” - An Interesting Article on Catholic World Report

Abbot Nicholas Zachariadis and Benjamin Mann, who are both members of an Eastern Catholic monastery, Holy Resurrection in Saint Nazianz, Wisconsin, have recently published an article on the website of Catholic World Report, on beauty in the liturgy and the truly Christian sense of humility. (Mr Mann, who is soon to receive his monastic tonsure, is also the author of a regular column at Catholic Exchange.) The article contains a number of valuable insights and observations, of which I will give just a few selections here; click the link above for the rest. Especially interesting is the middle section, which is under the subheading “Poor Church, Yes – Iconoclastic Church, No!”

(I am very much in favor of always keeping the combox open, and I try to keep a very light hand on moderating the discussions in it. A gentle reminder, which I know is not necessary for the vast majority of our readers: keep the comments charitable, especially in regards to the Holy Father, and germane to the topic at hand.)

While it has lost much of its momentum since the heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, the iconoclastic approach to liturgy and religious art has not gone away: indeed, it remains deeply ingrained, at the parish level, in much of the Western world. Today, there is a danger that this de-sacralizing attitude will be revived – and Benedict XVI’s efforts toward authentic liturgical renewal rolled back – by a misreading of Pope Francis’ words and ideals: an interpretation that casts Christian humility and liturgical beauty as opposites in tension, or even outright contradiction, rather than as potentially harmonious counterparts.

Notably, this assertion would have been repugnant to Pope Francis’ namesake St. Francis of Assisi – who wrote in his Testament that he wanted “above all” for Christ’s Eucharistic presence “to be honored and venerated and reserved in places which are richly ornamented.” This is in keeping with the saint’s entire view of nature and creation as showing forth the glory of God: for Il Poverello, there is no question of demonstrating our own humility through minimalistic worship. Rather, we show our ultimate poverty before God precisely by offering all created beauty – symbolically present in the Christian temple – back to its Creator. ...

Examples could be marshaled and multiplied, to show that Christian humility and poverty do not require the abandonment of classical beauty and traditional liturgical forms. And such examples would by no means be confined to history. Across the globe even today, many of the world’s humblest and poorest Christian populations – those of the Middle East, or India, for instance – are among those most intent on maintaining their long-established forms of liturgy, art, and architecture, in all their outward splendor.

Ironically, far from expressing a sense of global or social solidarity, the insistence on a minimalistic and exaggeratedly “humble” religious aesthetic actually seems to be a form of modern Western parochialism among an educated elite. The movement toward a contrived informality and secularity in liturgy and art did not come from the poor or the ordinary faithful, but from a class of trained professionals who saw themselves as the most qualified readers of the signs of the times.

Their basic aspiration – to engage and evangelize the modern world more effectively – was good, and remains essential. Yet the result of their iconoclastic experiments can be seen in the “devastated vineyard” of closed seminaries, barren sanctuaries, and dwindling religious orders. The Western Church has already tried the reductive, desacralizing approach to humility and poverty, which claims that the Church must put off her outward signs of holiness and simply meet modern man on his own terms – and garb – in the secular city. Whatever its intentions may have been, this project has proved to be a dismal failure.