A Report from the Chartres Pilgrimage

Our thanks to Mr Charles Bradshaw for sharing with us this write-up of the annual Chartres pilgrimage. The pictures were taken by his father-in-law, Mr Joseph Thurrott, who, due to the crowds, was unable to get near the cathedral on Monday, but still, they provide a glimpse into what the pilgrimage looks like “on the ground” with one of the Chapters.

The recent Chartres pilgrimage reached an important milestone that even the French National secular media were not keen to miss: a month before the pilgrimage even began, bookings were closed due to record numbers, and on Saturday, May 18, some 18 thousand pilgrims (at an average age of 21) set off on the road that separates Paris from Chartres. The Pentecost Sunday Mass in the pre–Tridentine Dominican rite was broadcast live on CNews, the French equivalent of Sky News, whilst BFM TV gave their morning news slot over to the story, to name but a few of the media outlets covering the event.

Yet more importantly than numbers and coverage, is the question that needs to be raised and addressed both on the continent and this side of the Channel. What is it that year after year keeps more young people coming?

Notre Dame de Chrétienté is a lay led organisation that has risen to the challenge of the current times without shying away from the elephant in the room (Traditiones Custodes) or backing down. Rather they’ve chosen to do what the French have always done: carry on and, to make light of the situation by producing a T-shirt with “guardians of tradition” proudly printed on the back. In fact, there are lessons to be learnt: under pressure from the French bishop’s conference to use the reformed missal, rather than keeping the advertised Masses quiet or reserved to a small few, instead of backing down, they have raised their voice louder, and this in no small way explains the success of the pilgrimage. The Traditional Latin Mass is not the preferential option of a small group of people, but the rich heritage of the Universal Church, as Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007 made clear. It wasn’t, isn’t and shall never be the exclusive property of a fee paying few. Furthermore, this Rite of the Church was never abrogated, and if logic is required, then the same must hold true today. If numbers are needed, Chartres provides: the organisers estimate some 60% regular attendees of the Traditional Mass, 30% attending both forms, and 10% not even Christian.

So, what brings that 10%? Nothing other than the power of Truth. This is the second key to the success of the Chartres pilgrimage: sound doctrine and the unashamed preaching thereof. Pick up the pilgrim handbook, and as the pages of the Mass unfold, so does the catechetical teaching that accompanies it, compiled by the monks of Fontgombault, who even teach priests to say it in vast numbers. Doctrine is not just a question of liturgy: it naturally flows from it, but it is a rich whole. As the Chaplain of the Chartres Pilgrimage, Fr de Massia put it, “it is the only reality worth living”.

But there’s another side to this story that keeps getting missed: the French fighting spirit. Integrity and downright brutal honesty are part of the French DNA. Some call it pride, others the sheer determination not to be beaten down. It is the Faith of a people who have taken the Gospel literally, and that means living it to the full. It is that authenticity that the pilgrims sing “chez nous, soyez Reine”, Mary be Queen of our homes! It is belief that is not afraid to upset or challenge. Therein lies the third key to the Chartres success story.

In short, it is none other than living the threefold demand which French writer Jean Madiran addressed to the Pope in those turbulent years after the Council: “give us back the Mass, the Catechism and Scripture”. What lessons must we learn? That it is time to live the Mass, love the Mass, share and defend the Mass, not hide it, lock it up and mute what it stands for. Yes, at whatever cost.

As the 42nd Chartres pilgrimage drew to a close on Pentecost Monday afternoon, before Pontifical Mass began, the President of Notre Dame de Chrétienté addressed the now twenty thousand strong packed Cathedral and square for a brief moment in English, urging the “étrangers” to take Chartres home and in direct partnership with them start such initiatives themselves. Isn’t it about time “Christendom Pilgrimage” was born in England’s land? The 43rd Chartres pilgrimage will take on the challenging theme of “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven” celebrating 100 years since Quas Primas and the social reign of Christ the King. “Regnavit a ligno Deus” is not outmoded, you see, or impossible to realize: it just takes integrity and will power to do so! Chartres t’appelle!

Historical Images of the Chartres Pilgrimage, from Sharon Kabel

Since today is the first day of the Chartres pilgrimage, we are very pleased to share with our readers some more of the fascinating research work of Mrs Sharon Kabel, who has put together this wonderful collection of historical documentations of past pilgrimages, going back nearly 100 years. (I am sure our readers have already heard that this year, for the first time ever, the number of people enrolled was so high that the organizers had to close registrations.) Félicitations à tous les pélérins!

From Sharon: To start off, here’s a photo from the 1948 pilgrimage. (from The Catholic World in Pictures, 18 June 1948: https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cwp19480618-01.2.14&srpos=2)

We can thank the poet Charles Peguy for reviving the pilgrimage in the 1910s (not in 1935, as the clipping says... Peguy was long dead by then.) The 1955 pilgrimage allegedly had 14,000 pilgrims and two Masses at the end! (from The Catholic Standard and Times, Volume 60, Number 35, 27 May 1955, https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cst19550527-01.2.128&srpos=1)

1933 - over 5,000 pilgrims. (Catholic News Service - Newsfeeds, 15 May 1933, https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cns19330515-01.1.47&srpos=2)

I leave American newspapers behind, and turn to the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Here’s an announcement for the 1955 pilgrimage in the publication Cité chrétienne. (Cité chrétienne: bulletin trimestriel des chrétiens: anciens résidents de la Cité Universitaire. 1955-05-01. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9783528f)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Extraordinary Youth

Our thanks to Mr Henry Walker, who has just participated in the annual Chartres pilgrimage, for sharing this reflection on youth and the traditional Mass with NLM.

I looked around the Church, a place which had happily become a second home of sorts… Over the years, many of the once unfamiliar faces had become regular features in my life; and I was grateful for them all. But this time, as I looked around the crowd, something struck me, something that has been a pleasant revelation since I had wandered into a Mass in the Extraordinary Form...

The Church was crammed full of young people like myself; it appeared vibrant, growing, new faces in the pews, young and old, each at different stages of their spiritual life, irrespective of age. The youngsters weren’t present to pay any empty lip service, or out of an inherited custom, and they weren’t young enough—or so inclined—to have been dragged along by their parents or spouses! They were present to worship God, in a form which they had taken on as their own; devotees of a tradition far too old and rare to have been embraced without a firm desire for it. They stand as a contradiction, an unpleasant disruption from the normal decline, the ones who bear witness that the Mass of Ages can be both universal and unique, simultaneously ancient and timeless!

English pilgrims on the way to Chartres.

These youthful souls are the result of a silent and under-reported evangelization, largely a fruit of Summorum Pontificum, and the relatively widespread availability of the Traditional Latin Mass which resulted from it. As well as penning the motu proprio just mentioned, the then Pope Benedict XVI spoke of a “silent apostasy”… A gradual falling away of monumental proportions. I now see evidence of a “silent evangelisation” emerging, admittedly small, but budding, with a long-overdue summer in sight!

These young people are passionate, dedicated, and inflamed with a new love for the Old Mass, a Mass which many of their forefathers had both lived and died for. They possess a certain zeal, which in this age is a phenomena that often seems unique to only “tradition-minded” parishes.

It cannot be argued—as it often is—that the usus antiquior is a relic of the past, only made available for elderly folk who can’t shake off the shackles of old. The Mass of Ages is a gem that has been seized upon by a multitude of previously lost Catholics, as well as many converts, and people from families that aren’t at all inclined towards piety. “I brought my parents along once, they didn’t understand...” Sentiments similar to this were expressed to me by a bright-eyed young man at a gathering for young Catholics, where the Latin Mass was the point of common focus. He told me of how his own conversion was encouraged by the Latin Mass, and now his heart had been swept away with it; he even unveiled that his parents did not at all consent to this change. He was a normal man, in his early twenties. There was nothing different or “extraordinary” about him, yet this version of the Mass had awakened in him a lively Faith, and a total conversion of life.

His story sounded familiar, it reminded me of my own, and many others which I have heard along the way…

The author outside Chartres cathedral during the recent pilgrimage.

“Your parents weren’t religious?” my confused friends often ask me. “No. They are now, but I was the first of the family to begin practising.” Upon hearing of this reversion, they are filled with curiosity and confusion; such a reality falls so far outside their frame of reference.

In the modern era, religion is viewed as an unfortunate custom that you carry forward like a burden, if you are unlucky enough to be brought into the world by parents not yet free from it’s shackles. This could not be further from the truth in the young hearts which make up the small yet growing movement dedicated to the Old Rite, the Mass of Ages, and, we are convinced, the most beautiful thing this side of heaven.

My own experience led me to write this article; finding the Extraordinary Form quickly changed my life and deepened the comparatively little Faith which I had already been graced with. I hope that this movement will continue to grow, and will mutually foster support and understanding within all sections of the Universal Church, which gave us this treasure, and especially in this troublesome time, to this Church we owe our deepest gratitude and singular allegiance!

Guest Article: Time to Say “No Thanks” to Liturgical Deviations

Today NLM is pleased to present a translation of the response by Monika Rheinschmitt, president of Pro Missa Tridentina, to an article by Fr Engelbert Recktenwald, FSSP, entitled “Time to say ‘Thanks’ ”, which was published on June 28 in Die Tagespost.

Time to Say “No Thanks” to Liturgical Deviations

Monika Rheinschmitt

Together with the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, we rejoice over its 30th anniversary and wish God’s blessing upon its current General Chapter.

After Fr. Recktenwald, FSSP in his article from June 28, 2018 (“Time to say ‘Thanks’”) has finished discussing the history of the birth of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and, as a second theme, the mutual trust between Rome and the Fraternity as well as between bishops and members of the Fraternity who care for individual parishes, he busies himself in the last two paragraphs with “the danger of a hyperliturgization [Hyperliturgisierung], especially among traditional laity.”

In response, I would like to offer a few thoughts to ponder. In my work for the lay association “Pro Missa Tridentina,” I have many contacts with about 230 sites of classical Roman tradition in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Not surprisingly, while I encounter a wide variety and certainly a diversity of different views, I cannot confirm the existence of such a tendency. The faithful, who often travel long distances to be able to assist at Holy Masses in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, are well aware of what a great treasure the Catholic Church preserves in this liturgy, and what a unique historic opportunity is the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which ensured that the liturgical books in use in 1962 might continue to be used, and used without restriction. According to the will of Pope Benedict XVI, this treasure of the classical Roman Rite is not intended for a small, elite group, but rather “offered to all of the faithful” (Instruction Universae Ecclesiae).

People find their way to the traditional Roman Rite along many paths: the beauty of the music in the churches, the great painting and architecture, the solemn liturgies, things they read—all that expresses reverence and adoration of the Most High. As in the Gospel parable about the treasure in the field (Mt 13:44-46), they do not want to lose again what they have found, but rather to conserve the beauty of this treasure. They respect and practice forms grown up over the centuries and maintained in the life of the Church—forms that also help Catholics today to pray more devoutly and reverently and to believe more deeply.

It is not “pastoral,” therefore, when priests carry out their own little private liturgical reform and, for example, replace Latin Scripture readings with German ones, or the sung Ordinary of the Mass with Schubert Mass-paraphrases (as Fr. Recktenwald advocates), or allow certain liturgical prayers to be said in German rather than Latin. Especially today in the age of globalization, in which communities of the faithful in places like Frankfurt or Bonn or Stuttgart can easily show a linguistic diversity like that of Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost, a common liturgical language and a single worldwide form are of inestimable value for preserving a spiritual homeland.

The desire to remove deviations accumulated over the course of years in order to keep this form visible and available is also expressed in the following papal provisions:

1) The motu proprio Rubricarum instructum of Pope St. John XXIII: As of January 1, 1961, all who belong to the Roman rite must obey the rules set forth in the liturgical books. All conflicting provisions, privileges, exemptions, permissions, and customs of any kind are withdrawn—even if they have existed for centuries or from time immemorial.

2) The Instruction Universae Ecclesiae, enacted by the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei in the name of Pope Benedict XVI, frees the celebration of the usus antiquior from any laws adopted after 1962 that concern the sacred rites and are incompatible with the rubrics of the liturgical books in force in 1962.

Edifying, perhaps, but not the Mass

Here, the intention of the papal legislators is clear: to eliminate any possible deviations from the rubrics, whether they are matters of custom or are motivated by “pastoral” or “contemporary” adjustments. This ought to receive complete agreement on the part of all traditional believers, clergy as well as laity, and especially members of priestly communities that make an exclusive use of the liturgical books of 1962.

The authentic celebration of the liturgy by no means neglects pastoral care in favor of a self-sufficient aesthetic. As the well-known formula puts it: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi: worship, faith, and concern for the salvation of souls belong together. Prayer, faith, and life are based on the same foundations and are supported by an authentic liturgy that is faithful to its rite.

Accordingly, in the decree of establishment of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, October 18, 1988, it says:

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter is dedicated to the sanctification of priests through the exercise of pastoral ministry, principally through the uniformity of their lives with the Eucharistic sacrifice and by observing the liturgical and disciplinary traditions about which the Pope writes in his Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei of July 2, 1988.

It may be taken for granted that the statutes of the Priestly Fraternity have meanwhile been conformed to the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007 and the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae of 2011, but this would not modify anything in the assertion that the statutes of the Priestly Fraternity imply adherence to the liturgical rites.

Let us take up an example from Fr. Recktenwald’s article: the presentation of the Scripture readings immediately in the vernacular, instead of (as intended for High Mass) first being sung in Latin, and then optionally read out in the vernacular. On this point Rome has expressly spoken. The already-mentioned Instruction Universae Ecclesiae specifies: “As foreseen by article 6 of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the readings of the Holy Mass of the Missal of 1962 can be proclaimed either solely in the Latin language, or in Latin followed by the vernacular or, in Low Masses, solely in the vernacular.” This means: in all sung Masses on Sundays and Holy Days as well as feasts of the first class such as St. Joseph on March 19, or the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or SS. Peter and Paul on June 29, or the Assumption on August 15, the Epistle and the Gospel must first be sung in Latin (if the priest is not ill such that he may only read out the text in Latin).

It remains incomprehensible why, after this clear statement in the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae, many priests (above all in the sphere of the German language and in France) ignore the latreutic aspect of the Scripture readings and insist, even at High Masses, on reading out the Scripture immediately in the regional language—and then accuse those who “dissent” from this abuse of “rubricism,” and complain about “hyperliturgization.”

In support of his position, Father Recktenwald refers to the Pontifical Mass that was celebrated this year by Cardinal Sarah at the conclusion of the Paris-Chartres pilgrimage. There, after all, the Epistle and Gospel were read aloud immediately in French, and Cardinal Sarah in his homily issued a reminder about how one should celebrate the liturgy: “with noble simplicity, without useless additions, false aestheticism or theatricality, but with a sense of the sacred that first and foremost gives glory to God.”

This quotation seems to me to be torn out of context and not taken in the sense in which Cardinal Sarah meant it. In the same homily, the celebrant refers in a positive way multiple times to the Pontifical Mass just celebrated, with the following words:

Let us take today’s Mass as a model: it brings us to adoration, to a filial and loving fear before the greatness of God. ... Dear brothers and sisters, let us love these liturgies that enable us to taste the silent presence and transcendence of God and turn us toward the Lord. ... What the world expects of the priest is that he proclaim God and the Light of his Word, without ambiguity or falsification. Let us know how to turn together to God in a liturgical celebration full of reverence, a silence that expresses holiness. We invent nothing new in the liturgy; we receive everything from God and His Church. We don’t want to put on a show or seek our own success. The liturgy teaches us: To be a priest is not to do a lot, it means, far more, to be with the Lord upon the Cross. ... Whether in the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Form, let us always celebrate, as we also do today, according to what the Second Vatican Council teaches: with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, false aestheticism or theatricality, but with a sense of the sacred that first and foremost gives glory to God, and with the true spirit of a son of the Church.

Whether Cardinal Sarah, in a Pontifical Mass for 15,000 international pilgrims, many of whom did not understand French, really endorsed (a) the disregarding of the Roman requirement that the Scripture readings be first given in Latin and (b) the reading of them immediately and exclusively in French, eludes my knowledge, but it appears to me to be questionable.

Presumably, this remark (“useless additions, theatricality”) referred more to other elements of large-scale Mass celebrations that can be witnessed at the Pope’s Masses, and most recently at the Catholic Day [in Germany]: liturgical dance with the Gospel book, guitars, percussion, even drum kits, never-ending Offertory processions in which many people bring all sorts of gifts down the aisle to the altar, a lengthy and excessive Kiss of Peace, and so forth.

Comparable to the prescriptions about the Scripture readings are the provisions concerning church music, especially what is to be sung during Holy Mass. Ever since the motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (1903) of Pope St Pius X, all the popes as well as the Second Vatican Council have stressed the importance and primacy of the Gregorian chant in the liturgy and have highlighted that, in addition to the cantors (Schola), the others who are assisting at Mass should also learn the Gregorian melodies and sing the parts that pertain to them. All the worshiping communities at locations where Holy Masses in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite are regularly offered make an effort to build up a schola cantorum. This should also be encouraged and appreciated by the celebrants, because the Gregorian chant is a necessary, indispensable part of the liturgy.

For the greater glory of God, believers of all centuries have made the best of what has been available to them in the fields of architecture, painting, fine arts, paraments, goldsmithing, and music. We should continue to do this today, so that the sacraments, especially the Mass, “the most beautiful thing this side of heaven,” may be celebrated as fittingly as possible.

Almighty God,
grant me the grace
to desire ardently all that is pleasing to Thee,
to examine it prudently,
to acknowledge it truthfully,
and to accomplish it perfectly,
for the praise and glory of Thy Name.
Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas

[The original German text of this article may be found here.]

The Ill-Placed Charges of Purism, Elitism, and Rubricism

For over 1,500 years, the Church in the West has sung her readings at Mass in the Latin tongue, in the chant that grew up with the texts and clothes them to perfection. For a long time now, she has read the lesson towards the east and the Gospel towards the north, offering them up as part of the high-priestly sacrifice of the Mass, for the glorification of God and not merely for the instruction of the people (as the Protestants would subsequently maintain). When it was thought desirable to convey the readings also in the vernacular, Holy Mother Church, in imitation of Our Lady, “kept these things and pondered them in her heart”: she did not abolish the Latin chants but gave permission for them to be read aloud in the vernacular afterwards, from the ambo or pulpit. There is absolutely no reason to change the Catholic practice of chanting the Epistle and Gospel in Latin, and every reason to conserve it for the theological and spiritual patrimony it transmits.

When I published my article “Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making ‘Pastoral Adaptations’” this past June 11, protesting against the manner in which the final pontifical Mass of the Chartres pilgrimage did violence to the Roman Rite in regard to the readings, little did I know what a hornet’s nest I was kicking. Blogs in French and German picked up the article (some examples here, here, here, and here). It was consoling to find that many priests who contacted me agreed that the rubrics should be followed and that this Franco-German custom is an aberration that deserves to be set aside definitively.

However, there were some voices raised in support of such liturgical irregularities. To my surprise and disappointment, one of these voices belongs to P. Engelbert Recktenwald, F.S.S.P., who on June 28 published a column in the major German Catholic newspaper, Die Tagespost, entitled “Zeit, ‘danke’ zu sagen’” (“Time to Say Thanks” — the article is not available online for free), in which he eloquently expresses his confidence in the rightness of the founding of the Fraternity of St. Peter in 1988 and its peaceful role within the Church, but then veers into an attack on a certain category of traditionalists. His paragraphs are worth reading in their entirety (my translation):

Personally, in the meantime, I see an unexpected danger for the traditional movement somewhere else in the Church, that is to say, in a hyperliturgization [Hyperliturgisierung]. Despite all the theological narrowness of which one might accuse Archbishop Lefebvre, he had the zeal of a true shepherd who is concerned with the salvation of souls. To him, the preservation of the liturgy was not an aesthetic end-in-itself. Far more, he saw the liturgical crisis as part of the crisis of faith that was endangering the salvation of many souls. His intention was highly pastoral, in the full Catholic sense of the word. He was not concerned with rubrics, that is, with the letter of liturgical rules, but with their spirit. He was not altogether against reforms, but only against reforms that cloud over the spirit of the liturgy.
          In my first year as a priest in the Society of St. Pius X, on Sundays I served at a chapel where they sang, on alternating weeks, Gregorian chant and Schubert Masses [i.e., Mass paraphrases in German]. No one had thought anything of that. The phenomenon of a liturgical purism that despises German songs in the liturgy, rejects the direct reading of Epistle and Gospel in the vernacular [i.e., without reading/chanting them in Latin], and cultivates an excessive rubricism to the point of a missionary self-gagging, crossed my way much later, especially in lay circles. Thus [outside] critics of the traditional liturgy are offered a target, while newcomers have a more difficult start. One enters upon an oblique path at the end of which liturgy appears to be the hobby of an exclusive club of exotic aesthetes.
          I am grateful to Cardinal Sarah that, at the concluding Mass of the Chartres pilgrimage, he set a sign and gave a reminder about the correct measure of the way one ought to celebrate: “with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, false aestheticism, or theatricality, but with a sense of the sacred that first and foremost gives glory to God.”[1]

There is much that one might criticize in these paragraphs, but I would like to take a step back and consider the eerie similarity between the way Recktenwald is arguing today and the way that Annibale Bugnini and his liturgist comrades were arguing about the “urgent need” to modify the old Mass.

Yves Chiron’s masterful biography of Bugnini details just how willing were the liturgical “experts” of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s to experiment with the liturgy, as if it was their personal possession. No established rubrics held them back, in spite of nearly constant warnings and reproofs from the popes, from the Congregation for Rites, or from other curial officials. The attitude seemed to be: “If we have a good enough reason to break the rubrics to try something new that we think is a pastoral improvement, then we have sufficient justification.” This attitude, in short, was the very acid that dissolved any notion of a received, inherited rite to which we are humbly subject, by which we allow ourselves to be shaped and guided.

Once this erroneous attitude had established itself, it was relatively easy to discard the entire rite in favor of a fabricated one. Why not? It’s all about what we want to do. The Novus Ordo was simply the crown placed on decades of liturgical experimentation rooted in rationalism, voluntarism, and pastoralism. In some ways, it was the archetypal expression of a council that claimed to be not dogmatic but pastoral, a council that was content with rambling texts that tack to and fro like a sailboat trying to catch the wind, just as the so-called Tridentine rite in its majestic solidity and stability is the perfect expression of the genuine pastoral concern and luminous dogmatic teaching of the Council of Trent, valid for all time, all places, all cultures.

In their myopia, partisans of the later phase of the Liturgical Movement thought that they, and not the providentially unfolded tradition of the Church, knew best what Modern Man™ needed. To them, it was evident that he needed as much vernacularization as possible. That is why Latin was eventually thrown out of the window completely. They also thought we needed to simplify, always to seek a greater and greater simplification — be it in vestments (away with the amice and maniple and biretta), in furnishings (away with six candles, antependia, and thuribles), in the texts of the Mass (away with the Propers, second or third orations, Psalm 42, Prologue of John, Leonine prayers), in the ceremonies of the Mass (away with osculations, signs of the cross, genuflections, ad orientem), in its music (away with ancient chant).

A television Mass versus populum, for Modern Man

It never seems to have occurred to the Liturgical Movement that quite possibly what an increasingly secular and materialist age needed was precisely a movement in the opposite direction — towards greater liturgical symbolism, a richer pageantry of ritual, a fuller immersion in Gregorian chant with its incomparable spirituality, and so forth.[2] What modern man needed most of all was to be rescued from the prison of his own making, namely, the rationalist anthropocentrism that defines modernity and that, to our shame, made its home in the Catholic Church through the liturgical reform, in its many intended and unintended consequences. In this sense, the proposed cure turned out to be more of the same disease, which is why, predictably, it has made the patient worse, not better.

The accusation of “hyperliturgization” made by Pater Recktenwald is therefore ironic. Priests who defend departures from the rubrics — often nationalistic departures from the universal Roman tradition — are the ones who deem themselves competent to make improvements or adjustments of the liturgy. They are the hyperliturgists. Those who wish to attend a Roman Mass that, at least as regards what is specified in the liturgical books, is the same everywhere in the world, even as the Catholic Faith is the same, are not hyperliturgists; they are not even liturgists. They are faithful Catholics. They are Catholics who believe that what the longstanding tradition of the Church offers them, such as the chanting of the readings in Latin, is going to be spiritually superior to some “adaptation” or “inculturation” that this or that priest, or group of priests, may happen to think is better. We are called to dwell in the house of the liturgy as grateful guests, not to re-engineer it as project managers.

Those who make changes like this in the liturgy are no doubt acting in good faith. But they are not acting with humble trust that there are always many layers of meaning in the liturgy that go beyond what we might understand to be the purpose of some ceremony or text or music or vestment. They are acting, in short, by their own lights. But what we must do, especially today, is to act by the light of Catholic tradition, until we have learned again, like children in grammar school, why it developed in the first place. We need to learn our ABCs again before we dare to make our own contributions, whatever those might be (and may God preserve us from “creativity”).

A relic of the past, a danger in the present

Some have curiously accused me in this connection of “rubricism,” a charge repeated, as we have seen, by Fr. Recktenwald. The reason I say “curiously” is that it is perfectly obvious that I am not a rubricist. The phenomenon of rubricism occurs when the liturgical or theological rationale for a given practice is forgotten, and all that one has to stand on is a rubric, a prescription of positive human law. If one cannot say why a practice is right and fitting but simply shouts “That’s the rubric and we must follow it!,” or if one breaks out into a cold sweat at 3 in the morning because one suddenly realizes that three manuals disagree about how many inches apart the items on the credence table should be, then perhaps one might be called a rubricist. But if one looks at what I wrote about why the Chartres abuses should be avoided, one can see a liturgical-theological rationale in addition to a reminder that the rubrics rule them out.

The reason rubrics are good is that the practices they guarantee are themselves good and right and fitting. It is not the other way around, namely, that something is good because the rubrics dictate it. That is legal positivism. No. The Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit learns the best way of doing something — best either in practical terms, or for theological/spiritual reasons, or both — and then she formulates it as a rubric and enforces its observance. For example, the custom of holding the thumb and forefinger together arose as a custom, gradually spread, and was finally taken up into the rubrics enjoined on all.[3] That is usually how such things develop. A great problem of 20th-century Catholicism was that rubrics had become a cottage industry. The Congregation for Rites, followed in turn by the Consilium, were cranking out new rubrics year by year, leading to a weariness and annoyance with the whole business. Forgotten was the theological and spiritual meaning of the rubrics, the reason they developed in the first place.

This is why a traditionalist is consistent in saying that rubrics must be followed, but also that some rubrics are better than others, because of what they require and why they require it. Indeed, some rubrics are bad, such as the Novus Ordo rubric that during Mass no one should genuflect to Our God and Lord Jesus Christ, really present in the tabernacle, even when passing in front of it. Let us not beat around the bush: this is stupid and wrong. It is “on the books,” but much in the same way that any bad law is on the books.[4]

A rubricist is one who insists on the rubrics for their own sake. A traditionalist insists on the rubrics because they protect and promote something important — something that one first has to understand theologically and spiritually, after which the rubrics are seen to be right. Rubrics have legal force because they are promulgated by legitimate authority, but they have their intrinsic force from the nature of the thing itself.

“Pastoral” priests who ignore or contradict the sound rubrics of the old missal are demonstrating not “flexibility within rules,” but an antinomian mentality that is characteristic of the modern period, with its habit of calling traditions into question and giving first place to utilitarian and pragmatist considerations. When a priest sees a traditional rubric not as the guardian of a theological or spiritual truth but as an arbitrary dictate of law, he will be all the more willing to violate it whenever he thinks he has a better idea.

This whole question of how readings are to be done is more important than it may seem, because it is not an isolated issue. It is one among several Trojan Horses by which selfless and tireless reformists may enter the traditional movement and turn it — or at least geographical portions of it — into a recapitulation of the Consilium’s descent into insatiable tinkering, modifying, expurgating, reinventing, archaeologizing, and ultimately transmogrifying the liturgy, all in the name of “pastoral improvements.” This, and not loving care for the traditional ars celebrandi, will be the “self-gagging” we need to avoid.

NOTES

[1] German original:

Ich persönlich sehe inzwischen eine unvermutete Gefahr für die traditionelle Bewegung in der Kirche ganz woanders, nämlich in einer Hyperliturgisierung. Bei aller theologischen Engführung, die man Erzbischof Lefebvre vorwerfen mag: Er hatte den Eifer eines wahren Hirten, dem es um das Heil der Seelen geht. Die Bewahrung der Liturgie war für ihn kein ästhetischer Selbstzweck. Vielmehr sah er ihre Krise als einen Teil der Glaubenskrise, die das Heil vieler Seelen gefährdet. Sein Anliegen war ein höchst pastorales im vollen katholischen Sinne des Wortes. Es ging ihm nicht um Rubriken, also um den Buchstaben liturgischer Vorschriften, sondern um den Geist. Er war nicht gegen Reformen überhaupt, sondern gegen Reformen, die den Geist der Liturgie vernebeln.
          In meinem ersten Priesterjahr in der Piusbruderschaft versorgte ich sonntäglich eine Kapelle, in der abwechselnd an einem Sonntag Gregorianischer Choral, am anderen die Schubertmesse gesungen wurde. Kein Mensch hatte sich etwas dabei gedacht. Das Phänomen eines liturgischen Purismus, der deutsche Lieder in der Liturgie verachtet, den direkten Vortrag von Lesung und Evangelium in der Landessprache ablehnt, einen exzessiven Rubrizismus bin hin zur missionarischen Selbstknebelung pflegt, ist mir erst viel später begegnet, vor allem in Laienkreisen. So wird Kritikern der traditionellen Liturgie eine willkommene Angriffsfläche geboten, Neulingen der Zugang zu ihr erschwert. Man hat eine schiefe Bahn betreten, an deren Ende Liturgie als Liebhaberei eines exklusiven Clubs exotischer Ästheten erscheint.
          Ich bin Kardinal Sarah dankbar, dass er beim Abschlusshochamt der Chartreswallfahrt ein Zeichen gesetzt und das richtige Maß für die Weise angemahnt hat, wie man zelebrieren soll: “mit edler Schlichtheit, ohne unnötige Überladungen, falschen Ästhetizismus oder Theatralik, aber mit einem Sinn für das Heilige, der Gott zuerst die Ehre gibt.”

[2] This is one of the insights that made Catherine Pickstock famous, and I gladly acknowledge my debt to her.

[3] See the final installment of my series on the holding together of thumb and forefinger.

[4] Fr. Zuhlsdorf has discussed this unfortunate rubric many times. Fr. Ray Blake mentions it here as part of his observation that the Novus Ordo does not seem to be concerned very much with latria, except in words (sometimes). This, of course, is pertinent to the tendency to see the readings as having only a didactic value, without a specifically latreutic function within the liturgy.

Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making “Pastoral Adaptations”

The Gospel being read in French, versus populum, at the Solemn Pontifical Mass

Over the past twenty-five years, I have assisted at traditional Latin Masses in many states and countries. What I have seen has largely been edifying: clergy who love the liturgy, offering it in accord with its Roman spirit and the appropriate rubrics, and faithful who are grateful to have access to this powerhouse of sanctity.

But there are some shadows as well.

A friend shared with me the video of the traditional Pontifical Mass celebrated by Robert Cardinal Sarah in Chartres cathedral. It was going along magnificently, as one would have every reason to expect from this crown jewel of the Latin liturgy — until we reach the Lesson and the Gospel (the Epistle may be found at the 1:08:50 mark, the Gospel at 1:17:40, of the above video). At this point, the subdeacon faced the people rather than the East, chanted only the title of the reading in Latin, and proceeded to speak aloud a French translation. The Latin reading was never chanted ad orientem in its ancient and thrilling tone. Then along came the deacon, and instead of chanting the Gospel in Latin facing northwards, he again faced the people, and after singing the title, proceeding to read the Gospel in French.

This practice is contrary both to the spirit of the ancient Roman liturgy and to the rubrics that govern its celebration. Most recently, in 2011, the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei states:

26. As foreseen by article 6 of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, the readings of the Holy Mass of the Missal of 1962 can be proclaimed either solely in the Latin language, or in Latin followed by the vernacular or, in Low Masses, solely in the vernacular.

Only in a Low Mass, therefore, is it permitted to substitute vernacular readings for Latin — and note, it is permitted, not required or recommended. In fact, it is always better practice to read the lessons in Latin first, and then read them in the vernacular from the pulpit if it is judged pastorally wise. But at a High Mass, a fortiori a Solemn High Mass, a fortiori a Pontifical Mass, the readings are always to be sung in Latin, with the correct ceremonial and orientation. What we saw in the Chartres Mass is a liturgical abuse, no different in kind from the host of abuses with which the Novus Ordo is plagued.

This violation of rubrics was no doubt intended as a “pastoral adaptation” or “accommodation.” Nevertheless, it is an example of exactly what we must be careful not to do. Many of the worst aberrations and deviations in the 1960s, when the old Mass was already being subjected to torture and dismemberment, and subsequently the ruinous missal of Paul VI, arose exactly from such supposedly “pastoral considerations.” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who worked at the Bugninian abattoir before regretting his complicity, already caught the whiff of a weird pastoralism in the 1950s. For Bouyer, liturgy is first of all

a given, a traditional given. From a material point of view it is a precisely circumscribed object: the whole of the rites and ceremonies, of readings and prayers that are written down in the books called the Missal, the Breviary, and the Ritual. It is something we can desire to enrich, as every living Christian generation enriches Christian spirituality, Christian morals, even dogma; but it is something that has first to be received, received from the Church.[1]

A major difference between the theology of the classical Roman Rite and that of Paul VI’s modern rite is the difference in how lections are understood. The lections at Mass are not merely instructional or didactic. They are an integral part of the seamless act of worship offered to God in the Holy Sacrifice. The clergy chant the divine words in the presence of their Author as part of the logike latreia, the rational worship, we owe to our Creator and Redeemer. These words are a making-present of the covenant with God, an enactment of their meaning in the sacramental context for which they were intended, a grateful and humble recitation in the sight of God of the truths He has spoken and the good things He has promised (in keeping with Scripture’s manner of praying to God: “Remember, Lord, the promises you have spoken!”), and a form of verbal incense by which we raise our hands to His commandments, as the great Offertory chant has it: “Meditabor in mandatis tuis, quae dilexi valde: et levabo manus meas ad mandata tua, quae dilexi.”

The chanted Latin lection is an expression of adoring love directed to God before it is a communication of knowledge to the people, and the form in which it is done should reflect this primacy. In the ancient liturgy, always and everywhere God enjoys primacy. Nothing is done “simply” for the people. Holy Communion, which is clearly for the benefit of the people, is treated with adoration, reverence, care, and attentive love, being distributed exclusively by the anointed hands of the ordained, on the tongues of the kneeling faithful, with a paten held underneath, and, perhaps, a houseling cloth. All eyes are thus fixed on the Eucharistic Lord, giving Him the primacy that is His due. It should be no different with the utterance of the divine words, in which we find a symbolic incarnation of the Word of God which nourishes our souls in preparation for the divine banquet of the Most Holy Sacrament.[2]

Vernacularization and recitation of the lessons at High Mass betrays the rationalism and utilitarianism of the Synod of Pistoia. The chanting of the Word of God is not just for instruction but also a quasi-sacramental action in and of itself (as Martin Mosebach argues with regard to the use of incense, candles, and the prayer “Per evangelica dicta, deleantur nostra delicta”).[3] It is part of the activity of worship, and like the other prayers of the Mass, it should be set apart by words of a sacral register, hallowed by tradition. No one will complain if this formal liturgical chant, which takes only a few minutes in any case, is followed up with a recitation of the vernacular texts before the homily. But the latter should never be substituted for the former.

I have learned about priests in France and Germany who, in keeping with this cavalier pastoral attitude, also change the “Ecce Agnus Dei” and “Domine non sum dignus” into the vernacular. Seriously: has it ever really caused difficulty for the faithful to understand what is meant by these phrases, which are repeated at every Holy Mass? Additionally, some clergy in Germany, who have apparently learned nothing from the past fifty years, persist in recycling the old saccharine Schubert Masses and other German paraphrases, which they fob off on the people instead of sharing with them the riches of Gregorian chant, as every Pope has urged from 1903 to 2013.[4]

Then there are practical concerns, those stubborn little things known as facts. Congregations who attend the usus antiquior today are often made up of faithful of diverse linguistic backgrounds, because in many locales only a single Latin Mass is available, and all the people of the surrounding territory gather for it. I was recently visiting St. Clement’s in Ottawa, in which about 40% of the faithful are Francophone and 60% are Anglophone. Latin is the common liturgical language that unites them. In the United States, when Hispanic Catholics attend a Latin Mass, the Latin is closer to their native tongue than English. In another city parish of which I am aware, there are families who speak English, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Italian, and Spanish. Quite apart from fidelity to the rubrics, such situations present a genuine “pastoral” reason for the consistent use of Latin!

In this respect, the Chartres Mass afforded us a spectacular lack of pastoral common sense. This is an international pilgrimage of people for whom French is certainly not a common language. To read the lessons only in French reveals a nationalist, regionalist, and culturally imperialist attitude. As Pope John XXIII noted in Veterum Sapientia, only the use of the venerable and universal Latin tongue is exempt from such problems.

It would be opportune for the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, as well as religious congregations and societies of apostolic life that utilize the usus antiquior, to monitor such liturgical abuses and correct them before they spread. How can clergy expect the faithful to show due obedience to their fathers in Christ, if these same fathers are not faithful to the inherited liturgy? Is it too much to ask that priests follow the spirit and the letter of the Roman Rite as it has been passed down to us, without introducing the deviations and creative adaptations of the Liturgical Movement? We have seen where those ended up: the Novus Ordo.

The faithful deserve and have a right to a traditional Mass offered in accordance with the wise slogan “Say the Black, Do the Red.” After decades of confusion, the Church is being given an unparalleled opportunity to restart the celebration of the liturgy with a correct attitude and praxis. If we mess it up this time with short-sighted pastoral adaptations, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when we slide into a second liturgical reform, from which Divine Providence may not rescue us.

[1] “Après les journées de Vanves. Quelques mises au point sur le sens et le rôle de la Liturgie,” in Études de pastorale (Paris: Cerf, 1944 and Lyon: Abeille, 1944), 383, cited in John Pepino, “Cassandra’s Curse: Louis Bouyer, the Liturgical Movement, and the Post-Conciliar Reform of the Mass,” Antiphon 18.3 (2014): 254–300, on 270.

[2] For a more extensive treatment of the topic, see my article “In Defense of Preserving Readings in Latin.”

[3] Another confirmation of this thesis is found in the traditional rite for the ordination of deacons, as a commenter at Fr. Zuhlsdorf noted (and here I quote):

After the bishop vests the new deacon in the stole and dalmatic, he presents the Gospel book and says: “Accipe potestatem legendi Evangelium in Ecclesia Dei, tam pro vivis, quam pro defunctis. In nomine Domini.” “Receive the power of reading the Gospel in the Church of God, both for the living and for the dead. In the name of the Lord.” The part about reading the Gospel for the dead would be nonsense if the reading were merely a practical instruction for those members of the Church Militant who happen to be present at a particular Mass. (The rite for subdeacons has a similar formula withe the Book of Epistles, with reference to power to read them both for the living and the dead.)

[4] I would not necessarily object to vernacular hymns being sung at a High Mass, provided that the Gregorian Ordinary and Propers were sung first, and the hymn functioned as a kind of popular motet. But to supplant what is liturgical with what is non-liturgical is Protestant, not Catholic or Orthodox.

Cardinal Sarah’s Homily to the Chartres Pilgrims

With the kind permission of His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, we here publish an English translation of the homily which he delivered yesterday in the cathedral of Chartres to the pilgrims present for the annual Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage. Our deepest thanks to His Eminence, and to the organizers of the pilgrimage for the pictures, from the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté website.

Allow me first of all to warmly thank His Excellency Bishop Philippe Christory, Bishop of Chartres, for his fraternal welcome to this wonderful Cathedral.

Dear Chartres pilgrims,

“The light has come into the world,” Jesus tells us today in the Gospel (John 3, 16-21), “and men have preferred darkness.”

And you, dear pilgrims, have you welcomed the only light that does not deceive: that of God? You walked for three days, prayed, sang, suffered under the sun and in the rain: did you welcome the light in your hearts? Have you really given up darkness? Have you chosen to pursue the Way by following Jesus, who is the Light of the world? Dear friends, allow me to ask you this radical question, because if God is not our light, all the rest becomes useless. Without God all is darkness!

God came to us, he became man. He has revealed to us the only truth that saves, he died to redeem us from sin, and at Pentecost he gave us the Holy Spirit, he gave us the light of faith ... but we prefer darkness!

Let’s look around us! Western society has chosen to establish itself without God. Witness how it is now delivered to the flashy and deceptive lights of a consumer society: to profit at all costs, and frenzied individualism.

A world without God is a world of darkness, of lies and of selfishness!

Without the light of God, Western society has become like a drunken boat in the night! She does not have enough love to take in children, to protect them beginning from their mother’s womb, to protect them from the aggression of pornography.

Deprived of the light of God, Western society no longer knows how to respect its elderly, accompany unto death its sick, make room for the poorest and the weakest.

Society is abandoned to the darkness of fear, sadness and isolation. She has nothing to offer but emptiness and nothingness. It allows the proliferation of the maddest ideologies.

A Western society without God can become the cradle of an ethical and moral terrorism more virulent and more destructive than Islamist terrorism. Remember that Jesus told us, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10, 28).

Dear friends, forgive me this portrayal. But one must be clear and realistic.

If I speak to you in this way, it is because, in my priestly, pastoral heart, I feel compassion for so many wayward souls, lost, sad, worried and lonely! Who will lead them to the light? Who will show them the way to the truth, the only true path of freedom which is that of the Cross? Are we going to leave them to be delivered to error, to hopeless nihilism, or to aggressive Islamism?

We must proclaim to the world that our hope has a name: Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world and of humanity! We can no longer be silent!

Dear Pilgrims of France, look upon this cathedral! Your ancestors built it to proclaim their faith! Everything, in its architecture, its sculpture, its windows, proclaims the joy of being saved and loved by God. Your ancestors were not perfect, they were not without sins. But they wanted to let the light of faith illuminate their darkness!

Today, you too, People of France, wake up! Choose the light! Renounce the darkness!

How can this be done? The Gospel tells us: “He who acts according to the truth comes to the light.” Let the light of the Holy Spirit illuminate our lives concretely, simply, and even in the most intimate parts of our deepest being. To act according to the truth is first to put God at the center of our lives, as the Cross is the center of this cathedral.

My brothers, choose to turn to Him every day! At this moment, make the commitment to keep a few minutes of silence every day in order to turn to God, to tell him “Lord reign in me! I give you all my life!”

Dear pilgrims, without silence, there is no light. Darkness feeds on the incessant noise of this world, which prevents us from turning to God.

Take the example of the liturgy of the Mass today. It brings us to adoration, filial fear and love in the presence of God’s greatness. It culminates in the Consecration where together, facing the altar, our gaze directed to the host, to the cross, we commune in silence in recollection and in adoration.

Dear friends, let us love these liturgies that enable us to taste the silent and transcendent presence of God, and turn us towards the Lord.

Dear brother priests, I want to address you specifically. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the place where you will find the light for your ministry. The world we live in is constantly petitioning us. We are constantly in motion, without taking care to stop and take the time to go to a deserted place to rest a little, in solitude and silence, in the company of the Lord. There is the danger that we regard ourselves as “social workers”. Then, we would not bring the Light of God to the world, but our own light, which is not that which men expect from us. What the world expects of the priest is God and the Light of his Word proclaimed without ambiguity or falsification.

Let us know how to turn to God in a liturgical celebration, full of respect, silence and sacredness. Do not invent anything in the liturgy. Let us receive everything from God and from the Church. Do not look for show or success. The liturgy teaches us: To be a priest is not above all to do many things. It is to be with the Lord, on the Cross! The liturgy is the place where man meets God face to face. The liturgy is the most sublime moment when God teaches us to “ to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8, 29). Liturgy is not and should not be an occasion for grief, struggle or strife. In the ordinary form, just as in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the essential thing is to turn to the Cross, to Christ, our East, our Everything and our only Horizon! Whether in the ordinary form or the extraordinary form, let us always celebrate, as on this day, according to what the Second Vatican Council teaches: with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, without factitious and theatrical aesthetic, but with the sense of the sacred, with the primary concern for the Glory of God, and with a true spirit of a son of the Church of today and of always!

Dear fellow priests, always keep this certainty: to be with Christ on the Cross is what priestly celibacy proclaims to the world! The plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, “pastoral reasons or necessities”, would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition. We would to manufacture a priesthood according to our human dimension, but without perpetuating, without extending the priesthood of Christ, obedient, poor and chaste. Indeed, the priest is not only an “alter Christus”, but he is truly “ipse Christus”, he is Christ himself! And that is why, following Christ and the Church, the priest will always be a sign of contradiction! ~ To you, dear Christians, lay people engaged in the life of the City, I want to say with force: “do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to bring the light of Christ to this world!

Your first witness must be your own example: act according to the Truth! In your family, in your profession, in your social, economic, political relations, may Christ be your Light! Do not be afraid to testify that your joy comes from Christ!

Please, do not hide the source of your hope! On the contrary, proclaim it! Testify to it! Evangelize! The Church needs you! Remind all that only “the crucified Christ reveals the true meaning of freedom! “ (Veritatis Splendor 85) with Christ, set free liberty that is today chained by false human rights, all oriented towards the self-destruction of man.

To you, dear parents, I want to send a special message. Being a father and mother in today’s world is an adventure full of suffering, obstacles and worries. The Church says to you: “Thank you”! Yes, thank you for the generous gift of yourselves! Have the courage to raise your children in the light of Christ. You will sometimes have to fight against the prevailing wind and endure the mockery and contempt of the world. But we are not here to please the world! “We proclaim a crucified Christ, scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1, 23-24) Do not be afraid! Do not give up! The Church, through the voice of the Popes - especially since the encyclical Humanae Vitae - entrusts to you a prophetic mission: to testify before all of our joyful trust in God, who has made us intelligent guardians of the natural order. You announce what Jesus has revealed to us through his very life: “Freedom is accomplished in love, that is to say, the gift of oneself.” (Veritatis Splendor 87)

Dear Fathers and Mothers, the Church loves you! Love the Church! She is your Mother. Do not join those who laugh at her, because they only see the wrinkles of her face aged by centuries of suffering and hardship. Even today, she is beautiful and radiates holiness.

Finally, I want to address you, you the younger people who are numerous here!

However, I beg you first to listen to an “elder” who has more authority than me. This is the Evangelist St. John. Beyond the example of his life, St. John also left a written message to young people. In his First Letter, we read these moving words of an elder to the young people of the churches he had founded. Listen to his voice full of vigor, wisdom and warmth: “ I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world”(1 John 2, 14-15).

The world we must not love, as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa commented in his homily on Good Friday 2018, to which we do not have to comply, is not, as we all know, the world created and loved by God, it is not the people of the world to whom, on the contrary, we must always go to, especially the poor and the poor of the poor, to love them and serve them humbly ... No! The world not to love is another world; it is the world as it became under the rule of Satan and sin. The world of ideologies that deny human nature and destroy the family ... structures from the UN, which impose a new global ethic, play a decisive role and have today become an overwhelming power, spreading through the airwaves through the unlimited possibilities of technology. In many Western countries, it is a crime today to refuse to submit to these horrible ideologies. This is what we call adaptation to the spirit of the times, conformism. A great British believer and poet of the last century, Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote a few verses that say more than whole books: “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”.

Dear young Christians, if it is permissible for an “elder,” as St. John, to speak directly to you, I also exhort you, and I say to you, you have overcome the Evil One! Fight any law against nature that would be imposed upon on you, oppose any law against life, against the family. Be of those who take the opposite direction! Dare to go against the grain! For us, Christians, the opposite direction is not a place, it is a Person, it is Jesus Christ, our Friend and our Redeemer. A task is especially entrusted to you: to save human love from the tragic drift into which it has fallen: love, which is no longer the gift of oneself, but only the possession of the other - a possession often violently tyrannical. On the Cross, God revealed himself as “agape”, that is to say as a love that is given to death. To really love is to die for the other. Like the young gendarme, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame!

Dear young people, you often, without doubt, suffer in your soul the struggle of darkness and light. You are sometimes seduced by the easy pleasures of the world. With all my heart of a priest, I say to you: do not hesitate! Jesus will give you everything! By following him to be Saints, you will not lose anything! You will win the only joy that never disappoints!

Dear young people, if today Christ calls you to follow him as a priest, as a religious, do not hesitate! Say to him: “fiat”, an enthusiastic and unconditional yes!

God wants you to have need of you, what grace! What a joy! The West has been evangelized by the Saints and the Martyrs. You, young people of today, will be the saints and the martyrs that the nations are waiting for in a New Evangelization! Your homelands are thirsty for Christ! Do not disappoint them! The Church trusts you!

I pray that many of you will answer today, during this Mass, the call of God to follow him, to leave everything for him, for his light. Dear young people, do not be afraid. God is the only friend who will never disappoint you! When God calls, he is radical. It means He goes all the way to the root. Dear friends, we are not called to be mediocre Christians! No, God calls us all to the total gift, to the martyrdom of the body or the heart!

Dear people of France, it is the monasteries that made the civilization of your country! It is men and women who have accepted to follow Jesus to the end, radically, who have built Christian Europe. Because they have sought God alone, they have built a beautiful and peaceful civilization, like this cathedral.

People of France, peoples of the West, you will find peace and joy only by seeking God alone! Return to the Source! Return to the monasteries! Yes, all of you, dare to spend a few days in a monastery! In this world of tumult, ugliness and sadness, monasteries are oases of beauty and joy. You will experience that it is possible to put concretely God in the center of his whole life. You will experience the only joy that will not pass.

Dear pilgrims, let us give up the darkness. Let’s choose the light! Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to know how to say “fiat”, that is, yes, fully, like her, to know how to welcome the light of the Holy Spirit like she did. On this day when, thanks to the solicitude of the Holy Father Pope Francis, we celebrate Mary, Mother of the Church, let us ask this Most Holy Mother to have a heart like hers, a heart that refuses nothing to God, a heart burning with love for the glory of God, a heart ardent to announce to men the Good News, a generous heart, a heart as profuse as the heart of Mary, as abundant as that of the Church, and as rich as that of the Heart of Jesus ! So be it!

Highlights from Day Three of the 2017 Chartres Pilgrimage

The Chartres pilgrimage wound up yesterday, finally arriving at the splendour that is Chartres Cathedral where His Eminence, Raymond Cardinal Burke, celebrated a solemn pontifical Mass for the pilgrims and other dignitaries. Here then is a final selection of photos. The entire photo album is available, as usual, from Notre Dame de Chrétienté.

 

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Day Two of the 2017 Chartres Pilgrimage (Part 1 of 2)

Continuing on with our coverage of the Chartres pilgrimage, here the first of two parts, covering off the second day (with a few additional photos from the end of day one in the mix as well). 

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