The Mass Is the Faith and the Faith Is the Mass

Hilaire Belloc is famous for many sayings, but perhaps the most famous—and among the most heavily criticized—is his claim: “Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.”

It is in the nature of hyperbole to be… exaggerated. The very modus operandi of the Chesterbelloc was to say extreme, provocative things that stood precariously balanced on one leg of truth. We all know that the Faith has taken root in many places other than Europe. We know that Asia Minor, that is, modern-day Turkey, hardly “counts” as Europe, yet this is where so much of apostolic Christianity flourished.

Nevertheless, Belloc’s statement is more true than false, as Joseph Ratzinger himself recognized (not with explicit reference to Belloc, of course, but with reference to the debate about “hellenization” and “dehellenization”). The Catholic Faith flourished above all in the lands that were once embraced by the Roman Empire, and Europe is the fairest fruit of this Roman miracle. As Benedict XVI put it in his Regensburg Address:

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history — it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

Allow me to suggest an analogous statement: “The Mass is the Faith, and the Faith is the Mass.”

All the same sorts of knee-jerk objections could be raised to this hyperbolic claim. Surely the Faith is much more than the Mass! It is orthodox dogma; it is the life shaped by the Decalogue and the Beatitudes, lived in many states, vocations, and friendships; it is devotion, meditation, wordless prayer. Indeed, there is far more to the liturgy itself than the Mass: there is the Divine Office, there are the other sacramental rites, blessings, processions, penances, pilgrimages.

However, no one can really dispute the point that the Mass is the burning heart of the Faith, the axis, the pith, the focal point, the “fons et culmen.” Once we know that Jesus is there — that He reigns as King in our midst from the altar and in the Holy Eucharist — we know that all things in this world of pilgrimage culminate and are meant to culminate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass, in itself, expresses the dogmatic content and doxological purpose of our religion. It is the summation, the synopsis, the synaxis.

St. Leonard of Port Maurice wrote in his popular treatise The Hidden Treasure:

The sacrifice of the Mass is the soul of faith, the center of the Catholic religion the compendium of all the good and beautiful to be found in the Church of God. Do you know what the Holy Sacrifice is? It is the sum of Christianity, the soul of faith, the center of the Catholic religion, the grand object of all her rights, her ceremonies, and her sacraments: it is, in a word, the summary of all that is good and beautiful in the Church of God.

In history, it functioned in just this way, as Fr. William Slattery observes, quoting Christopher Dawson: 

The Ancient Rite’s impact is due not only to the fact that it is the Mass but to the fact that it is this concrete rite, this “Ancient Rite,” a clearly defined complex ceremonial embodying “everything that the [Western] Christian world possessed of doctrine and poetry, music and art [that] was poured into the liturgy, moulded into an organic whole which centered round the Divine Mysteries.” (Heroism and Genius: How Catholic Priests Helped Build—and Can Help Rebuild—Western Civilization, citing Dawson, The Formation of Christendom)

Traditional Catholics (yes, this phrase is defensible) are sometimes criticized for “making too much of the Mass.” “Why are you people always going on about ‘the TLM this’ and ‘the TLM that’? It’s as if you think of only one thing!”

Well, of course we don’t just think about one thing. If someone is married, he has a wife and children to think about, help out, take care of. If he has a job, he has to pay attention to it and carry it out. If he is studying, he has his studies; if teaching, he prepares his classes. And so on and so forth. But the traditionalist intuitively perceives, intellectually grasps, and passionately feels that the Mass is the concrete symbol and mediation of the unum necessarium. He knows that, if the Mass is as it should be, all other things will find a way to fall into place around it, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, or bodies drawn to a center of gravity. He knows with no less certainty that if it is not as it should be, all other things will fall apart around it, fly away from it, crash into chaos.

Catholicism fully believed and fully lived is centripetal toward the Mass in its full “thickness,” its full-fledged form; Catholicism in a state of decline is centrifugal from the Mass, falling apart and breaking down. This, tragically, can happen even within the Mass, when certain actions, practices, customs, adaptations, inculturations, cause it to disintegrate into the ambient worldview, the horizontal environs, the religious titillation of the moment, the project of a department, the ideological tool of a dicastery.

Indeed, the Mass is the microcosm in which we see reflected the macrocosm of the Church. As goes the Mass, so goes the Church. The Mass is the center of all the concentric circles that define Catholicism as a religion — as the true religion offering the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ, in continuity with the Chosen People who looked in faith for Him, with His Apostles ordained by Him, and with the Church that His Spirit has guided over the course of 2,000 years of divine worship.

I shall end with a marvelous quotation from the journals of Dom Pius de Hemptinne, a disciple of Dom Columba Marmion:

Although Jesus Christ the divine High Priest appeared only once on earth, to offer up His great sacrifice on Calvary; yet, every day He appears in the person of each one of His ministers, to renew His sacrifice on the altar. In every altar, then, Calvary is seen: every altar becomes an august place, the Holy of holies, the source of all holiness. Thither all must go to seek Life, and thither all must continually return, as to the source of God’s mercies.           Those who are the Master’s privileged ones, never leave this holy place, but there they “find a dwelling,” near to the altar, so that they never need go far from it; such are monks, whose first care it is to raise temples worthy to contain altars. Making their home by the Sanctuary, they consecrate their life to the divine worship, and every day sees them grouped around the altar for the holy sacrifice.
       This is the event of the day, the centre to which the Hours, like the centuries, all converge: some as Hours of preparation and awaiting in the recollection of the divine praise—these begin with Lauds and Prime continued by Terce, the third Hour of the day; the others, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, flow on in the joys of thanksgiving until sunset when the monks chant the closing in of night.
       Thus the days of life pass, at the foot of the altar; thus the life of man finds its greatness and its holiness in flowing out, so to say, upon the altar, there to mingle with that Precious Blood which is daily shed in that hallowed place: for, if the life of man is as a valueless drop of water, when lost in the Blood of Christ it acquires an infinite value and can merit the divine mercy for us. He who knows what the altar is, from it learns to live; to live by the altar is to be holy, pleasing to God,—and to go up to the altar to perform the sacred Mysteries is to be clothed upon with the most sublime of all dignities after that of the Son of God and His holy Mother. (A Benedictine Soul: Biography, Letters, and Spiritual Writings of Dom Pius De Hemptinne, 145–47)

(A charming cover from one of the many printings of Belloc’s book. I’d say we could use some axe-wielding fervent Catholic statesmen right about now...)

Read Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity.”

Holiness Inspires Greatness In Others - Fr Vincent McNabb's Impact on Belloc and Chesterton

We can’t all be great, like Chesterton or Belloc, but we can all be holy like Fr McNabb.

Pontifex University Press is re-publishing two collections of essays by Fr Vincent McNabb,

an Irish Dominican priest who lived in England for over 50 years and was influential on the thought and writing of both Chesterton and Belloc, with both of whom he was good friends. It is through that association and with the land movement that Chesterton and Belloc championed that he is generally known today.

These collections have been chosen to deal with a range of subjects, but we deliberately chose essays that do not focus on what he generally known for, the land movement. As a result, they are a fascinating insight into a man who is a deep and intelligent thinker with a great love for God and man, and so, will give fresh insights indirectly into his motives for support of the land movement.

The first book, God’s Dealings With the Minds of Men - Essays on Biblical Inspiration, Mysticism, and the Imagination, edited by Matthew Horwitz and with a Foreword by myself, shows McNabb as an intellectual. These essays are written for his peers and are technical, reflecting his powerful intellect. They cover the nature of inspiration and revelation in treatments that are surprisingly fresh and relevant for today’s reader.

The more recently published collection is called The Wayside - A Priest’s Gleanings, which is a charming and touching series of essays that are descriptions of how his work with the poor and underprivileged in the tenements and prisons of London and Leicester affected him personally. Again this is edited by Matthew Horwitz, and has a Foreword by Michael Hennessy, who is the chairman of the Hilaire Belloc Society in the UK.

These include some reflections by a theologian and scholar of St Thomas, for example, The Dumb Ox of Thought, and St Thomas as a Controversialist, and an essay on the liturgy called The Riches of Ritual. But as much as these, it is his accounts of the joy he has in serving those around him, that give us insights into McNabb as a man, for example, Jane Seedcombe Wool Weaver: Of Certain Notable Things Heard From Her Lips.

In The Innocent, he describes his regular visits to an alcoholic prisoner called Patrick Glennon who, by his own account was justly serving time. One day he went in and Glennon was not there, but another prisoner whom he did not know.

I was talking with Patrick Glennon’s successor in A4, 22.

“You knew Patrick Glennon, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes! What of him?” I answered, in dread. “He died last month.” The A4, 22, shifted himself uneasily on his feet. I noticed a quiet flood filling his eyes.

“Died?” I asked.

“In the workhouse—”

We kept silence, as if before the presence of a great law. I was relieved when A4, 22, began the panegyric of the dead.

“He was a good one, was Pat. Never heard him say a wrong word of anyone. He was one of the best. He was—you know what I mean—holy!”

An uncontrollable “Amen” nearly rose up in my throat.

Most of us cannot hope to be great men in the manner of Belloc and Chesterton. But we can all aspire to holiness, even that of Fr Vincent McNabb. It is through personal holiness that we can inspire greatness in others. Here is what Belloc and Chesterton had to say about McNabb (again quoted in the book) and then some concluding remarks from Michael Hennessy’s Foreword to The Wayside. 

Here is what Belloc and Chesterton had to say about McNabb (again quoted in the book) and then some concluding remarks from Michael Hennessy’s Foreword.

The greatness of . . . [Fr. Vincent McNabb’s] . . . character, of his learning, his experience, and, above all, his judgment, was altogether separate from the world about him . . . But the most remarkable aspect of all was the character of holiness . . . I have known, seen and felt holiness in person . . . Never have I seen or known anything on such a scale. 

— Hilaire Belloc

I will say briefly and firmly that . . . [Fr. Vincent McNabb] . . . is one of the few great men I have met in all my life; that he is great in many ways, mentally and morally and mystically and practically; and that next to nobody nowadays has even heard of him . . . [but] . . . nobody who ever met or saw or heard Father McNabb has ever forgotten him.

— G. K. Chesterton

In the Foreword to The Wayside - A Priest’s Gleanings, Michael Hennessy, chairman of the Belloc Society in the UK wrote:

Some writers are famously less than their oeuvre. If great books are the products of great writers, they are not always the product of great men. Fr. McNabb’s close friend, Hilaire Belloc—and Fr. McNabb accompanied Belloc through the darkest days of his life, immediately after the early death of his wife, Elodie—wrote over 150 books; yet the consensus is that even this great mass of writing, and the gems of literature and thinking within it, does not match the magnificence of the personality, genius, haecceitas, of Belloc. They do not encapsulate the astonishing breadth of his subject material, the depth of his thinking, or the extent of his energy. They form an incomplete jigsaw or a partial map, the cartography of which is not only imperfect through what it lacks but on which even what is visible is indistinct. Even more partial a map is fashioned by the works of Fr. McNabb.

McNabb wasn’t as great a writer as he was a thinker; and he wasn’t as great a thinker as he was a lover of God, and of His creation in an order to Him. Sometimes his mind moves too fast for his pen clearly to express his thoughts; and sometimes his thought is caught up in an emotion that, amidst all the hardness of his scholastic reasoning, yet retains strains of a vivid Irish sentimentalism.

Two of the essays in The Wayside particularly express, beyond his “book-learning,” the deep, unstinting charity he felt towards others—in respect of the non-conformist wool-weaver, Jane Seedcombe, and the convict, Patrick Glennon. An effulgent sensitivity in how he writes of others, seeing all those around him in the light of Christ, fills his work. The context of rustic Irish emotion in which his young Faith was nurtured reveals itself in some of these essays, which show a gentleness before beauty and an acuity of spirit before truth. In other essays, his mind fastens hawk-like on apologetic arguments and criticisms, and the condensing of logical argument becomes so great as occasionally to defy easy understanding.

Reading these essays, it is clear that their author was a man consumed by love for God and for his fellow man, and determined, in that charity, to oppose arguments and error that sought to dethrone Christ and take away from the people their rightful, loving King. For his task was to show God to all, in all that he wrote, said and did.

There was an old lady, bed-ridden, who lived in a tenement by Camden Lock. For years, someone came regularly to visit her, to talk to her and to tidy her room and scrub her floor. A few weeks after Fr. McNabb died, people who used to live nearby talked about how visits by this kind old lady had stopped. One of the bed-ridden lady’s best friends knew that this visitor had in fact been Fr. McNabb, in his homespun habit and cloak, on his way to Parliament Hill to speak at the Catholic Evidence Guild. Even his fellow friars hadn’t known about these visits. Such was the man who wrote this little, beguiling book.

Here is my interview with Michael about the book in which he offers other fascinating insights into McNabb and his connection to Belloc.

Mike Hennessy’s email: michael.hennessy4@btinternet.com

The Belloc Society Blog: thehilairebellocblog.blogspot.com/

And here is a talk by Mike Hennessy on Belloc’s love for wine!

A Drinking Song in Honor of St Germanus, by Hilaire Belloc

Most places which use the Roman Rite keep today as the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who died on July 31, 1556. But in the Middle Ages, July 31st was kept in France, England and some other places (although not at Rome) as the feast of St Germanus of Auxerre; Ignatius himself would have celebrated this feast during his years as a student in Paris, along with the earliest members of the Company. A 7th-century church dedicated to St Germanus sits directly in front of the Louvre; his feast is also on the calendars of liturgical books of the medieval French and English Uses.

A state of St Germanus in the Parisian church of St Germain l’Auxerrois (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Mbzt, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Although devotion to him is not as widespread now, St Germanus may well be described as the St Ambrose of the fifth century. Like the great archbishop of Milan, he came from a family of high rank, and after studying law in Rome, served as the civil governor of a Roman province. Like St Ambrose, when the bishop of his provincial capital died, he was chosen to succeed him by popular acclamation, and embraced his new state of life completely; and in that role, he revealed himself as fierce an opponent of the 5th century’s dominant heresy, Pelagianism, as St Ambrose had been to Arianism in the 4th.

Pelagius himself was a Briton, and in the early 5th century his heresy was flourishing in his native place. In 429 Pope St Celestine I and the bishops of Gaul sent Germanus, accompanied by St Lupus of Troyes, to Britain, to combat the heresy; they reduced Pelagius’ followers to silence not only by their overwhelming success in a public debate, but also by their example of holiness and various miracles. St Germanus’ triumph would be capped by a second visit to Britain in 440 to stop a new outbreak of the heresy, after which, (as St Bede will note with pride in the 8th century), Britain remained true to the Catholic Faith until the Reformation.

During his first visit to Britain, the Romanized Britons, whose province had been abandoned by the Roman Empire in 410, were threatened with invasion by the Picts and Saxons. After Easter, as the weather grew milder and an enemy attack seemed imminent, Germanus led the forces of the Britons’ to a place between two mountains with a strong echo. As the Saxons drew near, he had them all shout “Alleluia” as loudly as they could; the resulting noise terrified the Saxons into thinking the Britons’ army was much larger than it really was, and they threw down their arms and fled. In the neo-Gallican Missal of Paris, the Alleluia verse for his feast is chosen based on this story. “Alleluia, I heard the voice of many people, saying: Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. And again they said: Alleluia.”

The great Catholic writer and apologist Hilaire Belloc, who was French on his father’s side and English on his mother’s, wrote a very funny drinking song in honor of St Germanus and his defeat of the Pelagian heresy; it is included in his novel “The Four Men – A Farrago”, first published in 1911.

Pelagius lived at Kardanoel
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or to hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.

No, he didn’t believe in Adam and Eve
He put no faith therein!
His doubts began with the Fall of Man
And he laughed at Original Sin.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
He laughed at original sin.

Then came the bishop of old Auxerre
Germanus was his name;
He tore great handfuls out of his hair
And he called Pelagius shame.
And with his stout episcopal staff
So thoroughly whacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall,
They rather had been hanged.

Oh he whacked them hard,
And he banged them long
Upon each and all occasions,
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong
Their orthodox persuasions.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Their orthodox persuasions.

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed,
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed;
But we that sit in a sturdy youth
And still can drink strong ale,
Let us put it away to infallible truth
That always shall prevail,

And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too,
And all good things
our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Especially barley brew!

A Drinking Song in Honor of St Germanus, by Hilaire Belloc

Most places which use the Roman Rite keep today as the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who died on July 31, 1556. But in the Middle Ages, July 31st was kept in France, England and some other places (although not at Rome) as the feast of St Germanus of Auxerre; Ignatius himself would have celebrated this feast during his years as a student in Paris, along with the earliest members of the Company. A 7th-century church dedicated to St Germanus sits directly in front of the Louvre; his feast is also on the calendars of liturgical books of the medieval French and English Uses.

A state of St Germanus in the Parisian church of St Germain l’Auxerrois (image from wikipedia by Mbzt)

Although devotion to him is not as widespread now, St Germanus may well be described as the St Ambrose of the fifth century. Like the great archbishop of Milan, he came from a family of high rank, and after studying law in Rome, served as the civil governor of a Roman province. Like St Ambrose, when the bishop of his provincial capital died, he was chosen to succeed him by popular acclamation, and embraced his new state of life completely; and in that role, he revealed himself as fierce an opponent of the 5th century’s dominant heresy, Pelagianism, as St Ambrose had been to Arianism in the 4th.

Pelagius himself was a Briton, and in the early 5th century his heresy was flourishing in his native place. In 429 Pope St Celestine I and the bishops of Gaul sent Germanus, accompanied by St Lupus of Troyes, to Britain, to combat the heresy; they reduced Pelagius’ followers to silence not only by their overwhelming success in a public debate, but also by their example of holiness and various miracles. St Germanus’ triumph would be capped by a second visit to Britain in 440 to stop a new outbreak of the heresy, after which, (as St Bede will note with pride in the 8th century), Britain remained true to the Catholic Faith until the Reformation.

During his first visit to Britain, the Romanized Britons, whose province had been abandoned by the Roman Empire in 410, were threatened with invasion by the Picts and Saxons. After Easter, as the weather grew milder and an enemy attack seemed imminent, Germanus led the forces of the Britons’ to a place between two mountains with a strong echo. As the Saxons drew near, he had them all shout “Alleluia” as loudly as they could; the resulting noise terrified the Saxons into thinking the Britons’ army was much larger than it really was, and they threw down their arms and fled. In the neo-Gallican Missal of Paris, the Alleluia verse for his feast is chosen based on this story. “Alleluia, I heard the voice of many people, saying: Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. And again they said: Alleluia.”

The great Catholic writer and apologist Hilaire Belloc, who was French on his father’s side and English on his mother’s, wrote a very funny drinking song in honor of St Germanus and his defeat of the Pelagian heresy; it is included in his novel “The Four Men – A Farrago”, first published in 1911.

Pelagius lived at Kardanoel

And taught a doctrine there

How, whether you went to heaven or to hell

It was your own affair.

It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,

But was your own affair.

No, he didn’t believe in Adam and Eve

He put no faith therein!

His doubts began with the Fall of Man

And he laughed at Original Sin.

With my row-ti-tow

Ti-oodly-ow

He laughed at original sin.

Then came the bishop of old Auxerre

Germanus was his name

He tore great handfuls out of his hair

And he called Pelagius shame.

And with his stout Episcopal staff

So thoroughly whacked and banged

The heretics all, both short and tall,

They rather had been hanged.

Oh he whacked them hard,

and he banged them long

Upon each and all occasions,

Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong

Their orthodox persuasions.

With my row-ti-tow

Ti-oodly-ow

Their orthodox persuasions.

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold

Exceedingly bold indeed;

And the masses of doubt that are floating about

Would smother a mortal creed.

But we that sit in a sturdy youth

And still can drink strong ale

Let us put it away to infallible truth

That always shall prevail,

And thank the Lord for the temporal sword

And howling heretics too,

And all good things our Christendom brings

But especially barley brew!

With my row-ti-tow

Ti-oodly-ow

Especially barley brew!