We conclude our translation of P. Bernward Deneke FSSP's Pro Missa Tridentina lecture. Part 1 | Part 2. - PAK
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Where the altars are no longer inhabited by the truth and Christian rites are no longer inspired by it, error and falsehood are imminent. Renouncing the truth has a corrosive effect. The symbolic, i.e. the composite, falls apart, degenerating into the diabolical.
Against this background, here are some remarks that concern more the personal religious life of individual Catholics than the situation of the Church. For although in circles of true believers one usually honors the truth, takes its moral implications (the good) seriously, and by no means considers the aesthetic side (the beautiful) to be of secondary importance, it can still happen here that the various areas become disconnected.
Thus, among conservative Christians, morality sometimes degenerates into a barren or even toxic moralism, robbed of its foundation in the truth of faith. It poses a greater danger to genuine morality as a whole than does open immorality. While the latter openly declares itself to be against the norms of morality and thus reveals itself as their enemy, moralism presents itself in the name of morality, but distorts it in a caricatural, sometimes downright malicious way, and thus brings it into disrepute.
The opposite danger is the separation of the true from the good and the beautiful, which becomes an end in itself. Not infrequently, the faith is present, but not strong enough to have a concrete effect on the way of life. From this point of view, for example, the liturgical celebration of this faith is either appreciated only from a taste point of view or, on the contrary, considered to be of low rank. Because the bond that should hold together truth, goodness and beauty is weakening, considerable tensions arise in the life of such a person, even to the point of inner contradiction.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Everyman, who is beset by death, is an extreme example of the power of holding on to faith without it shaping one's life. Everyman already has one foot in hell and is desperately looking for salvation. Faith in the form of a personification approaches him and says, “You have laughed at me all your life / And thought God's word was nothing worth, / Now in your hour of death / Is there another word coming out of your mouth?”
Everyman's “I believe – I believe” stammering is answered by Faith with the remark: “That's poor talk!” Whereupon Everyman begins to apologize: “Oh, that God has mercy on me! / I believe the Twelve Articles with diligence, / Which I know from my childhood: / What they represent entirely, / I accept as sacred and true.” But according to James 2:26, faith without works is dead, like a body without a soul. So Everyman is told about the first divine virtue: “Faith is a poor part. / Don't build any bridges over to the other side. / Don't you know better?”[1]
True faith, as the Council of Trent teaches, is fundamentum et radix omnis iustifications, “foundation and root of all justification” (Decree De iustificatione, chap. 8, DH 1532), of every supernatural, salvific life. But this foundation must actually bear something, allow the root to grow out of the juices and forces it draws from the earth; otherwise it is a matter of a fides non formata caritate, a faith that is not formed by active love and therefore remains ineffective.
For this reason, I am partly, but not entirely, in agreement with Nicolás Gómez Dávila, who is always worth reading, when he, as always with a sharp pen against the trends of the time, presents the provocative aphorism: “The corpulent and horny canon who believes in God is more indisputably Christian than the strict and careworn pastor who believes in man.”[2]
Dávila is right in that faith in God is a basic requirement for being a Christian and that a humanistic “belief in man” can never replace it. However, does not gluttony and lust in their own way also challenge the indisputability of this faith? At least according to Catholic teaching, faith is only salvific if it is connected with the divine virtue of love – and that means: with the will to live according to God's commandments.
Incidentally, the following incident shows how the traditional liturgy, as it were, sends out strong signals in the area of moral life. Many years ago, I met a gentleman who, having grown up Catholic, not only distanced himself from the Church during his student days, but also openly opposed it. In the left-wing circles in which he moved, this was taken for granted. Until one day, during a protest action against a church dignitary, he was awakened as if from a deep sleep and then quickly changed sides.
In short, he reconnected with his abandoned homeland, attended church services, and even went to communion despite not having gone to confession since his childhood. The conditions for receiving the body of the Lord were not mentioned anywhere, and there was nothing to indicate that he should receive another sacrament in his condition.
Until he happened to attend a Holy Mass according to the old rite, which was unknown to him until then. Fascinated, he followed the events. And when the moment of Holy Communion arrived, he remained in the pew with the intention of confessing first. Why? Not because the priest had given any indication in his sermon. Rather, it was because the whole liturgy, but especially the approach to Communion and the manner of receiving it, said to him: You are not worthy for the Lord to come under your roof; first he must speak the word of absolution, and so your soul shall be healed.
6. Veritatis Splendor
Those who prefer the traditional liturgy often sense a specific danger among the faithful: aestheticism, that is, the independence of that realm which is described with qualities such as “beautiful,” “sublime,” and “glamorous.” What can be said in response to the accusation of aestheticism?
First of all, it should be noted that an aesthetic view of the liturgy is entirely appropriate. As public worship of the visible Church, it is essentially sensual and thus falls within the αἴσθησις, perception. Its form, its structure, the atmosphere of its sacredness, the transparency of its rites and symbols in terms of their spiritual content, their sublimity – all this is, of course, the subject of aesthetic contemplation.
In this way, the traditional liturgy, whether in the rich unfolding of a pontifical mass or in the simple celebration of a requiem, will prove to be truly beautiful. For, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, beauty is that which delights the eye because it possesses perfection (perfectio), proportion and inner harmony (proportio, consonantia), as well as a certain splendor (claritas) (S.Th. I 39,8).
Who would claim that this does not apply (or should not apply!) to the Church's liturgical heritage? Her cult is indeed the perfect expression of the purest worship of God, harmonious in its inner and outer form and – as outsiders have often testified – radiant. In contemplating the liturgy, as St. Thomas again describes it as a peculiarity of the experience of beauty, human desire comes to a fulfilled rest in a knowing way (S.Th. I-II 27,1 ad 3).
This consideration of the liturgy from an aesthetic point of view must now be clearly distinguished from aestheticism, i.e. its reduction to the aesthetic sphere. To look at it in this way is forbidden by the liturgy itself. Its statements about the necessity of true faith and about the required right life are far too explicit for someone who sincerely engages with it to stop at its perceptible form.
Thus, the Credo is one of the essential components of Sunday and festival masses. The early church name for it is symbolon, meaning a “combination” of fundamental mysteries that represent pars pro toto the entire treasury of the church and are thus a mark of recognition of the true Christian. Furthermore, the liturgical prayers often ask for fidei firmitas, the “firmness of faith” (cf. the prayer of the Trinity Sunday).
Accordingly, the liturgy has faith as a prerequisite and also as an aim. It is, in the words of Klaus Gamber, “dogma celebrated.” As such, it emerges from the mysterium fidei and leads into it. To paraphrase an important remark by St. Clement of Alexandria about understanding the Old Testament (Strom. VII 17), one can say: Without right faith, the appropriate key is missing for understanding the act of worship; for with a bent or incomplete exemplar, lacking the appropriate "teeth," the lock of the sacred vault cannot be opened to access the treasures stored within.
Ultimately, the beauty of the liturgy is grounded in its truth. Beauty is veritatis splendor, the splendor of truth. According to Martin Heidegger, it is “the fate of the essence of truth, whereby truth means: the disclosure of that which hides itself”.[3] It would be better to say that not truth, but beauty is the “disclosure of that which hides itself”. In beauty, the mysterious truth is made luminously manifest, and this is particularly the case in the liturgy.
7. Conclusion
Truth is therefore the keynote of the Catholic faith, life and worship. The truth that reveals itself to us in the Christian mysteries of the triune God, of creation, incarnation and redemption, of the church, of sanctification and perfection. The truth that radiates into Christian activity, into the simple and heroic works of love, into the heart of individuals and into human communities. The truth that makes itself perceptible in acts of worship, in personal and especially liturgical prayers in their dignity, in their conciseness and abundance, their humility and solemnity, their inner abundance and outer splendor.
Without truth, morality becomes a moralistic system or a matter of mere sentiment; worship becomes a hollow, gutted externality, a mirage and, unfortunately, all too often a stage for human self-promotion. Through, with, and in truth, however, the various spheres find their place in the overall order.
That is why it is essential for the survival of Christianity to rediscover the keynote of the triad and to emphasize it, especially today. Even if the fifth or the third, the moral or the aesthetic aspect of our catholicity, is at times at the top or bottom of the chord and perhaps drowns out the main note, the whole must still be tuned to this, the truth. This becomes evident in the following encounter with the traditional liturgy of the Mass, which concludes these remarks.
In my youth, when I myself began to discover the rich heritage of Catholic tradition, I met a student who had found his way to the faith in an amazing way. At his university, a lecture was given by Max Thürkauf, a professor of technical chemistry in Basel who died in 1993 and was a convinced Catholic. With scepticism, yet also a certain fascination, the still unbelieving listener followed the lecture.
He was deeply touched by a poem that Thürkauf quoted at the end, the Adoro te devote latens Deitas, that hymn-like prayer to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, which in all probability was written by St. Thomas Aquinas and which in German reads: “Gottheit tief verborgen, betend nah ich Dir” (O Deity, deeply hidden, I adore You devoutly).[4] Although he was not at all familiar with the Church's Eucharistic beliefs, the student requested the text and guarded it like a treasure. He memorized the verses, even though he was not yet able to understand them. He began to search for what the Adoro te evoked, but he was unable to find it during his visits to various churches.
One day, he happened upon a service that was so very different from those he had previously experienced. It was held in the Latin language of worship and was pervaded by silence, reverence, and adoration. When the priest lifted up the consecrated host during this Holy Mass according to the traditional rite, the words came to the student's mind: Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas.
He had arrived where beauty bears witness to truth and love proclaims it. Here he did not experience a vague sense of the numinous, but recognized the One who is truth Himself. And so he was able to intone the triad with which the Holy Mass concludes, the triad of beauty of glory, goodness of grace, and the keynote of truth: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” plenum gratiae et veritatis (John 1:14).
NOTES
[1] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Jedermann. Das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes. In Dramen (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 10–71; here, 61.
[2] Nicolás Gómez Dávila: Einsamkeiten. Glossen und Text in einem. Trans. Günther Rudolf Sigl (Vienna, 1987), 88.
[3] Martin Heidegger, Was heißt Denken? (Tübingen, 1971), 8.
[4] Ed. note: see also Dominus vobiscum no. 25, p. 22-36 [in German], available online here.
