Pius XI’s First Visit to the Lateran in 1933

In yesterday’s post about Saints Catherine of Siena and Francis of Assisi being made the patron Saints of Italy, I explained a bit about the state of cold war that existed between the Papacy and the kingdom of Italy in the period of the so-called Risorgimento, and how the Popes from 1870 until 1929 were confined to the Vatican. A friend then brought to my attention this video from the always-interesting YouTube channel Caeremoniale Romanum, a British Pathé newsreel, which shows Pius XI going to the Lateran basilica for the first time in his papacy, to celebrate the feast of the Ascension in 1933.

Our friend Fr Joseph Koczera, SJ, also shared with us this picture of an inscription (written in a very elevated and formal style of classical Latin) in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which commemorates the visit of Pope Pius XII during which he solemnly proclaimed Ss Catherine and Francis to be the patrons of Italy. (The church is called “sopra Minerva – over Minerva” because it was built on the site of a Roman temple.)

“On May 5 in the year 1940, Pius XII, shining forth in the majesty of the papacy, entered this church, was present for a solemn Mass, commended the Italian people to the heavenly patrons Francis and Catherine, and paid outstanding tributes to them both from the pulpit; going into the neighboring buildings (i.e. the Dominican house), together with the leaders of the city, he gladdened the Dominican and Franciscan families with his appearance and speech; in the piazza of the Minerva, he graced the celebrating crowd with an auspicious prayer. The Dominican friars set up (this inscription) for the memory of posterity.”

The Canonization of St John Bosco

Today is the feast of St John Bosco, who is well known as the founder of the Salesian Order, and as one of the great pioneers in modern Catholic education. Something about him which perhaps many English-speakers are less aware of is that he lived in a period in which the government of the state he came from, the kingdom of Savoy in north-western Italy, was extremely hostile to the Church. As it conquered one part of the Italian peninsula after another over the mid-19th century, (the political movement known as the “Risorgimento”), it would rob the Church in each region blind, suppressing religious orders, and forcing the closure of countless Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages and cultural institutions, to say nothing of the churches themselves. Finally, in 1870, it conquered and despoiled the Papal state, at which the Popes became, in the phrase of the day, “prisoners in the Vatican”, refusing to cooperate with the robber-state’s illegal occupation of their country by setting foot within it. The Matins lessons for Don Bosco refer to this state of affairs when they say that he “more than once he helped the Roman Pontiff to temper the evils which derived from laws passed against the Church at that time.”

In 1922, the same year that Pius XI was elected, the Italian Fascists led by Benito Mussolini came to power, and although they would do many terrible things over the next 23 years, it cannot be denied that they also did some good things. One of these was to recognize that the state of cold war which existed between the Church and the Italian state was harmful to both, and needed to end. Not long after coming to power, Mussolini agreed to open negotiations to settle the Church’s legal status, and compensate it for the vast theft which Italy had perpetrated against it. The resulting treaties were signed by representatives of the Church and the Italian kingdom on February 11, 1929; they are known as the Lateran Treaties, since the signing ceremony was held in the papal palace next to the Lateran Basilica.

Don Bosco was the very first person to be beatified after the Lateran treaties went into effect, on June 2 of that same year. (This day is, ironically, now the July 4th of the modern Republic of Italy, the anniversary of the constitutional referendum of 1946 that turfed out the Savoiard monarchy, after the king’s appalling performance during World War 2.) Of course, the Lateran treaties did not magically erase all the tension between the Church and state, but this beatification was very much a celebration not only of a great Saint, but of the restoration of some measure of peace to a society long torn by serious internal strife.

Don Bosco was canonized 5 years later, on April 1, Easter Sunday of 1934. Here are two pieces of footage (without commentary) from the time of the canonization, from the archives of the Italian newsreel company Luce. The first shows events surrounding the canonization at St Peter’s in Rome, and the second, a procession in the city of Turin, where he is buried.

The Centenary of St Thérèse of Lisieux’s Beatification

Today marks the centenary of the beatification of St Thérèse of Lisieux, who passed into eternal life on September 30, 1897. Pope Benedict XV permitted the opening of her cause in August of 1921, when less than half the traditional waiting period after a proposed Saint’s death (fifty years) had elapsed; Pius XI had the honor of beatifying her, and then of canonizing her just over two years later, in May of 1925.

Here is a video from the archives of the newsreel service British Pathé, which shows the laying of the cornerstone of the basilica built to honor Thérèse at Lisieux, in 1929. The bishop is H.E. Alexis-Armand Cardinal Charost, archbishop of Rennes. We also see her relics carried in procession on a massive palanquin. - Sancta Theresa, ora pro nobis!

The Death of Pius XI

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XI in 1939, 4 days after the 17th anniversary of his election in 1922. His death also came one day before the 10th anniversary of one of the great achievements of his reign, the Lateran Treaties, which finally brought peace between the Church and the Kingdom of Italy after the plundering inflicted on the Church by the Italian Risorgimento. Here is a contemporary report from the always interesting archives of the newsreel company British Pathé.

Here is a reel of raw footage, without soundtrack, of scenes in Rome at the time. The caption on YouTube mistakenly says “Pius II”, who was Pope in the mid-15th century.

And a report from the Italian company Luce, with particularly good footage of the procession that brings the body of the dead Pope down from the Sistine Chapel, where it first lay in state, down to the Vatican Basilica, and a beautiful image of the catafalque.

“February 10th of this year, in St Peter’s square, in the first hours of the morning, groups of people stop, sadly turning their faces towards two closed windows in the Vatican Palace. Within, still in his rooms, still on his deathbed, lies Pius XI, the Pope who, on the following day, would have celebrated in the basilica the tenth anniversary of the Reconciliation (between the Church and the kingdom of Italy), an anniversary very dear to his heart. Now, the body, clothed in solemn vestments, is in the Sistine Chapel, which is destined to see, in the tradition of the church of Rome, both the deceased pope, and a few days later, the first exaltation of his successor. A long procession of ecclesiastics and dignitaries accompanies the body from the Sistine Chapel to St Peter’s; outside, the throng which grows ever more crowded in the piazza seems to follow the sad ceremony in sentiment. (no narration from 1:15 to 3:10) Then, the gates of the basilica are opened; the mortal remains of Pius XI, before they are laid in the tomb, remain exposed for three days for the veneration of the faithful. Passing in endless lines before the body, the people express a unanimous tribute of grief to the Pope of the Reconciliation.”

The Centenary of Pius XI’s Coronation

On Sunday, we commemorated the centenary of the election of Pope Pius XI; today is centenary of his coronation. Thanks once again to Nicola de’ Grandi for sharing with us these photos of the magnificent ceremony, as well as two images from Italian magazines, one of the Pope’s appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica. So as not to give any sign that could be interpreted as legitimizing the occupation of the Papal State by the Kingdom of Italy, Popes Leo XIII, St Pius X and Benedict XV had imparted their first blessing as Pope from the windows that face into the basilica; Pius XI was the first Pope to return to the balcony and give the blessing to the crowds in the piazza since the election of Bl. Pius IX in 1846.

The Centenary of Pius XI’s Election

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the Papal election of Cardinal Achille Ratti, who look the name Pius XI. He was ordained a priest of Milan in 1879 at the age of 22, and had spent much of his early career as a scholar in the Ambrosian and Vatican Libraries, both of which he very effectively reorganized and modernized. In 1919, he was appointed the first Apostolic Nuncio to the newly reconstituted state of Poland, and ordained a bishop very shortly thereafter. Within less than 2 years, in June of 1921, he was raised to the cardinalate and made archbishop of his native city, a position in which he would serve for less than eight months before his papal election. His papacy lasted for almost exactly 17 years; he died on Feb. 10, 1939, two days before the anniversary of his coronation.

Here is some footage from the time of the election, from the always interesting archives of British Pathé (still silent in 1922), followed by some pictures collected by another native son of the Ambrosian church, our own Nicola de’ Grandi.

Masses in the Sistine Chapel

Continue Reading this Article. . .

On “Hearing Mass”

Pope Pius XI famously said that Catholics should not be “detached and silent spectators” at Mass (Divini Cultus of 1928). I am sympathetic to this statement when it comes to the High Mass: there is little reason for the faithful not to sing the Ordinary and the various responses. But one wonders if Pius XI was already being influenced too much by a certain modern way of thinking, whereby doing something external, or at least seeming to be doing something, is the major point to be accentuated. This idea grew over the next forty years into the self-sapping activism of the Novus Ordo era.

Should we not instead be thinking first about the manner in which one is entering into the liturgy—the way one is assimilating it, relating to it interiorly?

In the old days it used to be said that Catholics “assisted” at Mass. This concept is fruitful. Every member of the body assists in (and at) the divine uplifting of the liturgy, each according to his place, but without thinking that he has to take on any particular action, other than faith-filled attention. It was also common in the old days, in fact for centuries, to say that Catholics went to “hear Mass.” We read in the lives of lay saints like Louis IX that “he heard Mass twice a day.”

Modern liturgists wince at that expression, for to them it seems to epitomize the worst of the Tridentine (or, let’s say, broadly medieval) era: a bunch of laity “doing nothing but” listening while the priest and server spoke all the words of the Mass on their behalf. In their view, only the ones saying or singing the Mass are doing it. Indeed, the dialogue Mass, promoted first by the same Pius XI, was intended as an alternative, one might even say a remedy, to move people from hearing to speaking.

But we should slow down and think more about hearing. Family counselors often like to make a distinction between hearing and listening—between mere auditory reception and actually absorbing the import of what is being said and responding appropriately. “You heard me, but did you listen to me?” When people are said to “hear Mass,” the meaning surely is that they are listening intently with the ear of the heart, to use the lovely expression of the Rule of St. Benedict.

Listening is a difficult activity to do well. It is something that requires and rewards experience, practice, concentration, receptivity, humility—an openness to being the carved-out space in which a word or sound can dwell and bear fruit. It is not for nothing that the vast majority of works of art that depict Our Lady show her looking and listening at the Archangel Gabriel, rather than talking back to him or taking action. She is pondering the Word of God in her cell; she receives his greeting and wonders within her heart what it means; after the dialogue (usually not depicted), she accepts the Word made flesh. The Virgin Mary assists at the first Mass; she hears the first Mass.

As John Paul II loved to say, the Blessed Virgin Mary reveals to us that being is more basic than doing, receiving is more fundamental than giving—just as our insertion into Christ at baptism, which happens to us (we suffer a spiritual death and God raises us up), is more basic to our identity than any particular act we perform on the basis of our baptism. No man makes himself a Christian; he (or his parents on his behalf) consent that he be made a Christian by God.

Modern times are characterized by an unusual degree of noise, busyness, and image saturation. We are always being drawn out of ourselves, out of our deep inner identity as sons of God, into distractions and dissipations. “You were inside and I was outside,” as St. Augustine said to God in the Confessions. For this reason, and without for a moment abandoning the importance of the High Mass as the most beautiful and normative expression of the liturgy, I will say that the quiet Low Mass is more relevant and more needed than ever, as a bulwark against the total extroversion and superficiality of secular life.

One wonders if the forms of meditation offered by Buddhism and other increasingly popular Far Eastern phenomena would ever have made such huge inroads in Western society without the loss of the one omnipresent form of “silent meditation” that we once had in abundance.

There have been many times in my life when I have longed for nothing more than a quiet Low Mass early in the morning. Attending it was like arriving at an oasis in the desert, or stepping through a low wooden door into a secret garden. Assisting at Mass, one can feel the roots sinking deeper into the earth, the branches reaching out higher towards the heavens, the leaves opening to the sun and the buds ripening. It is a time outside of time, a place of holy encounter, leaving one speechless and happy not to speak.

A Reflection on the Fate of the Feast of Christ the King

Andrei Rublev, Christ Enthroned in Glory

Note: The following article appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of The Latin Mass magazine on pages 38-42 (vol. 26, issue 3). Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its publication here.

The first time that the Feast of Christ the King was celebrated was October 31, 1926. In Mexico, 200,000 faithful went to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, among whom was the Jesuit priest and future martyr José Ramón Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, S.J., better known as Blessed Miguel Pro. The faithful had come on pilgrimage, but they were also protesting the repressive anti-Catholic “Calles Law.” Pro writes:

On October 31^st, the Feast of Christ the King, we had the biggest, most sublime demonstration that the entire world has seen in the last four centuries. The pilgrimage to the Basilica started at four in the morning and ended at 7:30 at night… It was around five p.m., when I was about to return home with Mendez Med, when we saw a resolute group of housemaids who arrived with some one hundred industrial workers. They approached, singing along the streets leading to La Villa; but the singing was a little bit of a mumble. Then I told my partner, “C’mon buddy, now is the time,” and pushed my way into the group using my elbows. Then, following the leading voice of my partner I sang “Thou Shalt Reign” at the top of my lungs. [1]

It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic inauguration to a liturgical feast.

Blessed Miguel Pro

To understand how a mere Sunday in the Church calendar could have such an impact, it is necessary to turn to the feast as it was originally conceived by Pope Pius XI.

Quas Primas

In December 1925, Pope Pius XI announced a new Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical Quas Primas. The Supreme Pontiff makes it clear that the purpose of the new celebration is not merely to honor Christ’s Kingship, but to encourage individuals, families, and entire societies to submit to the yoke of Christ the King (17). After a beautiful reflection on how Jesus Christ exercises full judiciary, executive, and legislative power over all of mankind, he adds, “It would be a grave error…to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to Him by the Father, all things are in His power” (17).

According to Quas Primas, the “pest of our age” is secularism (laicismus), the attempt to build society without God (24). Secularism began with a political curtailment of the Church’s ability to govern her flock with respect to their eternal salvation and escalated into either the subordination of the Church to a powerful State or outright persecution. The result of the secular marginalization of “Jesus Christ and His holy law,” the Pope argues, is constant war between nations, an assault on the family, domestic strife, insatiable greed, and a blind and immoderate selfishness—“in a word, society shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin” (24).

According to the teaching of Pius XI, the solution to this plague is to “look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” (1) by recognizing, “both in private and in public life, that Christ is King” (19). When this happens, “society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience” (19). It was to facilitate this solution to modernity’s ills that Pius XI instituted a feast in honor of Christ the King, “that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood” (21).

The Feast of Christ the King, then, is designed to instruct the minds of the faithful about the social reign of Jesus Christ and to warn them of the errors of secularism. But it is also designed to move and strengthen their hearts. Without saying it in so many words, the Pope is just as concerned about the silence of the good as he is about the ideological delusions of the bad. Secularism thrives on the pusillanimity of the pious; it sets a public tone of silence about God and then twists that silence into a form of acquiescence and even apostasy. Pius XI’s response to this hostile silent treatment is not the further privatization of religion or more “dialogue.” It is a rebel yell:

While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim His kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm His rights (25).

The Feast of Christ the King is designed not to recover an ancien régime or to establish a theocracy or even necessarily a Catholic confessional state, but to embolden Catholics to march into whatever public square in which they find themselves a part and declare Christ’s gentle but firm sovereignty over their society, as Blessed Miguel Pro literally did on that first feast day in Mexico City. Pius’ vision is aptly captured in the following verses from Te Saeculorum Principem, the Vespers hymn for this Sunday:

The wicked mob screams out:
“We don’t want Christ to reign!”
But we rejoice and say:
“Thou art the Supreme King of all.”

May the leaders of nations publicly honor and extol Thee;
May teachers and judges reverence Thee;
May the laws and the arts
Be a reflection of Thee.

May the insignias of kings shine forth
In their submission and dedication to Thee.
And bring under Thy gentle rule
Our country and the homes of its citizens.

In sum, the exhortatory goal of the Feast of Christ the King is the renewal of a Christian public spiritedness that can meet the political and social challenges of the age and work manfully towards the inner transformation of contemporary society.

The Original Date

Pius assigned the Feast of Christ the King to the last Sunday of October. [2] The Holy Father wanted it to fall on a Sunday so that not only the clergy but the laity could fully participate in it (29). And he wanted it on the last Sunday of October for two reasons. First, by being near the end of the liturgical year, the feast “sets the crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year” (29). Second, by celebrating it before All Saints’ Day on November 1, “we proclaim and extol the glory of Him who triumphs in all the Saints and in all the Elect” (29).

Pope Pius XI

It has also been speculated that Pius XI chose the last Sunday of October because several Protestant churches observe on that day Reformation Sunday. The first Protestant reformers were hardly champions of secularism (Calvin’s Geneva and Zwingli’s Zurich leaned more towards theocracy); nevertheless, the secularization of the West was one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation. Either way, the last Sunday of October is an ideal choice. As Pius XI mentioned, there is a fitting transition from the triumph of Christ in His Headship to the triumph of Christ in His members—the Communion of Saints (November 1) and the Holy Souls in Purgatory (November 2). The Church Triumphant and Church Suffering follow on the flowing trains of their King.

Second, celebrating the feast near the end of the liturgical year gives it an eschatological note. The final Sundays of the Church calendar become increasingly focused on the End Times until the year culminates with the Last Sunday after Pentecost, known in some quarters as “the Sunday of Doom” because of its Gospel on the destruction of the Temple and the world. [3] Then, the Church year begins anew with Advent, which is likewise about the Last Day, for in preparing for the celebration of Christ’s First Coming in Bethlehem we are also to prepare for His Second Coming in glory. [4] Thanks to the pairing of Christ the King and All Saints, we can therefore trace a shift from a sense of wonder and awe at heavenly glory to a holy fear about if we will ever reach such a stage. This shift, in turn, conditions the faithful to convert this holy fear into actual preparedness during Advent, so that we may greet Christ our Judge “without dread” when the time comes (see the December 24 Collect). Paradoxically and ingeniously, the period from late October to Christmastide uses a fear of Doomsday to help us appropriate and properly move beyond it.

Although this holy fear reaches its height on the “Sunday of Doom,” it is present in ovo in the Feast of Christ the King. The Pope hoped that as a result of this annual celebration, nations will recall “the thought of the Last Judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults” (32). Pius XI also expressed the wish that it would encourage the faithful to live their lives in such a way that Christ will count them among the good and faithful servants (33).

Third, by having it near but not at the very end of the liturgical year, the feast teaches that the social reign of Christ the King has already begun and that we are subject to it now. Such a placement also fits in nicely with the current season in the Roman Breviary, which in October includes passages from II Maccabees, which chronicles Jewish defiance of the pagan ruler Antiochus IV. One such reading, proclaimed on the Fifth Sunday of October, recounts the story of ninety-year-old Eleazar, who chose to be flogged to death by public officials rather than eat a piece of pork and defy the law of the Lord. Here was a man who had a sense of God’s social reign avant la lettre.

Customs

Pius XI ordained only one custom on the new feast: that the Dedication of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which Pope Leo XIII inaugurated and Pope St. Pius X commanded to be renewed yearly, be recited on this day (28). Given the historic ties between devotion to the Sacred Heart and Christ the King, the association is appropriate. The Church continues to grant a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the devout recitation of this prayer on the feast.

In his encyclical the Pope also praised Adoration and procession of the Blessed Sacrament by which “men unite in paying homage to Christ, whom God has given them for their King” (26). Because they are public, processions make precisely the kind of assertion that Quas Primas seeks to promote. “It is by a divine inspiration that the people of Christ bring forth Jesus from His silent hiding-place in the church and carry Him in triumph through the streets of the city,” the Pope muses, “so that He whom men refused to receive when He came unto his own, may now receive in full His kingly rights” (26). Consequently, many parishes using the 1962 Missal have a Eucharistic procession on this feast similar to that of Corpus Christi.

New Name

The post-Vatican-II calendar makes three changes to the original feast: a new name, a new date, and new propers.

First, the title has been modified from the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King to the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe. Theoretically, the addition could signify that as Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ has dominion over all things and all men, thereby reinforcing His social reign. But the intention of the architects of the new calendar was the opposite: instead of highlighting Christ’s social reign they sought to deemphasize it.

Pierre Jounel was the priest in charge of the subcommittee that revised the calendar. After summarizing the feast’s original purpose (and implicitly pooh-poohing Pius XI for still dreaming “of a possible Christendom”), Jounel explained the new rationale:

The compilers’ aim was to emphasize more the cosmic and eschatological character of Christ’s kingship. The feast is now the feast of Christ “King of the universe” and is assigned to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time. [5]

In other words, Christ Pantokrator is being replaced by cosmic Jesus.

Pantokrator, Monreale, Sicily

New Date

As Jounel’s statement indicates, changing the date was likewise meant to emphasize the “cosmic and eschatological” at the expense of the social. In 1968, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was allowed to review the proposed new calendar. Writing back in June of that year, the CDF stated that “The feast of Christ the King ought to keep its social dimension and be celebrated in October as in the past.” [6] Note the reasoning: the October date bespeaks the feast’s “social dimension,” that is, its promulgation of the social kingship of Jesus Christ.

To iron out their differences, members of the CDF met with Archbishop Bugnini’s Consilium in charge of reforming the liturgy. Bugnini states that the CDF, despite their “nostalgia” and “fears,” were dazzled by his committee’s “expertise and care,” and so the two groups soon came to an agreement “even though in the process many requests of the Congregation were effectively denied,”[7] including retaining the original date of Christ the King.

New Propers

The new propers for the Mass and Divine Office also make clear that Christ’s social reign is no longer the reason for the feast. The inspirational hymn verses cited above were removed, as were various references to Christ’s rule and the world’s opposition to it (for a full analysis of these liturgical changes, see Fr. Dylan Schrader’s fine article [8]).

And it is expected that the pulpit now be used to reinforce this new emphasis. The Congregation for Divine Worship’s 21015 Homiletic Directory [9] recommends that for the solemnity preachers consult seventeen different paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, only one of which, citing Quas Primas, explicitly affirms Christ’s kingship over human societies (2105). The rest teach that Christ is the “Lord of the cosmos and of history” (668-672) and that we participate in Christ’s Kingship not by making our laws reflect God’s order (to paraphrase the afore-mentioned hymn) but by serving the poor (786) and exercising self-control (908). Similarly, in his influential The Liturgical Year, Father Adrian Nocent, O.S.B. (one of the periti who revised the Lectionary) avoids the concept of Christ’s social reign and writes instead of the folly of the Church wanting “political authority in the world,” an assertion that is true so far as it goes but prone to secularist misinterpretation without proper qualification. [10]

New Feast

Moreover, according to no less an authority than Pope Paul VI, the Feast of Christ the King was not merely changed or moved; it was replaced. In Calendarium Romanum, the document announcing and explaining the new calendar, the Pope writes:

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe occurs on the last Sunday of the liturgical year in place of the feast instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and assigned to the last Sunday of October. By this reasoning, the eschatological significance of this Sunday is placed in a clearer light. [11]

The key word is loco, which means “in place of” or “instead of.” The Pope could have simply stated that the Feast occurs on a different date (as he did with the Feast of the Holy Family) or that it is being moved (transfertur) as he did with Corpus Christi, but he did not. The Novus Ordo’s Solemnity of Christ the King, he writes, is the replacement of Pius XI’s feast.

Assessment

We can draw three conclusions about the new solemnity.

First, it changes the liturgical year. On the positive side, the date of the new feast affirms the triumph of Christ the King over all things at the end of time and serves as a fitting capstone to the season of Ordinary Time, which began in January after the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. Thus configured, Ordinary Time is bookended by the beginning and end of Christ’s ministry (of course, whether Ordinary Time is itself a good idea is another matter). [12]

On the other hand, because of the new location the feast loses its link to All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, and without this link there is no mini-season celebrating the relationship between the Head and its members. Consequently, the progression from glorious awe to a righteous fear of the Lord to Advent’s joyfully penitential preparation for the Second Coming is weakened.  Instead, the last Sunday of the liturgical year is now expected to carry a rather overwhelming list of themes (Christ’s kingship, the Last Judgment, and the Kingdom of God), the risk being that justice is done to none of them.

Second, the new feast guts the original of its intended meaning. Pius XI instituted Christ the King to proclaim Christ’s social reign; its eschatological dimension was subordinate to this goal. The new feast, by contrast, uses the eschatological in order to replace the social. By doing so and by dropping all critical references to godless societies, it gives the overwhelming impression that the new eschatology, as Peter Kwasniewski puts it,

Betrays weak knees before the challenge of modern secularization, as well as hesitation about the perceived “triumphalism” of the earlier papal social teaching. In other words, the kingship of Christ is palatable and proclaimable so long as its realization comes at the end of time, and does not impinge too much on the political and social order right now—or on the Church’s responsibility to convert the nations, invigorate their cultures, and transform their laws by the light of the Faith. [13]

Or to put it more cynically, the liturgical innovators kicked the can of Christ’s reign down the road to the end of time so that it will no longer interfere with an easygoing accommodation to secularism.

Although vestiges of a social element remain in the new solemnity (such as the Gospel for Year A), these are usually manifested in the form of social justice rather than Christ’s social reign. The USCCB uses this Sunday to collect donations for the Campaign for Human Development and to defend religious liberty. [14]

Certainly, conforming to Christ’s reign includes caring for the poor, but it is also much more than that. The reduction of Christ’s social kingship to social justice is a betrayal of its meaning. And while the erosion of religious liberty in the United States is a very serious concern, one cannot help note the irony of using Pius XI’s feast to defend it, since the Pontiff ostensibly rejected the American model of religious freedom when he deplored the legal practice of “ignominiously placing” the true religion of Christ on the same level as false religions. [15]

Third, the feast has lost its strong exhortatory character. Pius XI wanted this day to be a spiritual call to arms, emboldening Catholics with a courageous public spiritedness unashamed of Jesus Christ, zealous of sound morality, and fearless in applying the high standards of the Gospel. We may even say that the old feast aimed at reanimating a kind of Catholic chivalry that channeled manly assertiveness into publicly defending God’s honor. The new feast has none of these rousing elements; it is, quite frankly, wimpy by comparison. One can hardly imagine the current solemnity inspiring the same kind of muscular civil disobedience exhibited by Miguel Pro and his coreligionists. 

Father Miguel Pro’s Martyrdom

Conclusion

Blessed Miguel Pro only lived to celebrate two Feasts of Christ the King before giving his life for the Lord. After being arrested in November 1927 on the bogus charge of conspiring to assassinate the president of Mexico, Pro was executed without trial on the 23rd of that month. As he faced the firing squad, the holy priest extended his arms cruciform and shouted ¡Viva Cristo Rey!—“Long Live Christ the King!” Pius XI’s feast had become the inspiration for the battle cry of the Cristeros rebellion against atheistic tyranny and the motto of martyrs.

Now that Blessed Pro is part of the Church Triumphant, we pray that through his intercession the Church Militant may never forget the true meaning of this powerful feast and never fail to put it into practice. And in times such as ours, when the Barque of St. Peter “is taking on the waters [of secularism] to the point of capsizing,”[16] it is good to remember the words of Quas Primas:

We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men’s faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before (22).

[1] Marisol López-Menéndez, Miguel Pro: Martyrdom, Politics, and Society in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lexington Books, 2016), 4.

[2] Quas Primas 28. During its first year in 1926, however, it was held on October 31.

[3] The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden, which more or less retained the traditional readings of the Roman Rite, uses this sobriquet.

[4] See my “The End and Beginning of the Church Year: Interlocking Clasps in the Hidden Season,” TLM 22:3 (Fall 2013), 46-50.

[5] Pierre Jounel, “The Feasts of the Lord in Ordinary Time,” in The Church at Prayer, vol. 4, The Liturgy and Time, ed. Aimé Georges Martimort, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Liturgical Press, 1986), 107.

[6] Annibale Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 1990), 311.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “The Revision of the Feast of Christ the King,” Antiphon 18.3 (2014), 227-253.

[9] Congregation for Divine Worship, “Homiletic Directory,” Prot. N. 531/14 (2015).

[10] Adrien, Nocent, OSB, Liturgical Year: The Liturgical Year: Sundays Two to Thirty-Four in Ordinary Time, vol. 4 (Liturgical Press, 1977), 298.

[11] Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), 63.

[12] See my “The Time after Pentecost vs. Ordinary Time,” TLM 26:2 (Summer 2017), 46-50, or my essays in New Liturgical Movement here and here.

[13] “Should the Feast of Christ the King Be Celebrated in October or November?” 

[14] See“Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.”

[15] Quas Primas, 24.

[16] Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Funeral Message for the late Joachim Card. Meisner.

Is Passivity Mistaken for Piety? On the Perils and Pitfalls of Participation

This essay will have two contrasting parts. In the first part, I will defend being a “silent spectator” at Mass, one who looks and listens, or perhaps prays the Rosary. In the second part, I will suggest that there is, in postconciliar times, a danger of bending the stick so far in this direction that one risks cultivating a habit of liturgical passivity rather than true devotion. I am confident that each part will offend a different cohort of my beloved fellow traditionalists, and I only ask in return their prayers.

Part I: Pope Pius XII subtly corrects Pope Pius XI

A recent NLM article commemorated the 90th anniversary of Pope Pius XI’s Apostolic Constitution on Sacred Music Divini Cultus, promulgated on December 20, 1928. This document has many fine passages (as the quotations in the commemorative article demonstrate.) Nevertheless, there is one phrase in section 9 that should give us pause:

In order that the faithful may more actively participate in divine worship, let them be made once more to sing the Gregorian Chant, so far as it belongs to them to take part in it. It is most important that when the faithful assist at the sacred ceremonies, or when pious sodalities take part with the clergy in a procession, they should not be merely detached and silent spectators [non tamquam extranei vel muti spectatores], but, filled with a deep sense of the beauty of the Liturgy, they should sing alternately with the clergy or the choir, as it is prescribed.

The notion that laity who sit or kneel quietly at Mass and do not vocally participate are “disengaged and mute onlookers” is something of a caricature, and the mantra-like use made of this phrase in subsequent decades of the increasingly audacious Liturgical Movement culminated in a fascist enforcement of “active participation” that numbered among its casualities the interior participation that often thrives on silence and sacred music. The majority of the faithful, even those who may be utilizing paraliturgical devotions, are still participating in the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice; following a missal word-for-word, which seemed to be the ideal of the Liturgical Movement, is not only not required, but can even be an impediment to offering up the holy oblation in peace. [1]

Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mediator Dei contains the best treatment of participation — and of the related topics of the priesthood of the faithful and how they offer the sacrifice of the Mass in union with the priest — to be found in any magisterial document. [2] In paragraph 80 he writes:

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

Pius XII explains in paragraph 106 the purpose of any actions by which the faithful join in more directly with the liturgy taking place, such as following a daily missal or chanting the responses and the Ordinary — “their chief aim is to foster and promote the people’s piety and intimate union with Christ and His visible minister and to arouse those internal sentiments and dispositions which should make our hearts become like to that of the High Priest of the New Testament” — but then cautions against those who, “led away by false opinions, make so much of these accidentals as to presume to assert that without them the Mass cannot fulfill its appointed end”:

Many of the faithful are unable to use the Roman Missal even when it is written in the vernacular; nor are all capable of understanding correctly the liturgical rites and formulas. So varied and diverse are men’s talents and characters that it is impossible for all to be moved and attracted to the same extent by community prayers, hymns, and liturgical services. Moreover, the needs and inclinations of all are not the same, nor are they always constant in the same individual. Who, then, would say, on account of such a prejudice, that all these Christians cannot participate in the Mass nor share its fruits? On the contrary, they can adopt some other method which proves easier for certain people; for instance, they can lovingly meditate on the mysteries of Jesus Christ or perform other exercises of piety or recite prayers which, though they differ from the sacred rites, are still essentially in harmony with them.

This was Pius XII’s typically nuanced response to a complex situation. On the one hand, he applauded efforts made to inform and involve the laity in the actual liturgical rites — in this regard no different at all from Dom Guéranger’s purpose in writing The Liturgical Year and Explanation of the Prayers and Ceremonies of Holy Mass. [3] On the other hand, he rebuked the haughty proponents of “objective piety” who considered it wrong for Catholics to “tell their beads” during the Mass. It is as if the Pope is saying to each Catholic who assists at Mass: Pursue whatever it is that will most unite you in mind and heart to the mysteries of Christ and especially to His Sacrifice. For different people, this will take different forms; and even for the same person it will take different forms at different times.

Medieval manuscript showing layfolk at Mass.

When my son Julian interviewed Bishop Athanasius Schneider in June 2018 at the Sacred Liturgy Conference in Oregon, he asked him how the Rosary and the Mass complement one another, how they might “work together.” I was delighted to read the good bishop’s profound answer:

The Rosary is a beautiful synthesis of the entire mystery of the Incarnation, redemption, and work of salvation. And the Holy Mass is the recapitulation of the work of salvation. Christ became incarnate for what reason? To offer Himself as the Lamb of God and to offer Himself on the Cross for the salvation of humankind, and to glorify the Father. This is what it means. When we pray the Rosary, which we can pray even during Mass, we do participate very actively in the Joyful Mysteries, centered around the Incarnation — and the holy Mass is a continuation of the coming of Christ in the Incarnation, under the veils of the sacred species of bread and wine. And then the Sorrowful Mysteries, of course, they are the specific meditation of the holy Mass: they help us to contemplate the real presence of Golgotha under the sacramental veil. And then the Glorious: Christ present in the holy Host is the Risen One, the Glorified One, with His luminous wounds.
          So we have in the prayer of the Rosary a really beautiful synthesis of the entire Mass. And therefore in ancient times, those who could not read, I mean the peasants and farmers, did participate in the Mass with the Rosary. Often times after the Council, priests ridiculed these people, and humiliated them for praying the Rosary. But this is bad; it is unjust. They participated more deeply with praying the Rosary because they are meditating on what is now going on at the altar with the Rosary, the prayer of the Gospel, because the words of this prayer are of the holy Gospel.
          And so, of course, I do not want to say that we should only pray the Rosary during holy Mass, but it is a possible way of participating — not the only one, maybe not the main one, but it is legitimate. This I would say for people who have a special affinity for this.

As Pius XII said, and as Bishop Schneider beautifully explained, we should have no objection to people praying the Rosary during the traditional Latin Mass. I remember when I used to parrot the fashionable objections against such “private devotions” and “subjective piety.” But sooner or later, I learned a different lesson, thanks to my encounters with priests who say the old Mass especially slowly. This was a new phenomenon: I had so much time on my hands that I could read the propers of the Mass five times and still be left wondering what to do with myself. So I tried praying the Rosary and was surprised as how well it worked. (These “peasants and farmers” knew a thing or two! — a tough lesson for a kid who grew up in suburban New Jersey.) Or I will pray the preparatory Psalms printed in my St Andrew’s Daily Missal of 1945 — Psalms 83, 84, 85, 115, and 129 — or a Litany during the Offertory and the Canon, and often the prayer of St Ambrose or St Thomas while the priest is reciting his prayers immediately before communion. So far from detaching me as a silent spectator, all of these practices have enriched my offering of the prayer of the Mass, the prayer of Christ.

Part II: Liturgical Quietism and the Deactivation of the Laity

All this being said, however, I have noticed in some pockets of the Catholic traditionalist world a pendulum swing to an extreme opposite to outward participation and intelligent assimilation of the liturgy. I will call it a refusal to engage the liturgy at a bodily level, be this in the manner of gestures, reading, or singing; almost a taking pride in saying or singing nothing, and making as few motions as possible. There are many examples of the phenomenon; I will offer a few for consideration.

If you are literate and can follow the orations (collect, secret, postcommunion), or ponder the Epistle and Gospel, why would you not do it — at least sometimes? Why sit there and let the foreign words float over your head while you think about something else than what the liturgy is presenting to God on your behalf and with you (at least partly) in mind? Yes, it’s efficacious ex opere operato, but you can also make it your own prayer and your own meditation. It seems a perfect occasion for having the Church’s words in your soul, illuminating your mind and warming your heart. [4]

If the priest makes the sign of the cross at the start of his homily, and doesn’t himself say “Amen,” as if expecting the people to say it, why should they not say “Amen”? Yet I have seen congregations sit there, silent as stone, and never say “Amen.” Are we worried that it would be Protestant to hear the sound of our voices?

If you know the melody of Credo III and can sing it, why would you not sing it? The profession of faith is yours, too, and there’s no reason to consider it exclusively the property of the choir or schola. Congregational singing of the Ordinary is something the 20th century popes spoke consistently in favor of, and for good reason.

If you know that it’s a custom to strike your breast three times with the servers at the Confiteor, or during the Agnus Dei and the “Domine, non sum dignus,” why wouldn’t you do it? And if the faithful don’t know it, why couldn’t the priest tell them about it in a sermon? The same could be said of the many times when the priest makes the sign of the cross (“Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini…”; “Indulgentiam, absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum nostrorum…”; “in gloria Dei Patri”; “vitam venturi saeculi”; etc.). Admittedly, many of the faithful do cross themselves at these moments, which is a beautiful custom; why should it not be universal? What about the slight bowing of the priest’s head at certain points in the Gloria and in the Creed? Such actions, for me at any rate, remind me all the more forcibly of what is being prayed and why. When bowing the head at “simul adoratur et conglorificatur,” one is aware in one’s very muscles as well as in one’s intellect that the Holy Spirit is God, deserving of latria.

When the priest turns towards us with the Blessed Sacrament, why shouldn’t we say together: “Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea”? Of all the moments in the Mass, this one seems the most appropriate for a corporate exclamation before the corporate action of processing forward for Communion.

Now, I am not suggesting (quod absit!) that rubrics be imposed on the faithful to that effect, for we have seen how harmful such regimentation has been in the sphere of the Novus Ordo. I am merely pointing out a kind of passivity among the faithful that inhibits a fuller response to the texts and motions of the liturgy. [5] For, as Hilary White insightfully put it, liturgy is “theology in motion,” and this means our motion, to the extent that it pertains to us. [6]

A friend of mine once quipped that traditional Catholics too often “dress like Amish and pray like Quakers.”

At this point many readers may be itching to accuse me in the comments of being in cahoots with the tumid Liturgical Movement, of trying to sacerdotalize the laity, of importing Novus Ordo expectations into a classical context where they do not belong, of confusing participatio actuosa with activism, etc. But all of this I have argued against elsewhere repeatedly and at great length, and nothing I am saying need be construed as implying or promoting those errors.

What I object to is a situation where there is nothing in common between the two parts of the church — the nave and the sanctuary — except that the people in each part happen to be in the same building at the same time with the same generic intention. This strikes me as a low-water mark in the practice of liturgy, and a fruitful cause of the evils of liturgical reform. The solution isn’t to change the liturgy, or to force laity to do something; the solution is that clergy and laity alike learn to know and love the liturgy as it stands, and to insert ourselves into it with our powers of soul and body. Unlike the “pastoral priests” who are bent on repeating the errors of the past, we must be intelligent supporters and sustainers of the liturgical tradition as it comes down to us.

This does require some preaching specifically on the liturgy; it requires catechesis and ongoing education. The family of St Thérèse of Lisieux read aloud Dom Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, which formed the souls of the Martins. Lest it be thought that no one today could read such a book within the family, I happen to know of a family that did it — with about a dozen children, ranging from infants at the breast to young adults. More is possible than we tend to think possible.

I am convinced that it is too trite and simplistic to say “well, all that the priest says at the altar belongs to him, it’s his business; all the stuff the schola sings is their business; and the laity should just do their own thing.” No. The liturgy belongs to everyone in the church, because it belongs to Christ our Head. It is our common inheritance and activity. We have different offices and roles within it, but the liturgy is not like a pie divided up into different pieces that are served up to different people. It is a common good, like a philosophical truth or a theological mystery that can be equally and fully possessed by everyone at the same time. What the priest is doing and saying is also mine, albeit in a different mode. [7] When the schola sings the propers, they are my prayer, too, sung on my behalf — words that the Church places before me and within me.

It is also trite and simplistic to say “participation is interior.” Yes, it is principally interior and spiritual; as we all know, without this inner component, any amount of physical activity is useless or worse. But “principal” implies a comparison with something else that is secondary. The soul of man is primary and his body is secondary, yet you cannot have a man without both. The liturgy is a physical action and the man who participates in it is a physical being who engages with it through his bodily senses. Thus the body should be engaged as much as is consistent with the role a given person has in the liturgy. To my mind, that means not only kneeling, but also beating the breast, making the sign of the cross, bowing the head, singing the responses, and singing the Ordinary.

Ultimately the right disposition is not passivity, where we sit or kneel and otherwise keep still as if we were schoolchildren in the 1950s, afraid to call down on our heads the displeasure of the sister in charge. The right disposition is receptivity — and this means receiving not simply invisible graces but the particular goods the liturgy itself, in all its human richness, offers us.

The inscription reads: "Joseph, rising from sleep..."

NOTES

[1] In Yves Chiron’s biography of Annibale Bugnini, we learn about the latter’s radical liturgical experiments in the 1940s, where he began manipulating the liturgy for the sake of “participation.” In Bugnini’s own words: “I suddenly wondered: how could I have this people, with their elementary religious instruction, participate in the Mass? Above all, how could I make the children participate? I started out by painting big signboards with the easier responses for the people to say in Latin… Then I did the same with signposts in Italian… I knew that I had found the formula: the people willingly followed the Mass. The ‘inert and mute’ assembly had been transformed into a living and prayerful assembly” (p. 25). Note how Bugnini himself reverts to the formula of Pius XI.

[2] See sections 76 to 111. As to the common priesthood, there is no question that the traditional liturgy accentuates the one who is sacramentally configured to Christ in Holy Orders and who represents the Head of the Church within the assembly, the ekklesia. However, this would seem to cancel out the priesthood of the faithful only if one had an activistic notion of what it means to exercise this universal baptismal priesthood, which, in reality, is one of consent and self-offering.

[3] For the latter, I recommend this new edition from Angelico.

[4] I do not take into account the relatively rare situation of a layman who is so capable in Latin that he can perfectly understand what the priest is saying or singing. But a missal is still useful because often, perhaps even more often than not, issues of church architecture, acoustics, idiosyncratic pronunciation, or the speed of delivery make it difficult to follow the Latin of the priest even when it is spoken aloud.

[5] For the record: I am not a proponent of the so-called “dialogue Mass.” The kind of responses I have in mind are those that are sung during a High Mass (“Et cum spiritu tuo,” “Gloria tibi, Domine,” “Amen,” etc.) and the Ordinary of the Mass (from the “Asperges” through the final “Deo gratias”).

[6] For many examples of bodily participation in the usus antiquior, see my article “How the Traditional Latin Mass Fosters More Active Participation than the Ordinary Form,” which became the center of chapter 8 in my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017).

[7] As mentioned above, Pius XII’s explication of this point in Mediator Dei remains unsurpassed, whatever the flaws of that encyclical may be in regard to the axiom of Prosper of Aquitaine.

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for information, articles, sacred music, and Os Justi Press.

Divini Cultus, Pope Pius XI’s Apostolic Constitution on Sacred Music

Today marks the 90th anniverary of the publication of Divini Cultus, an Apostolic Constutition issued by Pope Pius XI to commemorate the 25th anniversary of St Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini. Although the post-Conciliar reform was effected with almost total disregard for earlier legislation and magisterial pronouncements on the liturgy, as an Apostolic Constitution, this remains part of the law of the Church to this day, no less than the motu proprio which inspired it. It is very much to be hoped that when the time comes to reform the liturgy properly (which it most surely will, though we know not the day nor the hour), the Church will take the wisdom of this document into serious consideration, particularly in regard to the importance it lays on the training of the clergy in the field of sacred music, and the importance of the public celebration of the Divine Office. We here present some excerpts from an English translation published on the website of the Adoremus Bulletin, where you can read the complete text; the Latin original is available on the Vatican website. (h/t Nicola.)

Public domain image from Wikipedia

“... No wonder, then, that the Roman Pontiffs have been so solicitous to safeguard and protect the Liturgy. They have used the same care in making laws for the regulation of the Liturgy, in preserving it from adulteration, as they have in giving accurate expression to the dogmas of the faith. This is the reason why the Fathers made both spoken and written commentary upon the Liturgy or “the law of worship”; for this reason the Council of Trent ordained that the Liturgy should be expounded and explained to the faithful.

In our times too, the chief object of Pope Pius X, in the Motu Proprio Tra Le Sollecitudini which he issued twenty-five years ago, making certain prescriptions concerning Gregorian Chant and sacred music, was to arouse and foster a Christian spirit in the faithful, by wisely excluding all that might ill befit the sacredness and majesty of our churches. The faithful come to church in order to derive piety from its chief source, by taking an active part in the venerated mysteries and the public solemn prayers of the Church. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that anything that is used to adorn the Liturgy should be controlled by the Church, so that the arts may take their proper place as most noble ministers in sacred worship.

Far from resulting in a loss to art, such an arrangement will certainly make for the greater splendor and dignity of the arts that are used in the Church. This has been especially true of sacred music. Wherever the regulations on this subject have been carefully observed, a new life has been given to this delightful art, and the spirit of religion has prospered; the faithful have gained a deeper understanding of the sacred Liturgy, and have taken part with greater zest in the ceremonies of the Mass, in the singing of the psalms and the public prayers. ...

It is, however, to be deplored that these most wise laws in some places have not been fully observed, and therefore their intended results not obtained. We know that some have declared that these laws, though so solemnly promulgated, were not binding upon their obedience. Others obeyed them at first, but have since come gradually to give countenance to a type of music which should be altogether banned from our churches. ...

In order to urge the clergy and faithful to a more scrupulous observance of these laws and directions which are to be carefully obeyed by the whole Church, We think it opportune to set down here something of the fruits of Our experience during the last twenty-five years. ...

We wish, then, to make certain recommendations to the bishops and ordinaries, whose duty it is, since they are the custodians of the Liturgy, to promote ecclesiastical art. ...

Holy Thursday in the Sistine Chapel in the reign of Pope Pius XI

All those who aspire to the priesthood, whether in seminaries or in religious houses, from their earliest years are to be taught Gregorian Chant and sacred music. At that age they are able more easily to learn to sing, and to modify, if not entirely to overcome, any defects in their voices, which in later years would be quite incurable. Instruction in music and singing must be begun in the elementary, and continued in the higher classes. In this way, those who are about to receive sacred orders, having become gradually experienced in chant, will be able during their theological course quite easily to undertake the higher and “aesthetic” study of plainsong and sacred music, of polyphony and the organ, concerning which the clergy certainly ought to have a thorough knowledge.

In seminaries, and in other houses of study for the formation of the clergy both secular and regular there should be a frequent and almost daily lecture or practice — however short — in Gregorian Chant and sacred music. ... Thus a more complete education of both branches of the clergy in liturgical music will result in the restoration to its former dignity and splendor of the choral Office, a most important part of divine worship; moreover, the scholae and choirs will be invested again with their ancient glory.

Those who are responsible for, and engaged in divine worship in basilicas and cathedrals, in collegiate and conventual churches of religious, should use all their endeavors to see that the choral Office is carried out duly — i.e. in accordance with the prescriptions of the Church. And this, not only as regards the precept of reciting the divine Office “worthily, attentive and devoutly”, but also as regards the chant. ...

... it should be observed that, according to the ancient discipline of the Church and the constitutions of chapters still in force, all those at least who are bound to office in choir, are obliged to be familiar with Gregorian Chant. ...

We wish here to recommend, to those whom it may concern, the formation of choirs. These in the course of time came to replace the ancient scholae and were established in the basilicas and greater churches especially for the singing of polyphonic music. Sacred polyphony, We may here remark, is rightly held second only to Gregorian Chant. We are desirous, therefore, that such choirs, as they flourished from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, should now also be created anew and prosper especially in churches where the scale on which the Liturgy is carried out demands a greater number and a more careful selection of singers.

Choir-schools for boys should be established not only for the greater churches and cathedrals, but also for smaller parish churches. The boys should be taught by the choirmaster to sing properly, so that, in accordance with the ancient custom of the Church, they may sing in the choir with the men, especially as in polyphonic music the highest part, the ..., ought to be sung by boys. Choir-boys, especially in the sixteenth century, have given us masters of polyphony: first and foremost among them, the great Palestrina. ...

The traditionally appropriate musical instrument of the Church is the organ, which, by reason of its extraordinary grandeur and majesty, has been considered a worthy adjunct to the Liturgy, ... We wish, within the limits prescribed by the Liturgy, to encourage the development of all that concerns the organ; but We cannot but lament the fact that, as in the case of certain types of music which the Church has rightly forbidden in the past, so now attempts are being made to introduce a profane spirit into the Church by modern forms of music; which forms, if they begin to enter in, the Church would likewise be bound to condemn. Let our churches resound with organ-music that gives expression to the majesty of the edifice and breathes the sacredness of the religious rites; in this way will the art both of those who build the organs and of those who play them flourish afresh and render effective service to the sacred liturgy.

A Mass coram Summo Pontifice at the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, celebrated on the occasion of Pope Pius XII’s proclamation of Ss Catherine of Siena and Francis of Assisi as the Patron Saints of Italy. (Courtesy of the Liturgical Arts Journal, via their Facebook page.)

In order that the faithful may more actively participate in divine worship, let them be made once more to sing the Gregorian Chant, so far as it belongs to them to take part in it. It is most important that when the faithful assist at the sacred ceremonies, or when pious sodalities take part with the clergy in a procession, they should not be merely detached and silent spectators, but, filled with a deep sense of the beauty of the Liturgy, they should sing alternately with the clergy or the choir, as it is prescribed. If this is done, then it will no longer happen that the people either make no answer at all to the public prayers — whether in the language of the Liturgy or in the vernacular — or at best utter the responses in a low and subdued manner.

Let the clergy, both secular and regular, under the lead of their bishops and ordinaries devote their energies either directly, or through other trained teachers, to instructing the people in the Liturgy and in music, as being matters closely associated with Christian doctrine. This will be best effected by teaching liturgical chant in schools, pious confraternities and similar associations. Religious communities of men and women should devote particular attention to the achievement of this purpose in the various educational institutions committed to their care....

We are well aware that the fulfillment of these injunctions will entail great trouble and labor. But do we not all know how many artistic works our forefathers, undaunted by difficulties, have handed down to posterity, imbued as they were with pious zeal and with the spirit of the Liturgy? Nor is this to be wondered at; for anything that is the fruit of the interior life of the Church surpasses even the most perfect works of this world. Let the difficulties of this sacred task, far from deterring, rather stimulate and encourage the bishops of the Church, who, by their universal and unfailing obedience to Our behests, will render to the Sovereign Bishop a service most worthy of their episcopal office.”