TLM Pilgrimages in France and the Holy Land with Dr. Kwasniewski

Over the years, I’ve noticed a happy development, and it seems to me to confirm the general trend pointed out by countless observers, namely, that where Catholicism still remains, it is becoming more traditional, or at least more tradition-friendly. Thus, it used to be the case that it was nearly impossible to find a group pilgrimage to the famous religious sites, be it Lourdes or Fatima, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, or what have you, that also featured the daily celebration of the traditional Roman Rite. But today, if you look at companies like St. Charles Catholic Pilgrimages or Syversen Touring, you will quickly find several options with chaplains who will offer only the old rite.
Without prejudice to any of the other wonderful trips taking place, I wanted to alert NLM readers to a couple of unique opportunities coming up in 2027, because of their unusual combination of traditional liturgy, theology, and sacred music.

O Beauty Ever Ancient, Ever New: French Gothic Cathedrals with Sacred Music From September 29 to October 9, 2027, I will be co-leading a pilgrimage to sacred sites in France that offers a rare immersion in the Church’s tradition. We will contemplate the theological vision embodied in Gothic architecture (including the cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Beauvais, Amiens, and Rouen), and venerate relics and holy sites (Mont St. Michel, St. Denis, Sainte Chapelle, Miraculous Medal chapel, the Carmel of Lisieux and Les Buissonnets, the site of St. Joan of Arc’s martyrdom). I will be offering commentary as the trip proceeds, in addition to casual conversations with each of the participants. Daily High Mass will be offered by our chaplain, Canon Jean-Baptiste Commins, ICKSP, with a choir singing Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony that I will direct for every Mass. The kind of music we’ll be singing:

Formed by the Church’s liturgy and the legacy of French Catholic culture, we will seek to draw closer to Christ in His mysteries. Ends with a Seine River cruise.

***N.B.: there’s a $300 per person Early Booking Discount for deposits received before 9/29/2026 and a $200 per person Check Discount for those paying the remaining balance by check after the initial deposit. For more information, visit the pilgrimage page.

The Holy Land: An 11-Day REGINA Insider’s Pilgrimage

Those who are looking for a traditional Catholic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, look no further. On this Regina/St. Charles trip, taking place November 29 to December 9, 2027, we will have daily Latin Mass with a wonderful priest, Fr. Pablo Santa Maria—and we will sing whenever we can, whether inside or outside of churches, utilizing special Masses and chants for the Holy Land. Our tour manager will be the incomparable John Paul Sonnen of Liturgical Arts Journal, one of the most widely-traveled and culturally knowledgeable Catholics you will ever meet in your life. Our local guide will be Amer Shehadeh, revered for his experience, lore, and connections. And I will be offering theological and liturgical commentary, as well as being available for conversations over meals or on walks. A rare opportunity and still a few spots open. For details, see this page.

Fr. Santa Maria and I on an earlier pilgrimage

Giving a short talk on the bus

Fr. Santa Maria offering Holy Mass

Eyewitness Accounts of Liturgical Life Before and After the Council

In his second memoir, Traddy Daddy: Memories and Thoughts of the Father of a Catholic Family, Joseph Bevan regales us again, as he did before in Two Families, with story after story of English life before, during, and after the Second Vatican Council. I think personal testimonies like these are worth their weight in gold, particularly as fewer and fewer people are left who can pass on the tales of what things were like back then.

Indeed, I have noticed a disconcerting tendency among younger generations nowadays to deny or downplay how good things were in the 1950s in many places, and how bad things really were in the 1960s and thereafter. The partial restorations of tradition under John Paul II and Benedict XVI have, to some extent, been projected backwards so as to create the illusion of a mild squall rather than a tempestuous storm. Memoirs are a partial but crucial way to overcome such biases. (See “Not ‘the Silly Season’ but ‘the Satanic Season’” for more on this point.)

There’s also a lot of rich detail in this book about the history of the Society of St. Pius X, obviously of considerable interest given this summer’s events.

(The remainder of this post is direct quotation from Bevan’s Traddy Daddy.)

Solemn Pontifical Mass in Westminster Cathedral, ca. 1950

1966: Westminster Cathedral Choir School

The priest mutters his way through the Latin prayers during early morning Mass as we boys kneel in adoration in the dusty half-light of the crypt under Westminster Cathedral. The celebrant stands at the altar with his back to us as he performs the work of a master craftsman, and he whispers the prayers. I look up during the elevation of the host and watch the fishes in the mosaic depicted on the arch above the altar, as I have done hundreds of times before. There is Our Lord walking on the water and there’s the ship containing the apostles who are scared by the storm. Fish abound in the picture, and I try to count them. Having had nothing to eat I often feel faint at the priest’s recitation of the Agnus Dei, during which he bends slightly and taps his chest three times. Why I do so at that particular time of the Mass I have no idea and today I pass out momentarily.

Sister Immaculata frogmarches me out of the crypt and sends me on a trot around the car park outside. I find that attending Mass on a completely empty stomach is a bit of a trial, but, as it is Sunday, we do get a decent breakfast afterwards. Nevertheless, I am struck by the dual simplicity and dignity of the ceremony, with the priest in sparkling gold vestments on Saints’ days. To my young brain, the whole ceremony is rich with deep meaning which is beyond my comprehension, and represents the magnificence of the supreme orderliness which is the Catholic Church. Everything is in its place and the whole organisation reminds me of an ancient clock which ticks away over the centuries and never loses a beat. During the hush of the consecration of the host, I hear the low mumbling and tinkling bells of other Masses which are going on in the various crypt chapels. There is also the distant rumble of traffic in Victoria Street….

Every Sunday we wear our smartest uniforms as we file into the cathedral for High Mass and take our places in the front two rows facing the grand altar. The interior of the church is constructed out of miniature red bricks, reminding me of Legos and, for a little boy of my size, it’s vast. I cannot see the roof as it soars up above my head shrouded in darkness. Above the high altar is a decorative baldacchino which, to me, is as big as a railway bridge, and hanging over the sanctuary a massive crucifix keeps sentinel over the proceedings. The organ is growling in the background as the church begins to fill up.

Some people kneel whilst reciting their rosaries and knots of people cluster around the votive candle stations as they light candles and kneel in prayer. No one is talking and all I can hear is the shuffling of many feet and the creaking of chairs as they quietly take their places with the organ playing in the background. Sister Immaculata fusses over us like a mother hen and ensures that we have our missals open at the correct page. My own Mass book contains a section at the end of the service called “post communion” and I have concluded that it is for when the priest posts off holy communion to people who have been unable to attend. (1-3)

My favourite service in the cathedral is Sunday Vespers. Again, we probationers occupy the front two rows and follow the service in our missals. The psalms at Vespers move me to tears sometimes; even as a boy of eight my sensitivity is acute, and I am transported by the sight of five priests in gold copes among the clouds of incense. During the incensing, while the altar is prepared for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the organist plays thunderously and it is this part of the ceremony that I look forward to most of all, for the organist is Nicholas Kynaston who, we are told, is internationally famous. (6)

Quite often Sister Immaculata takes us to the cathedral during the week to visit the Blessed Sacrament in a special chapel set aside for devotions. We follow the nun quietly through the echoing cathedral where we see people praying, strolling around, or lighting votive candles. The Blessed Sacrament chapel is off a side aisle to the left of the high altar and when we enter, we see many people kneeling down. Some are holding rosaries and whispering the prayers. The centre of devotional attention is the gold tabernacle on the altar, surrounded by lighted candles and flowers. I smell the sweet odour of the incense of past ceremonies, and the attendant hush is in striking contrast to the noisiness of the London traffic outside in Victoria Street. I have no difficulty in saying prayers as I am transported by the beauty of the chapel and the fervour of the people around me. My childlike approach to prayer, which has never left me, was formed during those wonderful visits to the cathedral.

One Wednesday afternoon we are milling around in the playground and Father Veal is walking around the perimeter of the lawn in the distance, buried in his breviary. All the priests I meet at the choir school, and there are lots of them, seem to have their daily lives dominated by this mysterious black prayer book which they always carry around with them. (7-8)

We have religious instruction lessons with Father Veal, and he first distributes to each of us a little red booklet called the Penny Catechism. Over the next few terms, he makes us learn the whole thing parrot fashion and we recite sections of it back to him together in a singsong chorus. There is a lot of discussion, which Father leads and encourages, and in doing so he displays his own deep love of the Catholic Faith, which is infectious. (10)
 

How things were before: Bevan's father as director of the Downside Abbey choir

Changes in the liturgy

Our parish church in Shepton Mallet is a converted hall and every Sunday it is full. There is a choir gallery which our family inhabits so as to sing the Mass, and Pa plays the organ for us. We sing Gregorian chant and a few simple motets.

I detect trouble ahead as something Pa calls “Vatican Two” is casting a shadow over everything religious. Attending Mass, after the experience of Westminster in term time, comes as a surprise but I am thoroughly entertained by the upheavals.

Father Ryan is now facing us, having put in place a table which he uses as an altar. He is given to interrupting the service every so often to emit what Pa calls “sermonettes.” Worst of all, we are forced to join in with the server in a rather wordy and tedious translation of the Latin Mass. Jokes abound with the cack-handed words, such as, “mindful of our Saviour’s bidding, and for the prairie tortoise” (prayer he taught us).

Pa and my elder brothers, especially, are often angry after Mass. This is a massive alteration in our religious observance as respect for the parish priest, who is agitating for change, diminishes. I hear them mutter in annoyance when the priest gives an extra-long sermon about the “presidential chair,” whatever that is. The whole of Mass is, for me at least, an orgy of experimentation and I look forward to each Sunday in anticipation of new outrages.

Rather than being a servant of the liturgy, Father Ryan is behaving like a compère at a village dance, not resisting the odd joke or two either. Yet I am struck by the “do this or else” attitude of the priest, meaning that by taking our part in the changes we are being loyal subjects of the Holy Father. Nobody dares to object publicly, but privately people are either angry or mystified. Ma is convinced that the Pope has been kidnapped and is trussed up in a cellar in the Vatican. “Don’t worry,” she says, “he’ll restore things to what they were after he escapes.” This is how many people cling to hope.

St Michael's, Shepton Mallet

Changing church buildings

At about this time we abandon the old chapel of St Nicholas and take possession of our new gleaming concrete and glass building which is St Michael’s Church. As we enter the new building for the first time, I am immediately aware of that smell common to new buildings, it is the slightly sweet odour of floor polish. The altar is a slab of white bare stone and, unlike its predecessor at our last chapel, has no coverings. Also gone are the statues and the stations of the cross. The servers at Mass have abandoned their black cassocks and white cottas in favour of what look, to me at least, like long dresses which are coloured dark green.

With the new church comes a new parish priest, called Father Gerald Carrol, who has a string of drinkdriving convictions, so we are told. I am under the impression that Father Carrol is a “conservative” (the Catholic Church nowadays is reduced to political name-calling) and is resisting pressure from some of the more enlightened members of his congregation to get rid of our family choir which sings for him every Sunday. I can only describe the goings-on at the altar during Mass as chaotic. Father Carrol is often not particularly sober and keeps on breaking out into Latin. The servers bustle around like headless chickens and constantly trip up over their green dresses which are far too long for some or far too short for others. The master of ceremonies pushes and shoves to restore some kind of order. As I am at a delicate age, I find all this tremendous fun, but I catch the sighs, the groans and sharp intakes of breath from those around me.

During Mass of Low Sunday, we look up to see Father Carrol’s little white dog entering the church through the open vestry door and, neglecting to genuflect, waddling past the front row of pews, and then settling down in the corner by the little organ. Mass continues normally but during the hymn at the offertory the dog starts to howl, so a parishioner picks it up and returns it to the vestry. (11-13)
 

Chaos in 1969

1969 finds the Church in a maelstrom of chaos, upheaval, and experimentation. All Hallows, an unknown prep school in the middle of nowhere, is not immune to these revolutionary forces and Alistair Mortimer, our Headmaster, willingly carries the banner of progress. The school chapel, for example, a beautiful cruciform and ancient room with a remarkable reredos, is the first place to receive unwelcome attention from the reforming Headmaster. The altar is torn from its mountings and dragged out, leaving a space behind it from which the priest can face the congregation. The delicately carved wooden reredos is sold off, and a yellow curtain replaces it. The stations of the cross are removed along with the many statues of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and the saints. A public address system is installed which often either breaks down or emits loud crackles which are extremely offensive to the ear.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Reader Appeal: Origins of the Terminology “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful”?

If one looks at an old Roman hand missal, one will find the Mass divided into two parts, “the Mass of the Catechumens” and “the Mass of the Faithful.” Like most people, I had supposed this was an ancient division. However, Lynne C. Boughton, in her fascinating article “An Imagined Past: Initiation, Liturgical Secrecy, and ‘Mass of the Catechumens’” (Antiphon 25.2 [2021]: 161–210), believes that this terminology was invented rather later.

Boughton quotes a Catholic Encyclopedia article of 1908 in which the author, Thomas Scannell, writes: “Catechumens when present at Mass were not dismissed with the inquirers, but were detained while a special prayer was recited over them. They then also withdrew before the Mass of the Faithful began.” She suggests that the language became popularized through Dom Fernand Cabrol in the 1920s, based on Cabrol’s interpretation of the disciplina arcani:

Hand-missals provided for congregations into the early part of the twentieth century corresponded to altar missals in not indicating a “Mass of the Catechumens / Mass of the Faithful” distinction. But in 1921, a hand-missal edited by the liturgical movement specialist Fernand Cabrol contained labels that divided the Ordo missae into a “Mass of the Catechumens” and a “Mass of the Faithful.” Cabrol’s introduction to the hand-missal explains that the labels indicate that catechumens were “only allowed to assist at this first part of the Mass and were obliged to withdraw after the Gospel.” Although some hand-missals that were produced as late as 1950 did not insert labels that implied a division in the Ordo missae, the presence of such became standard in these books for the laity—but not in books for altar use—in the decade preceding the Second Vatican Council.

The remainder of her article then questions the historical assumptions on which the division was made. But my question is: When and where did this division originate? What are its origins?

A 1941 publication

Picking up volume 10 of Dom Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, the English version of which was first published in 1879, I see he writes on page 39:

The Priest and the people should now have their hearts ready: it is time to prepare the offering itself. And it is here that we come to the second part of the holy Mass; it is called the Oblation, and immediately follows that which was named the Mass of the Catechumens, on account of its being formerly the only part at which the candidates for Baptism had a right to be present.

Dom Guéranger speaks as if it’s a well-known fact, not something he’s daringly introducing. And this is over forty years earlier than Cabrol’s 1921 missal cited by Broughton.

So, my first question is: What is the earliest evidence any reader has come across for the Mass being divided explicitly into these two parts?

The plot thickens: I have noticed that Byzantine publications also divide the Divine Liturgy into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful,” and I am trying to figure out how far back that goes. One hypothesis would be that it was picked up from Western writers and applied to the Eastern rite, but it could also work the other way around.

I asked a biritual priest for his opinion and he replied:

“In Greek liturgical books, one distinction is ancient: ‘Pre-anaphora.’ But the evidence I can see points to the formal division of Byzantine service books under those exact headings being a later, imposed editorial convention, not a Byzantine manuscript habit. In the Greek tradition, older witnesses seem to prefer categories like proanaphora rather than ‘Liturgy of the Catechumens.’ In the Slavonic printed tradition (not my area of expertise) but discussed by Taft et al., explicit headings such as ‘Литургия оглашенных’ (Liturgy of the Catechumens) are attested at least by the 1617 Sluzhebnik, and continue in later editions (the interesting question here is whether or not Cabrol had access to French/Slavic versions of these books—from Russian emigres in post-Revolutionary France?). The formal division of Byzantine liturgical texts into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful” appears to be modern editorial imposition. That is to say: the rite historically had a ritual seam at the anaphora, but the titles themselves may be largely a modern scholarly fiction when projected backward.”

Now, if a book in Russian in 1617 has “Liturgy of the Catechumens,” then could Guéranger have gotten this term from the Slavic tradition and imposed it on the Roman Rite? Perhaps “Liturgy/Mass of the Faithful” was a later imposition, something invented for the sake of parallelism and a clear division?

As a provisional hypothesis, one might say that the source of calling the first part of the liturgy “catechumenal” is due to the litany of the catechumens terminating before they are thrown out of “the doors” by the subdeacons at Hagia Sophia, and thus, the second part becomes, by default, the liturgy “of the faithful.” St. Augustine complains at one point that there are too many catechumens to bless individually so he will bless them all at once, which indicates the origin of the oratio super populum. The litany of the catechumens ended in a common dismissal prior to the anaphora, as likely attested in North Africa, Rome, and Constantinople.

In any case, I would very much welcome input from readers on these questions.

The Incarnation, the Passion, and the Eucharist as Keys to Rightly Interpreting the Song of Songs

If you’ve ever read the Song of Songs (also called the Canticle of Canticles) in the Old Testament, you probably had more than a few questions about it! What is this very sensuous book about a lover and a beloved doing in the canon of Scripture? Are the modern biblical exegetes right when they say it’s just a loose collection of ancient Near Eastern erotic poetry that accidentally found its way into the Hebrew scriptures? Were the Jewish rabbis closer to the truth when they said it depicts the tender and tempestuous relationship between YHWH and Israel?

In his new book Wounded I Sing: The Song of Songs and the Incarnation of the Son of God, Dr. Timothy Kelly, a professor of theology at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria, argues that Christians are uniquely positioned to unlock the mysteries of this book, which opens its secrets more and more as we read it in and through the Heart of Christ.

When the Word became flesh, the transcendent God of love reached down into our mortal, passible nature to join it as a man joins his betrothed, and upon the Cross He accomplished a bodily-spiritual nuptial covenant with the Church and every baptized soul that He renews, day after day, in fleshly-and-spiritual Eucharistic communion.

What the Hebrews longed for as yet-to-be-attained in the Messianic age, the Christian receives as now accomplished in the sacrifice and sacrament of the Lord's Passion—yet this, in turn, is the foretaste and pledge of something far greater: the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb. The dynamism of eros that characterizes the Song reveals both the fiery love of the Divine Lover and the yearning of His beloved to be inseparably one, but in a manner that is incarnate, ecstatic, total, irrevocable, blissful beyond what mind can conceive or imagine.

This is the essence of the Christian life and no book in the entire Bible conveys it better. No wonder the Fathers and Doctors wrote more commentaries on the Song of Songs than on any other book. No wonder it entices and baffles us: it speaks to our deepest desire, and yet does so with all the enigmas of salvation history and of our pilgrimage under the invisible hand of Providence.

And we can be thankful to Dr. Kelly for synthesizing all of this—drawing especially on St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Matthas Scheeben—into a readable guide that opens one magnificent vista after another. An exemplary work of Thomistic synthesis, with the clarity of Garrigou-Lagrange and the eloquence of Pieper.

Readers of NLM will be particularly interested in Kelly's extensive discussion of the Passion narratives (pp. 63-96), which play so pivotal a part in the ancient Roman Rite's celebration of Holy Week (with all four being read between Palm Sunday and Good Friday); how Christ's spousal office is necessarily priestly, sacrificial, and nutritive of His bride, the Church and the Christian soul; and how baptism and the Holy Eucharist, in particular, are nuptial sacraments with analogous aspects of unity and fecundity (pp. 97-149).

Without necessarily intending to be an apologetics work for the Catholic Faith, in fact Kelly's argument shows that both the Old Testament as a whole and the Passion of Christ make no salvific sense if there is not an immediate physical-spiritual communion possible with the Son of God, and in that sense proves that the Protestant account of personal salvation (through faith, by Scripture, by grace alone, etc.) is in tension with the entire trend of salvation history and of the life of Christ.

The early readers of this manuscript—including some of the greatest living Catholic biblical scholars—loved it.

Scott Hahn, editor of the Ignatius Bible’s commentary on the Song of Songs, wrote: “Rarely will you see a book that brings biblical, dogmatic, and mystical theology together so artfully and lucidly as this remarkable and readable synthesis does. Timothy Kelly refreshingly resets the entire question of the Song’s literal and spiritual meanings.”

John S. Bergsma, who co-authored A Catholic Introduction to the Bible with Brant Pitre, and wrote a book called The Bible and Marriage, had this to say: “An exquisite contemporary reading of the book, which I hope will contribute to returning the Song to its rightful and central place within Catholic biblical theology.”

Stephen K. Ray, author of commentaries on Genesis and the Gospel of John, summed it up as “an illuminating guide to a sublime and mysterious book.”

Fr. John Saward, author of some of the finest theological works of recent decades, declared: “Writing with a poet’s sensitivity to language, Dr. Kelly shows us how the Nuptial Mystery of Christ and His Church, of which the Song of Songs speaks with the authority of divine and prophetic inspiration, stands at the very centre of the Catholic faith.”

To find out more or “look inside,” visit the publisher’s site or any Amazon site.

Here’s a short video introduction, including a reading of part of the text:

Interesting Liturgical Sights on a Recent Trip to Europe (2): Venice

Concluding the gallery I began last week, today I have a small number of photos to share from Venice (and one that was taken elsewhere, as will be noted in due course).

In the Franciscan church Santa Maria Gloriosa “dei Frari - of the Friars”, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the altar in the Blessed Sacrament chapel had been fitted out with a new and rather handsome icon of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

In a side chapel, a Preparatio ad Missam next to a kneeler; rather oddly situated, I thought, and it made me wonder if it was the original location for it.

Also in the Frari: the chapel where Claudio Monteverdi is buried in a remarkably humble tomb compared to every other one in the same church.

It had been 27 years or so since my last visit to the Basilica of San Marco, and I had forgotten just how exquisite the mosaics are. Absolutely stunning! Here are depicted the six days of creation and the fall.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Interesting Liturgical Sights on a Recent Trip to Europe (1): Vienna and Environs

In May, my daughter and I visited a few places in Austria and Italy, and while I wasn’t much of a shutterbug (I’m trying these days to leave my camera mostly unused), I’ll admit that I pulled it out whenever I saw something that I thought NLM readers might enjoy seeing. As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

The ceiling of the sacristy at Heiligenkreuz Abbey. Note how the tormentors of the three children in the fiery furnace are sporting turbans, a reminder that the Turks once ransacked this abbey.

For a place that’s supposed to help priests become recollected for Mass, the interplay between this priest and his server is rather funny!

The Pummerin of Stephansdom in Vienna, the third largest bell in Europe at 44,380 lbs or the weight of 15-20 cars; its metal is from 208 Turkish cannons melted down after the Siege of Vienna.

Our guide took us up to the perimeter of the Stephansdom roof to give us a close look at the tiles.

Here’s the huge room under the Stephansdom roof, above the vaulted nave of the church - it's almost the size of a church in itself.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

What Were the Rites “Older Than 200 Years” for Which Pius V Made Exception?

The following letter exchange is published here for the interest of NLM readers.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I found my way into saying the Traditional Latin Mass a year after my ordination in 2018. Saying the TLM has changed my life and drawn me closer into our Lord’s sacrifice. I have suggested your book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright and the documentary Mass of the Ages as resources to educate others about the significance of the TLM. The motu proprio Traditionis Custodes has certainly shown people’s true colors when it comes to the liturgical life of the Church.

In an interview you did with Cameron O’Hearn, you mentioned that there were liturgical rites older than 200 years that Quo Primum did not suppress, but that most of them died out over time. Do you have a list of these liturgical rites that were not suppressed by Quo Primum but which eventually dissolved anyway? Is there also a comprehensive list of liturgical rites that Quo Primum actually did effectively suppress because they were younger than the two-century span he posited?

I would also love to read any academic sources on this subject to educate others on what a liturgical rite actually is. Most people do not realize how many liturgical rites exist or have existed. My hope is that the Traditional Latin Mass will not have to compete for the title “Roman Rite” and will someday simply be acknowledged as the Roman Rite bequeathed to us from across the centuries. Indeed, I have pondered the idea of the Novus Ordo just dissolving over time, as apparently did some of these local liturgical rites, instead of a Pope someday strictly banning it. Most Catholics start scratching their heads when I suggest that the Novus Ordo is likely to lose its hold and dissolve over time, but I really believe this is true.

Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback

Dear Father,

You are one of many priests I know who have been so seized with “Eucharistic amazement” through the traditional Latin Mass that they seek to join a fully traditional society of apostolic life or religious order. You may have seen the article I wrote about a priest’s crisis of conscience; many are they who have experienced similar awakenings.

I’m not aware of a simple list of suppressed or defunct rites (or, in most cases, more accurately “uses”), but we can say that there were many in England alone that the Reformation tragically swept away. Sarum was only the most famous. Similarly, the Mozarabic rite was nearly extinguished throughout Spain, surviving eventually only in Toledo, so in a way it can be considered a rite that died away and would have disappeared had not Cardinal Cisneros personally intervened. The rites of Lyons and of Braga were once quite prominent yet barely survive today, with just a handful of clergy who know how to do them.

It would have been ideal had Pope Francis left alone the “Pax Benedictina” of the two “forms.” Yes, one can object to the coherence of the idea, but on the ground it was working as a modus operandi. The “market forces,” so to speak, would have slowly but surely increased the share of the TLM, and the NOM would eventually have peacefully given up the ghost—especially because younger clergy would keep nudging it closer and closer to the TLM until a smooth adoption of the old rite would, in fact, be the logical and pastorally appropriate step. But the late pope allowed himself to be persuaded (or maybe he really believed it) that an all-out war against the TLM was necessary to rid the Church of the last impediment to the glorious revolution marked by Vatican II and its (putative) reforms, and so, now, we will be in the trenches for a while, and the stakes will be higher. Somehow this too is in God’s plan.

I posed your question to another learned fellow, who wrote this interesting reply:

“Basically, every diocese in Latin Christendom had its own use, plus independent monasteries and monastic congregations, plus religious orders, plus some important collegiate churches. Look at the list of uses at Usuarium: it’s huge! Of course, often several dioceses would share the same use, differing only in patronal feasts, and some of the newer dioceses such as in Finland and the Baltic just copied the Dominican use (also adding patronal feasts), so one would have to determine what constitutes an independent “use” and by what standards one may differentiate between uses—a question that exercises many a fine mind. Another difficulty is that a large number of pre-Tridentine books have not survived the ravages of time, especially in smaller dioceses, so we have precious little information about how the liturgy was celebrated there. Generally, no diocese outside of Italy imported their books from Rome, prior to Quo Primum; smaller and poorer dioceses imported them from bigger neighboring dioceses, almost always the metropolitan See.

“To carry out the project, one would have to determine when and why each diocese adopted the Roman rite, and what it means concretely to adopt the Roman rite—as many French dioceses at least amended their books ad Romani formam or ex decreto concilii Tridentini without actually outright adopting the Breviarium Romanum. But at any rate, any diocese that was itself older than 200 years would have been free to keep its own use. St Pius V’s bull was probably aimed at novelties such as the Quiñones breviary and the Ferrari hymnal (both of which, nota bene, had received papal approbation from his predecessors!) rather than against any local use as such.

“The only scholar I know who has even attempted an overview of this transition to the Roman rite is Dom Guéranger in his Institutions liturgiques: he not only gives detailed information about the French dioceses but also discusses, in more general terms, dioceses in the rest of Christendom. (Happily, Os Justi Press has published the meatiest parts of Gueranger’s Liturgical Institutions.)

“Based on Guéranger’s research, I’d say one of the most important reasons many dioceses changed to the Roman rite was financial considerations; it was cheaper to buy the Tridentine books than to publish their own, although it is surprising how many non-French dioceses did not adopt the Roman books until as late as the 19th century, such as the city and region of Cologne. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that many dioceses and religious orders experienced pressure to adopt the Roman books, despite what St Pius V actually said. (The ‘Spirit of the Trent,’ if you will!)

“An attempt to list all the proper uses would therefore be almost impossible without a lot of research, and in any case it would end up being mostly a list of all the dioceses that existed in the late Middle Ages.

“A final note about the term ‘uses’: liturgical uses are probably comparable to languages, in the sense that before the erection of firm borders between European nation-states there were seldom strict boundaries between languages, but rather a continuum existed that makes it difficult to mark where exactly one language stops and another one begins. And like languages, there were several ‘dialects’ of what one might classify as a single liturgical use. But no one has yet ventured to identify and classify all the liturgical dialects of Latin Christendom.”

With my very best regards,
Dr. Kwasniewski

From a Sarum Rite Mass in Illinois, 2025, done with local episcopal permission

Dear Dr. K,

Your colleague has provided much insight about the defunct liturgical rites. I realize that finding a complete list of former rites would be difficult considering that Latin Christendom had many dioceses and religious orders. Taking a look at Dom Gueranger’s Institutions liturgiques should provide some insight into what content these former rites contained. I’m delighted to hear that a translation has finally been published. It sounds like a keeper for my liturgical library.

I do believe St. Pius V was correct in promulgating his bull Quo Primum, considering how many local rites or uses there were. The Protestant Revolution was wreaking havoc in Europe and there was a need to make sure the liturgy was teaching Catholics what the Church actually believed. Making possible the adoption of a unified way of worship was crucial for handing down the Faith in the midst of this religious revolution spreading across Europe. Studying the content of the defunct liturgical rites might give us insight into why certain parts of Europe were better able to, or more eager to, accept the Missal of St. Pius V than others. Did these rites already look similar to the TLM? Were there unworthy novelties that needed to be rooted out? Were certain regions able to adapt quicker than others?

The late Msgr. Klaus Gamber hints in his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background that the Novus Ordo essentially fosters a creation of multiple rites due to the vast amount of options in the missal: “As we all know, we now have an abundance of individual ‘rites,’ since so many priests now design their own liturgy, just as they please. In this environment, can we really talk about a unity of a liturgical rite?” (p. 95).

I believe that studying the vast number of defunct liturgical rites can teach us about how to promote the TLM amidst a myriad of local “rites” that the Novus Ordo has de facto created. The options of the Novus Ordo create multiple variations of the sacred liturgy that Catholics deal with on a regular basis; this, added to linguistic differences, yields a confusing and chaotic map. Perhaps studying how the TLM conquered (as it were) a plethora of local rites would yield strategies beneficial to us today.

Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback

(I must say, Father raises here a very interesting parallel I hadn’t thought of before: how today’s situation of plurality might be compared to that of the late medieval period, suggesting the desirability of a new imposition of the once and future Roman Rite. May God someday bestow this immense gift on us by the hands of a future St. Pius V!)

Britain’s Remarkable Monastic History, Told with Admiration, Humor, and Pathos

(This review was first posted at Rorate Caeli but is reprinted here for the benefit of NLM readers, who will also find much that is of liturgical interest in the book under review.)

Britain is full of monastic ghosts. Street names carry them: Monks Lane, Priory Road, Abbey Close. The landscape, too, still bears the imprint of communities that shaped it for a thousand years. The ruins of Fountains, Rievaulx, Tintern, and dozens of lesser houses stand in fields and valleys across England, Wales, and Scotland, drawing visitors who admire their picturesque qualities while knowing almost nothing of the civilization that produced them.

Joseph Kelly, in his new book Long Reign of Silence: A History of Monasticism in Britain (Cruachan Hill Press, 2026), has set out to remedy this ignorance, in what is surely one of the best popular histories of British monasticism ever written.

The scale of what has been lost and forgotten is remarkable. Kelly observes that almost nine hundred religious houses were targeted under Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, and that their combined population in the thirteenth century numbered some twenty thousand souls in England alone (out of a total population of well under three million). By any measure, British monasticism was a civilization within a civilization, and its disappearance was not simply a matter of institutional change but of a comprehensive cultural rupture.

Kelly argues, convincingly, that the subsequent neglect of monastic history has not been accidental. The powerful new property-owning class of the Reformation whose wealth depended directly on expropriated monastic land had strong reasons to discourage nostalgia, and the cultural legacy of their prejudice is still with us. (We can also sense, against this backdrop, why the Oxford Movement, and even more the revival of monasticism among Anglicans, ignited such fury in the Establishment.)

One of the book’s most interesting segments is its account of how monasticism first took root in Britain. Kelly begins in fourth-century Egypt with Anthony and Pachomius, the desert fathers whose radical withdrawal from the world gave the monastic movement its distinctive character: poverty, common life, manual labor, and ceaseless prayer. That impulse travelled west through Gaul, was received by figures like Ninian and Patrick, and then flowered with extraordinary intensity in Ireland, a land Rome had never touched but whose tribal social structure paradoxically made communal religious life feel native rather than foreign.

The result was a monasticism of vibrant originality, whose hermits and peregrini carried the Gospel across Britain and continental Europe with zeal. Kelly vividly describes beehive huts on Skellig Michael, huddled against the Atlantic, and the monastery-city of Kildare, where the treasures of kings were stored alongside the treasures of God, and readers begin to understand that what was dissolved in the sixteenth century was not a decayed institution but the living continuation of a tradition stretching back to the first Christian centuries.

For the traditional Catholic in particular, this phenomenon matters in a way that goes beyond historical curiosity. The Celtic and Benedictine monks of Britain inhabited a sacramental cosmos wherein prayer was not private therapy but the Church’s essential public work, offered on behalf of the whole of creation—and shaping it in turn. Their monasteries were, as Kelly suggests, the heartbeat of a civilization. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, what ceased was not merely a way of organizing property, but a way of interacting with reality itself. The consequences are well traced by other authors such as Sebastian Morello in his Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries.

The central chapters of Long Reign of Silence, concerning the Benedictine reform under King Edgar and the three monk-bishops who orchestrated it (Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald), deserve particular attention from readers interested in what authentic Catholic renewal actually looks like, especially when (N.B.) ecclesiastical culture is resistant.

By the early tenth century, monasticism in England had largely collapsed, its communities hollowed out by continuous Viking raids and dominated by married clergy who sang the Office and drew an income while ignoring the Rule. What followed was one of the most complete reversals in ecclesiastical history. The pious King Edgar, supported by his austere Bishop Æthelwold, instituted a thoroughgoing purge, expelling the unworthy and refounding house after house on strict Benedictine lines. The instrument of that reform was the Regularis Concordia, a document Æthelwold produced after convening the kingdom’s leading ecclesiastics at Winchester, mandating in precise detail how every monastery in the realm was to be governed.

Kelly tells this story with a novelist’s instinct for character: Dunstan, brilliant and combative, thrown bodily into the marsh by disgruntled monks and returning years later as their abbot; Æthelwold, who translated the Rule into English for the benefit of laypeople, and whose armed thanes arrived at Winchester to enforce compliance when persuasion failed; Oswald of Worcester, a descendant of Viking invaders who converted and became a champion of the civilization his ancestors had plundered. What makes this episode so interesting is that the reform succeeded not through accommodation to the surrounding culture but through an alignment of sacred and secular authority that is almost inconceivable today—together with a willingness to use “tough love” with gloves off, also quite foreign to our flaccid age.

(A few sample pages)

I’d particularly like to highlight the physical beauty of the book itself, which is a pleasure to hold and to read. The layout is clean and professional, and the more than sixty color illustrations—photographs of ruins, abbey churches, manuscript pages, beehive huts on Skellig Michael, the Book of Kells, and landscapes from Egypt to the Scottish Highlands—are reproduced with a clarity and care that genuinely enhances the text rather than merely decorating it. This is the kind of book you find yourself lingering over, turning back to an image to look again. Cruachan Hill Press and Joseph Kelly have produced a truly beautiful work that every traditional Catholic should own and read.

Long Reign of Silence has real virtues: narrative confidence, historical range, an accessibility that makes it suitable for any educated reader rather than Church history buffs alone. As a Brit from Oxfordshire, Kelly tells the story with a passion for the subject that only an English Catholic could bring. The endnotes are generous and point toward primary sources and scholarly literature with discernment.

Those with an interest in medieval history, in the roots of British culture, or simply in understanding what was lost when the monasteries fell will find much here to reward them. Anyone who has spent time in a functioning Benedictine monastery will recognize the life Kelly is describing, and will feel its absence in the landscape all the more acutely for having read this book. Perhaps, one might dare to hope that some of its readers will be among those whom God is calling to become monks or nuns, to help restore to the West its invisible heart, enclosed in visible walls.

Joseph Kelly’s Long Reign of Silence is available from Amazon. Alternatively, receive a 15% discount by pre-ordering at the Cruachan Hill webstore before the end of June.

Against Concelebration: The Remarkable Intervention of Archbishop Paul-Pierre Philippe OP at Vatican II

Bishops Yves Ramousse and Paul Tep Im concelebrate at Kep Benedictine Monastery in the 1970s (source)

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is to be thanked for recovering and publicizing, in his fine book The Catholic Mass: Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy, a particularly well-argued speech against concelebration that was given by Dominican archbishop during the Second Vatican Council’s debate on the liturgy.

Paul-Pierre Philippe was, it should be noted, no minor figure; later he was created a cardinal and made prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches.

I agree that the faculty of sacramental concelebration should be extended in the Latin Church to the Chrism Mass, on Thursday of the Lord’s Supper, as well as, for example, to the Mass celebrated by the bishop during the diocesan synod or on the occasion of a pastoral visit or spiritual exercises of diocesan priests, because in this way the union of the priests with the bishop in the one priesthood of Christ is manifested.
       This reason, however, is not valid for extending concelebration to the daily Conventual Mass of religious, which some Fathers have called for. For the union of many concelebrating priests comes about only as a consequence of the union of each priest with Christ the Priest, whose sacred person he represents at Mass. For the priest, as Pope Pius XII says in the encyclical Mediator Dei, “by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is made like to the High Priest and possesses the power of performing actions in virtue of Christ’s very person. Wherefore in his priestly activity he in a certain manner ‘lends his tongue and gives his hand’ to Christ” (AAS 1947:518). In fact, the action of Christ who sacrifices and offers himself through the sacramental action is manifested more expressively in the Mass celebrated by one priest than in a concelebrated Mass, and is better perceived both by the celebrant himself and by the faithful who see in this one priest “the image of Christ” the Priest (cf. ST III, Q. 83, art. 1, ad 3).
       Priestly spirituality is principally based on this doctrine and through it the Eucharistic devotion of priests is nourished. Now, however, if many priests habitually concelebrate, it is to be feared that they will gradually feel less like an “alterChristus” and that their Eucharistic piety will diminish. Religious who concelebrate daily may run into this danger in a particular way.
       Certainly, it has been said that the freedom of individual celebration must be safeguarded, but in reality, the insistence of superiors and confreres as well as external difficulties and the force of custom will impede that freedom. Moreover, too frequent or daily concelebration can lead to a certain contempt for the so-called “private” Mass. For every Mass, according to the doctrine of the Council of Trent, is truly public, since it is celebrated by the public minister of the Church for all the faithful belonging to the Body of Christ.
       Finally, the doctrine of Pius XII on the fruits of the Mass must be recalled (cf. AAS 1954:669). In this matter one must consider not only the fruit produced by a devout and fraternal celebration, but first and foremost the nature of the action taking place, that is, the sacramental sacrifice of Christ. Indeed, the objective fruit of the Mass, that is, the fruit of propitiation and impetration for the living and the dead, is the principal fruit. And because this fruit is not the same in a concelebrated Mass and in many Masses celebrated by many priests, if the use of frequent concelebration becomes widespread it is to be feared that right doctrine will be obscured and the faithful will no longer take care that many Masses be celebrated for the living and the dead.
       Therefore, practical convenience is not acceptable as a reason or criterion in favor of extending concelebration, but only the sometimes appropriate manifestation of the unity of the priesthood through concelebration with the bishop or religious superior. [1]

It cannot be said that the good archbishop was in any way mistaken, either in his theological synopsis or in his prognostication of the spiritual and liturgical effects of routine concelebration.

It is appropriate to add to this conciliar speech a more recent (1994) critique of concelebration mounted by Fr. Enrico Zoffoli—also conveniently included in Bishop Schneider’s The Catholic Mass. Schneider rightly praises Zoffoli’s “keen observations on the doctrinal, pastoral, and spiritual disadvantages of this modern celebratory practice”:

Habitual concelebration of the Mass facilitates a shift toward the heretical conception of the Mass as a banquet, and leads to losing sight of the Mass as a sacrifice; thus the altar yields to the table; the single minister who operates in persona Christi is replaced by the many diners; the substantial reality of Christ the Victim is dissolved into consecrated bread that is reduced to a mere symbol of His presence among the guests, and to His spiritual union with all.
       Concelebration fatally leads to a reduction in the number of individual Masses with seriously negative consequences.
       First, the Church is less frequently united with her Head in the “sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, propitiation, and expiation” that constitutes every Eucharistic celebration, thus failing in the fundamental duty of worship owed to God through Christ; and, consequently, she suffers a halt in her process of development.
       Second, if concelebration reveals the unity of the Catholic priesthood in the many ministers of worship (as in some circumstances is appropriate), nevertheless, the fact of being together and the need for each one to conform to the others in gestures, formulas, tone of voice, etc., over time reduces the intensity of a priest’s personal, unique, and irreplaceable union with God in Christ, to the detriment of his interior life. . . .
       Against this, many justify concelebration by claiming that it does not reduce the number of Masses, which they say would be equal to the number of concelebrating priests. But this is false, (1) first because every Mass consists essentially in the consecration, whose formula is one and indivisible, even if it is recited by many. (2) Second, several instrumental causes cannot multiply the work of the Principal Cause. That is to say, in each Mass Christ sacramentally immolates himself only once. St. Paul’s “quotiescumque” cannot have any other meaning. . . . Third, it is not the number of priests with their personal intentions that essentially conditions the sacrificial rite, but the consecration, which, if it is one, constitutes a Mass. Now, as noted above, the consecration of several concelebrants is one. Therefore, the Mass concelebrated by them is also one. In reality, the Mass, by the very fact that it is concelebrated, can only be (sacramentally) one. If several priests come together to celebrate, it is only because they intend to perform a single liturgical action, otherwise each would celebrate on his own. For this reason, everyone knows that many diners do not multiply a meal, and — again by analogy — many singers make up a single choir, etc.
       On March 7, 1965, with the decree Ecclesiae semper, the Holy See dispelled all doubts, declaring that when a Mass is concelebrated, the many priests, in virtue of the same priesthood and in the person of the High Priest, act at the same time with one will and one voice, and offer a single sacrifice at the same time by a single sacramental act. [2]

Bishop Schneider then comments: “The truth that the Mass is the source of salvation is demonstrated in a more expressive manner by the practice of its frequent celebration,” and quotes Zoffoli again:

It is right to insist on an ever more conscious, well-considered, and intense participation in the Mass. Who could ever doubt it? But this duty — a serious one for priest and faithful — has nothing to do with the infinite objective value of every Mass; which, being celebrated by Christ, the Priest who offers, is in itself the supreme act of worship of the Mystical Body and an inexhaustible source of grace for all, even when the minister is unworthy, and when the faithful are ignorant, distracted, or completely absent. [3]

Journet asserts: “If Christ in each Mass accomplishes the work of redemption, it is easy to see the need to multiply Masses.” [4]

As an aside, it seems to me that the doctrine of the infinite value of Christ’s sacrifice as present in the Mass can lead logically in only two directions: either you need to say that there is no need to repeat Mass at all, since even one celebration of it would be of infinite value—indeed, the Protestant will go further and say that no Mass is necessary because of the one supreme sacrifice of Calvary itself, all-sufficient and “once for all” (as Catholics, we understand the flaw in that view, which does not see how the Mass is a re-presentation, a making-present-anew, of the one selfsame sacrifice of the Cross)—or you need to say that Mass should be repeated as many times as it is fitting to do so, which the Church has deemed to be once a day for each priest, apart from well-defined pastoral exceptions. To do less than this is precisely not to acknowledge the intrinsic value of the Mass as a sacrificial offering.

Thus, Bishop Schneider continues with a quotation from Fr. Zoffoli that develops this line of reasoning:

The numerical reduction of Masses (one would like to arrive at a single Sunday Mass) has its understandable justification only in the context of the Protestant liturgy; which, having denied the sacrifice, transubstantiation and the real presence, only knows a “banquet,” which is obviously celebrated by several diners independently of the exercise of a “ministerial priesthood”; hence it is taught — even in some Catholic circles — that the true “celebrant” is not the “priest,” but the “community of the faithful” and indeed each believer.

While the error he mentions is not as frequently met with today as it used to be in the ferment of the immediate post-council period, nevertheless one may truly say that the appreciation of the priest’s offering of the Mass as such, independently of the presence of a community or of communicants, is something that is found only in the ambit of traditional liturgy—in which I include younger clergy shaped by the theology of Joseph Ratzinger (inter alia) and the presence of the old rite in lands graced by Summorum Pontificum.

NOTES

[1] Source: Concilii Vaticani II Synopsis, 1053, in Schneider, The Catholic Mass, 224–26.

[2] Questa è la Messa. Non altro!, Udine: Segno, 1994, 90–92, cited in Schneider, The Catholic Mass, 229–30. Zoffoli cites the text of the decree: “In hac ratione Missam celebrandi plures sacerdotes, in virtute eiusdem sacerdotii et in persona Summi Sacerdotis, simul una voluntate et una voce agunt, atque unicum sacrificium unico actu sacramentali simul conficiunt, idemque simul participant” (AAS 57 [1965]: 411).

[3] Zoffoli, Questa è la Messa, 93, in Schneider, The Catholic Mass, 231.

[4] Charles Journet, Oeuvres complètes XIV (1955–1957), Annexe I, sec. III, in Schneider, The Catholic Mass, 231.

The Voice of Tradition: Dom Prosper Guéranger’s “Anti-Liturgical Heresy”

Originally published at Adoremus Bulletin, this article by Richard Kaleb Hammond is more timely than ever, thanks to the recent invocation, by the Abbot of Solesmes and by Andrea Grillo, of Dom Prosper Guéranger as a supposed proponent, in advance, of the liturgical reform (!). We are all the more grateful to be publishing Mr. Hammond’s article in its original form, with many passages restored that had been edited out by Adoremus. It is also pertinent to note that, after 175 years, Guéranger's Liturgical Institutions, in which he speaks about the "anti-liturgical heresy," has finally been published in English. – PAK

Dom Prosper Guéranger has been called the “grandfather” of the Liturgical Movement, [1] a century-long effort within the Catholic Church to inspire deeper understanding and greater appreciation for the Liturgy of the Latin rite through liturgical piety, which Dom Alcuin Reid defines as “drawing one’s spiritual nourishment from active and conscious contemplation of the faith of the Church as it is celebrated and expressed in the liturgical rites and prayers throughout the annual round of seasons and feasts of the liturgical year, as distinct from the practice of an unrelated, however worthy, devotional exercise.” [2] Alongside his many other writings which contributed to this project, Guéranger summarized the errors which he and many future proponents of the Liturgical Movement sought to correct in popular approaches to the Liturgy through what he called the “anti-liturgical heresy.” [3]

The historical development of the Liturgy, including corruptions of it by heretics in the early Church, the Protestant Revolution, and the Jansenists and Gallicans of Guéranger’s own time, as well as the varied threads which would be woven into the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century, can be measured according to Guéranger’s description of this heresy, which he divided into twelve distinct criteria:

(1) hatred of Tradition;
(2) substitution of ecclesiastical formulae for readings exclusively from Scripture;
(3) fabrication of innovative formulae;
(4) antiquarianism;
(5) demystification of the Liturgy;
(6) “pharisaical coldness” [4] in liturgical prayer;
(7) removal of all intermediaries (Marian devotion, communion of saints, etc.);
(8) replacement of sacred languages with the vernacular;
(9) simplification of rites and easing of religious duties;
(10) rejection of papal authority;
(11) laicization, denying the sacramental nature of the ministerial priesthood; and
(12) confusion of the roles of priests and laity in liturgical reform.

Hatred of Tradition, Sola Scriptura and Innovation

Guéranger begins his formulation of the anti-liturgical heresy with its most overriding criterion: hatred of Tradition. He explains that the Liturgy, “which is Tradition at its strongest and best”, acts as the buttress against all doctrinal error. As such, those in history who wished to introduce innovative doctrines only had to deform the Liturgy, to substitute the heritage of Tradition which it maintains for their own hymns, prayers, and lessons, for the faithful to be subjected to and formed in their falsehoods. Through these cunning and often subtle changes, “the faith of the people was henceforth without defense.”

Even with the corrective work of apologists, as in the Counter-Reformation, the faithful, for whom the liturgy is the most immediate and formative experience of Tradition, can still be easily led astray by these liturgical corruptions.

Liturgical innovators who seek to violate Tradition and form the faithful in false doctrines have tended to uphold one common criterion: the need for all the formulae of the Liturgy to derive exclusively from Scripture, as Guéranger explains:

This involves two advantages: first, to silence the voice of Tradition of which sectarians are always afraid. Then, there is the advantage of propagating and supporting their dogmas by means of affirmation and negation. By way of negation, in passing over in silence, through cunning, the texts which express doctrine opposed to errors they wish to propagate; by way of affirmation, by emphasizing truncated passages which show only one side of the truth, hide the other [from] the eyes of the unlearned.

Ultimately, this second criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy falls prey to the same weaknesses as the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura: the choice of readings and even the canon of the Bible, as well as its interpretation, rely entirely upon “the caprice of the reformer, who, in final analysis, decides the meaning of the word itself.” On the other hand, the formulae inherited from Tradition reflect the infallible teaching of the Church and the integral meaning of Scripture; many of them were composed by saints and, like the creeds and definitions of the ecumenical councils, they codify and explicate the truth of God without bias.

In place of these traditional formulae, and as his third criterion, Guéranger explains that the heretics “fabricate and introduce various formulas, filled with perfidy, by which the people are more surely ensnared in error”. These innovations prove to be the true motive for the application of sola scriptura to liturgical Tradition.

Ironically, after discovering that Scripture cannot support all of their erroneous doctrines, even when picked and interpreted selectively, Guéranger notes that these substitutions of Scripture in place of traditional formulae are immediately accompanied by brand-new formulae which are “filled with perfidy, by which the people are more surely ensnared in error, and thus the whole structure of the impious reform will become consolidated for the coming centuries.”

Antiquarianism

Alongside sola scriptura, liturgical deformers will also frequently refer to Guéranger’s fourth criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy: antiquarianism. Asserting that only what is most ancient is truly pure, whereas later developments are those which “the errors and passions of man have mixed in”, proponents of antiquarianism claim to purge the Liturgy “from whatever is ‘false’ and ‘unworthy of God’.” Accordingly, as Guéranger explains,

they prune, they efface, they cut away; everything falls under their blows, and while one is waiting to see the original purity of the divine cult reappear, one finds himself encumbered with new formulas dating only from the night before, and which are incontestably human, since the one who created them is still alive.

Having removed everything that could testify to Tradition in its clearest terms, on the pretext that it did not reflect the “primitive” and pure teachings of the early Church, they replace them with their own formulae which lack the poetic beauty, theological depth, and doctrinal orthodoxy of the monuments of Tradition, thus “cutting them off from the entire past.”

This “pruning” can include the deletion of practices which are considered to be mere late “accretions” [5] yet are later proven not to be so, such as ad orientem prayer which “the early Church… regarded as an apostolic tradition”; indeed, “it goes back to the earliest times and was always regarded as an essential characteristic of Christian liturgy (and, indeed, of private prayer).” [6] It would also involve the exclusion of cherished customs, such as the elevatio at the Consecration or the reading of the Last Gospel, which developed from centuries of pious devotion. By its rejection of later developments in Tradition, antiquarianism, in Guéranger’s words, “cut[s] them [the Christian faithful] off from the entire past.”

Pope Pius XII clearly refuted antiquarianism only a few years before the Second Vatican Council:

It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device… one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; 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… This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. (Mediator Dei, §62, 64) [7]

Anthropocentrism and Demystification

A fundamental aim of the anti-liturgical heresy, in all its historical and modern forms, is the subjection of the Liturgy, and the Tradition which it monumentalizes, to human interests; this has sometimes been called anthropocentrism, in which “we want to find God on our terms, not on His terms; we want to worship Him in our way, not His way.” [8]

According to Guéranger’s fifth and sixth criteria, man, rather than God, is the center of the liturgy,[1] therefore all teachings, formulae, prayers and devotions which seem mysterious or arresting must be removed while any perceived obstacles to easy comprehension and external participation must also be “reformed.”

This dry rationalism often involves the elimination, simplification or deemphasis of sensible signs in order to demystify and didacticize the Liturgy, the effect of which is “the total extinction of that spirit of prayer, which in Catholicism, we call unction”, since “[a] heart in revolt can no longer love.” Following from this is the seventh criterion, in which man, “[p]retending to treat nobly with God… has no need of intermediaries”; thus is the intercession of the saints made superfluous in a Liturgy brought down to man’s level. In Dom Alcuin Reid’s words,

The ultimate result of this anthropocentrism, warns Guéranger, is “no more Sacraments, except Baptism, preparing the way for Socialism, which freed its followers even from Baptism. No more sacramentals, blessings, images, relics of Saints, processions, pilgrimages, etc. No more altar, only a table, no more sacrifice as in every religion, but only a meal… No more religious architecture, since there is no more mystery. No more Christian paintings and sculpture, since there is no more sensible religion.” In the end, when the Faith centers on man rather than God, it is gutted of all meaning.

In this way, the Liturgy becomes wholly private and interior, with the sensible being neglected or outright condemned, as in the various iconoclasms throughout history. This demystification and anthropocentrism of the Liturgy result from the previous principles delineated by Guéranger, all of which subjected Tradition to human interests and preferences in conformity with the spirit of the age.

One of the most ubiquitous and effective methods of demystifying the Liturgy is the imposition of vernacularism, the eighth criterion of Guéranger’s anti-liturgical heresy. By exchanging a sacred language with the vernacular, the sacredness and mystery of the Liturgy are essentially destroyed as it is reduced to the level of the commonplace. As a result, Guéranger says, it is insisted that “cult is no secret matter. The people, they say, must understand what they sing.” In so doing, the Liturgy loses its universality, becoming particular to each culture according to language and hindering the ability to participate wherever one happens to be.

A vernacular Liturgy easily falls prey to the arbitrary customizations of the people, as well as confusions of doctrine between languages, whereas a sacred language maintains continuity with Tradition and unity within each of the six liturgical Traditions (rites) which trace back to the apostles and together make up the Catholic Church (“the Latin, Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, Chaldean and Constantinopolitan or Byzantine”). [9] As Pope John XXIII taught (quoting Pope Pius XI), “For the Church, precisely because it embraces all nations and is destined to endure to the end of time… of its very nature requires a language which is universal, immutable, and non-vernacular” (Veterum Sapientia).

From a desire for expediency, vernacularism leads to Guéranger’s ninth criterion, the easing of other sacrifices in the life of the faithful, including “no more fasting, no more abstinence, no more genuflections in prayer” and the lessening of “the sum of public and private prayers”, all going toward the overall goal of this heresy to subject the Liturgy to man and thus break with Tradition.

Once a sacred language has been abandoned, “from that moment on the Liturgy has lost much of its sacred character, and very soon people find that it is not worthwhile putting aside one’s work or pleasure in order to go and listen to what is being said in the way one speaks on the marketplace.”

While Guéranger focuses on Latin, which he describes as “the bond among Catholics throughout the universe [and] the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit”, this can also be applied to the Eastern rites which often use ancient or specialized forms of vernacular languages to inspire reverence and preserve Tradition, [10] as well as to the Ordinariate Divine Worship which employs archaic English for similar purposes.

Throughout history, anti-liturgical heretics have consistently rejected the unique office of the papacy as the guarantor of orthodoxy, the sign of universality, and the final arbiter of conflict, substituting themselves as the sole authority to customize the Liturgy and interpret Scripture.

Guéranger lists this usurpation as his tenth criterion, a means of rebelling against the ‘tyranny’ of the papacy in favor of localism and individualism. Heretics in the early Church, the Orthodox, Protestants and Old Catholics have adhered to this principle; similarly, today dissident Catholics also reject the papacy, either by denying the doctrines of the Church in liberalism or by asserting that the post-conciliar papacy is illegitimate and the papal seat vacant (sedevacantism).

From this follows the eleventh criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy: the laicization of the priesthood as a whole. When the Liturgy is rationalized and brought down to the merely human level, a sacramental priesthood, acting in persona Christi, is impossible. One consequence of this anti-clerical “presbyterianism” is Guéranger’s twelfth and final criterion, wherein he warns against “secular or lay persons assuming authority in liturgical reform”. He recognized that this inevitably leads, like vernacularism, to “the Liturgy, and consequently dogma, [becoming] an entity limited by the boundaries of a nation or region.” [11]

As Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has noted, the laicizing of the priesthood, in doctrine or in practice, leads, like vernacularism, to “the Liturgy, and consequently dogma, [becoming] an entity limited by the boundaries of a nation or region.” [2] It is also not infrequently responsible for the confusion of roles in the Liturgy, by which tasks proper to the ordained are appropriated by laypeople. [12]

Both of these final criteria blur the distinctions between the universal baptismal priesthood and the special ministerial priesthood, thus subjecting liturgical Tradition to the local and individual preferences of the laity. In so doing, much of the mystery and universality of the Sacraments is destroyed through a false democratization, as in laypeople distributing the Eucharist at Mass or boldly approaching the altar and self-communicating in the hand. [3]

Tradition as Living Organism

From these negative criteria of the anti-liturgical heresy, Dom Alcuin Reid deduces positive principles which clarify and affirm liturgical Tradition

[corresponding to 1st and 2nd criteria: to] protect the place of non-scriptural texts in the organic whole of the Liturgy; [3rd] innovate rarely and only where necessary; [4th] reject antiquarianism out of respect for the living, developed Liturgy; [5th] protect all that speaks of the supernatural and of mystery in the Liturgy; [6th] similarly, protect the nature of Liturgy as prayer and worship lest it be reduced to a didactic exercise; [7th] treasure the role of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints in the Liturgy; [8th] reject vernacularism; [9th] resist the temptation to sacrifice the Liturgy for the sake of speed; [10th] rejoice in liturgical unity with the Church of Rome; and, [11th and 12th] to respect the particular liturgical roles and authority of the ordained. [13]

Answering the anti-liturgical heresy requires a thorough understanding of liturgical Tradition in light of these positive principles. The Liturgy must develop organically, as Vatican II taught: “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” (Sacrosanctum concilium, §23)

Guéranger also summarized this rule: “Progress in Liturgy must be an enrichment by the acquisition of new forms rather than by the violent loss of the ancient ones.” [14] Likewise, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “the Liturgy is received and not simply constructed anew according to the tastes of the people among whom he finds himself and… innovation must be for good reason and carefully integrated with the Tradition”, [15] reflecting the truth that “Liturgies are not made, they grow in the devotion of the centuries”. [16]

The Liturgy must be understood not as a mere communal meal, Bible study or prayer-meet but as the approach of penitent sinners on their knees to Calvary, where Christ the High Priest offered Himself as the spotless victim on the altar of the Cross to the Father for the forgiveness of sins, and as the sanctification of the faithful through participation in the Heavenly Liturgy. (Sacrosanctum concilium, §7-8)

Recovery and Restoration

As the Liturgical Movement progressed, it broke into two distinct strains: one faithful to Guéranger’s clear understanding of liturgical Tradition, and another which embraced both antiquarianism, following the “corruption theory” proposed by Jungmann according to which only what is most primitive constitutes authentic Tradition, and anthropocentrism, insisting on the need for a “pastoral Liturgy” which should be “fashioned to meet the needs of contemporary man.” [17]

In response, Cardinal Ratzinger observed, “Archaeological enthusiasm and pastoral pragmatism—which is in any case often a pastoral form of rationalism—are both equally wrong. These two might be described as unholy twins.” [18]

Tradition, then, is not merely a remnant of the early Church or the wholesale adaptation of the Faith to suit the times but the accumulated devotion of the saints across the centuries handed on to future generations. Accordingly, the goal of Pope St. Pius V’s institution of the Tridentine reforms was not to introduce any radical innovations but only to “[restore] the Missal itself to the original form and rite of the holy Fathers” while still permitting the continuation of any rite “which has been continuously followed for a period of not less than 200 years” (Quo primum), thus recognizing medieval contributions as legitimate organic developments of Tradition. [19] The same purpose also guided the orthodox fathers of the Second Vatican Council (cf. Sacrosanctum concilium, §23).

A rediscovery of Guéranger’s anti-liturgical heresy criteria, and their application to contemporary liturgical theology and practice, can help to fulfill the original goals of the Liturgical Movement and restore liturgical Tradition, including those venerable elements, such as ad orientem worship and the use of a sacred language, as well as the received forms of liturgical prayers and rites, which have fallen into disuse.

Kaleb Hammond holds a B.A. in English and Theology from Holy Apostles College & Seminary, Cromwell, CT, where he is now pursuing an M.A. in Theology. He is a writer for Missio Dei and has been published at Adoremus Bulletin, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, St. Austin Review and Catholic Insight. A convert to the faith, he grew up in Georgia but now lives in Indiana with his family.

NOTES

[1] Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2^nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 381. Kindle.

[2] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 58-59.

[3] See Prosper Guéranger, “The Anti-Liturgical Heresy,” at Catholic Apologetics, at catholicapologetics.info.

[4] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55.

[5] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 46.

[6] Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2018), loc 816. Kindle.

[7] The propositions of the illegal 1786 Synod of Pistoia, eighty-five of which were condemned in the 1794 papal bull of Pope Pius VI Auctorem fidei, were Jansenist attempts to make the Liturgy rationalized and anthropocentric according to the aims of the Enlightenment. They included having only one altar in each church, no recitation by the priest of anything chanted by the choir, “[f]orbidding relics and flowers on the altar”, reciting the Offertory and Canon aloud, “forbidding numerous devotional and pious practices, including the rosary,” simplifying the Liturgy and translating it into the vernacular. “The people rose up and rejected the imposed reforms.” See Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 49-50.

[8] Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite (Gastonia, NC: TAN, 2022), 117. Kindle.

[9] Edward McNamara, “Why So Many Rites in the Church,” at EWTN (25 October 2016), at www.ewtn.com.

[10] E.g. “[L]iturgical Greek… Church Slavonic… old literary Georgian… literary Coptic… Ge’ez… classical Syrian and Arabic [and] classical literary Armenian.” See Peter Kwasniewski, “The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo – Two Brothers and a Stranger,” at New Liturgical Movement (4 June 2018), at www.newliturgicalmovement.org.

[11] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55.

[12] See Peter Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Manchester, NH: Crisis, 2021).

[13] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55-56.

[14] Quoted in Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 56.

[15] Joseph Ratzinger, introduction to Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2^nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 20. Kindle

[16] Owen Chadwick, The Reformation, vol. 3 of The Penguin History of the Church (London: Penguin, 1990), 119; cf. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, loc 1952.

[17] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 151.

[18] Ratzinger, introduction to Organic Development, 10.

[19] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 39-41.