Minutes from the Commission of Cardinals That Advised John Paul II to Lift Restrictions on the Old Missal

Most people who have read about the liturgical reform and the revival of the traditional Roman Rite have stumbled across references to the commission of cardinals set up by Pope John Paul II in 1986 to evaluate several questions—among them whether Paul VI had abrogated the preconciliar Missale Romanum in promulgating his own missal in 1969.

Since there is a lot of misinformation circulating nowadays about the old and new missals, some of it sadly disseminated from the Vatican, I consider it important to publish here at NLM a translation of an Italian text by Cardinal Dario Castrillón-Hoyos and retrieved from the “clerus.org” website, that is, the Congregation for the Clergy’s site before it transitioned to “clerus.va.” This Italian text is still there, albeit only discoverable if you have the URL (here), dated to October 2008. Below is a screenshot to show where I found it, in case it is taken down after the appearance of the present article. (I have also copied into a file the complete Italian text for the same reason. We would not want to lose this precious historical evidence.)

His Eminence discusses not only Summorum Pontificum but also the work of the 1986 commission that prepared the way for Summorum Pontificum; he quotes at length from the minutes of this commission. It is truly remarkable just how much of that momentous motu proprio of 2007 was already present in nuce as far back as 1986. As far as I can tell, very few know about this text, which is not only a precious historical document but a witness to principles that will someday be vindicated anew under better leadership.
 

Responses of the Cardinal President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei to Certain Questions

Since the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei has received frequent questions on the reasons for the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, some of which are based on the prescriptions of the Document Quattuor Abhinc Annos sent by the Congregation for Divine Worship to the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences on October 3, 1984, the President of the same Commission, His Eminence Card. Dario Castrillon Hoyos, saw fit to give the following answers:

Question: Is it licit to refer to the Letter Quattuor Abhinc Annos to regulate matters pertaining to the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, that is, according to the 1962 Roman Missal?

Answer: Evidently not. For, with the publication of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, the prescriptions for the use of the 1962 Missal, previously issued by the Quattuor Abhinc Annos and, subsequently, by the Motu Proprio of the Servant of God John Paul II Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, come to an end. In fact, the same Summorum Pontificum, from Article 1, explicitly states that “the conditions for the use of this Missal established by the earlier documents Quattuor Abhinc Annos and Ecclesia Dei are replaced.” The Motu Proprio enumerates the new conditions. Therefore, one can no longer refer to the restrictions established by those two documents, for the celebration according to the 1962 Missal.

Question: What are the substantial differences between the latest Motu Proprio and the two previous documents pertaining to this matter?

Answer: The first substantial difference is certainly that it is now licit to celebrate Mass according to the Extraordinary Rite without the need for a special permission, called an “indult.” The Holy Father Benedict XVI established, once and for all, that the Roman Rite consists of two Forms, to which he wished to give the names “Ordinary Form” (the celebration of the Novus Ordo, according to the Missal of Paul VI of 1970) and “Extraordinary Form” (the celebration of the Gregorian Rite, according to the Missal of B. John XXIII of 1962), and confirmed that this Missal of 1962 has never been abrogated. Another difference is that in Masses celebrated without the people, any Catholic priest of the Latin Rite, whether secular or religious, may use either Missal (Art. 2). Furthermore, in Masses without the people or with the people, it is upon the pastor or rector of the church, where it is intended to celebrate, to give permission to all those priests who present the “Celebret” given by their Ordinary. If they deny permission, the Bishop, according to the Motu Proprio, must see to it that permission is granted (see Article 7).

It is important to know that already an ad hoc Cardinal’s Commission of December 12, 1986, formed by the Eminent Cardinals Paul Augustin Mayer, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Agostino Casaroli, Bernardin Gantin, Joseph Ratzinger, William W. Baum, Edouard Gagnon, Alfons Stickler, and Antonio Innocenti, had been created by the Holy Father’s will, for the purpose of examining the possible measures to be taken to remedy the established ineffectiveness of the pontifical indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos about the restoration of the so-called Tridentine Mass in the Latin Church with the Roman Missal of the Typical Edition of 1962, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship with Prot. No. 686/84 of October 3, 1984. This Commission had proposed to the Holy Father John Paul II, even then, for this purpose, some substantial elements that were [only] taken up in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.

Allow me to make a summary of the minutes presenting the interventions of the Eminent Cardinals in order to understand how the later documents substantially reflect the vision achieved by such an important Commission of Cardinals shortly after Quattuor Abhinc Annos. Indeed, in the minutes it was stated that:

“The concern, desire and mind of the Holy Father [John Paul II] is the promotion of internal concord in the Church and the edification of the brethren within it.

“This is to be accomplished also through the primary rebuilding of communion in the practice of the lex orandi, such as the sound implementation of the liturgical reform, while dutifully respecting the legitimate needs of minority groups that are often distinguished not only for full theoretical orthodoxy but also for authentic exemplarity in the practice of intensely lived Christian life and of sincere and devoted attachment to the Apostolic See.

“Therefore, there must be a commitment of conscience on the part of all—bishops, priests, and faithful—to remove the scandalous arbitrariness that a misunderstood ‘creativity’ has produced, giving rise to the so-called ‘wild Masses’ and other desecrations that have wounded many of the aforementioned faithful by alienating them from the easy acceptance of the liturgical reform and the new ritual books, including the Missal, which erroneously appeared, unfortunately and precisely because of such unedifying desacralization, almost as the cause of it.”

In the same Commission it was proposed that:

“It shall be reiterated, on the part of the competent Dicastery, that the Pope desires internal pacification among all the faithful of the local Churches through the concrete implementation of the concession he made with the indult.

“The bishops shall carry out the will of the Supreme Pontiff by placing themselves spiritually in harmony with His intentions [for granting the indult generously].

“An adequate response is to be given, from the bishops, to those who wanted to discourage the implementation of the indult by presenting it as a reason for division instead of rebuilding. The response was to be not polemical but pastoral, explaining, with delicacy and patience, the letter and spirit of the indult.”

Furthermore, it was stated with authority that:

“The real problem at issue does not seem to be so much the artificial conflict that the indult is intended to resolve, but rather the one that lies upstream of it and was its real cause—that is, the conflict between the rightful implementation of the liturgical reform and the tolerated abuses produced by uncontrolled fantasy. Therefore, in addition to the indult, a far more general level of intervention is required on the part of the Holy See to eliminate the aforementioned habitual abuse that deforms the conciliar liturgical reform.

“The indult, as it stands, on the one hand, gives the impression that the Latin Mass, so-called ‘Tridentine,’ was an inferior and second-rate reality, which was restored only out of tolerant commiseration with those who requested it, and, on the other hand, gives the impression, precisely with all the heavy conditions it contains, that the Holy See itself considers it as such and would not have granted it unless it was forced to do so.

“It is necessary to reiterate and clarify to the bishops the true will of the Holy Father, which consists, not negatively in a concession of tolerance, but positively in a real pastoral initiative taken not to quiet the reaction to the abuses but to recompose the disagreement into reconciliation.

“It is necessary to remove all the conditions contained in the Indult, in order to eliminate the impression bishops have that the Holy See does not want it and the impression on the part of the faithful that they are asking for something almost barely tolerated by the Holy See.”

In the interventions of the assembled Eminences, it emerged that:

“One was in favor of granting the indult to all the faithful and priests who wished to make use of it in aedificationem [for edification] and without anti-Conciliar instrumentalization.

“It is necessary to make it clear to the Bishops that the indult corresponds to a will of the Pope meant to be observed, and it is necessary to make it clear to the faithful that they should respectfully request the implementation of the Pope’s will, so that the Bishops, when faced with respectful requests, will no longer have reason to refuse.

“It should be asked whether, in order to foster reconciliation, it is really necessary to ask the bishop’s consent at all to celebrate Holy Mass in Latin.

“As a general mentality, it would be opportune to tone down the strictness of the limiting conditions of the indult and to eliminate the additional conditions on the Bishops.

“As far as any restriction to particular groups is concerned, since the indult was conceived for them, it should be maintained—but iuxta modum, that is, on the one hand, not meaning by ‘groups’ just three or four persons and, on the other hand, not prohibiting that other persons [not part of the original group] may join the groups that took the initiative in the practice of the concession obtained.”

In the same Commission it was pointed out that:

“There is no difficulty in allowing readings in the vernacular.

“As to the optional use of the [new] Lectionary, there were reservations, fearing some confusion may arise because of the imperfect correspondence between the calendars of the two Missals, while no difficulty was seen in allowing the use of the Prefaces of the new Missal.

“The conditions added by the Bishops and also conditions regarding [the use of] non-parish churches and groups contained in the Indult would have to be removed.

“Under the premise that Latin, as an expression of unity, cannot and must not disappear from the Church, and desiring the Bishops to be ‘helped’ more than to be too ‘respected’ in their prerogatives, it is necessary to come to their aid by reducing the complex conditioning casuistry of the indult to criteria of greater simplicity; it could also thus eliminate the impression that, with those conditions, the Holy See wanted to make it clear that it had granted the indult only obtorto collo [having been seized by the neck]. Moreover, in doing so, the evolutionary coherence of the corrective pontifical measures could be highlighted by obviating their contradictory contrasts.

Citing then No. 23 of Sacrosanctum Concilium “concerning the criteria to be observed in reconciling tradition and progress in liturgical reform, and No. 26 of the same conciliar document, on the subject of the norms that must preside over such reform, as deriving from the hierarchical and communal nature of the liturgy, it was proposed (a) to insist, in the eventual document revising the indult, on the objectivity and not the arbitrariness of the implementation of liturgical reform; (b) to make it equally clear how both the use of the Latin language and the use of one or another edition of the Roman Missal should be considered within the framework of that logic; (c) to grant, at least in large cities, that on feast days there be a Holy Mass in Latin with free choice of one or the other typical edition (1962 or 1980) of the Roman Missal.

“It was proposed, likewise, to extend the granting of the Indult also to Ordinaries, religious Superiors General, Provincials, and others.

“About the necessity or otherwise of the Bishop’s assent for the celebration of the Holy Mass in Latin, it was recalled that Paul VI had said that, per se, the Priest, privately, should celebrate in Latin, since the concession made for the use of vernacular languages is only of a pastoral order, to enable the faithful to understand the contents of the rite and, thus, to participate better.

“The need to leave free the option of the use of either Missal for the celebration of the Holy Mass in Latin was reiterated.

“About the type of intervention [to be desired—i.e., what eventually became Summorum Pontificum], one would opt for a new papal document in which, taking stock of the current real situation of liturgical reform, the aforementioned freedom of choice between the two Missals in Latin would be clearly established, presenting one as a development and not as a juxtaposition of the other and eliminating the impression that each Missal is the temporary product of each historical epoch.

“Referring to the previous concerns expressed, the need was reiterated to ensure the [presentation of] evidence of the logical developmental linearity of the documents of the Church and the free option between the two Missals for the celebration of the Holy Mass, and it was proposed to emphasize that they cannot be considered except insofar as one is a development of the other, since liturgical norms, not being true ‘laws,’ cannot be abrogated but only surrogated—the preceding in the following.”

A report of all this was made to the Holy Father [John Paul II].

The Maternity of the Virgin Mary

The traditional observance of October as the month of the Holy Rosary begins, of course, with the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the institution of the feast of the Holy Rosary, also called the feast of Our Lady of Victory. Two years later, at the request of the Dominican Order, Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) granted the feast to all churches which had an altar of the Rosary. After another important victory against the Ottoman Turks, the Battle of Peterwardein in 1716, Clement XI (1700-21) extended the feast to the entire Roman Rite. In accordance with the common custom of the time, it was originally fixed to the first Sunday of October, regardless of the date; partly because the victory at Lepanto was on the first Sunday of October, partly because, with the continual reduction of the number of holy days of obligation, feasts were often fixed to Sunday so that they might be kept with greater solemnity by the people. The custom of permanently fixing feasts to particular Sundays was abolished by Pope St Pius X as part of the breviary reform of 1911, and the feast of the Holy Rosary then assigned to the calendar date of Lepanto, October 7.

The Battle of Lepanto, by an unknown artist, late 16th century, now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

Once October had been thus established as a Marian month, two other feasts were then created for the second and third Sundays of October, called the feasts of the Maternity and of the Purity of the Virgin Mary. Of these two, the former gradually grew in popularity, to the point where the 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “At present the feast is not found in the universal calendar of the Church, but nearly all diocesan calendars have adopted it.” The latter was at least popular enough to be routinely found in the appendix “for certain places” of most editions of the Roman Missal and Breviary printed in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1931, Pope Pius XI extended the feast of the Virgin’s Maternity to the universal calendar, assigning it to October 11th, which was then the first free day of the month. A breviary lesson was added to the feast, which explains that the Pope intended it to serve as a liturgical commemoration of the 15th centenary of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. The third Ecumenical council was held in that city in 431 to refute the heresy of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, by which he rejected the liturgical use of the title “Mother of God” for the Virgin Mary. Shortly thereafter, Pope Sixtus III (432-40) built the basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, the oldest church in the world dedicated to the Mother of God, which still preserves a famous mosaic with episodes of Her life on the arch over the altar. Pope Pius XI also notes in this lesson that he had arranged for extensive restorations of the basilica, “a noble monument of the proclamation of Ephesus,” and particularly of the mosaic.

The upper left section of the mosaic on the triumphal arch of Saint Mary Major, with the Annunciation above and the Adoration of the Magi below. To the right of the Annunciation, the angel comes to reassure St Joseph. In the Adoration of the Magi, Christ is shown as a young child, but not as an infant, since the Gospel of St Matthew does not say how long after the Birth of Christ the Magi came to Him.

October 11 was then set by Pope St John XXIII as the opening day of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Pope John had a great devotion to Pope Pius IX, who was not yet a Blessed in his time, and whom he very much wished to canonize. Pius IX had proclaimed the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and fifteen years later, set the feast of the Immaculate Conception as the day for the opening of Vatican I. As Bl. Pius had placed his council under the protection of the Mother of God by opening it on one of her feast days, so did St John, the feast in question being also a commemoration of yet another ecumenical Council, and one especially associated with the Church’s devotion to the Virgin.

The crest of Pope St John XXIII, in the atrium of St Peter’s Basilica; the opening date of Vatican II is written beneath it, without reference to the feast of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary.

In the post-Conciliar liturgical reform, the feast of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary was suppressed, on the grounds that the newly-created Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, on January 1st made it superfluous, another fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The offical account of the changes made to the calendar, published by the Vatican Polyglot Press in 1969, explains this new feast in reference to the “Synaxis of the Mother of God” which the Byzantine Rite keeps on December 26th.

But in point of the fact, the latter observance arises from a particular Byzantine custom, by which several major feasts are followed by the commemoration of a sacred person who figures prominently in the feast, but who is, so to speak, overshadowed by another. These are usually, but not invariably, called “σύναξις (synaxis)” in Greek, “собóръ (sobor)” in Church Slavonic; that of St John the Baptist is kept on January 7th, the day after the Baptism of the Lord, that of St Gabriel the day after the Annunciation, that of the Twelve Apostles after Ss Peter and Paul, and that of Ss Joachim and Anne, the Virgin’s parents, on the day after Her Nativity. These are not the principal feasts of the persons honored by these “synaxes”, and one also finds in the Byzantine Calendar the feasts of St John on June 24 and August 29, of St Gabriel on June 11, the Apostles each on their own day (rarely the same as in the Roman Rite), and St Anne on July 26.

September 9th is also kept by the Byzantines as the commemoration of the “Fathers of the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus”; a most appropriate choice, since the liturgical New Year of the Byzantine Rite is on September 1st, and the Nativity of the Virgin is therefore the first Marian feast of the year. And indeed, the Maternity of the Virgin Mary would be better described, despite its title, as a Roman version of this Byzantine feast of the Fathers at Ephesus. The Byzantine Rite also has similar commemorations of the Fathers of the other ecumenical councils, as well as a joint commemoration of those of the first six, and another of Second Nicea.

An icon of the “Synod of the Holy Fathers”, in which the Emperor Constantine holds a scroll with the opening words of the Nicene Creed in Greek.

Pope St John XXIII died on June 3, 1963, a day which at the time had no feast on the General Calendar, but in the Novus Ordo was made the feast of the Ugandan Martyrs canonized in 1964. Despite the oft-stated modern preference for keeping Saints’ feasts on the anniversary of their death, or as near to it as possible, his feast day was assigned at the time of his beatification, for those places which kept it, to the anniversary of the opening of Vatican II. His feast and that of St John Paul II were extended to the general calendar as optional memorials in 2014; the latter is assigned to October 22, the day of his inauguration as Pope in 1978, since the day of his death, April 2, is very often impeded by Holy Week or Easter week.

Three Nostalgia Trips: Audio Albums from 1957, 1975 (?), and 1979

It seems as if advocates of eliminating the Catholic Church’s liturgical tradition often try to explain away the surprisingly dogged adherence to older forms as a matter of “nostalgia”—even today, when the average age of many Latin Mass congregations cannot be much higher than about 18 thanks to the enormous number of babies. It is hard for them to understand that the older forms have a holy eloquence of their own, an effiacious communicative capacity, that has almost nothing to do with the age or past experiences of the ones who attend.

But one might feel a bit of genuine nostalgia looking at these three LPs that have come my way in recent times.

The first was discovered by a priest when cleaning out his parents’ house. Today there are websites on which one can practice making the responses at Mass, but back in the day, in 1957 to be precise, you could pick up an old 45 called The Mass: Serving and Responses: Latin Responses for Altar Boys and for First Level Participation in Dialogue Mass, with an imprimatur from Cardinal Stritch. Quite the time capsule of 1957.
 

The second is a rather revealing slice of history: Latin High Mass for Nostalgic Catholics, which was produced by World Library of Sacred Music in Cincinnati. There is no date, but I’m guessing, on the basis of the description on the back, that it would have come out around 1975. The cover shows scenes taken from Fr. Lasance. It features a recording of the traditional Nuptial Mass, with Casali’s Mass in G, Schubert’s Ave Maria, Franck’s Panis Angelicus, and Widor’s Toccata from the 5^th organ symphony. The celebrant is a certain Rev. Cronan Kline, OFM, and the director of the choir is, interestingly, Omar Westendorf, whose hymns show up in many a hymnal.
 

What I find especially noteworthy, and rather sad, is the justification the record offers for itself:
 

The third exhibit is something of an oddity from 1979: Lieder des Papstes Johannes Paul II in Polen. The pinkish halo surrounding the Polish pope seems already to anticipate his accelerated canonization—that seems a better interpretation than radioactivity or phosphorescence.
 

The music is all sung in Polish, of course, but the album is designed for Germans, so it offers (according to a tiny note) a word-for-word literal translation of the various folksongs and specially composed offerings for the Polish pope on his momentous return trip to his homeland, from which many date the beginning of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe.
 

 

If I were to say “Ah, those were the days!,” I would be telling a lie, since I was exactly –14, 4, and 8 years old at the time these discs were manufactured. No, they hold no nostalgic value for me, but they do prompt some thoughts. Lots of little boys are still learning and making the responses at Mass, in spite of the attempt, some twelve years after the 45’s release, to cancel out the Latin Mass forever. Second, chant, choral music, and organ music of a far higher caliber than that which is found on the Westendorf record can be heard today at actual High Masses and Solemn High Masses around the world, in spite of renewed barbarian aggression against the Latin Mass. Third, whatever one might say about John Paul II’s weaker moments, he is in fact glowing in comparison with what Providence has allowed us to suffer in the past decade.

Liturgy as Labor versus Liturgy as Leisure

(Part 2 of a two-part series, “Exorcising the Demon of Activism.” For Part 1, see here.)

Last week I spoke of the tendency of modern Christians to prioritize activity, good works, social work — in short, the “horizontal” dimension — over the “vertical” dimension of the individual and corporate relationship with God and His kingdom that we find in, and cultivate through, personal and liturgical prayer. It is no secret that a pragmatic and utilitarian attitude dominates our world and, regrettably, our Church. Rare is the pastor of souls who takes seriously himself, and then teaches others by example and word, that seeking contemplative union with God is absolutely the first priority in the life of every man who has ever lived and who will ever live, and that this means giving Him the best of our time and resources. I sometimes have a mental picture of our final judgment being initially about why we gave God so little of our time, attention, and love when He was present in our midst in symbols and in His Real Presence; and, only after that fundamental defect has been thoroughly examined, launching into the terrifying review of our particular sins, offenses, and negligences.

The heroic Jesuit Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J. (1873–1917), who expended his life for his men on the battlefield of World War I as a much-loved and courageous army chaplain, and therefore cannot be accused of pious daydreaming, once observed: “Did it ever strike you that when our Lord pointed out the ‘fields white for the harvest,’ he did not urge his Apostles to go and reap it, but to pray?” (Recall Matthew 9, 37-38: “Then he saith to his disciples, The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.”)

Pope St John Paul II’s critique of the impoverishment of personal relations in a materialistic society suggests a striking parallel with the confusion of primary and secondary in the life of the Church:

The criterion of personal dignity — which demands respect, generosity, and service — is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness: others are considered not for what they “are,” but for what they “have, do, and produce.” (Evangelium Vitae, §23)

The liturgical reformers committed an analogous blunder. The criterion of liturgical dignity — which demands profound respect for tradition (a prerequisite to internalizing its wisdom), generous self-surrender to its ascetical and rubrical demands, and sincere service to the faithful in offering them ongoing formation — was replaced by the activist criteria of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness ad extra. Liturgy was to be judged not by what it is in its innermost essence, but by its externals, its facilitation of us, its meeting of our untutored needs, its satisfaction of our desires, and (in a best-case scenario) its stimulation of our apostolic activities. It became a Mutual Aid Society for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, with a decorative Catholic touch.

A contemplative ritual such as the Church had offered to God prior to the mid-1960s will never be able to withstand the relentless demands of the pragmatist for instant results or continual production of “output.” This is due to a fundamental error: work is taken as the paradigm of actuality, rather than rest. We would do well to dwell on this point.

Aristotle introduced into philosophy one of the most useful distinctions ever made, the difference between “first act” and “second act” (or, as some translations have it, first actuality and second actuality). We understand this distinction, which is not logical but metaphysical, by considering a lot of examples from common experience and intuiting what they have in common: being able to see versus actually seeing; being alive but asleep vs. being awake; being equipped with intellect or habitual knowledge vs. actually understanding an essence, which is when knower and known, subject and object, are one and the same. This latter state is being “fully-at-work” (in the Heidegger-influenced language of Joe Sachs), but paradoxically, it is not working at something laboriously; it is actively resting in the possession of a form or a perfection. Capacity for work is ordered to working (attaining actuality), but working is ordered to a certain “rest” (actuality fully achieved). What Abraham Maslow called “a flow state” or, colloquially, “being in the zone,” is just this second act/actuality of which Aristotle speaks, at its peak.

The solemn public liturgy of the Church, though it involves the combined efforts of various people, is essentially the latter kind of work: being fully-at-work in Christ’s actuality, which He now shares with us as an overflow, a redundantia, from heaven, and to which we unite ourselves more as twigs or leaves floating downstream than as trucks carrying gravel or streamrollers flattening asphalt. We are not making a better world by the work of our hands; we are being remade in the image of God, who is pure act.

Josef Pieper’s best-known book is called Leisure, the Basis of Culture. By “leisure” Pieper means what we do for its own sake when all our other practical needs are met. Leisure is not relaxation, which is an interval of inaction before resuming exertions. Nor is leisure exactly the same as recreation, when we entertain ourselves or one another in a more or less dignified manner. Leisure is the reflective and contemplative activity of rejoicing in what is real, with a full mind and heart, with no other business pressing on us and pulling us away; it is resting with wonder and gratitude in the goodness of creation and its Creator; it is what the virtuous man labors to make room for, because it is the best human activity and, in fact, something more than human.

Seeing “Liturgy as Labor” and seeing “Liturgy as Leisure” are, then, the two basic ways of seeing it. The former is activist, the latter contemplative; the one is based on a paradigm of involvement and production, the other on a paradigm of receptivity, surrender, and rest. The partisans of the first conception think of themselves as doing the right thing, bringing the right state of affairs into being, and thus feel that their opponents are “passive” and “mute observers”; the partisans of the second conception think of themselves primarily as beholding and loving what is beautiful or noble in itself, and therefore consider a certain kind of passivity a virtue, and quiet observation a form of opening one’s soul to the power of another who acts to conform the soul to Himself. As Andrew Louth remarks, “To participate by beholding seems a shortcoming only to the busy Western mind.” (The Study of Spirituality, p. 187)

Monastic professions: everyone in this photo is receptive in stance and action

Monastic private Masses (see here for more recent photos)

Fr. Ray Blake asks the question “Why are contemplatives problematic?” and answers:

It is presumably something about the ‘otherness’ of their lives. . . . their values are not those of the contemporary world: they tend to stand still rather than go out to the peripheries of contemporary thought, stat crux dum volvitur orbis, which means they don’t get “with the program.” There is something about the transcendence and otherness of their lives that says some important things about God; that he is above and beyond us, that he is unknowable, ineffable, which means he is beyond the control of Kings and governments, or even Churchmen. The war on Liturgy that speaks of the transcendent of the post-conciliar period uses the same arguments, or lack of argument, as those who have difficulty with the contemplative life. Liturgy that is pure worship, that does not seek to teach, or build community or to “celebrate” in the contemporary sense of the word, is equally incomprehensible; it is about esse [to be] rather than agere [to act]. 

In his fine work Love and Truth: The Christian Path of Charity, Jean Borella brilliantly analyzes the mentality behind suppressing prayer and liturgy because of “social needs”:

Being universal, this commandment [of love] is by definition and a priori applied to every man, but its realization does not require, for it to be accomplished in perfection and for us to be perfect, that we apply it successively to all men. A similar interpretation is implied, however, in the manner in which our contemporaries have become intoxicated with a quantitatively unlimited charity. Besides, why limit the import of this commandment to humanity? Does not the cosmic order concern the whole of creation, and has not Christ ordained the teaching of the Gospel to every creature and not to man alone? And on the other hand, imperfection, misery, and injustice being by definition inexhaustible, the work of justice claims the totality of my time and therefore the totality of my life.
          Consequently, everything not directly an individual or social work of justice is [regard as] mortal sin. Prayer and liturgy, momentarily requiring the whole man and the cessation of every action for the sake of the collectivity, become mortal sins themselves. For to pray, we must withdraw from the world. It is not we ourselves but Christ who is saying this, and we only need state that the commandment on prayer comes immediately after the just-quoted passage, as if the Gospel wished to forestall the modern errors of interpretation: “For yourself when you wish to pray enter into your chamber, close the door and pray to your Father who dwells in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 6:6).
          The hic and nunc of our existential situation implies a unicity of acting. We cannot do several things at once. The act of prayer and the liturgy concretely exclude the social act and vice versa. If active charity is to absorb the totality of the charitable power, everything opposing it should be eliminated. And this is why we think the modern conception leads directly and logically to the elimination of liturgical worship and the spiritual life, that is to say ultimately of the Church and theism, for their opposition, in concreto, is strictly inevitable. (225–26)

Now, what Borella describes may well be considered a “limit case” that will never be reached on earth, regardless of the combined effects of activism, indifference, and wickedness in high places as in low; nevertheless, the logic driving toward it leaves a path of carnage behind itself, along which are strewn the lost or never-awakened vocations of tens of thousands of contemplative religious after the Council — a gaping hole in the Mystical Body on earth that no campaign of charity, no pastoral programs, no liturgical reform, could ever fill. Precisely when and where the primacy of contemplation and the true leisure of liturgy are rediscovered and embraced will there be a restoration of the Church’s missionary dynamism and her once-unparalleled charitable work in the world. Delightfully, the way to reach that longed-for goal is the same as the goal itself: prayer and worship. The means and the end coincide, even as our “daily bread” par excellence is the Maker of bread and the Life it imparts.

Liturgical Notes on the Maternity of the Virgin Mary

The traditional observance of October as the month of the Holy Rosary begins, of course, with the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the institution of the feast of the Holy Rosary, also called the feast of Our Lady of Victory. Two years later, at the request of the Dominican Order, Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) granted the feast to all churches which had an altar of the Rosary. After another important victory against the Ottoman Turks, the Battle of Peterwardein in 1716, Clement XI (1700-21) extended the feast to the entire Roman Rite. In accordance with the common custom of the time, it was originally fixed to the first Sunday of October, regardless of the date; partly because the victory at Lepanto was on the first Sunday of October, partly because, with the continual reduction of the number of holy days of obligation, feasts were often fixed to Sunday so that they might be kept with greater solemnity by the people. The custom of permanently fixing feasts to particular Sundays was abolished by Pope St Pius X as part of the breviary reform of 1911, and the feast of the Holy Rosary then assigned to the calendar date of Lepanto, October 7.

The Battle of Lepanto, by an unknown artist, late 16th century, now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

Once October had been well established as a Marian month, two other feasts were then created for the second and third Sundays of October, called the feasts of the Maternity and of the Purity of the Virgin Mary. Of these two, the former gradually grew in popularity, to the point where the 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “At present the feast is not found in the universal calendar of the Church, but nearly all diocesan calendars have adopted it.” The latter was at least popular enough to be routinely found in the appendix “for certain places” of most editions of the Roman Missal and Breviary printed in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1931, Pope Pius XI extended the feast of the Virgin’s Maternity to the universal calendar, assigning it to October 11th, which was then the first free day of the month. A breviary lesson was added to the feast, which explains that the Pope intended it to serve as a liturgical commemoration of the 15th centenary of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. The third Ecumenical council was held in that city in 431 to refute the heresy of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, by which he rejected the liturgical use of the title “Mother of God” for the Virgin Mary. Shortly thereafter, Pope Sixtus III (432-40) built the basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, the oldest church in the world dedicated to the Mother of God, which still preserves a famous mosaic with episodes of Her life on the arch over the altar. Pope Pius XI also notes in this lesson that had arranged for extensive restorations of the basilica, “a noble monument of the proclamation of Ephesus,” and particularly the mosaic.

The upper left section of the mosaic on the triumphal arch of Saint Mary Major, with the Annunciation above and the Adoration of the Magi below. To the right of the Annunciation, the angel comes to reassure St Joseph. In the Adoration of the Magi, Christ is shown as a young child, but not as an infant, since the Gospel of St Matthew does not say how long after the Birth of Christ the Magi came to Him.

October 11 was then set by Pope St John XXIII as the opening day of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Pope John had a great devotion to Pope Pius IX, who was not yet a Blessed in his time, and whom he very much wished to canonize. Pius IX had proclaimed the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and fifteen years later, set the feast of the Immaculate Conception as the day for the opening of Vatican I. As Bl. Pius had placed his council under the protection of the Mother of God by opening it on one of her feast days, so did St John, the feast in question being also a commemoration of yet another ecumenical Council, and one especially associated with the Church’s devotion to the Virgin.

The crest of Pope St John XXIII, in the atrium of St Peter’s Basilica; the opening date of Vatican II is written beneath it, without reference to the feast of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary.

In the post-Conciliar liturgical reform, the feast of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary was suppressed, on the grounds that the newly-created Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, on January 1st made it superfluous, another fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The offical account of the changes made to the calendar, published by the Vatican Polyglot Press in 1969, explains this new feast in reference to the “Synaxis of the Mother of God” which the Byzantine Rite keeps on December 26th.

But in point of the fact, the latter observance arises from a particular Byzantine custom, by which several major feasts are followed by the commemoration of a sacred person who figures prominently in the feast, but who is, so to speak, overshadowed by another. These are usually, but not invariably, called “σύναξις (synaxis)” in Greek, “собóръ (sobor)” in Church Slavonic; that of St John the Baptist is kept on January 7th, the day after the Baptism of the Lord, that of St Gabriel the day after the Annunciation, that of the Twelve Apostles after Ss Peter and Paul, and that of Ss Joachim and Anne, the Virgin’s parents, on the day after Her Nativity. These are not the principal feasts of the persons honored by these “synaxes”, and one also finds in the Byzantine Calendar the feasts of St John on June 24 and August 29, of St Gabriel on June 11, the Apostles each on their own day (rarely the same as in the Roman Rite), and St Anne on July 26.

September 9th is also kept by the Byzantines as the commemoration of the “Fathers of the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus”; a most appropriate choice, since the liturgical New Year of the Byzantine Rite is on September 1st, and the Nativity of the Virgin is therefore the first Marian feast of the year. And indeed, the Maternity of the Virgin Mary would be better described, despite its title, as a Roman version of this Byzantine feast of the Fathers at Ephesus. The Byzantine Rite also has similar commemorations of the Fathers of the other ecumenical councils, as well as a joint commemoration of those of the first six, and another of Second Nicea.

An icon of the “Synod of the Holy Fathers”, in which the Emperor Constantine holds a scroll with the opening words of the Nicene Creed in Greek.

Pope St John XXIII died on June 3, 1963, a day which at the time had no feast on the General Calendar, but in the Novus Ordo was made the feast of the Ugandan Martyrs canonized in 1964. Despite the oft-stated modern preference for keeping Saints’ feasts on the anniversary of their death, or as near to it as possible, his feast day was assigned at the time of his beatification, for those places which kept it, to the anniversary of the opening of Vatican II. His feast and that of St John Paul II were extended to the general calendar as optional memorials in 2014; the latter is assigned to October 22, the day of his inauguration as Pope in 1978, since the day of his death, April 2, is very often impeded by Holy Week or Easter week.

Exclusive NLM Interview with Archbishop Sample: Why Young People Are Attracted to Traditional Liturgy

Archbishop Sample offering the Holy Sacrifice at the National Shrine

NLM is pleased to present the following transcription of an interview conducted by Julian Kwasniewski with the Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample, Archbishop of Portland, in connection with the Sacred Liturgy Conference in Salem, Oregon, June 27–30, 2018. Much of what his Excellency says is highly pertinent to the Youth Synod taking place at the Vatican this month. This interview is published here for the first time.


Julian Kwasniewski: First off, I just have to say thank you for agreeing to this interview.

Archbishop Sample: I want to encourage you young people, and especially young people who are serious about their faith and about the sacred liturgy. I want to do everything I can to encourage you.

JK: The first question I want to start with is very simple. What is a priest?

AS: It is a simple question and it might strike someone as kind of an odd question — we all “know” what a priest is because we see them. But do we really understand who the priest is?

I think over time, perhaps particularly since the Council, there has been a reduction, if you will, in people’s understanding of the nature of the priesthood and its place within the Church. A lot of people have come to see the priest as what he does. The focus is what the priest does. Even that has changed a lot, but I think the average person might say the priest celebrates Mass, he hears confessions, he supervises the parish, he administers things. They see his functions; they don’t see his identity. That is key: his priestly identity. Who is he? It’s not so much what he does; it’s who he is, because everything he does flows from who he is.

So who is he? He is a man chosen by God, called to this order and through the sacrament of Holy Orders, through the laying on of hands and the prayer of the church; he is sacramentally configured to Christ the High Priest. There is that an ontological change that takes place in him, change on the very level of his being. He becomes something new, since his soul is forever marked with the character of the priesthood, so that he can minister in the Church in the person of Christ the head, in persona Christi capitis. So there is a close identification between the ordained priest and the High Priest, Jesus Christ; he is called to be an alter Christus, another Christ. All Christians are by our baptism called to be other Christs, but the priest in a particular way represents Christ in the Catholic Church.

He participates in the tria munera, the threefold office of Jesus Christ, as Priest, Prophet, and King. The priest is ordained to teach, to sanctify, and to rule or govern God’s people in the name and person of Christ. He is to teach the doctrine of the Church, always according to the mind of the Church and in harmony with the magisterium. He is a sanctifier; he is the one who sanctifies God’s people, especially through the sacraments, and most especially through the celebration of Holy Mass and the hearing of Confession. He is a shepherd, the guide of the community, he points the way to eternal life.

If we understand who the priest is in this sense — the sense in which the Church understands who the priest is — then we see that all the functions that he does and all the things he does flow from this essential identity.

Celebrating a pontifical Mass in Rolduc

JK: I wonder if you could tie that in with the recent Corpus Christi procession that you did, since it seems to manifest the three gifts you were talking about: it is a witness to the Church’s teaching; it publicly witnesses to the ruling position of the Faith in society; and it is a practice that can sanctify us who participate in it.

AS: Right. As I was processing with Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Eucharist through the streets of Portland — and we went through a part that is a very secular area — all I kept thinking to myself was, “Lord Jesus, take possession of these streets, these streets belong to you. Reclaim them, Lord Jesus.” And when we were in the park for the Rosary and Benediction before we turned around, and headed back to the Cathedral, that was my prayer. People were walking by and amazed at this group of people marching and praying. I’m sure many of them were thinking “what is this thing you have on the altar there,” and of course, it was Our Blessed Lord. But I kept thinking to myself, “Lord, these streets belong to you. Reclaim and sanctify them.”

JK: How would you relate this experience of Eucharistic adoration to your episcopal motto: Vultum Christi Contemplari. What does your motto tell us about what you just said?

AS: I took my motto from the writings of St. John Paul II, who I consider my patron saint, quite honestly. I have no connection to him by name, but I really do consider him my patron saint now. He has been a great inspiration to me; I’m not sure I would be a priest today if it was not for him.

This idea of contemplating Christ’s face was something that John Paul II wrote a lot about. In Novo Millenio Ineunte, he recalls the scene in the Gospels where the Greeks come to Philip and they say, “We want to see Jesus.” The Holy Father picks up on that idea and says that this question, “we want to see Jesus,” is a question that is really in the heart of every person in the world today. Even if they don’t know it, they want to see the face of Jesus. He said they don’t want Christians just to talk about Christ — the world wants us to show them Christ. That’s our job: to let the light of Christ’s face shine before the generations of the new millennium. But, he goes on to say, our task would be hopelessly inadequate had we not first contemplated His face.

So he said we must contemplate the face of Christ. We must know Him intimately and deeply, we must cultivate that close personal relationship with the Lord, in order for us to show Him to the world. It’s very close to my own spirituality of prayer and being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament and just contemplating Christ’s presence in His Face. This is where my motto came from.

Later, in his last encyclical, Ecclesia Dei Eucharistia, John Paul II put it very bluntly: This is the task that I have set before the Church at the beginning of the new millennium, Vultum Christi contemplatri, to contemplate the face of Christ. And then he also speaks of the Marian dimension which he develops in his pastoral letter on the Rosary, that we contemplate the Face of Christ through Mary in the praying of the Rosary.

JK: Do you think the pope’s emphasis on contemplation is related to the problem of activism in our times?

AS: Yes. John Paul II is saying, “Church: This is your task. To first contemplate the face of Christ ourselves so that we may then let it shine before the nations.” Since we cannot give to the world what we do not have, we must first know Christ before we bring Him to others. For a Catholic in the world (not a contemplative religious), there must be a balance between contemplation and work, knowing Christ deeply and intimately, adoring him in prayer, in order for one to effectively carry on the apostolic works of the Church.

JK: It seems that many young people these days are rediscovering contemplation and an ability to give themselves joyfully to Christ through loving the Latin Mass and the old liturgical prayer of the Church.

AS: That’s a very good point, and it’s a point I made in the homily I gave at the Solemn Pontifical Mass at the National Shrine in Washington D.C. You know, the Church was filled with young people!

A lot of times, priests expect that if you go to a Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 missal, the church will be filled with grey hair, old people filled with nostalgia for days gone by, and that they have a sort of emotional attachment to the liturgy they grew up with.

But more and more, the majority of the people in the church at these masses are people who never lived during the time when this was the ordinary liturgy, that is, before the Council. If you are under a certain age (and that age is getting higher and higher), you never experienced this liturgy growing up. And yet young people — which is something Pope Benedict XVI said in his letter to the world’s bishops when he issued Summorum Pontificum — have discovered this [form] too, and have found it very spiritually nourishing and satisfying. They have come to love and appreciate it.

That is amazing to me: young people who have never experienced this growing up in the postconciliar Church, with the Ordinary Form (sometimes celebrated well, sometimes very poorly with all kinds of aberrations and abuses), have still discovered the Latin Mass and are attracted to it.

JK: What, in your view, accounts for that attraction?

AS: I would say its beauty, its solemnity, the sense of transcendence, of mystery. Not mystery in the sense of “Oh, we don’t know what’s going on,” but rather, that there is a mysterium tremendum celebrated here, a tremendous mystery. The liturgy in the old rite really conveys the essential nature and meaning of the Mass, which is to represent the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ which he offered on the Cross and now sacramentally, in an unbloody manner, in the Holy Mass.

I think young people are drawn to it because it feeds a spiritual need that they have. There is something to this form of the liturgy, in and of itself, that speaks to the heart of youth. Young people will continue to discover this, and they will be the ones who carry forward the Extraordinary Form when the older generation goes to their reward. Certainly this will be young people of your generation, but ... I’m 57. I was baptized in the old rite, but by the time I was aware and cognizant of Mass, we had already come to the new liturgy. So everybody younger than me has no experience really of this liturgy. Anyone under my age could be considered “young” in discovering this beautiful liturgy!

JK: Your Excellency, what would you say is the most important element of tradition for the Catholic youth to hold and cherish at this time?

AS: I think what young people need to do first is to discover — and many have — the Church’s tradition. Many young people have been deprived, in a certain way, of our Catholic heritage, of the great tradition which is ours in the Catholic Church. I know for myself I feel I was ... I don’t want to say cheated because that sounds like someone did it intentionally out of ill will for me ... but I feel like I was deprived of real teaching and appreciation and contact with my Catholic culture and my Catholic tradition and where we come from. I lived in and grew up in an age when there was this attitude that the Church had, in some way, hit a reset button at Vatican II, and that we could let go of all the past, as if the Church needed a new beginning and a fresh start.

You are far too young to have lived through that experience, and you are very blessed to live in the time that you do, because there was nothing like this for me when I was growing up. I grew up in a time when all of those things in the past had to be cast aside. Even something as simple as the Rosary, it was kind of discouraged — or if not discouraged, it was certainly not encouraged. I never saw Eucharistic Exposition and Benediction until I was a college student. I never knew such a thing existed. I grew up when there was a lot of experimentation with the Mass, always trying to make it “fresh and new.” There was a period of time growing up when you came to Mass on Sunday, and you just didn’t know what was going to happen next! The changes were coming so fast, and not just changes but experimentation and aberrations. So I was deprived of any contact with my tradition; I discovered it, on my own, as a college student.

JK: Was the liturgy the only area in which you felt deprived of contact with tradition, or are you speaking more broadly?

AS: In ‘tradition’ I would certainly also include the teachings of the Church that I never learned. I never understood what the Mass was — and I went to 12 years of Catholic school. If you has asked me what the Mass meant, I would probably have told you that it was a reenactment of the Last Supper, the last meal which Jesus shared with His disciples and in which He gave them His Body and Blood ... which is part of the truth. But the idea that the Mass was in any way a sacramental re-presentation of the paschal mystery, that Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was made truly, sacramentally present at the altar — and that it is an altar, and not just a table! — that would have been a foreign idea to me.

So certainly part of the tradition is that young people need to be deeply in touch with the Faith, what we believe, what the Catechism teaches. Young people must not take it for granted that what they have received in education (whether in a Catholic school or a religious education program) is an adequate formation in the Faith. They need to really delve into the teachings of the Church, the Catechism, they need to read good, solid books and articles, and other media forms, whether internet or movies. So that is part of it.

But of course, a big part of our tradition is our liturgical tradition. It’s in our DNA — and that’s why many are attracted to the traditional forms of the liturgy — because it’s in our Catholic DNA. Young people need to acquaint themselves with the richer, deeper tradition. Vatican II did not hit a reset button. Although, perhaps, the tradition needed to be renewed and refreshed, it never was meant to be destroyed or cast aside.

Pontifical Mass at Rolduc

JK: Would you put sacred music into this category, too?

AS: The rich liturgical tradition of the Church includes her sacred music. We don’t have to have pop music at Mass. The first time I heard Gregorian chant was when I was a college student. I’d never heard of chant before. When I heard it in a music appreciation class at a secular university, I hadn’t a clue what it meant, but it instantly spoke to my heart—instantly. The first time I heard it I was moved, really moved. So there is this rich liturgical, sacred music tradition that we need to recapture, recover, that young people need to learn about.

Moreover, we should all have devotions in our life. Devotions extend what the liturgy begins. Things like the Rosary, the chaplet of Divine Mercy, Eucharistic Adoration, other devotions to the Blessed Virgin, having favorite saints, patron saints that you pray to, Stations of the Cross…All these rich parts of our Catholic devotional tradition feed the life of faith and extend what we experience in the sacred liturgy, but also lead us back to it.

JK: Do you have any additional advice for young traditional Catholics trying to recover their tradition? 

AS: I’d say there is a tendency sometimes to see these things — doctrine, liturgy, devotions — in opposition to things like works of charity, works of mercy. I would emphasize that we must not get to a place where all we are concerned about is being of right doctrine (orthodoxy), having right liturgy (orthopraxy), good sacred music, that we are doing all the right devotions. If we are not doing works of mercy, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, if we are not taking care of the poor and disadvantaged, then we are not living fully our Catholic faith. That’s part of our tradition too!

I think traditional-minded Catholics should not let, perhaps, the more liberal elements in the church co-opt the works of justice and mercy as being “something of the new Church.” Catholics have always been steeped in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Church of the ages is the one that built hospitals and took care of the sick and the poor and the dying, built schools to educate poor children without opportunities.

The works of justice and mercy are also very much a part of our tradition, and I would caution young people not to get so focused on the other elements we spoke of that they forget that Jesus teaches us to love, to serve those who are in need. Remember the parable He gives us on the Last Judgment, when he separates the sheep from the goats. He does not separate them based on whether they are praying the traditional prayers or not. He separates them based on “when I was hungry did you feed me, when I was thirsty did you give me to drink, when I was homeless, did you shelter me, when I was sick and in prison did you visit me?” This is the basis of the judgment… it’s not an either/or!

This is a tendency I see: if you are a “progressive Catholic,” you are all about the social justice issues, taking care of the poor, working for justice and everything, but your liturgical worship tends to be a bit off and maybe you reject other moral teachings of the Church, while sometimes traditionally-minded Catholics are characterized as being all about the Mass, and right worship, right music, right devotions, the right vestments, orthodox teaching, and don’t care so much about the poor and works of mercy.

We’ve got to pull this together: it is not an either/or, it is a both/and in the Church. The works of mercy go back to the apostolic times, go back to the Acts of the Apostles; as St. Paul says, we must always take care of the poor. This is deeply traditional in our Church.

Archbishop Sample with prison inmates

Holy Matrimony, Sanctified Bodies, and Sacramental Grace

In our times we have seen the important work of Pope John Paul II on the “theology of the body” misunderstood and applied in a superficial and, at times, morally problematic way. One example is a claim I once heard, namely, that the very bodies of spouses are causes of grace, such that when they come together in the marital act, and assuming no moral impediment such as contraception, an increase of sanctifying grace is bestowed on each or both spouses. This claim, as it stands, is false—although something like it is true.

The only signs that effect or bring about the sanctifying grace they signify are the seven Sacraments of the New Law. In this sense, it is impossible that the spouse’s bodies, as such, should be causes of grace in a proper sense, such that when the cause (bodily action) is posited, the effect (increase of grace) follows. Rather, the bodily mutual self-giving, open to new life, is the outward sign of the Sacrament of Matrimony itself, which, present and operative in a mysterious way in the souls of the spouses, is the cause of an increase in sanctifying grace. Put more simply, the efficacious sign is not the bodily action but the sacramental union and state, which is represented and furthered by the bodily action.

On the other hand, any bodily act done out of charity is a cause of grace in the sense of being a moral cause of meriting an increase of such grace. In this way, the nuptial act is like an act of almsgiving, or clothing the poor, or instructing the ignorant—all of these are acts of a will animated by charity, performed with the help of the body and meriting an increase of grace.

We find many profound and inspiring passages in the writings of Pope John Paul II on these matters, such as the following, from the encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae:

Within this same [contemporary] cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other’s richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the “enemy” to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child “at all costs,” and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents. (n. 23)

The Pope chooses his words with care: the body is a “sign,” a sign of self-giving, a “place” and a “language,” but in and of itself it does not expressly signify sanctifying grace, nor directly confer it. This is what the Sacrament of Marriage or Matrimony is and does. If the spouse’s body were a cause of grace just by being what it is, namely, a sign of self-giving, it would follow that the body or the nuptial act is an eighth sacrament, a claim certainly contrary to the dogma of the Faith. I know a priest (he was married as an Anglican curate and was later ordained a Catholic priest) who refers to this kind of loose talk as “gamolatry,” that is, a sort of worship of things pertaining to marriage.

In our times, so given to vapid pseudo-mysticism, we do well to remember that Our Lord instituted the seven sacraments as the ordinary means of conferring His supernatural life and charity upon us. It is through the sacraments that we become “sons in the Son” and receive all that we need to grow in our sonship until the day of glory. (I do not engage here in the centuries-old debate over what precisely it means to say that Jesus Himself instituted all and each of the seven sacraments; various more or less convincing hypotheses have been proffered. In any case, Catholics are obliged to believe that which the Council of Trent defined as de fide dogma, namely, that Christ Himself instituted the seven sacraments of the New Law.)

Thus, even that which theologians have taken to calling the “primordial sacrament,” the very humanity of Christ, is effective among us in this world precisely through the seven Sacraments of the Church, and not somehow over and above and apart from them, as if it were an eighth sacrament that could be numbered alongside the other seven. The Church, too, may be called a “sacrament,” but in an analogous sense—for she, too, is built up from the seven sacraments, from which she derives her very existence and activity, as the Second Vatican Council teaches. The Eucharist, especially, is the root and the constant origin of the Church in this world. Without the Eucharistic Body, there would be no Mystical Body. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the “reality” of the sacrament of the Eucharist is nothing other than the unity, or charity, of the Mystical Body itself (cf. Summa theologiae III, q. 61, a. 2).

How beautiful it is that spouses receive in marriage a new participation in the love of God and the Passion of Christ, as well as a new power to participate in creation and redemption by begetting children and offering them to God in baptism! The quasi-character imprinted in their souls by the marriage vows remains throughout their life as a constant claim before God of all the graces each needs to fulfil the duties of his or her state in life; it is a permanent mark of their mutual surrender to and “ownership” of one another; it is a likeness of the relationship that unites Christ to His Bride, and the Church in turn to her Bridegroom, in an unbreakable union of eternal fecundity.

A Model Letter on the Restoration of All-Male Altar Service

This article was originally published in 2015, removed for editing, and is now ready for reposting.

A topic of conversation that often arises among young (and not-so-young) traditionally-minded Catholics is: “Can we do anything about the problem of female altar servers?” It is a problem worth solving and one that is capable of being solved, rather than a fateful mistake about which nothing can be done.

Imagine you are a bishop, thinking about what a wreckage feminism has made of the Church in the Western world, as men continue to feel alienated, women no longer offer themselves to religious life, and a pathetic number of priestly vocations dribble in. You are planning to write a letter to your presbyterate, explaining why you are abrogating, in your diocese, the use of female altar servers. What might such a letter look like? How would you make the case?

* * *

Dear Priests and Deacons,

Praised be Jesus Christ! With this letter I announce, after careful consideration and prayerful reflection, an important change in the liturgical praxis of the Diocese of Bromptonville.

As you know, some time ago the Vatican allowed local Ordinaries to permit female altar servers because, due to Pope Paul VI’s suppression of the minor order of acolyte and reassignment of its duties to the office of instituted acolyte, this type of service appeared to be no longer directly connected with the path to priestly ordination. Indeed, in the old days, laymen, particularly boys, substituted for acolytes in most situations (hence the familiar term “altar boys”). At the same time, the Vatican made it clear that female altar servers are not required, may not be imposed against the will of a celebrant of any Mass, and do not cancel out the good of retaining the traditional practice of male-only service at the altar.

With the wisdom of hindsight, we can now see that this experiment of admitting females to the service of the altar has proved problematic, for several reasons. First, altar servers are visibly dedicated, both by their responsibilities and by their vestments, to ministering in the sanctuary at the altar of sacrifice. Theirs is a role that appears to be intimately associated with the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It was for this very reason that the discipline of training and working with altar servers was traditionally regarded as — and, in truth, still remains — a means of fostering vocations to the priesthood. To serve at the altar is to be involved in priestlike activities. Operative here is a language of symbols that is more powerful than mere words.

Experience has shown that the now widespread presence of female altar servers in the sanctuary continues to create confusion among the faithful about the roles that women may legitimately play in the liturgical life of the Church. Again, the symbolism of a vested altar server ministering at the altar speaks more decisively than any catechesis. It is therefore no surprise that many Catholics, despite the definitive judgment of the Church expressed in John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, feel that “altar girls” are a first step towards the eventual allowance of “women priests.” Such confusion on matters bound up with the very deposit of faith is not healthy for our faithful people.

More profoundly, Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” helps us to understand that a whole realm of cosmic and metaphysical symbolism is literally embodied in man and woman. Even if we are not always consciously aware of this symbolism, it has a steady formative effect on our thoughts and attitudes at worship. It should not be simply ignored in the assignment and execution of liturgical roles. Modern society has shown a remarkable ability to ignore the obvious natural and God-given differences between the sexes, differences that support their complementarity. As grace builds on nature, so does Christian liturgy build on natural anthropology. Introducing confusion at so basic a level prevents the liturgy from exhibiting clearly the spousal relationship of Christ and the Church, where Christ is represented primarily by the celebrant offering sacrifice at the altar in the sanctuary, and the Church is represented primarily by the assembly of believers gathered in the nave to do Him homage and to receive His gifts.

Finally, on a practical note, the placing together of boys and girls has had the effect, consistent with human nature, of driving away boys who might otherwise have been interested in serving or who might otherwise have been persuaded to serve. Boys and girls of certain ages either do not wish to be together, or find one another’s company distracting. A similar distraction is caused for laymen by older girls or fully-grown women in the sanctuary. If the “theology of the body” is true, and surely it is, we should have been able to foresee these problems and avoided them altogether by not having departed from the constant and universal custom of the Church in regard to altar servers. Moreover, boys enjoy the challenge of a demanding and regimented approach to serving, characterized by a manly esprit de corps. Mixed service cancels out this psychological advantage.

Even beyond these concerns, the expansion of ministries to more and more lay people is characteristic of the “clericalization of the laity” and the “laicization of the clergy” against which John Paul II warned many times. The role of the laity is to sanctify the vast world outside the Church, not to take care of the sanctuary and its tasks. The holiness proper to the laity is best expressed when they participate in the liturgical rites by the responses and gestures appointed for them. This is the “spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1) that corresponds harmoniously to the sacerdotal and diaconal ministries exercised at the altar.

Recognizing that the novelty of female altar servers was never to be required but only to be allowed at the discretion of the diocesan bishop, and recognizing also that male altar servers remain normative for the Roman Rite, the Vatican left the decision in this matter in the hands of the diocesan bishop. Accordingly, exercising my right to legislate, I decree that, as of the Solemnity of the Assumption, August 15, 2017, the use of female altar servers is altogether abrogated in this Diocese, and is to be discontinued without exception, all customs to the contrary notwithstanding.

I shall send you a brief pastoral letter on this subject to be read from the pulpit early in June; it will also be published in the Bromptonville Catholic Register. When and as necessary, please prepare your parishioners for the change, emphasizing that it has nothing to do with a lack of appreciation of the countless gifts that women bring to each parish and to the Church. As John Paul II frequently emphasized, the Church is feminine, indeed motherly, in her deepest identity as Bride of Christ and Mother of the faithful, and this is why the Virgin Mary is the supreme model of the Christian disciple. Those who minister at the altar, on the other hand, do so not merely as disciples, but as representatives of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is Eternal High Priest and Servant (Deacon). This role of representation is symbolically shared by other liturgical ministries, especially that of altar server. That is the fundamental basis of my decision, and I am sure that further reflection on it will show the wisdom of the hitherto unbroken Catholic tradition.

I count on your understanding and support in this important step for the renewal of our diocesan liturgical worship, and ask that you speak with me personally if you have any concerns.

Cordially yours in Christ,
       etc. etc.

* * *

So that is how it might be done, although undoubtedly a better letter could be drafted. One can only hope that, as the years go on, bishops will become more and more aware of the harm that has resulted from unheard-of innovations in the Roman Rite and will take the necessary steps to restore liturgical tradition, such as all-male service in the sanctuary.

Although in the letter it is mentioned only in passing, I am convinced that part of the crisis of vocations to the priesthood stems from the lack of real “vocational training” in the form of a more demanding ministry for boys and young men in the sanctuary, connected with a richness of public worship that feeds the imagination and the intellect. When the liturgy is celebrated in a more traditional way, that is, with a certain solemnity, ritual beauty, and complexity, it exercises a mysterious and powerful fascination over the minds of youths. This experience of the sacred and its inherent worthiness has drawn more than a few men into the seminary, as I have witnessed in many different communities. In that sense, it is not rocket science to believe that nudging the liturgy towards greater solemnity and continuity with Catholic tradition, while curtailing female altar servers, cannot but be a most effective path to the promotion of priestly and religious vocations.

Altar boys, New York City, ca. 1957

Altar boys, St. John Cantius, today