New Study Closely Compares Aquinas, Innocent III, and Albert on the Roman Canon

I am pleased to inform NLM readers about an important new publication from the EOS (Editions Sankt Ottilien): The Sacramental Signification in the Rite of the Holy Mass: The Synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas in Comparison with Pope Innocent III and St. Albert the Great by Rev. Dominik Pascal Witkowski.

Dominik Pascal Witkowski (b. 1986) is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Chur, Switzerland. He studied History and Theology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and pursued further studies in Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his theological formation with a Baccalaureate, Licentiate, and Doctorate in Sacred Theology (STB, STL, STD) at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome.

This study offers a systematic and comparative account of three major medieval commentaries on the rite of the Holy Mass: St. Thomas Aquinas’ exposition in the Summa theologiæ, Pope Innocent III’s De sacro altaris mysterio, and the De mysterio missæ attributed to St. Albert the Great. At its centre stands the Roman Canon—the core of the Latin Mass tradition—whose enduring liturgical use prompted centuries of theological reflection.

Bridging perspectives of doctrine, sacraments, and liturgical exegesis, the dissertation addresses the long-standing tension between the spiritual and philological schools of interpretation. By retrieving the Thomistic doctrine of spiritual signification—grounded in sacred doctrine and operative in Scripture, sacraments, and liturgy—it proposes a theological resolution. This Thomistic ressourcement demonstrates that the spiritual sense is not a subjective imposition, but an objective content of the rites themselves—signifying the passion of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, and the final consummation of the mystical body. In doing so, it contributes to the renewal of liturgical theology and highlights Aquinas’s synthesis as a vital key for understanding the Holy Mass in the Western tradition.

Fr. Witkowski explained to me that his book develops and presents, in an objective and scholarly way, the theological relevance and the deep significance of three major medieval commentaries; it touches only remotely on the major controversies of the twentieth century. Yet, by demonstrating the antiquity and richness of the older rites (one cannot help but be struck by the remarkable identity between the 13th-century curial rite and the pre-1955 Roman Rite), Fr. Witkowski contributes something still more fundamental: a case for the intelligibility, coherence, and perfection of the tradition, based on uncontested primary sources. This is a work that strongly presents the authority, integrity, and spiritual wealth of the Roman Rite.

This classic, extensive, detailed, and systematic study of the Holy Mass is sure to be appreciated by all serious scholars and students of liturgy, for its numerous insights into the Church’s liturgical heritage, particularly the mighty anaphora that stands at the heart of nearly all Western rites and uses.

A PDF of the Table of Contents may be downloaded here.

Book Announcement: “Prayers in Honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas”

If you’ve been paying attention to the Dominican world, you’ll know we’ve hit some huge Thomistic anniversaries recently:

• in 2023, the 700th of Aquinas’s canonization;
• in 2024, the 750th of his death;
• and in 2025, the 800th of his birth.

To me, as a writer and publisher, it seemed that a special celebratory publication was in order!

Now, books that contain Aquinas’s own prayers and poems are fairly plentiful. That may not have been the case decades ago, but thanks to the efforts of Fr. Paul Murray and others who have rescued Aquinas from the false accusations of proto-rationalism, we are in a good spot today when it comes to familiarity with and use of a broader range of the saint’s writings, including scripture commentaries, sermons, expert opinions, and the like. But when it comes to collecting traditional prayers and devotions in honor of St. Thomas into a single book, the story’s rather different. As far as I can tell, such a thing has never been done. I am therefore delighted to announce the latest release from Os Justi Press, a beautiful prayerbook that brings together the finest of this literature, researched and edited by Thomas O'Sullivan:

• The Little Office of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Antiphons & Responsories from the Office of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Prayer of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity
• Prayers to St. Thomas, Patron of Catholic Schools
• Prayer Before Studying St. Thomas
• Litany in Honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church & Patron of Chastity
• The Six Sundays in Honor of St. Thomas Aquinas

These devotions help us to relate to the Angelic Doctor as first and foremost the Lord’s beloved friend, a miracle-worker, an intercessor before the throne of God, a powerful member of the Mystical Body in its heavenly glory—one who merited to be hailed as “the holy teacher, citizen of the heavenly courts, splendor of the world, guide and light of the faithful, pattern, path, and law of all morality, vessel of virtues.”

Prayers are given in both Latin and English, on facing pages. The meditations for the Six Sundays are in English.
 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Schmemann’s Critique of the West (Part 3): Secularism and Liturgy

Our Lady’s Church (13th century), Lissewege, Belgium (source)

Having summarized Schmemann’s objections (Part 1) and begun to respond to them (Part 2), today, in this concluding part, I will take up two questions.

First, did Aquinas “cause secularism,” as it were, with his distinction between first cause and second cause?

There are two extremes and a mean on this question.

At one extreme, the world has its own causality independent of God, which amounts to saying that God mostly does not exercise causality in this world. At the other extreme, there is only God’s causality, because the world has no causality. In the mean, God has causality and the world has causality, but the world’s causality is dependent on God’s. Aquinas in in the mean and secularism is in the first of the two extremes. It is probably true that thinkers before Aquinas could wander into the second of the two extremes at times, and so Aquinas’ move from the second extreme back to the mean can look like a movement toward the first extreme.

Later on, nominalist thinkers did set up a kind of divide between God and the world that led towards secularism. Schmemann’s critique is not entirely without merit, but he has picked the wrong enemy, for Aquinas is not a nominalist or a dualist.

(All the same, as a friend of a friend pointed out, Schmemann had liturgics of the 1950s-1970s in view as he composed his critique. He was right to recognize that Western Christianity since the late Middle Ages seems to have been overtaken by a creeping nominalism, one that seems connected, in turn, to a new concept of absolute Church authority, and which alone made possible a kind of nominalist, rationalist, and positivist liturgical reform that would be unthinkable in the East. Like Geoffrey Hull, Schmemann is asking himself: “How did it come about that this concept of liturgy ‘makes sense’ in Roman Catholicism (and Protestantism), when the same approach would be unthinkable in Orthodoxy?” That remains a valid question.)
 

Aquinas among the Fathers of the Church (excerpt from a painting by Zurbaran)

Second, does Aquinas differ from the Fathers on the relationship between liturgy and sacrament?

Schmemann is right to point out that there was no place for “liturgy” in the systematic theological treatises of the Middle Ages. There were commentaries on the liturgies, but within the developing system of theology there was not a slot for “liturgy” the way there was for “sacrament.”

However, this was not due to Aquinas’ metaphysics but because the contents of the theological system were at least partially determined by the history of controversies. There were controversies about sacramental validity, etc., but there weren’t controversies about liturgy such as we have today. The absence of a treatise on liturgy is not because Aquinas had divorced sacrament from liturgy but because it had never occurred to anyone divorce the two. It was inconceivable.

One finds a similar lacuna in the medieval system regarding “church”: there is no treatise on the Church, although one finds a brief treatment of Christ as Head of the Mystical Body. This is not at all because Aquinas or his contemporaries did not believe in the Church or did not have thoughts about it, but because controversy had never made it a definite subject as later happened in the Reformation debates.

As regards thinking of “sign” as a participation in the signified, I would point to the book Cur Deus Verba, where Dr. Jeremy Holmes develops Aquinas’ own thought to make this very point. I would also note again that some kind of contrast between “figure”/“type” and “truth” was made throughout Patristic times, and the division between “thing” and “sign” was made by St Augustine, so it seems petty to run down the medievals for making similar distinctions.

I think Fr. Schmemann’s problem is not so much with sign/thing as with the very notion of transubstantiation. To avoid transubstantiation, he says that when we enter into the liturgy we pass from this world into the kingdom of heaven, and in that kingdom the bread is the body of Christ. The bread is not the body of Christ in this world, but only in the kingdom of heaven. Once we have entered the kingdom by entering the liturgy, then there is no need for a particular moment of change in the bread; Schemann says that the action of the Holy Spirit is not to change the bread but to reveal that the bread is the body. This view would exclude, for example, the Western practice of Eucharistic adoration.

Needless to say, the idea that in the realm of liturgy the bread is shown to be always/already the body of Christ is, curiously, to repeat Berengarius’ error in a more subtle manner: the liturgy shows the bread as a sign of the body, but a sign it remains, with no basis for stating that the consecrated bread is, in truth, in reality, objectively, the body of Christ, such that the worship of latreia is rightly given to it (or rather, to Him who is present to us by means of the Eucharist). One wonders if we are not confronted once again with the fundamental error of Platonism, whereby the sensible is (merely?) an image of the idea or the form, “participating” in it, yes—but not the idea or the form really present in our midst. This Platonism has been a far greater temptation in the East, where it has even threatened, at times, to undermine the core mystery of the Incarnation of the Logos in the flesh.

Some broader points need to be made as part of a judicious response.

There is much truth in what Schmemann says, as (in general) is true of the Eastern Orthodox critics of Western rationalism. Those who wish to pursue this line of argument still further should consult Geoffrey Hull’s The Banished Heart, which will make the reader either a Roman traditionalist, a Byzantine Catholic, or an Eastern Orthodox. We might as well candidly admit that there has been a tendency in the West, in theological discourse, to isolate sacraments from liturgy, and then to isolate within sacraments the “matter and form” that makes them valid. This reduction to validity is at the root of all modern Western liturgical woes.

Joseph Ratzinger recognized the same thing, and so (as he points out) did the Liturgical Movement at its best. In the Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, OSB (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), Ratzinger writes:

The author [Alcuin Reid] expressly warns us against the wrong path up which we might be led by a Neoscholastic sacramental theology that is disconnected from the living form of the Liturgy. On that basis, people might reduce the “substance” to the material and form of the sacrament and say: Bread and wine are the matter of the sacrament; the words of institution are its form. Only these two things are really necessary; everything else is changeable. . . . As long as the material gifts are there, and the words of institution are spoken, then everything else is freely disposable. Many priests today, unfortunately, act in accordance with this motto; and the theories of many liturgists are unfortunately moving in the same direction. They want to overcome the limits of the rite, as being something fixed and immovable, and construct the products of their fantasy, which are supposedly “pastoral,” around this remnant, this core that has been spared and that is thus either relegated to the realm of magic or loses any meaning whatever. The Liturgical Movement had in fact been attempting to overcome this reductionism, the product of an abstract sacramental theology, and to teach us to understand the Liturgy as a living network of Tradition that had taken concrete form, that cannot be torn apart into little pieces but has to be seen and experienced as a living whole. Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.

Indeed, the traditionalist movement is premised on not reducing the virtue of religion—the habit of right worship—to mere validity and licitness. This is a point I discuss throughout The Once and Future Roman Rite, a book that responds, to some extent, to the Schmemannian critique (see especially chapters 5, 6, and 10).

That being said, many Eastern Orthodox thinkers suffer from the polemical defect of being able to find little or nothing good to say about the West, which they believe to be in permanent and irreversible decline ever since the “schism” of 1054. Lossky and other Orthodox intellectuals in Paris even made up a lot of stuff about the Eastern tradition to ensure it would stand as far as possible from the Western tradition. Serious scholarship does not support this almost Manichaean picture of “East = good, true, beautiful / West = evil, false, ugly.” St Thomas Aquinas was sensitive to the complex form of the liturgy, as we can see in Question 83 of the Tertia Pars, where he comments in some detail on the shape of the Roman rite as he knew it, and never betrays the slightest inkling that he views all of that as arbitrary scaffolding around a magical transubstantiation. The careful studies of Abbé Franck Quoëx support this reading of Aquinas.

While Orthodox authors captivate with their poetic grandiosity, metaphysically their accounts often fall apart. For example: even if the entire liturgy is “divine” and must be embraced and entered into with reverence, there has to be a moment of consecration, before which the elements are only bread and wine, and after which they are Christ Himself. After all, He is always present “spiritually” or “mystically” in a soul in a state of grace and in the mystical body of the Church, but He is not always and everywhere present in His body, blood, soul, and divinity as He is upon the altar of sacrifice and in Eucharistic communion. This difference is the basis for the exaltation of the Divine Liturgy and of the Eucharist in the Christian life (just have a look at Nicholas Cabasilas). Whatever language we use to point out that difference—as we saw last week, “real” can certainly be defended, especially if it is contrasted not with mystical but with metaphorical or rational, that is, a linguistic or mental entity—the difference must be pointed out.

Some in the East almost seem to make a boast out of their imprecision (“everything is sacramental... everything is Christ... the liturgy is Christ,” etc.), but this can work only if people are content to rest in a hazy cloud of incense and not ask any further questions. “In what sense is everything sacramental? Is Satan sacramental? Is dung? Is an iPhone? In what sense is Christ in all? Is he in the apostates? In the act of sinning or the sinful will?” Any intelligent reply rests on distinctions: “Things are signs of God to the extent that they are good... Christ is present in the nature of the will but not in its voluntary disorder...” The moment any such distinctions are introduced, a person is well on his way to scholasticism of one kind or another: this is just how the human mind works—and it’s a perfection if it is done well.
 

Need we be separated over the All-Holy Theotokos? (source)

Moreover, Church history reveals many unfortunate cases where a difference in vocabulary need not have been a doctrinal obstacle but ended up becoming one either due to a mistaken apprehension of what each side was saying or, worse, due to a stubborn insistence on a single way of speaking even when argument has shown there can be various ways of expressing a truth. Transubstantiation is an excellent example; the Immaculate Conception yet another. In their passion to condemn everything Western, Eastern writers even manage to contradict, irony of ironies, the witness of the Church Fathers. Have a look at the patristic quotations on behalf of the substantial change in the Eucharistic gifts (whatever one wishes to call it), in Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals (new ed., 405–6).

Another way in which the modern Eastern apologists fictionalize and mythologize their own tradition is by downplaying the quite extensive Byzantine scholasticism and even Byzantine Thomism. Some argue that Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas are not as opposed to each other as customarily assumed. If we take the conventional view of Palamas, how amusing it is that Orthodox thinkers thunder against the West for “driving a wedge” between God and creation by means of a distinction between uncreated and created grace—and then they seem to drive a wedge into the divine nature by means of a distinction between God’s “essence” and His “energies”! The obvious distinction between the infinite, eternal, uncreated cause and the finite, limited, created effect is elided, while a far from obvious distinction that threatens the simplicity of God is produced ad hoc. When challenged, the “mystery card” is played: more clouds of incense.

In any case, for Aquinas, at least, real and mystical are not in opposition to each other, nor does Aquinas have to be pushed in a rationalizing/rationalistic direction. Is there contrary evidence from within the Western tradition—in the rites themselves and in the habits of the faithful—that this rationalism was not normative? Do we have the wherewithal in our own tradition to respond to its besetting temptations and vices?” Every tradition has its own temptations and vices; any honest person will admit it.

All Western traditionalists are characterized by a fundamental agreement that liturgy has intrinsic, immense, and independent value and should not be reduced to sacramental validity; nay, that the proper context for understanding what sacraments are, who their ministers and recipients are, what a proper intention is, etc., is precisely the traditional rites themselves, which are therefore indispensable. All one has to do is participate in a solemn High Mass to see that the West never entirely lost its liturgical-cosmic-sacramental sensibility. It is right there, “baked into” the rich and resplendent rites, which are anything but reductionist or minimalist.

True, we are suffering greatly from the triumph of the Pistoian rationalism and utilitarianism that hijacked the liturgical reform and now infests nearly every aspect of the Church’s life; but we can also see a zealous countermovement, a creative minority, that is poised to fill the pews when the twentieth-century experiment has finally exhausted itself in institutional bankruptcy.

Here are some pieces one could look at, having Schmemann’s objections in mind:

• On “Pinpointing” Consecration: A Letter for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas
• East-West Disagreements about the Epiclesis and Transubstantiation
• Counterpoints to the Hieromonk’s Letter
• The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo—Two Brothers and a Stranger
• The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity

Schmemann’s Critique of the West (Part 1): The Accusations

Alexander Schmemann (1921–83) was a highly influential Russian Orthodox priest and author who left a major mark on the renewal of Byzantine liturgical and sacramental theology, and on the thinking of some Roman Catholic liturgists as well. He was famous (infamous?) for his intense attacks on Western theology, which he believed to be thoroughly contaminated with a rationalism and a reductionism inimical to mystery. (It should not be forgotten that he also rather sharply criticized many aspects of modern Eastern Orthodoxy.) It would be tempting for traditionalists to give ear to these arguments because, if they are correct, they would seem to demonstrate a broader liturgical crisis in the West that is rooted in a false Thomistic distinction, which, over the centuries, changed how Christians understood and received the sacraments and liturgy.

My goal in this new series of articles is to summarize his major objections (part 1) and then respond to them in a way that is both sympathetic to whatever is legitimate in his concerns, and sharply critical of his misunderstanding (at times extreme) of Western theology (parts 2 and subsequent).

One of Schmemann’s most important books, For the Life of the World, expounds how the Church is a sacrament/epiphany of Christ, and how the Church is her liturgy. After meditating on the Church’s liturgy as the work of Christ extended in time, Fr. Schmemann addresses secularism, which he defines as “above all a negation of worship” (p. 146), because its core doctrine is a negation of “the sacramentality of man and world. A secularist views the world as containing within itself its meaning and the principles of knowledge and action” (p. 147). He then cites the Lateran council of 1215 and St. Thomas Aquinas as watershed moments in the origin of secularism as a post-Patristic and anti-Patristic way of conceiving the world and its relation to God.

Here is a key passage:

At the end of the twelfth century a Latin theologian, Berengarius of Tours, was condemned for his teaching on the Eucharist. He maintained that because the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements is “mystical” or “symbolic,” it is not real. The Lateran Council which condemned him … simply reversed the formula. It proclaimed that since Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is real, it is not “mystical.” What is truly decisive here is precisely the disconnection and the opposition of the two terms verum and mystice, the acceptance, on both sides, that they are mutually exclusive. (p. 152)

Aquinas, starting from this point, introduced the dichotomy characteristic of secularism:

And since then, Christian thought, in scholasticism and beyond it, never ceased to oppose these terms … it is indeed implied already in Thomism, with its basic epistemological distinction between causa prima and causae secundae. Here is the real cause of secularism, which is ultimately nothing else but the affirmation of the world’s autonomy, of its self-sufficiency in terms of reason, knowledge, and action. The downfall of Christian symbolism led to the dichotomy of the “natural” and “supernatural” as the only framework of Christian thought and experience. (p. 153)

(Note that Schmemann, in effect, is summarizing DeLubac’s argument in Surnaturel.) It follows that, Aquinas—the theologian par excellence of the Latin West—has, according to Schmemann, a different metaphysics or ontology than the Church Fathers do.

Later on, Fr. Schmemann explains further by explicating the relationship between sacrament and liturgy. He explains that the Church Fathers related these two in an ontologically different manner than Aquinas and Scholasticism:

In the early Church, in the writings of the Fathers, sacraments, inasmuch as they are given any systematic interpretation, are always explained in the context of their actual liturgical celebration, the explanation being, in fact, an exegesis of the liturgy itself in all its ritual complexity and concreteness. The medieval De Sacramentis, however, tends from its very inception to isolate the “sacrament” from liturgical context, to find and to define in terms as precise as possible its essence i.e., that which distinguishes it from the “non-sacrament.” Sacrament in a way begins to be opposed to liturgy. It has, of course, ritual expression, its “signum” which belongs to its essence, but this sign is viewed now as ontologically different from all other signs, symbols, and rites of the Church. And because of this difference, the precise sacramental sign alone is considered, to the exclusion of all other “liturgy,” the proper object of theological attention. One can for example read and reread the elaborate treatment given in St. Thomas’ Summa to sacraments without yet knowing much about their liturgical celebration. (p. 163)

Again:

St. Maximus the Confessor, the sacramental theologian par excellence of the patristic age, calls the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist symbols (“symbola”), images (“apeikonismata”), and mysteries (“mysteria”). “Symbolical” here is not only not opposed to “real,” but embodies it as its very expression and mode of manifestation. Historians of theology, in their ardent desire to maintain the myth of theological continuity and orderly “evolution,” here again find their explanation in the “imprecision” of patristic terminology. They do not seem to realize that the Fathers’ use of “symbolon” (and related terms) is not “vague” or “imprecise” but simply different from that of the later theologians, and that the subsequent transformation of these terms constitutes indeed the source of one of the greatest theological tragedies. (p. 165)

And driving home his argument:

In the early tradition . . . the relationship between the sign in the symbol (A) and that which it “signifies” (B) is neither a merely semantic one (A means B), nor causal (A is the cause of B), nor representative (A represents B). We called this relationship an epiphany. “A is B” means that the whole of A expresses, communicates, reveals, manifests, the “reality” of B (although not necessarily the whole of it) without, however, losing its own ontological reality, without being dissolved in another “res.” But it was precisely this relationship between the A and the B, between the sign and the signified, that was changed. Because of the reduction of knowledge to rational or discursive knowledge, there appears between A and B a hiatus. The symbol may still be a means of knowledge but, as all knowledge, it is knowledge about and not knowledge of. It can be a revelation about the “res,” but not the epiphany of the “res” itself. A can mean B, or represent it, or even, in certain instances, be the “cause” of its presence; but A is no longer viewed as the very means of “participation” in B. Knowledge and participation are now two different realities, two different orders. (p. 168)

It is this kind of reasoning that leads Fr. Schmemann to conclude: “The doctrine of transubstantiation, in its Tridentine form, is truly the collapse, or rather the suicide, of sacramental theology” (p. 170). One may certainly sympathize with this line of argument, inasmuch as we see conventional Thomists teaching about sacraments in isolation or abstraction from liturgy and exaggerating the principle of magisterial authority to the denigration and effective cancelation of tradition.

Next week, I will begin my response by answering this question: Did the Lateran Council give a bad and unpatristic definition of “real” as opposed to “mystical”?
 

with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

The Theology of Legoland

How can a fairground with a McDisney aesthetic and made of plastic bricks be so popular?

On a trip to England a few years ago, I visited a number of attractions for children in or around London. Two of them were the modern style of themed parks, Legoland and Kidzania, which have a range of highly interactive activities and rides that are free once you pay the entrance fee. They seem to be modeled on Disneyland in this regard.

We also went to the more conventional London Museum of Water and Steam, which is in the old water pumping station on the banks of the Thames, at Kew, built in 1820. This has the 19th-century pumps and engines on display, including a miniature steam train looking not unlike Thomas the Tank Engine. It is made interesting for children with some interactive explanations of what they are seeing.

Finally we went to Regent’s Park Zoo, which doesn’t really need to do very much to please most kids and parents other than show us the animals, but, perhaps in order to keep the eco-warriors at bay, it has had to reinvent itself as an environmentalist educational park (a marketing veneer, in my opinion, that can be ignored if eco-politics doesn’t interest you).

First, here are thoughts on the most popular of these attractions by far, Legoland. I was struck by just how exciting and entertaining these places are for kids aged 5 - 10. Legoland is a large permanent open-air fairground on a hill that overlooks Windsor castle, and so presumably the Queen can see it from her bedroom window if she cares to look in that direction. It is so popular that it has a hotel onsite, made out of real bricks...I think. Pretty much everything else in the place is made out of Lego. The general idea seems to be that there is a range of fairground rides - a ghost train, a rollercoaster, a merry-go-round, a boat on artificially created rapids, etc. - into which we are all strapped for safety, to which some themes from popular culture are applied. These themes are chosen to tap into whatever is running high in children’s popular culture at the time, so that might be the latest Disney hit or anything to do with pirates, princesses or fairy tales. Then they make a string of giant Lego models on that theme, perhaps have some of them waving their arms mechanically, and open the doors for business. And boy, does this work as a business model. Thousands and thousands attend.

This shows the power of anything that stimulates the imagination. These children are transported in their imaginations and they love it. The fact that the imaginary world is so obviously recreated by images made out of plastic bricks does not put them off; rather, it seems to attract them even more. They are thrilled by the Lego sculptures and, it seems to me, by the way, it stimulates their natural facility for seeing prototypes when presented with images. To my mind, the fact that Legoland stimulates this so powerfully is the attraction. It’s not just the themes, it’s the fact that there are images of the themes! This is the way of thinking that St Thomas describes in his 4th ‘proof’ of God and which he says is the most powerful way of evangelizing of all his proofs.

As I describe in a previous blog post, 4th-Way evangelization is a method underutilized by Christians today. The Lego company understood the power of this, even if Christians today haven’t, and have made a spectacular business success out of it. (So striking is Lego’s skill at doing this that one wonders if some secret Thomist has finally stumbled upon a commercial application for all those years studying the Summa and medieval philosophy. About time!) Christians should learn to tap into the same power. We could create something, perhaps, that without necessarily being explicitly Christian taps into the themes of Salvation History which are hardwired into us. The McDisneyland aesthetic of the Legoland is not great, but this is not a necessary component of what is on offer - it just says to me that there is a place for something even more powerful if we wanted to provide it. Whoever does this successfully will corner the market!

We do not need to compete with Legoland if we don’t want to (I don’t see that it is doing anything bad). They are so good at what they do, we might choose instead to observe how they tap into this natural facility in mankind and then build on what they do in order to further the Faith. People whose imagination is stimulated powerfully will respond even more powerfully to more explicitly Christian themes if presented well in a Christian context, such as the liturgy.

Kidzania is an indoor facility in West London which uses a similar psychological device to draw people in. Rather than transporting us to imaginary worlds for pure entertainment (with perhaps some incidental moral message) as Legoland does, Kidzania presents the world of adult work to children as an exciting place to which they can aspire. They can become for about twenty minutes at a time, airline pilots, aircrew, policemen, window cleaners, cooks, firemen, paramedics in an ambulance. Typically, an instructor firefighter welcomes them to the activity classroom. The door is shut and parents are excluded. They can’t hear what is said so are trusting that what they are told is good - we watch them through a glass screen. The children put on firemen’s hats and in conjunction with a video are told about this profession. Then they are told that there is an emergency to attend to. They are ushered into something like a golf cart that is made to look like a fire engine. They go to the scene of the accident and douse the fire with hoses spouting real water. As a result of this ‘work’, they earn 12 Kidzania pound notes. The moral message is more apparent here than the Lego experience. The goal is to introduce the idea of work to them and make it seem worthwhile. Again, what is fascinating is how exciting they make this by using the children’s imaginations to connect them to the reality they portray.

The last two places - the Museum of Water and Steam, and London Zoo - were more of what you would expect and much more interesting to me. The beauty and grace-in-motion of the old pump engines and even the elegance of the pumphouse (made in harmonic proportions of course) caught my eye. Interestingly, it was the rides and the interactive models, that seemed to me to be incidental to the main attraction, that the children were most interested in.

The latter two attractions offered an experience of something which was not using imagery, but presenting us with directly with something real. The children were thrilled to be at both of these places too, and enjoyed what was on offer, whether it was a water pump, a steam engine, tropical butterflies, gorillas, giraffes or penguins. The tendency of the more culturally conservative, such as myself, would be to argue that the higher, nobler, experience for the children is that in which they relate to reality directly. But now I’m not so sure. As I have pointed out in the past, the stimulation of imagination and the ability to relate the image to the prototype is almost universally necessary for one to have faith in God. Moreover, for all the beauty of the animals, we will not see them as God’s creatures unless we have that capacity for awe and wonder, and the power of imagination, to connect image to prototype, and creature to Creator. So, in fact, London Zoo needs a Legoland if it is to avoid being a neo-pagan, eco-warrior homage to Nature, rather than an authentic glorification of the Creator.

Perhaps Legoland is onto something profound here!

Advice to Singers: Drink Some Water After Receiving Holy Communion

In talking to Catholics over the years, I’ve sometimes encountered odd ideas about what’s reverent or not. To be fair, the biggest problem is the lack of any conception of reverence whatsoever, but that’s not my focus in the present article. Here, I am thinking of devout Catholics who may think that a certain practice is irreverent when it’s simply not. A classic example is when Catholic schoolchildren of yore were taught that it would be wrong to masticate the host; it had to be allowed to dissolve. One can appreciate that religious sisters were in the business of teaching much-needed manners to children (especially boys) and did not want to see them “munching” on their way back from communion, but the way I’ve heard it told, it sounds like they might have gone overboard in the emphasis given on this or similar points of decorum.

So, too, it seems that some choir members are uncomfortable with drinking water from a water bottle immediately after communion, as if somehow this were not appropriate. But I would make the case that not only is there nothing wrong with it, but on the contrary, it can be a very good idea. I think what might be happening psychologically is a kind of assumption that because it is fitting to fast before communion, we should also fast (as it were) after communion.

It is indeed a big deal to fast before Holy Communion, and the reduction of the fast from all night to three hours to one hour is a poster child example of the colossal prudential error frequently made by churchmen in modern times, namely, that if we relax our disciplines we will somehow retain or attract more believers. This is demonstrably false; the ancient discipline was eminently wise. In his commentary on the Sentences, St. Thomas writes as follows:

This sacrament should only be received by those who are fasting, unless out of necessity because of imminent death, lest it happen that someone should have to exit this life without viaticum. Fasting must be established in reverence for such a sacrament, for three reasons in particular. First, because of the very sanctity of the sacrament; so that the mouth of a Christian, by which it is to be consumed, would not be first drenched with other food, but would be reserved for its reception as something new and pure. Second, because of the devotion that is required on the part of the one receiving, and the attention that could be distracted by having taken food, with gases rising from the stomach to the head. Third, because of the danger of vomiting, and other things like that. (In IV Sent. d. 8, q. 1, a. 4, qa. 1)

On the other hand, even if it is highly fitting for worshipers to remain after Mass for a time of thanksgiving rather than immediately leaving the church building and tucking into regular food and drink, doing so would not carry the same gravity, since a time of thanksgiving is (at least theoretically) built into the Mass itself. Again St. Thomas:

According to the custom of the Church, out of reverence for so great a sacrament, after having received it, a man should remain in thanksgiving; and the prayer of thanksgiving after Communion in the Mass is also said, and the priests after celebrating Mass have special prayers for thanksgiving. And so it is fitting that there should be a certain interval between consuming the Eucharist and other foods. But since a great interval is not required, and what lacks something small seems to lack nothing, as it says in Physics 2, for this reason we might concede that in this sense a person can take other food immediately after receiving the Eucharist.

After all, the priest himself, in receiving the unconsecrated wine and water during the ablutions, is already consuming non-consecrated elements, at times only moments after having received Holy Communion. Obviously the vessels have to be cleansed, and there is no more efficient way to do it; but we should also not overlook the practical benefit to the priest in being able to clear his mouth of any fragments of the host that might have remained there. A sign that this concern is real may be gleaned from the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. In chapter 38, the legislator prescribes concerning the weekly reader during the meals: “Let the brother who is reader for the week take a little bread and wine before he begin to read, on account of the Holy Communion, and lest it be hard for him to fast so long. Afterwards let him take his meal with the weekly cooks and other servers.” On this passage, a commentator writes:

Saint Benedict prescribes “a little bread and wine before he begin to read, on account of the Holy Communion.” This is not only because the reader, if he waits until after the meal, risks a headache and weakness from too prolonged a fast; it is also out of reverence for the Most Holy Sacrament. The “little bread and wine” serve as an ablution of the mouth, lest in reading or chanting, the reader inadvertently expectorate particles of the Sacred Host in his saliva. The custom of an ablution of the mouth after receiving Holy Communion is very ancient; traces of the custom have perdured, not only among certain Orthodox faithful, but even in some places in the West. I remember very well that my paternal grandmother, who received her First Holy Communion in County Leitrim in about 1909, was taught to cleanse her mouth with water immediately upon returning home from Holy Mass and before eating or drinking anything. I can still see her coming in from the early morning Mass. She would, without removing her hat and coat, light the burner under the kettle for tea and, then, go straight to her pantry for the traditional post-Holy Communion glass of water. It is interesting that such a custom was still practiced in early 20th century rural Ireland.

Like readers, singers are aware of the “inadvertent expectoration” mentioned above, however rare it might be that it would contain a crumb of the divine manna. It only took one such experience to convince me of the benefit of taking a drink of water in the choir loft upon returning from communion and before beginning to sing the communion antiphon or motets. Later on, when I read the passage in the Holy Rule, and connected it with the ablutions, I realized that this awareness has long been present in the mind of the Church, if in an understated way.

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The monastic reader in the refectory

MOGA (Make Octaves Great Again): Photos from the Christmas Octave of Solemn Masses in St. Louis

As Candlemas approaches, and the final days of the Christmas season slip away, let’s look back on a unique liturgical event that took place this Christmas in St. Louis. Below is a brief account from one of the members of the Schola of St. Hugh.

It all started with a conversation between two seminarians last summer. Both St. Louis natives, these friends met for dinner and pondered the upcoming academic year. One of them, who has a devotion to St. Stephen, mentioned how great it would be if they could assist together at a Solemn Mass in honor of his Saint’s feast day on December 26th. Better yet… Why not have Solemn Masses for the entire Christmas Octave?

Thus, the plan for a Solemn Christmas Octave in St. Louis — lovingly nicknamed MOGA (Make Octaves Great Again) — was born.

While these seminarians studied during the fall, a lay friend of theirs kept the idea alive. He worked with the rector of the Oratory of Ss. Gregory and Augustine to schedule Masses at the oratory for each of the Octave days. Things escalated during Advent with a flurry of choir rehearsals, clergy training, server training, and volleys of emails to keep everyone informed.

St Luke’s Church in St. Louis Missouri, home of the Oratory of Saints Gregory and Augustine.

Finally, the beautiful midnight Mass of Christmas arrived, and it was followed by seven glorious Solemn Masses. Throughout the Octave, various clergy from across the archdiocese ministered to over 1000 lay faithful who assisted at these Masses. Many of the lay faithful commented on how the solemn liturgies deeply moved them and drew them into the mysteries of Christmas. Some of the lay faithful even made it a point to come to every one of the Octave Masses.

Feast of St Stephen

The oratory’s regular choir collaborated with the Schola of St. Hugh, a small task force of musicians from both the Archdiocese of St. Louis and the Bellville diocese, to provide polyphony, organ fanfares, and chant. Some of their musical selections included Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium, Palestrina’s Alma Redemptoris Mater, and the rarely heard chant settings III and V from the Kyriale.

Some readers may ask if a solemn octave was really necessary and assert that Low Masses are perfectly acceptable. To understand what motivated the participants of the Solemn Octave, one must first recall that divine worship is the supreme act of religion, which is the highest of all moral virtues and a part of justice (Summa theologiae, q. 81, aa. 5-6). A thirst for justice leads to the desire to worship God with the greatest possible solemnity.

The Church needs an abundance of solemn liturgies because the Church needs justice. She needs priests, deacons, subdeacons, masters of ceremonies, processions, incense, chant, and the rich rubrics of the solemn liturgies because it is in these that She praises God with worship par excellence. If a lack of ministers and choristers precludes a Solemn Mass or at least a Sung Mass, then a Low Mass is good and, of course, always a great blessing. But when clergy and gifted musicians find themselves spurred on by a hunger to give their utmost in divine worship, then this inspiration should not go unheeded.

The organizers of the Solemn Christmas Octave were grateful to pay court to their newborn King and, according to their abilities, render Him His due. The Solemn Christmas Octave was the occasion of many graces, and plans are already underway for a Solemn Easter Octave in St. Louis.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

3,000-Years-Old Newsflash! God Commanded the Use of Graven Images

Last month, on Sunday, October 13th, the Eastern Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. I am happy to share with our readers the text that was the basis of the homily given by Fr Sebastian Carnazzo, pastor of St Elias Melkite Catholic Church in Los Gatos California, on that day.

There are several points that we of the Roman Church can take from this.

First, is the content. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the 10 commandments do not forbid graven images. The relevant commandment, often quoted by iconoclastic Protestants and out of context, does not condemn the making and use of religious imagery, but rather idolatry, which is very different. Graven, incidentally, means “made by hand.” Fr Sebastian (a Scripture scholar who is a colleague of mine on the faculty at www.Pontifex.University) explains why this is the case.

Second is the fact that Fr Sebastian thought this point is important enough to make it the central subject of his homily, and to send out a summary of his points in the church bulletin which he encouraged his parishioners to take home and study. In this homily, while he did mention in passing the many contemporary forms of idolatry in our neo-pagan or secular world, (a subject that many priests today are more likely to discuss in this context), he focused primarily on the use of images in the context of worship.

As Roman Catholics, we cannot afford to be smug about this. The general situation in my observation is that images are not incorporated in worship at all. And I am not referring here to the liberal, impious parishes with whitewashed, modern churches that reflect modern iconoclasm and are barely distinguishable from a puritanical Protestant church. I am thinking of your parish and mine, that of the orthodox, pious and religious who appreciate beauty, and very likely agree in principle with the need for sacred art in churches. They might have beautiful art in their churches, and Mass at such parishes might be dignified and beautiful, with expert choirs singing chant or polyphony, but I have never yet seen liturgical imagery used in the context of worship in the way that I see it in every Eastern Divine Liturgy. The understanding of the place of liturgical imagery in the actual process of worship is so small that, in my experience, Roman Catholics simply don’t know what I am referring to when I mention it. At Roman Catholic churches, the art is reduced to contributing to a beautiful backdrop that is incidental to the process of worship, which is an eyes-closed affair that involves us having our noses buried in Missals. Most of the art is devotional, and if it is engaged with at all, it is not in the context of the liturgy. Until we remedy this situation in the Roman Church, we cannot, in my estimation, revitalize the culture powerfully. I wrote about this specifically and in detail in the following article: The Good, the Better and the Sunday Best - Using St Thomas’ 4th Way to Evangelize the Culture.

The third is the importance of this feast in the Church calendar in the Eastern Church. Of the seven Councils recognized by the Eastern Church, the first six are celebrated together, but the Seventh Ecumenical is given its own day. This is a reflection of the history of the Eastern Church and its fight against iconoclasm. There are martyrs from the period, over 1,000 years ago, people who were prepared to die rather than concede the point. We have been through our own period of iconoclasm in the West (we are not out of it yet), but in contrast with its Eastern equivalent, it is marked not by resistance from the Catholic faithful and hierarchy, but by quiet acquiescence. Greater the fools we!

Images are the stepping stones by which the spirit of man can move from contemplation of the material world to contemplation of God. We neglect them at our peril, as the history of Church in the West for the last 200 years demonstrates. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that until we once again incorporate imagery directly into our worship, we will continue to lose the culture wars with the anti-Christian secular forces, and Mass ayyendance will continue to decline.

The Adoration of the Golden Calf – Picture from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (12th century)

Here is Fr Carnazzo’s recorded Bible study on the topic.
And here is the written text, which was the starting point for his homily, made available at my request:

The Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council declared: “We, therefore...define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honorable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honorable reverence not indeed that true worship of faith which pertains alone to the divine nature...but...according to ancient and pious custom” (NPNF, vol 14).

The Seventh Ecumenical Council made this declaration in AD 787, against the heresy of Iconoclasm, a heresy that had labeled the making and use of religious imagery in the Church as idolatry. The council condemned the heresy of iconoclasm on the grounds that it contradicted the Orthodox and Apostolic Faith. For the Church had used sacred images in both its liturgical life and catechesis from the earliest days, just as Israel had in both its synagogues and places of worship in the OT. And although the declaration of the venerable Council officially ended the problem for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the heresy lives on even to today.

Iconoclasm is found implicitly in the architecture and decor and explicitly in the doctrine of the vast majority of Protestant sects. These sects teach that the Bible forbids the making and use of religious imagery, such as statues and icons. The passage they most commonly cite is from the Ten Commandments given through Moses at Sinai: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them or serve them...”(Exod 20:4-5). When this passage is read out of context, it can appear that the Protestant position has some support and that the Bible really does condemn the making and use of religious imagery.

However, if one reads the passage in its original context, one can see that the commandment does not condemn the making of a graven image as such (“graven” simply means ‘fashioned by hand’), but rather the making of an image to be worshiped as a god. This is made clear by a careful reading of the words which appear immediately before and after the passage in question: “I am the Lord your God....You shall have no other gods before me.....for I the Lord your God am a jealous God....” Later on in the same chapter, God repeated his commandment in one succinct statement, “You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold” (Exod 20:23). Therefore the passage, usually quoted by Protestants and often out of context, does not condemn the making and use of religious imagery, but rather idolatry, that is the making and use of an image of a created thing to bow down and worship it as a god.

An examination of the broader context further supports this conclusion, since there are a number of passages, even in the very same book of Exodus, where God actually commands that religious imagery be made. For example, just a few chapters later, God began to describe to Moses how to build the Ark of the Covenant and the Sanctuary that would be God’s dwelling place among Israel (Exod 25:10-22). In this passage God told Moses to make an ark (a box about the dimensions of a bath tub) out of wood and to cover it with gold. Then he was to put two cherubim (a cherub is a type of angel) on the lid at either end, facing each other, wings out-spread, and touching in the middle. In this box, Moses was to place the Ten Commandments, and above this box God would sit enthroned on the outstretched wings of the graven images of golden angels (cf. 1 Sam 4:4; Ps 99:1, etc.), and from there speak to Moses about all of his commandments to Israel. Continuing on in the book of Exodus, one finds that from chapter 25 to the end of the book, the majority of the text is spent describing how God wants Moses to build the Sanctuary, and how he is to cover it with images of cherubim, palm trees, flowers, and fruit (cf. Exod 25: 31-40; 26:1,30-31; 28:31-34), all according to God’s command (cf. Exod 25:40; 26:30; 27:8; 39:43; 40:33-38). As one can see, God did not condemn the making or use of religious imagery; on the contrary, he actually commanded it for his most holy Sanctuary where he would dwell among Israel. Similar imagery appears later in the Old Testament, when Solomon built the Temple.

Like Moses before him, Solomon was appointed to build a place for God to dwell among His people. And like the Sanctuary Moses was commanded to build, Solomon built the Temple in accordance with the pattern he had been shown by God (1 Chron 28:18-19; Wis 9:8; cp. Exod 25:40). In the inner sanctuary of the Temple, Solomon put the Ark that Moses had built, and at the entrance he put two 15-foot (1 cubit = 1 ½ feet) statues of cherubim to guard the way (1 Kings 6:14-32). The Temple’s inner sanctuary was covered in gold and the rest of the Temple walls were lined in cedar and carved with images of cherubim, open flowers, gourds, palm trees, lilies, and lions (cf. 1 Kings 6:33-35; 7:28,36). Twelve life-sized statues of oxen supported a 10,000-gallon bath for liturgical washing (cf. 1 Kings 7:25-26). Hundreds and hundreds of golden pomegranates (a type of fruit) hanging from lengths upon lengths of golden chains draped from every pillar (cf. 1 Kg 7:15-22,42). What Moses had made for ease of travel through the wilderness, Solomon made for permanence in Jerusalem. As with the sanctuary built by Moses, Solomon’s Temple contained numerous examples of God’s command to make and use religious imagery for both catechetical decoration and liturgical function.

Another example of God commanding the making of graven imagery appears in an episode of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness when they were stricken by deadly serpents Here God commanded the making of a graven image in the form of a serpent as a medium through which he would save his people (Num 21:8-9; cp. 2 Kings 18:4).

Therefore, the common Protestant claim that the Ten Commandments condemn the making and use of graven religious imagery is clearly refuted, not only in the immediate context as already addressed, but by numerous other passages in the Bible, as the above examples demonstrate. God did not condemn the making and use of religious imagery in the Ten Commandments, but rather the sin of idolatry. Idolatry is the act of making or using an image to be worshiped as a god. One can see the difference by an examination of the well-known biblical account of idolatry, when Israel made a golden calf (cf. Exod 32). But notice what was at issue here. It was not the fact that Israel decided to make an image of a calf, Solomon had made twelve life-size statues of oxen to be used in the Temple he built (cf. 1 Kings 7:25-26), rather the issue here was the making of an image of a calf to be worshiped as a god (cf. Exod 32:1,4).

Another example of idolatry appears in the book of Daniel, when King Nebuchadnezzar built a 90-foot tall golden image (Dan 3). He then commanded all in his kingdom to come and worship it as a god (cf. Dan 3:6,11,14,18). Here again, notice that the problem was not that Nebuchadnezzar built a large golden statue, indeed Solomon had built two 15-foot golden statues of cherubim in the Temple (cf. 1 Kings 6:23), rather the issue here was that Nebuchadnezzar had built his statue to be worshiped as a god.

So we see how Protestantism’s erroneous interpretation of God’s teaching regarding graven images in the Ten Commandments, is not only contradicted by a careful examination of the immediate context, but also in numerous examples throughout the rest of Sacred Scripture. Let us recall the golden cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant, whose wings formed the very throne of God upon the earth, the two 15-foot golden cherubim who guarded the way into the Temple’s sanctuary, the twelve life-size statues of oxen which supported the bath of purity in the Temple, the cherubim, lions, palm trees, gourds, pomegranates, and open flowers that decorated the Temple, and the bronze serpent, fashioned that the people of God might live. Thus it is obvious from even the ‘Bible alone’, that God did not condemn the making of religious imagery in the Ten Commandments, but rather the sin of idolatry. And so while we renounce the idolatrous making of a graven image to be worshiped as a god, we also uphold the ancient and honorable practice of the making and use of religious imagery in the Church, received from Israel of Old, since as the Council Fathers taught: “For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them....” Therefore, let us proclaim with the great and venerable Fathers of that most blessed and glorious Council concerning the Iconoclasts of the past and their modern adherents today among the Protestant sects: “they have failed to distinguish between holy and profane, styling the images of our Lord and of his Saints by the same name as the statues of diabolical idols....[applying] to the venerable images the things said in Holy Scripture about idols.”

Here is the bulletin which is not only distributed to all who attend the Divine Liturgy but is emailed out to any who have ever attended the church. This contains a truncated version of the above. Again, this indicates the seriousness with which this topic is taken in the Eastern Church.

The Theology of Legoland

How can a fairground with a McDisney aesthetic and made of plastic bricks be so popular?

On a recent trip to England, I visited a number of attractions for children in or around London. Two of them were the modern style of themed parks, Legoland and Kidzania, which have a range of highly interactive activities and rides that are free once you pay the entrance fee. They seem to be modeled on Disneyland in this regard.

We also went to the more conventional London Museum of Water and Steam, which is in the old water pumping station on the banks of the Thames, at Kew, built in 1820. This has the 19th-century pumps and engines on display, including a miniature steam train looking not unlike Thomas the Tank Engine. It is made interesting for children with some interactive explanations of what they are seeing.

Finally we went to Regent’s Park Zoo, which doesn’t really need to do very much to please most kids and parents other than show us the animals, but, perhaps in order to keep the eco-warriors at bay, it has had to reinvent itself as an environmentalist educational park (a marketing veneer, in my opinion, that can be ignored if eco-politics doesn’t interest you).

First, here are thoughts on the most popular of these attractions by far, Legoland. I was struck by just how exciting and entertaining these places are for kids aged 5 - 10. Legoland is a large permanent open-air fairground on a hill that overlooks Windsor castle, and so presumably the Queen can see it from her bedroom window if she cares to look in that direction. It is so popular that it has a hotel onsite, made out of real bricks...I think. Pretty much everything else in the place is made out of Lego. The general idea seems to be that there is a range of fairground rides - a ghost train, a rollercoaster, a merry-go-round, a boat on artificially created rapids, etc. - into which we are all strapped for safety, to which some themes from popular culture are applied. These themes are chosen to tap into whatever is running high in children’s popular culture at the time, so that might be the latest Disney hit or anything to do with pirates, princesses or fairy tales. Then they make a string of giant Lego models on that theme, perhaps have some of them waving their arms mechanically, and open the doors for business. And boy, does this work as a business model. Thousands and thousands attend.

This shows the power of anything that stimulates the imagination. These children are transported in their imaginations and they love it. The fact that the imaginary world is so obviously recreated by images made out of plastic bricks does not put them off; rather, it seems to attract them even more. They are thrilled by the Lego sculptures and, it seems to me, by the way, it stimulates their natural facility for seeing prototypes when presented with images. To my mind, the fact that Legoland stimulates this so powerfully is the attraction. It’s not just the themes, it’s the fact that there are images of the themes! This is the way of thinking that St Thomas describes in his 4th ‘proof’ of God and which he says is the most powerful way of evangelizing of all his proofs.

As I describe in a previous blog post, 4th-Way evangelization is a method underutilized by Christians today. The Lego company understood the power of this, even if Christians today haven’t, and have made a spectacular business success out of it. (So striking is Lego’s skill at doing this that one wonders if some secret Thomist has finally stumbled upon a commercial application for all those years studying the Summa and medieval philosophy. About time!) Christians should learn to tap into the same power. We could create something, perhaps, that without necessarily being explicitly Christian taps into the themes of Salvation History which are hardwired into us. The McDisneyland aesthetic of the Legoland is not great, but this is not a necessary component of what is on offer - it just says to me that there is a place for something even more powerful if we wanted to provide it. Whoever does this successfully will corner the market!

We do not need to compete with Legoland if we don’t want to (I don’t see that it is doing anything bad). They are so good at what they do, we might choose instead to observe how they tap into this natural facility in mankind and then build on what they do in order to further the Faith. People whose imagination is stimulated powerfully will respond even more powerfully to more explicitly Christian themes if presented well in a Christian context, such as the liturgy.

Kidzania is an indoor facility in West London which uses a similar psychological device to draw people in. Rather than transporting us to imaginary worlds for pure entertainment (with perhaps some incidental moral message) as Legoland does, Kidzania presents the world of adult work to children as an exciting place to which they can aspire. They can become for about twenty minutes at a time, airline pilots, aircrew, policemen, window cleaners, cooks, firemen, paramedics in an ambulance. Typically, an instructor firefighter welcomes them to the activity classroom. The door is shut and parents are excluded. They can’t hear what is said so are trusting that what they are told is good - we watch them through a glass screen. The children put on firemen’s hats and in conjunction with a video are told about this profession. Then they are told that there is an emergency to attend to. They are ushered into something like a golf cart that is made to look like a fire engine. They go to the scene of the accident and douse the fire with hoses spouting real water. As a result of this ‘work’, they earn 12 Kidzania pound notes. The moral message is more apparent here than the Lego experience. The goal is to introduce the idea of work to them and make it seem worthwhile. Again, what is fascinating is how exciting they make this by using the children’s imaginations to connect them to the reality they portray.

The last two places - the Museum of Water and Steam, and London Zoo - were more of what you would expect and much more interesting to me. The beauty and grace-in-motion of the old pump engines and even the elegance of the pumphouse (made in harmonic proportions of course) caught my eye. Interestingly, it was the rides and the interactive models, that seemed to me to be incidental to the main attraction, that the children were most interested in.

The latter two attractions offered an experience of something which was not using imagery, but presenting us with directly with something real. The children were thrilled to be at both of these places too, and enjoyed what was on offer, whether it was a water pump, a steam engine, tropical butterflies, gorillas, giraffes or penguins. The tendency of the more culturally conservative, such as myself, would be to argue that the higher, nobler, experience for the children is that in which they relate to reality directly. But now I’m not so sure. As I have pointed out in the past, the stimulation of imagination and the ability to relate the image to the prototype is almost universally necessary for one to have faith in God. Moreover, for all the beauty of the animals, we will not see them as God’s creatures unless we have that capacity for awe and wonder, and the power of imagination, to connect image to prototype, and creature to Creator. So, in fact, London Zoo needs a Legoland if it is to avoid being a neo-pagan, eco-warrior homage to Nature, rather than an authentic glorification of the Creator.

Perhaps Legoland is onto something profound here!