Both the Chaos of Jackson Pollock and the Sterility of Photorealism are Incompatible with Christianity

Unveiling the middle ground where faith, philosophy, and beauty all meet in the person of Christ, image of the invisible God.

Authentic Christian art strikes a balance between abstraction and realism, rejecting the extremes of Abstract Expressionism—where meaning dissolves into unrecognizable chaos—and Photorealism, which reduces reality to soulless or meaningless matter. Rooted in a worldview shaped by faith and philosophy, the Christian artist uses partial abstraction to blend naturalistic forms with spiritual depth, revealing the soul and invisible truths of existence. This tension, distinct from modern art’s dualistic pitfalls, defines its unique purpose and beauty.

John the Baptist, by David Clayton, 21st cent.

The Limits of Abstraction and Naturalism

If a painting of a man is so abstracted that it is not recognisably what is meant to be—as is the case with Abstract Expressionism —then put simply it is a bad painting. There can be no Christian Abstract Expressionism. On the other hand, extreme naturalism, such as we see in Photorealism, is also bad art from a Christian point of view because it reflects an attitude that says there is no meaning or spiritual dimension in what we are looking at, only matter. There is no Christian Photorealism. Christian art sits between these two poles of dualism. It has traditionally aimed to reflect naturalistic appearances so that we know what we are looking at, but to stylise the image through partial abstraction to suggest to the observer the invisible aspects of what we see, such as its meaning and importance, and in the human person, the soul.

The Profound Connection Between Faith, Philosophy, and Art

A painter’s artistic choices are not made in a philosophical or theological vacuum. Rather, an artist’s ‘worldview’—his ‘personal philosophy’ or understanding of reality that combines philosophical and theological truths—profoundly shapes what he paints and how he depicts it. At a more general level, everyone possesses an underlying philosophical framework that informs his perceptions and judgments, whether he recognises it or not. This “worldview” also determines an artist’s decisions when he paints, including what he deems worthy of imitation and the specific stylistic techniques he employs to emphasise those aspects of reality that matter most to him. Therefore, a Christian artist must have a correct worldview; otherwise, he might lead people astray and misrepresent aspects of the faith through his paintings' content and style.

Lessons from Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek philosophy can help us here. Ancient Greece was a great cauldron of ideas. Indeed, there are so many ideas that it could be argued that just about any personal philosophy we encounter today was represented in some form by the ideas of at least one of those ancient Greek philosophers. Many of those ideas of ancient Greece passed into Roman civilisation, and the best of them, subsequently, into mainstream Christian thought. Of course, two Greek philosophers stood out as giants: Plato and his greatest student, Aristotle. Together, they came closest to describing the nature of man, God, and the world through natural reason alone and without the benefit of Revelation.

Plato, Aristotle, and Christian Thought

The ideas of these two philosophers have continued to be of great interest to Christians because the philosophical methods of inquiry they developed have helped Christians understand more deeply what Christ revealed to us and how it can be applied in everyday life today and in the past. Perhaps the Christian who did more than any other to integrate Christian teaching with Aristotelian and Platonic thinking and the Fathers who preceded him is St Thomas Aquinas (1215-1274 A.D.), who integrated their philosophies with the gospel.

Raphael’s School of Athens: A Visual Parable

To illustrate the continued importance of the ancient Greeks to Christian thought, consider this painting. It is called the School of Athens, and it was painted in 1511 by the Italian artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520), generally known in English as Raphael. His painting is on a wall in the Vatican Museums.

It shows many great philosophers of the ancient world. Despite the name of the painting, not all of them lived in Athens. Indeed, some are not even Greek, but collectively, they represent the tradition of philosophy that originated in Athens and lasted over 1,000 years from about 600 BC. At the centre, featured most prominently, we see these two great figures already mentioned, Plato and Aristotle. Raphael has shown Plato pointing upwards to the metaphysical world, what we might call the spiritual world, which exists beyond the material realm (which he called the world of Ideas or Forms). Plato is talking to Aristotle, who is pointing downwards to the earth to symbolise his more significant interest in the goodness and reality of the material realm of existence.

The Eternal Tension in Art

This detail of a great painting symbolises the tension in all art: that is, how do we describe the relationship between the spiritual and the material worlds, especially when painting people, between body and soul? Some people believe that the essence of human nature is what we think and feel. An artist who believes this might dispense with the portrayal of the human body and try to represent pure emotion, thought, or subconscious aspects through abstract shapes (20th-century abstract artists did this, for example). The ethos of the abstract expressionists is testable - we can present people with these paintings to a hundred people (who haven’t studied art history at university) and ask the question that only 5-year-olds dare ask…what is it? If the majority respond with the artist’s intention without being told in advance, then we can concede a point to them. However, in my experience, few, not even the critics who promote their work, seem to see what the artists hope to portray.

Jackson Pollock No. 1

Mark Rothko, Untitled

At the other extreme, some people, called ‘materialists’, believe that man is only made of matter and has no soul. An artist who is a materialist might decide to paint the man in perfect correspondence to natural appearances, as close to perfect in every visible detail as possible, but would have no interest in communicating that he possesses a soul or that a painted scene has a meaning that indicates a Creator or loving God. If executed skillfully, such a painting or sculpture would be dazzling in its lifelike detail but sterile and lifeless in appearance, like a death mask or an image created mechanically without human artifice. Photorealism is an example of the art of the materialist. For example, I invite the reader to look at the work of Ron Mueck, who sculpts in an extreme form of photorealism called Hyperrealism (it is difficult to find photos that can be reproduced here).

Continue Reading this Article. . .

From Extemporaneity to Fixity of Form: The Grace of Liturgical Stability

Catholics who love the traditional liturgical rites of the Church maintain that a fixity and stability of sacred formulas is essential both to the nature of liturgy as such and to the fruitful participation of the laity. But some liturgical scholars might object: Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised? The answer is: yes — and no. Few things are as important as understanding how and why we moved from liturgy-in-flux to fixed and stable liturgy.

For starters, in their gatherings for worship, ancient Christians do not seem to have practiced “casual” or “informal” prayer in the way in which the relaxed Christians of today might practice it. All the records we have indicate set prayer forms not only among the Jews whose Scriptures are full of formulaic prayers but also among the earliest Christians, several of whose hymns are preserved in the New Testament and in Patristic literature. Gregory Dix, Adrian Fortescue, Paul Bradshaw, and other scholars note that the prayers of the Christians, offered up by their leaders in a spontaneous but tradition-informed manner, acquired consistent formulaic patterns over time and settled into repeatable rites and ceremonies. After a few centuries of ever-solidifying praxis, improvisation ceased to be a feature of the liturgy — and this, for obvious reasons.

Christianity is a religion with deeply conservative instincts: we are holding on to what has been given to us once for all in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the depositum fidei. A devout bishop who celebrated the Eucharist would arrive at satisfactory ways of speaking to which the people became habituated [1], and his successor, drawn from within his own clergy, would naturally wish to follow in his footsteps and model his liturgical prayer after that of his father in Christ. As Michael Davies observes, when a community had a holy bishop who was accustomed to praying in certain ways, his successor would have had every reason to imitate him, and the people every right to expect that continuity. Otherwise, how would the ancient sacramentaries, with their carefully-formulated orations, have ever developed?

The eloquent and polished prayers we find in the oldest extant liturgical books did not suddenly drop down from heaven; they are the faithful reflection of the actual practice of Catholic communities gathered around their God-fearing bishops. In this way it was normal, one could say inevitable, that fixed anaphoras, readings, collects, antiphons, etc., would develop and stabilize over time. Thus, it should come as no surprise to find, no later than the seventh century and possibly as early as the fifth, a complete cycle of propers for the Roman Rite. Gennadius of Massilia (5th cent.) says of St. Paulinus of Nola, “Fecit et sacramentarium et hymnarium – he made both a sacramentary and a hymnal” (De viris illustribus, XLVIII). There is an account in Gregory of Tours of a bishop who had everything memorized, and when the book was removed (maliciously) he was able to do everything by memory.

In short, improvisation has not been a characteristic of the liturgy for 1,500 years. The evidence we have points to the relatively rapid development of fixed forms.

It is, moreover, absurd to think that the Holy Spirit did not intend this state of affairs as a positive good, or that the Church erred in remaining a jealous guardian of the spelled-out content of liturgical books. It would be no less ridiculous to assert that the same Spirit, after having willed such a state of affairs for 1,500 years, would suddenly will its dissolution, dilution, or replacement. So much for improvisation—or optionitis, which might be called a soft version of improvisation. [2] 

A key principle in liturgy is “the principle of stability.” The early Church was in a divinely-willed state of formation, and had wider and freer powers precisely because she was in an embryonic condition, growing rapidly and establishing her institutions under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. [3] The same Spirit guides her gently and gradually into set forms, which are the fairest flowers of those early developments. He prunes what is less worthy and nourishes what is more worthy. We should therefore expect, as time goes on, that the liturgy will become more and more solid, definite, fixed, and perfected. It will be handed down increasingly as a family inheritance, an approved profession of the Church’s one faith.

We see the same kind of development in the dogmatic debates of the early councils, with their ever more precise creeds that cut off all heretical depravity. We do not have the “freedom” to go back to the looseness and ambiguity of the early centuries, although modernists seem to wish they could do so. [4] Catholics have the immense blessing and privilege of carrying more refined and more precise formulas on our lips. Those who live after an Ecumenical Council — any of the councils except the last one, that is — are at a decisive advantage compared with those who lived before it, since they can now profess their faith in the Lord and confess His holy Name using a more perfect expression of the truth, and with less danger of lapsing into error about the highest, best, and most difficult things.

The development of the liturgy in this respect is much like the development of languages. Yes, a language such as French or German or English is ever developing, but it is much more the same than different from decade to decade and even, as time goes on, century to century. English as we write it today is much the same as that which was written 300 years ago; any literate person can pick up Samuel Johnson and read him without much difficulty (perhaps looking up a word here or there).

Yet a notable difference obtains between “hieratic” languages — those that, having attained a certain richness or fullness of development, were then taken over into religious practice as sacral tongues — and vernacular languages. The hieratic languages — e.g., Hebrew, ancient Greek, ecclesiastical Latin, Church Slavonic — are, as regards their use in divine worship, unchanging and unchangeable. They do not need to develop any more, since they are perfect at expressing what their respective liturgies need them to express. Only if revelation were to change would the language conveying it need to change. A hieratic language becomes an external sign of the internal stability, consistency, and timelessness of the religious truths conveyed through it. It does not deviate to the left or to the right in its unerring delivery of the message. Its linguistic completeness not only participates in divine attributes but helps bring about our participation in these attributes. In this way, a sacred language has a sacramental function.

A vernacular language, on the other hand, is intended to be the medium of daily discourse, the supple tool of life in the world, which is rife with change. The vernacular will never be done changing, reflecting the hustle and bustle of the people who use it. It is just this mutability and instability that explain why the religious instincts of all peoples have enshrined their highest forms of worship and doctrine in hieratic or classical languages. The vernacular is for this world of change, of Heracleitian flux; the hieratic is for the eternal world that always abides, like Parmenidean Being, and penetrates through the veil of this world in the form of dogma and doxology.

Think of the Eastern Christian liturgies, which are extremely conservative (at least where modern liturgists have not defaced them). The priest might add a personal intention during the litanies, but the fixed prayers are exactly that: fixed, finalized, admitting of no improvement. It would be a species of sacrilege to tamper with these glorious prayers. That, too, was the attitude of the Latin Church towards the pillars of the liturgy: the antiphons, the readings, the offertory, the Canon, the calendar, the use of certain psalms at certain times of the day or in certain seasons. We might augment, extrapolate, enhance, ornament, and even occasionally prune the dense growth, but in no sense did we throw off what earlier generations held to be sacred and great.

Hence, the essential response to the objection with which this essay opens — “Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised?” — is at once simple and profound: we are not in the same position as the early Christians. They had the first contact with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; they had the guidance of the Apostles and their immediate successors; they had to develop for themselves a liturgy out of Jewish precedents and apostolic oral tradition. It was a unique situation. Tollite vobiscum verba: “take with you words” (Ember Friday of September). The need to design or write a liturgy is, on the one hand, a sign of imperfection, because it belongs to a phase of institutional immaturity.

On the other hand, because of how central the liturgy is and will be for all future generations until the end of time, the writing of liturgy requires a special charism of the Holy Spirit — a profound spiritual maturity, discernment, and inspiration on the part of anyone who would dare to write liturgical texts or chants. It follows that already elaborated liturgical rites possess an inherent sanctity and nobility that will not and cannot be surpassed by later generations. [5] Since, as time went on, such rites had become more stable, refined, explicit, and expressive of their sacred content, Christians received them accordingly with reverence, as gifts handed down from their forebears. This process of development — which is at the same time a process of explicitation and solidification — must be held to be a work of the Holy Spirit, as Pope Pius XII reminded the Church in Mediator Dei. [6]

After 1,500 or 2,000 years of development, the situation is not and could never be the same for us as it was for the early Christians in the decades and centuries immediately after Christ. The reformers’ argument from antiquity is invalid from the word “go.” Nor has this argument the wherewithal to be taken seriously. Henry Sire demonstrates in Phoenix from the Ashes that the twentieth-century reformers invoked antiquity as an excuse for their modernist agenda, since as a matter of fact (1) they did not restore much that was ancient; (2) they abolished many things that were known to be ancient; (3) and they invented much that was utterly novel. How such people, whose motley work is clear for all to see, can expect us to credit their affected motives is quite beyond me.

The main argument of the postconciliar reformers, expressed in countless pamphlets and publications, boils down to this: “We are now celebrating the Mass as the early Christians did, and dropping away all the ‘accretions’ that accumulated like soot over time and obscured the original purity of worship.” But there are three devastating flaws to this argument.

1. We don’t really know what the early Christians did, and evidence from cultural history suggests that it was probably quite elaborate, rather than the contrary.

2. Many arguments based on antiquity have subsequently been shown to be false, such as the main argument in favor of Mass facing the people (St. Peter’s basilica).

3. Most importantly, Pius XII taught in Mediator Dei that we must believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages and that the developments that occur are part of God’s plan. So the development of “medieval liturgy” and “Baroque liturgy” are, if not in every detail, at least in the main, providential. To cast them away and try to return to a questionably reconstructed “primitive church model” is not only to exalt mere hypotheticals over real facts, it is an assertion that the Holy Spirit guides the Church less and less as time goes on, and that we must strip away what each age has added in order to return to the purity of the origins. This is liberal Protestantism, this is higher criticism, this is Modernism. All of it is condemned by the Church.

NOTES

[1] Funnily enough, we see this even today, among well-practiced Protestant preachers when they are offering public prayers, for which they have developed their own vocabulary and formulas. The result is not random but carefully channeled, almost predictable. I have seen the same thing in the Catholic Church. For example, in a certain diocese, almost every “spontaneous” prayer I have heard begins: “Good and gracious God…” I don’t know who originated this alliterative phrase, but it reproduces itself successfully in the wild.

[2] An objection might be raised: Are there not aspects of the old liturgy that are also up to the celebrant’s discretion? And should you not argue against them, as well? The truth is that the realm of choice in the old liturgy is extremely narrow, and is always a choice between fully articulated elements. In some commons, there is a choice between two epistles or Gospels. On a solemn day, a priest may choose to wear gold instead of a different liturgical color. He may choose to sing the most solemn Preface tone rather than the more solemn tone. If his missal has the Gallican prefaces, the rubrics allow him to use them on specified days. But notice how small a range of choice is allowed, and how its components are already fully spelled out — the priest invents nothing. There is no putative right to extemporize; and the most essential elements, such as the Canon, can never be altered. The holiest thing is beyond the realm of choice; it is a given. The Byzantine liturgy is the same: which of the anaphoras is to be used is dictated to the priest by the calendar, not left up to his pastoral discretion.

[3] One may consider what Charles Cardinal Journet said about the difference between the apostolic period and the succeeding ages, and apply it analogously to the early age of worship in contrast with later ages of worship.

[4] Pope Francis, for instance, preaches with such sloppiness that one would think none of the Ecumenical Councils had ever occurred, nor any of the Church Fathers had preached.

[5] John Henry Newman recognized this fact as well.

[6] To question, therefore, the inherited forms in the radical way they were questioned in the 1960s was nothing less than a sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin for which Our Lord says there is no forgiveness.

The Catholicity of Common Worship: A 1948 Letter by a Convert from Communism

Douglas Hyde (1911-1996)

As a kind of follow-up to my post this past Monday, I would like to share a passage sent to me by Leo Darroch, author of Una Voce: The History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003 (reviewed here by Dr Joseph Shaw). It is from a book entitled I Believed by Douglas Hyde, detailing his conversion from Communism to the Catholic Faith. On pp. 249–50, he gives an account of a letter he wrote to The Catholic Herald in January 1948 reflecting on his experience listening to Midnight Mass broadcast on the radio — and this was before he officially converted. Images of the pages are below; here is the text of the letter.

“Sir, — May I, as one who is not yet even an accepted convert but merely feeling his way towards Catholicism from communism, say how useful and timely I feel the new Encyclical Mediator Dei, to be at this precise moment.
         “The divisions of our post-war world are all too apparent; the lack of any sort of political stability in the world situation weighs heavily on men’s hearts and minds. The generation which came to manhood between the wars — my generation — pagan though it was, grew up in the belief that some sort of universal harmony and lasting peace was possible, that men need not remain divided. We looked to the new organisations to achieve this for us — some to the League of Nations, some to world communism. But the League has been dead, murdered, for eight years. No one has the same hopes of the United Nations or, if they ever had, bitter reality has long since brought disillusionment. The Communist International, far from uniting the human race, is splitting it both horizontally and vertically. Its values, which once seemed so fundamental, so stable and immutable, we find in this hour of communism victorious may be changed overnight to meet a new situation.
         “At 11.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve I was twiddling the knob of my radio. Unable to get out to Midnight Mass I wanted at least to bring it to my fireside. And as I switched from one Europeain station to the next I tuned in to one Midnight Mass after the other. Belgium, France, Germany, Eire, yes, even behind the Iron Curtain, Prague. It seemed as though the whole of what was once Christendom was celebrating what is potentially the most unifying event in man’s history. And the important thing was it was the same Mass. I am a newcomer to the Mass but I was able to recognise its continuity as I went from station to station, for it was in one common language. This aspect of Catholicism is but a single one, and, maybe, not the most important. But I have a strong feeling that it is precisely the Catholicism of the Catholic Church which may prove the greatest attraction, and will meet the greatest need, for my disillusioned generation.”
         It was signed: “A Newcomer.”

J. Kirk Richards: Sacred Art in the Naturalistic Style

One heartening trend today is the growing number of young artists who are rejecting the ethos of our mainstream art schools, and choosing instead to learn to draw and paint in the classical naturalistic styles. We have moved from a situation 50 years ago in which there was barely anywhere still teaching traditional methods, to one today where there are many. In US cities today there are dozens - perhaps hundreds - of small independent ateliers offering training in what is called the academic method, which originated in the art academies of the High Renaissance period.

For Christians who are interested in contributing to an improvement in sacred art, the ability to draw and paint naturalistically with great skill is not enough. Christians must strike a balance between naturalism and idealism. They must modify naturalistic appearances by partial abstraction to reveal invisible truths. The Baroque masters, for example, used stylistic elements with great skill to suggest that a person has a soul, or that the beauty of creation points to a Creator.

Pope Pius XII summed up the necessary balance of naturalism and idealism in his 1947 encyclical, Mediator Dei (195). He uses the words “realism” and “symbolism” to denote what I refer to as naturalism and idealism, respectively.

Recent works of art which lend themselves to the materials of modern composition, should not be universally despised and rejected through prejudice. Modern art should be given free scope in the due and reverent service of the church and the sacred rites, provided that they preserve a correct balance between styles tending neither to extreme realism nor to excessive “symbolism,” and that the needs of the Christian community are taken into consideration rather than the particular taste or talent of the individual artist. Thus modern art will be able to join its voice to that wonderful choir of praise to which have contributed, in honor of the Catholic faith, the greatest artists throughout the centuries. 

It is not an easy task for artists to do this, even assuming they have the necessary drawing and painting skill. The tendency of those who try is to make the art too naturalistic on the one hand - which lacks a sense of the sacred; or to make it too abstract on the other - which creates bad expressionistic art.

Here is the approach to striking that balance taken by one contemporary art called J. Kirk Richards (h/t to reader Kathryn Cardenas, who is a highly skilled artist herself, for bringing his work to my notice).

First, here are examples of mundane art by the artist. His style in these reminds me of the work of Gustav Klimpt of the Vienna Successionist school from the turn of the last century.

Here are examples of his sacred art.

The Resurrection

The woman at the well

The commissioning of the women

The Nativity

Suffer the Children

Interestingly, Kirk is a Mormon. I do not know anything about the tradition of art in the Church of Latter-Day Saints and so cannot say if this is typical. Certainly, I think that Catholics should consider, at least, his approach. I am not suggesting necessarily that you adopt an identical form of idealization (I happen to like it very much), but I would say that you need some coherent departure from natural appearances if you are serious about creating sacred art for the Church today. 

The Continual Spectre of False Antiquarianism

Excavating Roman ruins in London

A friend of mine once wrote to me about a forum on the Eucharist that he attended at a well-known Catholic institute, taught by a teacher who, though talented, said a few things that were, at best, misleading. They illustrated well the sort of half-truths that people occasionally use to justify a kneejerk preference for a liturgical form that, if only they were to research it better, they would come to see as the fruit of Enlightenment rationalism, the fulfillment of the ideals of the Synod of Pistoia, and not authentically Roman, or even Catholic for that matter.

Here were three points made by this teacher:

1. The Emmaus story prefigures the Novus Ordo Mass because Jesus broke open the Scriptures (“Liturgy of the Word”) and then broke bread (“Liturgy of the Eucharist”).

2. Origen’s commentary on Exodus 35, 4–5 shows that people received Communion in the hand at the inception of the Church: “How carefully and respectfully you receive the Lord’s body when it is distributed to you, for fear even a crumb might fall and a little part of this consecrated treasure might be lost. You would even blame yourself — and rightfully so — if a fragment were lost through your negligence.”

3. St Justin Martyr’s First Apology describes a Mass far closer to the Novus Ordo than to the traditional Latin Mass. Even the term “president” is found there, as the term “presider” is found in the context of the Novus Ordo. Thus, the Novus Ordo is a return to the “true” Mass of early Catholics.

Note that there is a common thread running through all of these points: “false antiquarianism,” as Pius XII called it. This appeal to antiquity is always selective: the reformers pick the early elements that fit with their modernist agenda, and effortlessly discard the rest — even things that are equally ancient or more ancient, such as the ad orientem stance.

In other words, there is a modern filter that determines what antiquity means and what makes an ancient element acceptable to moderns. In this way, all such “recoveries” are inherently and unavoidably modern rather than ancient. Thus, antiquarianism is doomed to collapse into the self-referential modernism that picks and chooses items still deemed “relevant” out of the indifferent mass of ateleological matter into which the Church’s past has been converted by modern philosophy. Nothing is valued simply on account of its being handed down; it is valued because it is wanted by a reformer according to his own lights and for his own purposes, be they good or ill. It could almost be turned into a motto for an organization called Planned Prayerhood: “No rite an unwanted rite.”

For example, the reformers liked Communion in the hand because it suited their anti-medieval, anti-scholastic, anti-metaphysical, anti-Tridentine mentality, dressed in the fancy clothing of ressourcement. But when it came to Septuagesimatide, which is from the 6th century and even older than Ash Wednesday, they just chucked it out the window. One can cite dozens of such examples. There are, however, patently good reasons why the liturgy of the Church developed as it did over the centuries — when, for example, a period of preparation for Lent was introduced, or when it was experienced as safer and more reverent to give Communion on the tongue to kneeling faithful.

The modernist agenda is thus very clever in how it appeals to the ancient practice while conveniently forgetting (or denying?) that the Church’s worship is perfected over time, under the guidance of Divine Providence. In spite of his own unfortunate dabbling with liturgical reform, it seems that Pius XII saw this truth and underlined it in the 1947 encyclical letter Mediator Dei, in three paragraphs that should have been engraved on the wall of the Consilium’s headquarters:

62. Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feastdays, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer’s body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.
          63. Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church [a reference to the Council of Trent], under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas [of antiquity]. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by the disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation. 
          64. This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the “deposit of faith” committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father for their souls’ salvation.

Notice how many of the things that Pius XII singled out for condemnation ended up being done, to the letter, by Captain Bugnini and his novelty-mongering crew. (In my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, I go into all these things in more detail, especially in the chapter contrasting the original liturgical movement with what it devolved into.)

Let us consider briefly, then, the three points made by the teacher that were mentioned at the top of this article.

Ad 1. The division of the Mass into the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful is far more ancient than the division between Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist. This latter division hails from the Protestants. Sure, you can get it out of Emmaus, just as you can get Luther out of Romans or Calvin out of Augustine. But it’s not traditional and it’s not Catholic.

Ad 2. Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s book Dominus Est is the definitive refutation of the idea that the early Church did “just what we’re doing now” with Communion in the hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, the ancient way was more careful, more devout, and more solemn. Second, the numbers of faithful were far smaller. Third, the reason the Church moved to Communion on the tongue for kneeling recipients is the very piety one finds in the Fathers of the Church. Take the attitude you find in St. Cyril of Jerusalem and compound it by several centuries of meditation, adoration, and experience, and you will end up with the medieval custom. (It should hardly need to be said that the Byzantine manner of distributing communion, in spite of superficial differences, has far more in common with the traditional Roman way than it has with the contemporary Romish way.)

Ad 3. Yes, the primitive liturgy described by St. Justin sounds a bit like the Novus Ordo. That’s because there had not yet occurred 1,800 years of natural and supernatural development to enrich the solemn official worship of the Church, especially after this worship had become legal and public. St. Justin must be rolling over in his grave to see people depriving themselves and Our Lord of due reverence and beauty in order to simulate the fiction of a primitive liturgy.

The redactors of the Novus Ordo used selective (and, as we now know, often erroneous) scholarship on early Catholic practices as an incentive and a justification for creating their own novel product, which, in its totality as in its particular constellation of details, bears little resemblance to any actually existing liturgical rite whose complete form we know, such as the Latin rites and uses at the end of the first millennium, or the Roman Rite from the middle of the second millennium. Or rather, it bears the same resemblance as a teddy bear to a black bear: they both have the same shape, they both have eyes, ears, nose, a mouth, and four paws, they are both furry. But one is large, heavy, alive, and hungry, while the other is small, lightweight, lifeless, and stuffed.

To return to our point of departure, the well-intentioned but ill-informed teacher who presented this half-information to his Catholic audience was doing them a disservice by implying that the Novus Ordo is somehow more in continuity with the ancient Church than the developed Latin liturgical tradition. In so doing he inadvertently made himself a “useful idiot” running interference for the modernists who carried out the liturgical reform with a hatred of the traditional Catholic faith, and who removed every so-called “medieval or Baroque accretion” they could get away with removing. The result is the stripped-down Bauhaus liturgy that will haunt the reputation of Paul VI until the end of the ages.

In order to cover the new rite’s nakedness, people inclined to “Reform of the Reform” add as many “smells and bells” as they can think of or get away with. But there is no amount of Latin that will change what the prayers say (and do not say); there is no amount of chant that will change the damaged structure of the propers, the lectionary, and the calendar; there is no mountain of incense that will mask the sharp smell of the electric dynamo, the spirit behind the reform. ROTR is a huge band-aid placed over a gaping wound that refuses to heal. It refuses to heal because rupture with tradition cannot be blessed by God. Many people will be saved in spite of it, but it can never be a good thing in itself.

Why, then, do Catholics still adhere to the ROTR when they could (in many cases) so easily move over to the TLM? When, let us say, a parish run by the Fraternity or the Institute is just across town, or even down the road, or where a parish priest has added the usus antiquior to the Sunday schedule? Why settle for the Citroën or Renault when you could have the Jaguar or Rolls Royce? Why is it that those without special training or academic credentials can often see the rightness of the old ways and the emptiness of the new, while those who should be leading their brethren by precept and example turn out to be hoodwinked and benighted?

I believe there is a moral reason and a cognitive reason.

They do not see it because they do not want to see it. This is the moral dimension. It stems from a false ultramontanism, whereby Paul VI or any pope can do no wrong, and from a fear that if the liturgy he promulgated turns out to be flawed, it will somehow call into question the indefectibility of the Church — which it certainly does not. It also stems from a fear of personal instability: if the new liturgy is seriously defective, that may mean the new theology and pastoral approach introduced by Vatican II is worthy of critique (as indeed it is). And that would require an interior spiritual and intellectual reorientation that many are unwilling to entertain, let alone execute — although Pope Francis has been making this reorientation tempting and even irresistible, for which we can be grateful to him.

They do not see it because they have not tried to see it. This is the cognitive or perceptual dimension. One has to let the traditional liturgy wash over one’s body and soul like waves at the ocean, patiently getting to know it, adjusting to its gentle rhythm, before its secrets fully reveal themselves. Those who discover these secrets are proving once again the efficacy of the prayer of Our Lord: “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones” (Mt 11:25).

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press.

What the Difference in Disagreements Can Teach Us

In the world of the usus antiquior, we find certain disagreements. Here are some examples:

• whether orchestral Masses (e.g., Mozart’s) should be performed, or whether they run contrary to the spirit of the liturgy;
• whether to follow exactly the Solesmes rhythmic markings or to incorporate the findings of chant paleography;
• whether the people should sing the Mass Ordinary together with the choir;
• whether a Gothic chasuble is better, worse, or equal to, a Roman fiddleback;
• whether to remove the chasuble before preaching, or only the maniple;
• whether buckled shoes are worth reviving or may be considered an affectation;
• whether this much lace is too much lace.

Such disagreements, I think all would agree, are about relatively minor matters, in the grand scheme of things. At their fiercest, such disputes might be compared to boxing or wrestling; at their mildest, to chess or culinary tastes. Everyone agrees about the essentials: the Mass is a true and proper sacrifice; the universal tradition of ad orientem worship and the Western tradition of the Latin language are ever to be retained; the Ordinary and Propers of the Mass are always to be recited or sung, and if sung, normatively in Gregorian chant; the Roman Canon is the heart of our central act of worship, and like the heart’s beating, it takes place in silence, hidden within; the sanctuary, which represents the holy of holies and the court of heaven gained by Christ the High Priest, is off limits to all but ordained ministers and the men or boys who are deputed to substitute for them; the awesome mystery of the Holy Eucharist is to be received kneeling, on the tongue, in an attitude of utmost humility and adoration, from hands specially anointed for the purpose of consecrating, carrying, and giving the Lord.

We might compare such differences as there are to the performance of a stately piece of Baroque music, where musicians ornament the music in various ways, but according to the conventions of the period and the indications of the figured bass. Two performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or Handel’s Messiah may vary in many details, but it is still obviously the same music, with the same words, in the same order, and with largely the same impact.

In the world of the Novus Ordo, we also find disagreements—indeed, quite a number of them. Here are examples:

• whether the Mass is primarily to be understood and enacted as a sacrifice or as a meal;
• whether the language used should be the age-old Latin, a “sacral” vernacular, or a contemporary vernacular;
• whether traditional sacred music should be employed a lot, a little, or never, with modern popular styles in its place;
• whether the priest in accord with bimillenial tradition should offer the Mass facing eastwards, or rather facing the people;
• whether the priest should pray the only traditional Roman anaphora, the Roman Canon, or choose another one from the menu;
• whether Mass should be recognizably the same throughout the world or radically inculturated;
• whether women should serve in as many liturgical ministries as possible, or the tradition of men only in the sanctuary should be retained;
• whether lay people should handle the true Body and Blood of Christ, or whether, in keeping with the entire Catholic tradition, only bishops, priests, and deacons should do so;
• whether this sacrosanct, august Mystery of the Flesh and Blood of God should be placed on the tongues of kneeling faithful, or into the hands of people standing in line.

It is not difficult to see that the number, nature, and magnitude of disagreements in this realm vastly exceed those found in the traditional realm. These disagreements, let us be honest about it, are more like warfare between countries. The sides are embedded in their trenches; they fire away with belligerence and take no hostages. Indeed, if someone in 1950 had been given a list of the disputed points above, he would have reasonably assumed that it was an accurate statement of disagreements separating Catholics from Protestants, or believers from modernists.

This monumental contrast between the two worlds should give us pause and prompt serious reflection. How does this welter of deep disagreements across the board about the lex orandi of Paul VI (and, therefore, inevitably, about the lex credendi of the People of God) square with the consistent teaching and practice of Paul VI’s namesake?

The Apostle Paul placed much emphasis on unity, not only in matters of doctrine but also in matters of practice, where he urged conformity with tradition: “The things which you have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, these do ye, and the God of peace shall be with you” (Phil 4:9). “We charge you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us” (2 Thes 3:6). “Fulfill ye my joy, that you may be of one mind, having the same charity, being of one accord, agreeing in sentiment” (Phil 2:2). “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment [in eodem sensu, et in eadem sententia]” (1 Cor 1:10). Or, in the words of St. John: “Remember then what you received and heard; keep that, and repent” (Rev 3:3).

Which of the two worlds we have discussed better embodies the apostolic advice to receive the tradition gratefully and wholly, and thereby be at peace; to withdraw from the disorderly who walk not according to tradition; to have one mind, in one accord speaking the same thing, walking by the same judgments?

The same teaching is consistently given from the early Fathers through the Middle Ages down to the modern period. The Council of Trent says much the same:

This holy Synod with true fatherly affection admonishes, exhorts, begs, and beseeches, through the bowels of the mercy of our God, that all and each of those who bear the Christian name would now at length agree and be of one mind in this sign of unity, in this bond of charity, in this symbol of concord; and that mindful of the so great majesty, and the so exceeding love of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave His own beloved soul as the price of our salvation, and gave us His own flesh to eat, they would believe and venerate these sacred mysteries of His body and blood with such constancy and firmness of faith, with such devotion of soul, with such piety and worship as to be able frequently to receive that supersubstantial bread... (Session XIII, ch. 8)

In the culminating lines of Pope Pius XII’s famous encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei—which makes for eye-opening reading, as one sees how brazenly the teaching on almost every page has been contradicted by the course of events—the pontiff declares:

May God, whom we worship, and who is “not the God of dissension but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33) graciously grant to us all that during our earthly exile we may with one mind and one heart participate in the sacred liturgy which is, as it were, a preparation and a token of that heavenly liturgy in which we hope one day to sing together with the most glorious Mother of God and our most loving Mother, “To Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction and honor, and glory and power for ever and ever” (Apoc. 5:13). (Mediator Dei, n. 209)

This is from 1947, one year before Annibale Bugnini, joining the Vatican’s commission for liturgical reform, began his slow ambitious climb to prominence and ultimate hegemony over the Hamletesque Montini.

A reader once wrote to me:

People wedded to the new liturgy have narratives and they become invested in them, especially as they get older. To concede the superiority of the traditional liturgy would mean having to rethink more aspects of that narrative than they are ready to do, especially as it would involve admitting to being wrong for a long time about things of great importance. It is a shame, because the traditional Roman Rite is fully the heritage of every Catholic, yet so few avail themselves of it. 

When all is said and done, the only narrative that can make sense for a Catholic is continuity with his own heritage, with stronger allegiance to that which has been of longer use. Received forms and practices have intrinsic value, according to the mind of Christ and the Church; they enjoy the privilege of seniority, settled reception, and proven efficacy. So, while one might be wrong in one’s “take” on this or that aspect of one’s heritage (the disputed questions listed at the top of this article), one will never be mistaken in principle for adhering to tradition. Whereas the moment one abandons this compass, one is in a ship afloat at sea, with no established route and no guarantee of arrival, confined with passengers who are confused, restive, and strongly at odds about what to do next. I prefer being a passenger on the ship that knows whence it comes and whither it goes, and has all the means for a safe and speedy journey—with the guarantee of fraternal harmony and amicable differences along the way.

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 3)

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series made use of the profound teaching of Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei to help articulate how everything we do and make for the liturgy, especially music, must be in full accord with its inherent nature and qualities, if we expect God to be pleased with what we offer and our own sanctification to result.

Today I will complete the series with reflections on three paragraphs from the same encyclical that focus on the interior attitude of the worshiping Christian.

81. It is quite true that Christ is a priest; but He is a priest not for Himself but for us, when in the name of the whole human race He offers our prayers and religious homage to the eternal Father; He is also a victim for us, since He substitutes Himself for sinful man. Now the exhortation of the Apostle, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” requires that all Christians should possess, as far as is humanly possible, the same dispositions as those which the divine Redeemer had when He offered Himself in sacrifice: that is to say, they should, in a humble attitude of mind, pay adoration, honor, praise, and thanksgiving to the supreme majesty of God. Moreover, it means that they must assume to some extent the character of a victim, that they deny themselves as the Gospel commands, that freely and of their own accord they do penance and that each detests and satisfies for his sins. It means, in a word, that we must all undergo with Christ a mystical death on the cross so that we can apply to ourselves the words of St. Paul, “With Christ I am nailed to the cross” (Gal 2:19).

The emphasis on Christ as Priest and Victim can no longer exactly be called popular today, and yet it sums up simply and effectively how Our Lord saved mankind by a sanguinary redemption that purchased for us forgiveness of every sin, eternal life, and the ourpouring of the Holy Spirit, which brings with it all the means necessary to be holy in this world. In short, we owe everything we are and everything we do as Christians to Christ’s perfect oblation on the Cross. The Mass was given to us precisely to place us in mind of, in the presence of, and in real contact with this saving mystery of love. Our mystical participation in it is the wellspring of our life and the pattern to which we are conformed.

If our experience of the Mass and its “externals” seems to say to us little or nothing of the “religious homage” offered to the eternal Father by Jesus Christ, the high priest of our confession and victim for our sins; if it does not cultivate in us explicit acts of “adoration, honor, praise, and thanksgiving to the supreme majesty of God” (including the very consciousness of His majesty!); if it does not lead us ever deeper into the sacrificial death of Christ so that we understand ourselves to be, and desire ourselves to be, victims with him in a “mystical death on the cross”—then one might well wonder whether it is serving its supernatural purpose at all. For sure, the mystery is still present if the consecration is valid; but are we present to the mystery? Has the liturgy, have the texts, ceremonies, music, and other elements, made us present to the Lord, Priest and Victim, as they are meant to do?

100. …While we stand before the altar, then, it is our duty so to transform our hearts, that every trace of sin may be completely blotted out, while whatever promotes supernatural life through Christ may be zealously fostered and strengthened even to the extent that, in union with the immaculate Victim, we become a victim acceptable to the eternal Father.

The liturgy is supposed to develop our “supernatural life through Christ,” which has its root in our interior life. The “interior man,” the “new Adam,” needs to be cultivated—his existence is caused by baptism, certainly, and he receives new powers at confirmation, but his growth and maturation cannot be taken for granted and will not happen automatically. The old Adam will take over again and reign supreme if we do not take seriously “the duty to transform our hearts” until we become “a victim acceptable to the eternal Father.” The liturgy itself ought to be such as will cultivate our interiority, our inner life, our genuine awareness and desire for spiritual goods, for the heavenly fatherland. I am reminded of a passage in Veritatis Splendor (n. 7), where, speaking of the search for the meaning of life, John Paul II observes: “This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion.”

A richly filled and ordered space for “quiet searching and interior prompting”: this is what the traditional Roman liturgy provided and still provides with a special abundance. The music of our worship, too, should promote this intimate searching for God, the fundamental motivation of the inner man, in a way that is perhaps initially disquieting as it displaces us from our worldly assumptions and expectations.

101. In fact, the prescriptions of the sacred liturgy aim, by every means at their disposal, at helping the Church to bring about this most holy purpose in the most suitable manner possible. This is the object not only of readings, homilies and other sermons given by priests, as also the whole cycle of mysteries which are proposed for our commemoration in the course of the year, but it is also the purpose of vestments, of sacred rites and their external splendor. All these things aim at “enhancing the majesty of this great Sacrifice, and raising the minds of the faithful by means of these visible signs of religion and piety to the contemplation of the sublime truths contained in this sacrifice” (Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 5).

A failure to “raise the minds of the faithful . . . to the contemplation of the sublime truths contained in this sacrifice” is not just an incidental problem or marginal mistake; it is something close to a total liturgical disaster, a failure to prepare the faithful to take part worthily in the Lord’s sacrifice and to approach communion with the proper dispositions. It is therefore a failure to build up the Body of Christ in such a way that the Mass will actually benefit the particular members of the Church ex opere operantis, by their very acts of “adoration, honor, praise, and thanksgiving to the supreme majesty of God.” In short, it saps the strength, disturbs the order, and hinders the mission of the Church Militant.

The attitude, the dispositions, the state of mind and heart of the Christian worshiper as described by Pope Pius XII imply a significant responsibility on the part of clergy and church musicians to practice the liturgy in such a way that these goods can be genuinely fostered in the Church. May we do our part, be it big or little, as cleric, religious, or layman, to put into practice the vocation of adoring love to which Our Lord has summoned us.

(Stained glass window: photo courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.)

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 2)

Last week I offered some thoughts and questions on how we might evaluate liturgical music (and other aspects of our public worship) by considering the fact that, as Pope Pius XII taught, “the entire liturgy . . . has the Catholic faith for its content” and that this content includes, as one of its most precious components, the mystery of the awesome sacrifice of Calvary made present in the Most Holy Eucharist.

Let us continue to take up the teaching of Pius XII’s Meditator Dei as a way of reflecting on what music is most suitable for such a humbling and exalted honor in our Christian life as our assistance at and participation in this divine sacrifice.

188. Three characteristics of which Our predecessor Pius X spoke should adorn all liturgical services: sacredness, which abhors any profane influence; nobility, which true and genuine arts should serve and foster; and universality, which, while safeguarding local and legitimate custom, reveals the catholic unity of the Church.

We must admit it: when reading these words of Pius XII, it is as if we are looking at another world, not just another decade or era. When is the last time you have met someone who is concerned to “abhor any profane influence”? Catholics today so readily compromise their faith, morals, and worship by prostituting themselves to the latest fashion that it seems they are rather more eager to embrace the profane in all of its vanity than to reject it for the poison it is. Far from abhorring the profane, they court it, embrace it, and submit to it, making what ought to be a badge of shame into the boast of a new identity and mission. Indeed, a popular (though largely tendentious) interpretation of Vatican II has presented it as the moment when the Church finally welcomed the world into her bosom and discarded, once and for all, the ascetical divide between sacred and secular: there was to be no such thing as sacred liturgy, because all the world is our new liturgy, all of it is blessed by God, and the Church has only to listen, learn, and adapt herself to man in order to bring Christ to him.

And when is the last time you have heard “nobility” put forward as the general description of the aim of human arts and skills, when these are brought into the service of God? Nobility—the pursuit of the utmost excellence, tasteful beauty, integrated virtue—should be the single word that captures the essence of the Catholic attitude and mentality, the single word that should sum up the tone of seminary education in catechetics, homiletics, dogmatics, morals, and, above all, liturgy. It is, unfortunately, hard to resist the impression that the cult of the ugly, the compromise of the ignoble, and the toleration of the casual and the slipshod are instead the prevailing traits.

Last but not least, is there universality still left, when the ever-malleable and evolving popular inculturated liturgy, burdened by the disease of optionitis, makes every community one visits a new sociological experiment as to the meaning of ‘Catholic’ in this or that town, diocese, or country? As a friend recently pointed out to me, many Catholics have no assurance of either universality or stability: even if their parish has done the liturgy nobly and beautifully for many years, the whole thing can be undone overnight by the next cleric in charge—and, regrettably, almost all of the unwanted changes, deformations, reductions, cancellations, modifications, and novelties can be justified in the name of some permission or other. Let us be clear about this: outside the tranquil world of the usus antiquior and those few communities fortunate enough to enjoy its exclusive use, there is simply no universality, and but little stability, for Catholics of the Roman Rite.

80. It is, therefore, desirable, Venerable Brethren, that all the faithful should be aware that to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice is their chief duty and supreme dignity, and that not in an inert and negligent fashion, giving way to distractions and day-dreaming, but with such earnestness and concentration that they may be united as closely as possible with the High Priest, according to the Apostle, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). And together with Him and through Him let them make their oblation, and in union with Him let them offer up themselves.

Magnificent words! The “chief duty and supreme dignity” of the Christian is “to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.” It is not social work; it is not evangelization or catechesis or education; it is not political activism; it is not breaking down barriers of prejudice; it is not the defense of human rights. Our dignity consists above all in worshiping the true God at His holy altar—and making of ourselves an oblation that is pleasing to Him by attaching ourselves devoutly to the supreme offering of Jesus Christ the High Priest. If this is not what we are thinking and intending to do during Mass, we have missed the entire point of the liturgy. We are doing violence to it, abusing it, making it serve our own ends rather than serving its inherent end.

When it comes to music, in particular, we see how often the Mass is sorely abused, inasmuch as a worldly style of music not only permits but encourages “distractions and day-dreaming” that take us far away from the “earnestness and concentration” with which we should be consciously uniting ourselves with the High Priest and saving Victim. Just pondering these words of Pope Pius XII will make us realize how many times the Mass is violently derailed from its very purpose and made to serve a human agenda that is ultimately inert and negligible.

No wonder—as many fine priests and bishops have begun openly to admit—no wonder the New Evangelization is looking so wimpy and tending, so far, to be so fruitless. We are spending a lot of our time talking among ourselves about how to make Christianity appealing, attractive, relevant, meaningful, etc., and are neglecting the single most important thing that we are called to do as Christians: worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, receiving from Him, through our Catholic Tradition, the sacred, noble, universal, and stable forms by which we are to order ourselves and the whole of creation back to their primal font and glorious end. Whenever and wherever Catholics have committed themselves wholeheartedly to this program, and for its own sake, because God is worthy of it, the propagation of the Gospel has taken place quietly, irresistibly, with a joy that is not of this world.

(Top photo courtesy of LMS Chairman; bottom photo, Sisters of Life.)

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 1)

The most common argument I’ve heard over the years for why we should allow Christian “pop” music in Church is the consequentialist or utilitarian argument: “Look how well it works. It gets people to Mass and keeps the youth involved.” Interestingly, I’ve never heard a Catholic try to defend the folksy or pop-style music on purely artistic or liturgical grounds, and only rarely have I seen Protestants try to do that. The baseline for the entire discussion seems to be a rough-and-ready pragmatism.

The problem with this argument is twofold. First, even on a practical level, it’s not really true, or very unevenly so. The total number of Catholics attending Mass is in steady decline and has been for decades, especially in the category of young people. The music we have cobbled together after the Council just doesn’t seem to be so appealing, broadly speaking, as to turn the tide. It seems to put off as many people as the number it may appeal to, if not far more.

Second and more importantly, a popular style of music, complete with guitars and pianos and that distinctive rock-ballad or easy listening feel, is not at all compatible with the Church’s understanding of the Mass as a true and proper sacrifice offered to God. Let’s admit (for the sake of argument) that we could pack a building full of people by using that kind of music. Would this music be able to convey to the worshipers what the Mass actually is, how they should be disposed to it, and how they should think of what they are doing? Or would it subtly or openly inculcate a different doctrine that would eventually result in heterodoxy?

There’s a lot that can be said and has been said about these matters, but it seems to me that one helpful approach is to ponder certain passages of Pope Pius XII’s great encyclical on the sacred liturgy, Mediator Dei, which was a major source for the authors of the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, and to use its insights to illuminate the issues at hand, which are not issues peculiar to our time but ones that arise in every age where secular music has invaded the sanctuary. I will offer the quotations and, after each, make some comments.

47. The entire liturgy, therefore, has the Catholic faith for its content, inasmuch as it bears public witness to the faith of the Church.

Note well: the entire liturgy has the Catholic faith for its content. This entirety, then, includes the music of the liturgy, in both its words and its strictly musical attributes. Pope Pius XII is saying that the texts, melodies, rhythms, all of these should bear public witness to the Church’s faith. It comes as no surprise that Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, Vatican II, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI pointed to Gregorian chant and polyphony as pinnacles of this public witness, and underlined the need for new compositions to imitate the spirit of these exemplars.

68. The august sacrifice of the altar, then, is no mere empty commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, but a true and proper act of sacrifice, whereby the High Priest by an unbloody immolation offers Himself a most acceptable victim to the Eternal Father, as He did upon the cross. “It is one and the same victim; the same person now offers it by the ministry of His priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner of offering alone being different” (Council of Trent).

The Mass is not a social gathering with a humanitarian aim, it is not even a symbolic drama in which we play-act the death of Jesus. It is a true and proper sacrifice, the unbloody re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s once-for-all immolation on the Cross is made present and active for us sinners, who would otherwise be lost forever. He comes to be present in this awe-filled, world-changing, life-shaking, heaven-rending sacrifice. For our part, do we appreciate what is happening on the altar? Do our actions, attitudes, responses, artistic expressions, accurately convey our interior awareness of this great mystery, before which we should fall in total self-abnegation, profound humility, trembling adoration? Or does the music (for example) lead us to feel, think, and act as if this mystery and miracle wasn’t happening?

152. While the sacred liturgy calls to mind the mysteries of Jesus Christ, it strives to make all believers take their part in them so that the divine Head of the mystical Body may live in all the members with the fullness of His holiness. Let the souls of Christians be like altars on each one of which a different phase of the sacrifice, offered by the High Priest, comes to life again, as it were: pains and tears which wipe away and expiate sin; supplication to God which pierces heaven; dedication and even immolation of oneself made promptly, generously and earnestly; and, finally, that intimate union by which we commit ourselves and all we have to God, in whom we find our rest. “The perfection of religion is to imitate whom you adore” (St. Augustine).

Does our music convey that we are falling down in worship before the all-holy Lord, the God of heaven and earth—the serving of whom leads to eternal life, the offending of whom leads to eternal death? And is this God truly an aweful mystery for us, in our midst, or has He been domesticated into a kind of friendly atmosphere within which our self-referential ceremonies take place? Are the souls of the people like altars of immolation? Is the unspeakably pure and demanding holiness of God the dominant note of what we are doing and singing?

Of Considerable Interest on the Benedictine Front

Gregory DiPippo has reminded us today, on St. Benedict's "second" feast, of the primacy that the Father of Western Monasticism and Co-Patron of Europe placed on the OPUS DEI, understood as the solemn public celebration of the sacred liturgy. Today, then, seems a fitting time to mention two important sets of articles that take St. Benedict or the Benedictine tradition as their point of departure, but develop ideas that are deeply relevant to all of us who love the Church's liturgy.

The Benedictine-Jesuit Controversy

First, Dom Mark Kirby recently published a series of posts on Vultus Christi about the grand debate, in the first half of the 20th century, between the Benedictines and the Jesuits—more particularly, Dom Lambert Beauduin and Dom Maurice Festugière on the one side, R.P. Jean-Jacques Navatel and R.P. Louis Peeters on the other—concerning whether the formal liturgy of the Church or personal meditation should be seen as having primacy in the Christian life of prayer. Dom Mark's four posts are a brilliant summary of and commentary on the debate, all the way down to the intervention made by Pius XII in his encyclical Mediator Dei of 1947, and really bring home the contemporary (almost frighteningly contemporary) relevance of this debate to the situation today. Highly, highly recommended.

Part 1: The Liturgy: Foremost and Indispensable

Part 2: Until Christ Be Formed in Us

Part 3: More on the Benedictine-Jesuit Conundrum

Part 4: Nowhere Else as in the Liturgy


The Spirituality of the Traditional Monastic Office

The redoubtable Benedictine Kate Edwards—who runs three blogs, one for lectio divina of the Gospels, another for the careful study of the Psalms, and still another dedicated to the ancient Benedictine monastic office!—has inaugurated a series of articles that will explore "the liturgical genius of St. Benedict's office." In the first post, for today's feast, she writes:

Most modern commentators on St Benedict's Office have struggled to find any systematic thematic or programmatic intent in St Benedict's psalm selections beyond a few allusions to the morning or light at Lauds.
          Certainly the Rule itself provides only a few rather oblique clues as to the factors that shaped St Benedict's Office, and don't go to the reasons for selecting this or that psalm for a particular hour or day. Nonetheless, in this series of posts on the liturgical genius of St Benedict, I will argue that in fact the Benedictine Office reflects a very deliberate theological and spiritual program indeed, one that links together the seven days of creation with seven 'days' that set before us the life of Christ: seven days, in short, of the new creation. It is, in my view, a structure that builds into each day and hour key themes and ideas for us to meditate on. And it is a program that is closely integrated with the spirituality of St Benedict's Rule more generally.

To all Benedictines out there who are reading this—priests, monks, oblates—I wish you a happy feastday! And to everyone else: let us worthily honor this great saint and patriarch, making our own this verse from today's hymn Iste Confessor:

          Whence we in chorus gladly do him honor,
          Chanting his praises with devout affection,
          That in his merits we may have a portion,
          Now and forever.