A Teen’s Testimony of the Impact of the Latin Mass in Her Life

The following account was a homeschool assignment given to a 15-year-old from California. We are grateful to this remarkable young lady for having shared it with NLM. To me, it speaks more (and more profound) truths than we will ever hear from any Synod. – PAK

I have been going to the Traditional Latin Mass for several years now, and with good reason. It has enriched me spiritually in many ways, and I have felt a stronger love for Jesus Christ in my soul than ever before.

When I was younger, only about five years old, I went to the Novus Ordo Mass every Sunday. My older brother, especially, instilled in me a love for God and for Holy Mass. He told me to meditate on the Mass, and the sacrifice that was taking place, and to spend lots of time contemplating the decades of the rosary.

But to be honest, I never understood how the Mass was a “sacrifice.” At my Novus Ordo church, the priests said it was a celebration. To my younger and smaller self, I had trouble figuring out whether the Mass was a sacrifice or a celebration. Because to me, it certainly could not have been both. A celebration reminded me of parties and happiness, and a sacrifice reminded me of sorrow and pain. A small child does not understand the meaning of true sorrow and deep pain, and so the concept of a “sacrifice” seemed very mysterious to me. I wondered a lot about it, but after not figuring out what a sacrifice really was, I decided to cast those thoughts aside. If I didn’t understand it, then surely it wasn’t important, right?

I lived in a similar way for years, trying to love God but not knowing what loving God really was; trying to pay attention to Mass, but not understanding what was taking place. I knew God was present, but I didn’t know the prayers. When did the bread become the Holy Eucharist? I used to think it was when the band started singing the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts and we all knelt. I even thought that I was already a saint, and that everyone around me was too. Hell was a place reserved for very, very few people, I thought.

As I got older, I started disliking Mass. Why did we have to go every week, sometimes even more frequently than that? I especially disliked when Christmas Day fell on a Saturday, because then we would have to go to Mass two days in a row. I noticed no difference in my spiritual life. I didn’t even know what a spiritual life was. I was told by my brother and mother that it was something very special. But I never knew what it was exactly. How can someone tell if they are advancing in their spiritual life? Since I had felt no change my entire life, I assumed I had reached that point of spiritual perfection long ago. But the saints loved the Mass very much, so if I was a saint, then how come I didn’t like Mass?

One day, though, everything changed. My father announced that we were not going to our regular parish that Sunday, but to a different one. A different parish with a different Mass.

When we arrived, I noticed how quiet it was. How sacred it felt. When the Traditional Latin Mass began to be offered in front of me, I was confused. I didn’t understand a thing, and I didn’t give anyone the sign of peace. It felt very different. I remember particularly disliking kneeling a lot and not being able to talk to people in the pews behind me. It was like something very serious was going on. But I had never thought the Mass to be very serious, so why was everyone so prayerful and reverent? And everyone dressed nice too. It wasn’t like a get-together for everyone to join hands and sing happy songs and chat. It was a beautiful, sacred prayer.

For about the first six months, I disliked both Masses. I didn’t like kneeling for so long. The Novus Ordo Mass was boring enough. Why did we have to go to a different Mass that felt twice as long?

Changes in my soul were slow, but definitely there. Over the years, I learned more and more. I learned that the Mass was a prayer, something I had never known before. I followed along to the prayers in the 1962 Missal and saw people reverently beating their chest at the Agnus Dei, and it seemed so interesting to do that, so I started doing that too. I wore a veil, which obscured some of my sight, making me almost see in tunnel-vision forward to the altar. The Gregorian chants were breathtaking, and I would just kneel there, listening to the beautiful music and watch the incense float up to heaven, and I felt peace.

I went from being a child continuously asking her mother when we could leave, to a child who somehow just knew that she had to be silent. I learned, from the grace of God, that Mass is for praying. Mass is for adoring Christ. When I genuflected in front of the Altar, I really meant it. If I didn’t walk slowly and reverently through the church, I felt like I was disrespecting God’s holy place. Because God was there, and I knew it very well.

I started looking forward to Mass, and to the rosary, like never before. I would take every moment to deeply meditate and pray. I would impatiently wait in the car on the drive to Mass, thinking about kneeling before the altar and pouring out my entire heart to God. He became my confidante, and so easily, with God’s grace aiding me, I would feel infinitely better after praying. It was like a breath of fresh air. When I was a child, I thought God was just this important god that made the world then took a step back. After going to the Latin Mass, I realized how much of a father He is. He did not take a step back from the world, and He listens to our prayers every day. I can put total trust in Him because I know He loves me.

Sometimes I would envision the altar as a throne, and when the priest was consecrating the Eucharist, a king would come and sit on the throne. And at communion, the people were coming to the foot of the throne to beg their king for help, to adore their king and his mightiness, to thank their king for all he has done for them. It was truly special. But, in my mind, people could not go visit their king without a gift! Therefore, it would make sense that people had to give something to God when they went to receive, because God was giving Himself to them. The person receiving needed to have a desire for God and had to be as pure and sinless as possible. A person had to become like an angel from heaven before they could dare receive God. 

As I grew older, I grew alongside a Mass that was never-changing. One that reflected the never-changing nature of God. It became like a home to me. I grew spiritually in ways I cannot even describe.

When I turned fourteen, I traveled to Spain for three months. Spain is an incredible place, really, and I had an amazing time there. But of course, everyone experiences the regular feelings of homesickness for the first week or so. I had never been in Europe before, so it was a very new experience to me.

One of the first things I noticed was my homesickness, and the desire for something familiar. On Sunday I went with my family to the Latin Mass in Madrid, and it patched up my homesick heart. When I knelt there, I poured my heart out to God in contemplative prayer, and I was more than glad that I was not at a Novus Ordo Mass—I didn’t have to respond to prayers aloud or greet people. I could just pray and feel God’s presence. The Traditional Latin Mass was a piece of home, but not like if I were to go to an American restaurant in Spain or see American tourists. What made it feel like home was God. That sacred presence in my church at home was there. That infinite peace, and the feeling of God’s grace coaxing you into deep prayer so delicately. It was all there.

I’m sorry to say, but when I later went to a Novus Ordo Mass in Spain, it wasn’t the same. I tried very, very hard to feel the same, but it was so hard, even though I can speak Spanish. The Mass was too distracting! I could not pray, or prepare myself for communion, or make thanksgiving afterward. I kept telling myself I would save my prayers and my devotions for after Mass, in the period of silence before the candles are blown out and the altar is disassembled. But that defeats the entire purpose of Mass! How can you go to a Mass and tell yourself that you will pray afterward? Mass is a prayer itself. How can you pray Mass after Mass is done?

I went to the Novus Ordo Mass every day in Spain except on Sundays (when we went to the Latin Mass), and I became confused again and again. I didn’t feel at peace or at home. I had been going to the Novus Ordo for half of my life and yet it didn’t feel at all like home. There wasn’t a hint of nostalgia. All I could think was how I wished I could just be in the Latin Mass at that moment.

I’ve even gotten to the point where, when I stand in the pew at a Novus Ordo Mass, a particular thought runs through my mind. I don’t try to think about anything but the Mass, yet, unbidden, this thought keeps returning: Why does this feel so fake? Why am I even here? What am I getting from this?

The only thing that consoles me at a Novus Ordo Mass is receiving the Holy Eucharist. But otherwise, I feel the childhood boredom I had felt for many years in the past, that wishing for it to be over soon.

I cannot fully explain why the Latin Mass has helped me so much. When someone asks me to explain my experience, I’m usually at a loss for words at first. How can you describe the deep movements of your soul in words? It truly is a very beautiful experience, and one that a person can only understand after they have been to the Latin Mass themselves. I proudly say that I will try my very best to attend the Latin Mass as long as it remains available, for the rest of my life if God wills it. I believe that the Latin Mass is the Mass that will truly aid me on the journey to spiritual perfection. And I believe that it will change your life too, just as it did mine.

A Brazilian Catholic Discovers Tradition

One of the true blessings of my line of work (so to speak) is the number of “conversion stories” I receive, in which fellow Catholics from all over the world tell me how they discovered tradition and the difference it has made for them. Sometimes these accounts are quite detailed and thought-provoking, such as the one from Brazil that I will be sharing today. Naturally, I have had to modify certain names and details to protect the author and his circle, but otherwise the account is true to the original Portuguese text.—PAK

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I would like to tell you my story, if you have time to read it. I was born in April 1971, so we are almost exactly the same age. The earliest memory I have is how much I loved resting in my mother’s arms. It distressed me to be away from her, as when my grandfather took me for a ride in a neighbor’s truck. The memory of those hours of anguish I have not forgotten, even though I could not have been more than a couple of years old.

As I grew up, I also felt somehow the same way when I was taken to church—as if something was wrong, missing. Time passed, I grew up, but going to Mass was an obligation. I liked Bible stories, the lives of the saints, but that was about it; and today I see that my friends from that time period were the same way: going to church did not appeal to us, it was like a burden. It was not uncommon for me to nod off during the celebration, even during charismatic Masses that were supposed to be peppy. I was indifferent.

The years of being in school did not help with my faith. It was not uncommon for certain teachers to speak of the Church as if it were synonymous with obscurantism, gullibility, violence, and backwardness.

It was like that until 2014, when I learned about Catholic tradition through videos on the internet. I came into awareness of people who talked about the Church in a way I had never heard any priest talk about, and began to discover that what I had been taught in school was wrong. A friend lent me Tom Woods’ book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, where I discovered that far from being dark and ignorant, the Middle Ages were a period of light, and our civilization would not exist without the Church.

The next step happened partly when a teacher of one of my children loaned me another book: Professor Roberto De Mattei’s The Second Vatican Council—An Unwritten History. Through this book I discovered that the Council, so celebrated by the Church, has little worthy celebrating; on the contrary, it was the start of the demolition of the sacred that we see until today, and that Pope Francis faithfully follows to its bitter end. The teacher also told us about the Tridentine Mass. Until then, I had heard only that “no one understood the Latin Mass” and that “the Council had improved the Mass,” and I remember thinking: “Gee, if Mass is so boring nowadays, imagine how bad it must have been before!” The sermons of priests in the 70s and 80s were not helpful at all, they were full of liberation theology, which made many Catholics leave the church (I saw it happen).
 

Well, this friend of ours invited us to become acquainted with Mass in the Ukrainian rite, since there is no Tridentine Mass in our region, so we drove to the city of N. Arriving there, I was surprised at the importance that the Eastern Catholic priests give to confession, because where I’m from, you can obtain confession only by asking for it, by making an appointment; and when you go, the priest doesn’t even listen to you, he goes quickly on to absolution. But what about the Ukrainian Mass? It was wonderful. I didn’t care that the language used was Ukrainian. I saw it, I felt it. The priest bowed to the iconostatis, blessed the altar; the Mass was centered on Christ, on the Eucharist. I didn’t find it strange at all that he “had his back to the people”; in fact, I found it quite natural. It was there, in fact, that I felt as if I were returning to my mother’s arms: I was safe, no doubt about it. I understood the liturgy on a deeper level than words; everything made sense. I had been to the edge of heaven and didn’t want to go back. When the Mass ended, I felt tears flowing, and our friend, knowing what I felt, said to me: “Here is a Catholic recognizing his Mass.”

At last, in 2016, I finally got to know the Tridentine Mass on a trip to a monastery far away. My reaction was, if I had known the Tridentine Mass in my youth, I might very well have worn the cassock and pursued the priesthood! What can I say about the Tridentine Mass? It is like going to heaven—those songs in Latin touch me deeply, and, as I said before, I feel like I am in my mother’s arms again. I wish the Holy Spirit had given me the gift of eloquence, like the great preachers, because I have tried to talk to our priests about this experience, and they just look at me as if I am mentally handicapped—even the bishop does!—and recently one of them got mad at me because I tried to introduce him to the tradition Latin liturgy, simply to make him aware of it.

What a beautiful thing the Tridentine Mass is! I saw that little church full of young people, thirsty for Christ and well aware of the doctrine they profess. Here in my town, most of the people who go to church are old people who don’t even know what it is to be Catholic anymore; they have become Protestants in their mentality and don’t even realize it. I know this, because I hear them denying parts of the creed and even the commandments. There are those who leave Mass and then go on to evangelical services, to spiritist centers, or Candomblé houses (imagine!). And if you say something to them about it? They get angry, they say that is where they feel good. And what of our priests, why do they not confront these things?

Dom N.N., the first bishop of our new diocese (broken off of an old one), had the tabernacles and crosses removed from the altars. The tabernacles were placed in side chapels, which resemble broom closets. In the church of Santa N., amazingly, the tabernacle is next to the entrance at the back of the church—that is, when people are kneeling in church, they have their backs to the tabernacle. The second bishop wanted to restore things to a better state but was opposed by those who had given money for the “renovation” of the churches; and so it has barely changed. The third and current bishop seems to have brought us straight back to the Liberation Theology of the 70s and 80s: he and his clergy talk all the time about “oppressed peoples,” the “preferential option for the poor,” “social justice.” Whatever happened to “seek first the kingdom of God”? It seems to have been hidden along with the tabernacles!
 

One Lent I overheard a young man ask a priest if he could become a Catholic, because he was an evangelical and wanted to convert. To my astonishment, the priest said: “Stay where you are, this is good for you.” In spite of the directives of the Council, telling us we should seek unity in the Catholic Church, it seems churchmen no longer want to convert anyone; they say that “all religions save the sincere.”

Thanks to the encounter with Eastern liturgy and the Tridentine Mass, I made up my mind to read only sources that predate the Council—and behold, I have found treasures. The encyclicals of the popes prior to John XXIII; the catechism of the Council of Trent; the writings of the Church Fathers; the books of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort. I have found substantial nourishment, the “words of eternal life,” and I ask myself: Why don’t priests (outside of the traditional enclaves) talk like this anymore? When I read about modernism, I come to see how it has pervaded so much. But I also see in serious Catholics a thirst for something different, something deeper and higher. People like you assure me that I am not alone in seeing the storm that is darkening the horizon, as well as the source of the light that will overcome it.

Sincerely yours,

A Brazilian Catholic

Photo of TLM in Brazil

Read more by Dr. Kwasniewski at his Substack, “Tradition & Sanity.”

The Mass for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Augustine of Hippo (May 5)

The Baptism of St Augustine, by Louis de Boullogne, 1695-1700

Religious communities often have additional feasts on their calendar for the saints or occasions that influence their spirituality the most, and the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA - formerly known as the Hermits of Saint Augustine) is no exception. “The Feast of the Conversion of Our Holy Father Augustine” was celebrated on May 5 by the Augustinians from around the thirteenth century until the twentieth, when it was changed to April 24 to reflect modern scholarship’s assessment of exactly when Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose in Milan (it is currently believed that the Easter Vigil of A.D. 387 fell on April 24-25 of that year). [1] I am not certain in exactly what year the Augustinians transferred the feast: the 1926 edition of their Missal and Office has it on May 5, while a 1953 Dutch edition has April 24, where it has remained ever since. [2]

The following is the Mass for the Feast of the Conversion from the 1926 edition. The propers are noteworthy insofar as they are an artful blend of the Common of Doctors, the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28, and orations proper to the occasion of his conversion. And the May 5 dating of the event is noteworthy because it explains the traditional date for the Feast of Saint Monica (May 4) who was so instrumental in her son’s conversion. Finally, the event itself is noteworthy because of Augustine’s extraordinary influence on Christianity. After that of Saint Paul, Augustine’s conversion may be the most important in the history of the Church.

In Conversione Sancti Patris Nostri Augustini

Introit, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 15.5—from the Common of Doctors

In médio Ecclésiæ apéruit os ejus: et implévit eum Dóminus spíritu sapiéntiæ et intelléctus: stolam glóriæ índuit eum. Ps. 91 Bonum est confitéri Dómino: et psállere nómini tuo, Altíssime. Glória Patri. In medio.

In the midst of the Church the Lord opened his mouth: and filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding: He clothed him with a robe of glory. Ps. 91 It is good to give praise to the Lord, and to sing to Thy name, O Most High. Glory be. In the midst.

Collect

Deus, qui nos beáti Patris nostri Augustíni Conversiónis mirábilis ánnua commemoratióne lætíficas: ipsíus méritis et intercessiónibus concede: ut, a peccátis omnibus solúti, júgiter tibi famulémur, et ad vitam perveniámus ætérnam. Per.

O God, who gladden us with the yearly commemoration of the astonishing conversion of our blessed father Augustine: through his merits and intercession, grant that, released from all sins, we may be ever in Your service and attain life eternal. Through.

Epistle: Sirach 50, 1-14 (repeated from the principal feast on August 28)

Behold a high priest, who in his life propped up the house, and in his days fortified the temple. By him also the height of the temple was founded, the double building and the high walls of the temple. In his days the wells of water flowed out, and they were filled as the sea above measure. He took care of his nation, and delivered it from destruction. He prevailed to enlarge the city, and obtained glory in his conversation with the people: and enlarged the entrance of the house and the court. He shone in his days as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the moon at the full. And as the sun when it shineth, so did he shine in the temple of God. And as the rainbow giving light in the bright clouds, and as the flower of roses in the days of the spring, and as the lilies that are on the brink of the water, and as the sweet smelling frankincense in the time of summer. As a bright fire, and frankincense burning in the fire. As a massy vessel of gold, adorned with every precious stone. As an olive tree budding forth, and a cypress tree rearing itself on high, when he put on the robe of glory, and was clothed with the perfection of power. When he went up to the holy altar, he honoured the vesture of holiness. And when he took the portions out of the hands of the priests, he himself stood by the altar. And about him was the ring of his brethren: and as the cedar planted in mount Libanus, and as branches of palm trees, they stood round about him, and all the sons of Aaron in their glory.

Alleluja (repeated from the principal feast on August 28)

Allelúja, Allelúja. ℣. Augustíne, lux doctórum, firmaméntum Ecclésiæ, málleus hæreticórum, summum vas sciéntiæ, pro tuis fíliis roga Deum, quǽsumus.

Allelúja, Allelúja. ℣. O Augustíne, light of teachers, mainstay of the Church, hammer of heretics, highest vessel of knowledge, pray to God for us, your sons we beseech thee.

Saint Augustine Disputing with the Heretics, 1470-86

The Gospel, Matthew 19, 21-26, chosen especially for the occasion, ends with a verse that resonates strongly with Augustine’s transition from despairing addict to an emancipated apostle of hope. In order to situate the hearer better, the opening has been changed from “Ait illi Jesus” to “Dixit Jesus adolescenti.”

At that time, Jesus said to the young man: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me.” And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions. Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” And when they had heard this, the disciples wondered very much, saying: “Who then can be saved?” And Jesus beholding, said to them: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Offertory, Psalm 91, 13 - from the Common of Doctors

Justus ut palma florébit: sicut cedrus, quæ in Líbano est, multiplicábitur, allelúja.

The just man shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow up like the cedar of Lebanon, alleluia.

The Secret contains a delightful but untranslatable pivot between the two meanings of 'pietas/pius'--namely, mercy when predicated of God, and pious when predicated of man. It also makes the astonishing petition to have this votive Mass connect Augustine, a canonized saint, to a blessed reward. I have never seen a petition like this before in the Roman liturgical tradition.

Secret

Sancti Augustíni Confessóris tui atque Pontíficis, quǽsumus, Dómine, ánnua Conversiónis solémnitas pietáti tuæ nos reddat accéptos: ut, per hæc piæ placatiónis offícia, et illum beáta retribútio comitétur, et nobis grátiæ tuæ dona concíliet. Per.

May the yearly solemnity of the conversion of Saint Augustine, Your Confessor and Bishop, we beseech Thee, O Lord, render us dear to Your mercy: so that, through these offices of pious placation, a blessed reward may accompany him and bring the gifts of Your grace to us. Through.

Communion, Luke 12, 42 - from the Common of Doctors

Fidélis servus et prudens, quem constítuit dóminus super famíliam suam ut det illis in témpore trítici mensúram, allelúja.

A faithful and wise steward, whom the Lord set over His family: to give them their measure of wheat in due season, alleluia.

Providence is an appropriate theme for a feast celebrated Augustine’s conversion, since it features prominently in his autobiography The Confessions.

Postcommunion

Deus, qui ineffábili providéntia beátum Patrem Augustínum ab errórum ténebris ad lucem Evangélicæ veritátis adduxísti: da nobis, quǽsumus: ut qui ejus hódie Conversiónem cólimus, eódem precánte, dona tuæ grátiæ sentiámus. Per Dóminum.

O God, who by Your ineffable providence led blessed father Augustine from the darkness of error to the light of the truth of the Gospel, grant us, we beseech: that we who on this day honor his conversion may by his prayers experience the gifts of Your grace. Through.

Notes

[1] Although it is more fashionable today to speak of a catechumen’s “reception” into the Catholic Church, Augustine refers to his baptism as a conversio. (Conf. 9.3.6) This religious conversion—that is, his formal initiation into the true religion—was the consummation of two other conversions—an intellectual conversion a year or two earlier that enabled him to understand immaterial reality and the nature of evil (Conf. 7.10.16ff); and a moral conversion, which occurred a few days before August 23, 386 (see Conf. 9.2.2) while reading Romans 13:13, (Conf. 8.12.29) that enabled him to live chastely after years of enslavement to the pleasures of the flesh. For more on these three kinds of conversion, see Michael P. Foley, “A General Introduction to the Cassiciacum Dialogues,” in Augustine, Against the Academics (Yale University Press: 2017), pp. xxiii-xli.

[2] Proprium Missarum et Officiorum Ordinis Ermitarum Sancti Augustini (Paris: Desclée et Socii, 1926) and Proprium Missarum Ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini; Augustijns Missaal (Gent: Paters Augustinjnen, 1953).

Joy and Hope, Mourning and Anguish

I imagine most of our readers have already seen at least one particular section of the interview which the actor Shia LaBoeuf gave yesterday to His Excellency Bishop Robert Barron. But if you have only seen or read the part in which he talks about the role the traditional Latin Mass played in his recent conversion, and his appreciation of it, I would very strongly urge you to listen to the whole thing, which is incredibly moving and interesting.

Mr LaBoeuf’s exposure to the Latin Mass came from playing St Padre Pio in an upcoming movie, and the preparations which he made for that role, including living for a time in a Capuchin friary. Of course, he had to learn more than a little about the Mass, and indeed, at least in part how to celebrate it, since it was the very center of the Saint’s life. The discussion of this leads to this exchange, which will deservedly be quoted rather a lot in the future.

Shia: “Latin mass affects me deeply. Deeply.”

Bishop Barron: “How come?”

Shia: “Because it feels like they’re not selling me a car. ... When somebody’s selling me on something, it kills my aptitude for it, and my suspension of disbelief, and my yearnings to root for it. There’s an immediate rebellion in me.”

This is a great observation, and he makes some others in a similar vein which are certainly worth paying attention to. But he also discusses several other experiences which he had on his journey into the Faith, from a life which he himself describes more than once as “depraved” and “on fire” (not in the good sense in which Bishop Barron uses it), experiences which are not immediately connected to the liturgy. For example, at one point, a friar told him to just go to a chapel and be silent for a while, which almost directly led him to begin repairing his difficult relationship with his mother. He also talks about some of what he learned from reading spiritual classics like St Augustine’s Confessions, and his visit to San Giovanni Rotondo, where he met some friars who knew St Pio when they were boys.

In these days of so much bad news in the Church, we should all have cause to rejoice, not just over the return of a lost sheep, although that is cause enough, for us and for the angels in heaven, but also for the reminder that despite everything, the conduits of God’s grace are still flowing. At the same time, for those of us who love the traditional liturgy, it gives us good reason to hope that God will not permit the loss of this spiritual treasure, by which He has made so very many Saints, and converted so very many sinners, and continues to do so. The eclipse which it is now suffering is, like most eclipses, partial, and like all eclipses, temporary.

I make bold to suggest to our readers that they also offer some prayers for Mr LaBoeuf, that the fruits of God’s grace continue to grow and flourish in his life, and that he continue to bear witness to that grace as eloquently and passionately as he does in the interview.

By the way, on a purely visual level, this seems like a great casting choice. (Pictures courtesy of the omnipresent Arrys Ortañez.)

This very same week, however, we have also been treated to the extremely unedifying spectacle of an Irish priest named Fr Brendan Hoban, whom I have read is very influential in the synodal muckery in Ireland, saying that he would rather there be no vocations at all (“I’d rather we had nothing”) than vocations of men who wish live as, um, priests. He laments that the few young priests that get ordained in Ireland these days are “traditional. They want to wear black... soutanes... They want to talk to people about sin. They want the Latin Mass. ... I despair of the young priests.” (Starts at 0:28)

Let me assure you that I did not write about Mr LaBoeuf and his conversion just to raise your hopes and then at once dash them. I do not, of course, deny that this is a terrible thing to hear. The vocational situation on the Island of Saints is catastrophic (Fr Z has the statistics at this post), and it is catastrophic precisely because of the prevalence of the attitudes which he evinces. Nevertheless, here we also have great cause for hope. Like Communism, an ideology this perverse simply cannot endure. By destroying a culture within the Church that fosters vocations, the ideology which these words represent has deprived itself of its own spiritual children, and has no future. What does a priest who cannot talk about sin have to say to a man who knows his own life to be “depraved” and “on fire”? Nothing.

It would be easy, and not altogether out of place, to be angry at hearing such a thing, but we should not let anger distract us from recognizing what this really represents: mourning and anguish over a failed revolution, and an ideology which knows in its heart that it holds no attraction and offers nothing of interest to anyone. And I therefore make bold to suggest, dear readers, that we should also offer some prayers for the childless children of the revolution, for their time grows short.

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

Douglas Hyde (1911-1996)

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

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

The Evangelizing Power of Solemn Liturgy: A Witness from Montreal in the 1920s

A postcard from 1907

Here at the New Liturgical Movement we frequently feature photographs of beautiful liturgies celebrated all around the world in a variety of rites. We have also published from time to time testimonies from converts who were drawn to the Faith (or reverts drawn back to it) by the beauty of liturgies they happened to attend — often enough, out of curiosity, or at the behest of a friend, or even somewhat by chance.

The other day I was desultorily scanning the shelves of a parish library and noticed a book whose title caught my attention: All or Nothing by Murray Ballantyne, published by Sheed & Ward in New York in 1956. I took it off the shelf and began to read it, finding in its pages a delightful and well-narrated story of the author’s conversion in 1933 from a generically Protestant background to Roman Catholicism. His vivid description of the superficial gaiety and literary sophistication of his circle of friends in the 1920s is valuable for those who are interested in a firsthand account of the interwar period.

Of particular interest to me, however, was Ballantyne’s description of a Christmas Midnight Mass he attended at Notre-Dame in Montreal in the late 1920s (he does not specify a year, but it has to be in 1927 or later). The whole passage is worth sharing, because it so strongly confirms the intuition at the heart of NLM’s work that authentic Catholic liturgy in its grandeur — and its strangeness — has a peculiar power to make an impression on the soul and to sow doubts about the self-assured security of a modern secularist worldview. Ballantyne’s thoughts on kneeling are especially relevant to our times.

The basilica at night

“TWO EVENTS pierced the glossy shell of this self-sufficient life and once again brought the thought of Catholicism to my mind. They were accidental and unrelated. The first was when I went to Midnight Mass with two undergraduate companions. The other was when I saw, in the New York Times Book Review section, a large advertisement for the latest essays of G.K. Chesterton, from which it appeared that he was not only an ardent Catholic but a convert as well. Seemingly unimportant as these happenings may appear, they nevertheless played a decisive part in what was to become my own conversion.

“The French-speaking Canadians have always celebrated Christmas enthusiastically. It is the custom among them for the whole family to go to Midnight Mass, and then to celebrate with a gay supper of traditional dishes. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve has at all times had its own magic. In the larger churches of Montreal the innate appeal of this beautiful and grace-laden service is heightened by superb music and decorations. When I was young, curious Protestants frequently went to these services as to a show. They were drawn not only by the glamour of age-old ceremonial, but also by the thrill that always attends ventures into strange lands.

“With enthusiasm, then, I accepted an invitation to go to Notre Dame one Christmas Eve…. All was still and hushed as we walked through the silent business district, but by the church on Place d’Armes all was life and movement. Although it was more than an hour before midnight, crowds were already streaming towards the portico under the two high towers… As we stood waiting in the snow, Notre Dame’s great bass bell, the thirteen-ton Gros Bourdon, began to toll, seeming almost to shake the tower with its clangorous vibrations.

“My emotions were intense as I stood there in the crowd, watching the snow falling soft and white, listening to the great bell sounding, and sensing the warmth and colour that awaited us within. It was Christmas Eve, and Christ was born, and there was joy to the world. In this stimulated and receptive condition, I was aware of a certain fitness. A long train of historical legitimacy joined me to the distant past, and carried me back beyond even the Reformers to an almost immemorial era. There has been a church on the spot where I stood for more than two hundred and fifty years, and the Faith that had built Montreal’s Notre Dame was the same that had built Europe’s cathedrals long before that. The Catholic Church had seen the founding of all our sects and all our institutions. This was the real, the genuine article. We might think her wrong, but no one could deny her continuity. It was living history that I was about to witness. I was about to see much that Charlemagne had seen on the fateful Christmas of the year 800, and even then the Church had been twice as old as the Protestant churches are now. The Catholic Church might be a relic, but at least she was venerable.

“We were swept in from the cool silence of the snow night to the warm, vivid, and ornate interior of ‘La Vieille Paroisse.’ As we stood in the throng, I noticed near me a bearded, roughly dressed Habitant [native resident of French descent]. Being unable to move farther into the church, he fell on his knees and began to pray. I was thunderstruck. In my Presbyterian experience we had not even knelt in our pews for fear of emotionalism and of papist superstition. My first reaction was one of embarrassment that the man should have made such a spectacle of what should have been his private devotions. Talking to God was something to be accomplished in a mumble, not something to be performed openly. Why make the melodramatic gesture of kneeling? Why indeed make any gesture at all?

“Immediately I had another reaction. This man clearly was neither theatrical nor making a gesture. He had come in all simplicity to adore his God. To him, if he had given us a thought, we were merely others who had come for the same purpose. He had simplicity, and we had not. And then I saw that if a man believed in God it was right and fitting that he should worship Him and that the should kneel in His temple. This, and not the restrained self-consciousness of the Puritans, was the proper behaviour. The concept of God was immense and overwhelming. If God existed — staggering thought — then this was the normal and the right reaction. If one came consciously to worship Him, if one entered His very presence, then one should kneel, yes, even prostrate oneself as did the ancient Jews. If one believed in God, it would be absurd to be held back from worshipping Him by the presence of other mortals. If people really believed, this was the way I would expect them to behave.

“By a stroke of luck, we found balcony seats in that vast throng, and my first Mass began. I was fascinated by the seemingly weird and incomprehensible ceremonial that unfolded before me. Nothing in all my life had prepared me for the gilt-encrusted vestments, the incense, the strange chanting, or the inexplicable comings and goings. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was all about. Here was something totally unlike the ‘meeting-house’ service of my childhood. I felt as a child might at his first circus. And yet with it all there was not only the glorious music, but also the feeling that somehow a valid religious experience was taking place. There was a rapt silence, a profound devotion, a spirit of worship that was an unmistakable as it was inexplicable. Worship, adoration, thanksgiving, joy were in the very air. Something was happening. And so I came away from my first Mass puzzled, intrigued, and enchanted by the strange beauty of a rare event.” (pp. 52–56)

Murray Ballantyne (photo source)

Ballantyne then talks about how the thought of Chesterton’s conversion bothered him, because he had assumed that only a poorly educated and somewhat superstitious person could be a Catholic, but here was a highly intelligent and spirited man boldly defending the Faith against all comers. He bought the book of essays by GKC, and this began to provide an intellectual counterpart to the spiritual and aesthetic intuitions he had had at Midnight Mass. Later in the book, Ballantyne offers a fine defense of “incarnational” Catholic sacramental worship and of adherence to tradition.
 

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website, SoundCloud page, and YouTube channel.

Cardinal Zen, Motets, the Ordinariate, Converts, and Dominican Chant

What do these diverse topics have to do with one another? They’re the topics of the latest episodes of Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast.

Catch up on episodes here on YouTube, or on our podcast feed. 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Worship That Takes God Seriously: A Convert from Islam on the TLM

Our readers have probably already seen some of the videos now circulating on social media about “Mass of the Ages”, a documentary on the Traditional Latin Mass currently in the works, which aims to show how the beauty of our timeless traditional liturgy will begin to restore and heal the Church. As we all know, over the last century, people have lost their faith at an alarming rate; the film-makers and designers involved in this project are putting their talents to the creation of a compelling piece of work that will, God willing, increase the general awareness of the reverence and beauty of the Mass. The filmmakers interview Catholics from all walks of life to investigate the power of the old Mass and the profound effect it has on our spiritual lives.You can check out what they are doing on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/liturgyfilm/) and via their Youtube channel.

Yesterday, I watched a video from the latter in which the leader of the project, Mr Cameron O’Hearn, talks about the TLM with Dr Derya Little, a convert from Islam to Catholicism via atheism, who has written about her conversion in a book titled “From Islam to Christ.” She also recently wrote a “A Beginner’s Guide to the Traditional Latin Mass”, to help those who come to the traditional rite with no previous experience of it whatsoever. In this video, she explains very nicely that it was her experience of beauty and reverence in the liturgy that really showed her that Catholicism “takes God seriously.” The channel also has interviews with writer Eric Sammons and our own Dr Peter Kwasniewski, which I am sure you will find interesting.

Saved by the Mass: Sohrab Ahmari’s From Fire by Water

Our thanks to one of our frequent guest contributors, Roseanne Sullivan, for offering us permission to reprint part of this article from her blog Catholic Pundit Wannabe. In it, she summarizes journalist Sohrab Ahmari’s experiences of the Catholic liturgy, and the role they played in his conversion, as recounted in his recent book From Fire by Water, published by Ignatius Press.

One Sunday evening in 2008, after two nights in a row of binge drinking — part of a pattern of compulsive misbehavior that shamed him when he was sober — Sohrab Ahmari was pacing around the block near Penn Station in New York City, killing time waiting for a train back to Boston. After several turns past a building that had what he described as a “nondescript brick façade” with “a relief above the entrance of an almost alien Jesus,” he went in and found a passage into a church where Mass was about to begin.

The Capuchn church of St John the Bapist in New York City, with the “alien Jesus”.

Sohrab Ahmari’s First Mass

Ahmari had never attended a Mass before. “The first thing I noticed on entering the vestibule was the serenity of the place, which struck me as almost impossible. Miraculous even, amid the pandemonium of midtown.”

A young guitarist with a man-bun played and led the congregation in singing hymns. While the congregation around him stood, kneeled, sat, prayed, and sang, Ahmari stayed seated in the back and wrestled with his ambivalence about religious belief. He paid little attention to what the friar was doing at the altar.

Skepticism had been ingrained in him in Iran from his bohemian family, and it had been reinforced by his experiences after he came to live in the United States with his mother at the age of 13. He had deep spiritual longings, but he didn’t want to be counted among the gullible by his intellectual peers. He thought he was too smart to be a believer. “But all of a sudden, the singing and the strumming dissolved into that all-encompassing serenity, and something extraordinary happened.”

During the consecration, he began to cry, not tears of sorrow or of joy, but of peace. The Mass appealed to two deeply-rooted parts of his personal make-up that he described in the first chapters of the book: he had always admired heroic self-less sacrifice, and he longed for cosmic and moral absolutes. The words of the consecration struck him because they made present at the Mass the redeeming death of the blameless Victim, who humbled Himself to become human and died on the Cross that all may live. On his way out after Mass, he saw a photo of Pope Benedict XVI in the vestibule, and that set off a new bout of tears—because he intensely craved loving, paternal, moral authority and the continuity that the papacy stands for.

He attended another Mass, and, from then on, he found that he could no longer honestly say he was an atheist. As he said in a Fox News interview, although he felt the faith was true on the level of his imagination and emotions, “it took, still, a long time to finally assent to faith.”

Wrong Worship (without the Mass)

Seven years later, Ahmari was married and working in London as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal’s European edition. He had come to believe in Christianity and — with the encouragement of a zealous friend — he occasionally worshipped at evangelical services. He lived near an evangelical Anglican church called Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), and he began to occasionally attend services there. “[T]he Regency church with its elaborate stained-glass windows and vaulting arches, played host to charismatic worship that included JumboTrons, rock bands, and funky lighting.”

The Latin OF Mass at the Brompton Oratory

On the way home after one such charismatic service at HTB at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, Ahmari noticed a sign at the nearby Catholic Brompton Oratory (Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) advertising a Solemn High Latin Mass, starting at 11, and he went in.

It was Pentecost Sunday. The richness of the church decor with abundant marble and carvings, the way that the architecture beautifully leads every eye to the altar of sacrifice, and what he felt was the rightful inclusion of the carving of the Immaculate Heart of Mary under the baldacchino and in a painting above the main altar, all captivated him. “It was a holy place. It was a place of right worship.”

A world-renowned choir chants and sings traditional sacred music at the Brompton Oratory’s Solemn High Latin Masses. The priests celebrate ad orientem, facing towards Jesus, towards liturgical East. Instead of staying aloof as he had at that first Mass, Ahmari threw himself into following along with the other worshippers as best he could, standing, sitting, kneeling, and blessing himself (a few times with his left hand).

Ahmari was struck that “the metalwork and masonry and painting directed my imagination to spiritual realities,” and in contrast to what he had just experienced at the HTB service, “the Catholic Church didn’t need to bend herself to the vacuous fads of 2016.”

The very next day he sought out a priest at the Brompton Oratory’s offices and announced he wanted to become a Roman Catholic.

There is more of great interest in Ahmari’s story, much more; the rest of the fascinating story is told in From Fire by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith. Conservative journalist and media figure Sohrab Ahmari wrote it to show the influences and events of his life and the changes in his convictions that brought him — from the fire of misery and the captivity of sin, through the water of Baptism — and into the Catholic Church.

Ahmari Speaks About the Mass with Ignatius Press

As noted above, From Fire by Water was published by Ignatius Press. In the following video, one of a series of videos discussing Ahmari’s book as part of the Ignatius Press FORMED Book Club series, he talked about the differences between his experiences at the two Masses described above, and the form of the Mass he prefers, beginning at 4:40. The relevant portion of the interview is also trascribed below.

Father Joseph Fessio, S.J. (founder and editor of Ignatius Press): In your conversion story two liturgical events were critical. One was right around Penn Station . . . when you went into the Capuchin Church. The other was when you went into Brompton Oratory. Vivian, why don’t you make your point about the first experience?

Vivian Dudro: When you went to the chapel near Penn Station, . . . that Mass was a low Mass in English. At the consecration when you heard those words, “This is my Body,” you made the association that a sacrifice was occurring, and that was an “aha” moment for you. And then later you were at a Brompton Oratory Mass in Latin. I was wondering if your first experience of the Mass had been the one at the Brompton Oratory, do you think you would have understood that a sacrifice was being made if you hadn’t been able to understand the words of the consecration?

Sohrab Ahmari: I think it would have struck me more, but I would have understood less. That [Brompton] Mass is a richer presentation of both the symbolism and the supernatural action of the Mass, and it would have been an experience I would not soon have forgotten.

But I don’t think I would have put two and two together to understand that this is an altar like any altar of every civilization that has offered sacrifice—which all civilizations have—but in this case, it’s God Himself offering Himself up as the sacrificial Lamb. I don’t think I would have understood that as much, but at the level of mystery and emotion and imagination I have no doubt that the Brompton Mass would have made more of an impression on me.

But overall my state of mind in going to that mass was one of ‘I am lousy. I am abject. I need something to redeem me,’ and as it happened, I found the Mass but thereafter within twelve hours I had forgotten about it.

In either case it would probably have taken some time to get to the point of willingly seeking out the Roman Catholic Church.

Father Fessio: What’s your preference liturgically now?

Sohrab Ahmari: I have a son who I like to take to Mass. [Since the interview, he has also a baby daughter.] I’m registered at a church that has a Solemn High Latin Mass on Sundays. But my son can’t sit through all of it. I vary. Sometimes I need that beauty of the Latin Mass. . . . So that means I will go alone on some Sundays to have that. And then on other Sundays, when I want to take him and my wife, then we’ll go to a different church where the liturgy is fifty minutes, a reverent Novus Ordo Mass [in English]. I try to go to Mass daily; I don’t always succeed. My day is so packed that I’m grateful for the twenty-minute daily English Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Father Fessio: I celebrate ordinarily the Novus Ordo mass, but in Latin, with English for the readings and prayers and the Preface and for everything that changes each day. I celebrate the rest that stays the same especially the Roman Canon, [Eucharistic Prayer I in the Ordinary Form] in Latin.

Sohrab Ahmari: I have to mention the Mass that is described in the book in the final chapter at the Brompton Oratory was not the Traditional Latin Mass. It too was a Novus Ordo Mass in Latin—also with the variable parts being done in English. I’m quite fond of that format.

Father Fessio: You’re young and energetic and a talented writer, so I hope to pass the torch onto to you from the Brompton Oratory and from me that in the future you can agitate for more widespread use of the Novus Ordo in Latin. I call it the Mass of Vatican II because it’s what the Vatican fathers were thinking about when they were talking about the reform of the liturgy.

Counterpoints to the Hieromonk’s Letter

My publication earlier this week of a letter written by a Greek Orthodox monk to a Benedictine monk concerning the plight of the Catholic Church was meant to stimulate thought and conversation. Dr. Pepino and I felt that this anonymous heir of the East made a number of valid points, eloquently and persuasively. We also saw that he indulged in some of the all-too-familiar Orthodox gibes and generalities that gloss over a much more complicated picture for the convenience of those who are settled in mind.

I posted the letter in the spirit of “if the shoe fits, wear it,” taking from the monk his good points — above all, that the West has a solemn obligation to reconnect with and restore its own tradition — and rolling eyes at his unfair points. But I see now that I should engage it in greater detail, indicating where I agree and where I disagree. Indeed, I must engage it, because at least one reader was prompted by the post to ask me: “Are you planning to convert to Orthodoxy?”

I will begin with two reactions that were sent to me privately, which I share here with permission, because I find them expressive of my own view:

There are three kinds of ecumenism.
       1. Stupid Ecumenism, which is what Roman Catholics do: all the worst of us compared to all the best of you.
       2. Mean Ecumenism, which is what Orthodox do: all the best of us compared to all the worst of you.
       3. Real Ecumenism, of which the sole known practitioner among Christian prelates was Pope Benedict XVI: the whole of us, the best, the worst, and everything in-between, compared to the whole of you, the best, the worst, and everything in-between.
       Our Orthodox monk friend from yesterday proved to be no exception to this assessment. “Your roots go no further back than the 12th century.” This is a gross and grotesque exaggeration, as if people like St Theresa of Jesus or St John of the Cross brought nothing to the table; as if the Orthodox had none of their own fashionable spiritual gurus; as if every word spoken by every Orthodox priest or monk were drawn straight and solely from the Holy Fathers; as if pure stasis in the 5th or 6th or 7th or 8th century would be a good thing, a guarantee of fidelity. It is painfully easy to point out that the West has its lunatics like Chardin and Rahner, as if there were none to be found in the East. It is painfully easy to point out that the West will tolerate any amount of heresy, but no schism, while ignoring the fact that the East will tolerate any amount of schism, but no heresy. The former is without question a very bad thing, but the latter is certainly not a sign of “a rather incredible period of spiritual renewal.” Both churches have beams in their eyes.

Another similar reaction, though more mildly stated:

Interesting letter from the Orthodox monk, but I am always a bit leery of their heavy-handed apologetics (which, to be fair, we can be guilty of, too). While a calm person can see that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, there is a certain kind of nervous Trad — beaten down for years by the establishment, reading too many sensationalist blogs, and sick of gay clergy — who wants to live in a holistically solid Church now rather than take the long, less rewarding task of building the blocks of reform. In other words, jump on board an apparently tidy trireme in the bright blue Aegean rather than bail water and repair sails on the barque of Peter. I’ve witnessed two defections in my time to Orthodoxy (though I have also sponsored two Orthodox to come into the Catholic Church), and in both cases they were highly discouraged Trads who weren’t interested in waiting things out past their own life times; of course there were other issues at hand (they lived in places where traditional Catholicism was more or less non-existent), but the highly distilled brand of Orthodoxy touted in the West — devoid of all their liturgical development, medieval and dogmatic theology, and history of caesaropapism by emperors and dictators — greatly appeals to these vulnerable people.
       Like you, I pray for the reunion of the Churches. I believe we are the answer to each other’s shortcomings and that we need to be honest with ourselves about what they are. I disabuse Catholics who speak ill of the Orthodox in public and happily rebuke Orthodox when they do the same to us. It’s an all-round sticky situation. We have until eternity to figure it out though.

Now for my own observations.

Like the West, the East has its “black boxes” into which people are not supposed to look too closely, lest they find tensions, contradictions, reversals, laxities, and other odds and ends. Above all, their systematic theology and moral theology are a mess, because they have no authoritative framework for interpreting the Fathers. Their own version of scholasticism, a bit like Islam’s, imploded and fell apart, unlike the West’s, which with figures like Bonaventure and Thomas attained a rare perfection and magnificence. Above all, there is no one in the East who is as biblical, patristic, ecumenical, synthetic, broad-minded, and comprehensive as the Angelic Doctor. Aquinas makes frequent, sympathetic, incisive use of dozens of Western and Eastern Fathers — indeed, more Eastern authors than Western — so it’s a bit silly to say our theology starts in the 12th century. It would be just as silly to say that the theology of the East stops after the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

Moreover, what the hieromonk doesn’t seem to grasp, or perhaps doesn’t wish to acknowledge, is the many great spiritual figures the West has always had, and still has. He does not mention figures like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Bd. Charles de Foucauld, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Bd. Columba Marmion, let alone countless martyrs and saints of every state in life. He mentions St. Pio of Pietrelcina only to suggest that he was opposed by the Church, which is only partially true. The writings of Fr. Jacques Philippe are every bit the equal of many contemporary books published by the Orthodox. One might also take a look at the pre-Reformation volumes of the Classics of Western Spirituality series from Paulist Press to get a rough sense of the richness of our mystical tradition.

Perhaps it is felt on the Eastern side that elders or spiritual guides must be distinguished by the length of their beards. We have some impressive “graybeards” on our side, as well, as one can experience by visiting places in the West where the Catholic faith is still believed and lived in its integrity — places like Le Barroux, Fontgombault, Clear Creek, Silverstream, or Norcia. (I privilege Benedictine monasteries only because, as a Benedictine oblate, I know them well.) I have heard or spoken with monks at nearly all of these houses whose wisdom reminds me of the spirit I encounter when reading the lives of the desert fathers. Anyone from the East would fit right in, liturgically and spiritually.

Admittedly, the number of such islands of sanity, outposts of civilization, is not huge; but they do exist and are attracting vocations — they are not in danger of disappearing altogether. Yes, theoretically, popes can try to crush all of this under foot, but popes have limited lifespans, and so do their plans and projects. “Man proposes, God disposes.” The pope can stack the deck all he wants, but God will have the last laugh. There is no chance, for example, that the old Roman liturgy will ever disappear. There are still priests, more with each passing decade, who are willing to risk everything and suffer anything rather than give up the traditional rite. When you have a handful of people like this, you have permanence. Progressivism will die the first and the second death. It has no intrinsic principle of life; it lives as a parasite on the scraps of tradition it still retains.

Vetus Ordo

On the subject of liturgy: I have joyfully participated in many Byzantine Divine Liturgies celebrated by Greek Catholics — offered in Slavonic, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, and English. I learned to cantor and have done it frequently. I’ve prepared choirs to sing the congregational prayers in three-part harmony. I have studied and continue to study the Eastern Fathers, including Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Dionysius, and St. Maximus the Confessor. But . . . I am Roman to the core. There is nothing I love more than a solemn High Mass in the Roman Rite (obviously the Vetus Ordo — there is no other Roman rite worthy of the name, as the hieromonk recognizes). For sheer melodic beauty and variety, the Gregorian chant is a musical form unequaled by any chant in the East. On weekdays, I will take a quiet Low Mass at a side altar over any Divine Liturgy. Again, there is no doubt that the East has preserved its liturgical tradition well, whereas the West has squandered it like Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. But the West has a liturgical tradition that is profound and beautiful, and those of us who have delved deeply into it are nourished by it, “fed with the fat of wheat, and filled with honey out of the rock” (cf. Ps 80:17).

The most important and seductive error of proponents of Orthodoxy is their claim, which we may assume is made more in ignorance than in malice, to be believing and doing only what is ancient. A little study of history handily dispenses with that myth. While there isn’t as much theological diversification and liturgical pluralism, there is still a process of development over the centuries that continues past the first half-millennium, past the first millennium, down to the present. In fact, the almost hyperventilating insistence on “fidelity to the early Church” is more a feature of Orthodoxy from the early 20th century onwards, especially as one finds it among the Russian émigrés in Paris who gave us such dreadful pseudo-scholarship as Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, which is a masterpiece of imaginary polemics or polemical imagination.

There is genuine growth in doctrine, liturgy, and devotion, for all Churches that remain alive. We see this across the entire Christian spectrum, East and West. There should be growth, amplification, variation, as long as it is not deviation or corruption. How do we know the difference? Not by a mathematical formula, that’s for sure, or a Geiger counter. It will often end up being a messy question of how something is received, perceived, accepted. Sometimes devotions come in and they are taken up right away with joy; other times, things sputter out and disappear. History is not tidy, but it’s not completely chaotic, either. There are patterns. One can see the difference between wheat and weeds if one has enough distance and perspective. On this point, the East will have to say the same thing as the West: much of what we do is not from the apostolic period, or even from the patristic golden age, but from the Middle Ages, or in the case of the Slavic tradition, even later.

Female acolytes: an example of corruption entering into the East

At the NLM post last week, there was an interesting exchange along these lines. One commenter objected that “the current Eastern iconostasis (or ‘holy wall’) . . . is not very traditional.” A hieromonk responded:

The point of tradition is that it develops and praxis changes over the centuries. We do not indulge in liturgical archeology, but are part of a continuum as the Holy Spirit guides the Church (though Catholic and Orthodox renovationists love doing this in a Protestant critical manner, believing they are scraping away centuries of accretion to find a somehow pristine and pure practice — of their own making!)
       In the early Church, communion was given in the hands and the Holy Gifts reserved in domestic settings. As Byzantines, we do not do this today, nor do we seek to do so, as tradition has developed so that things are now done differently.
       The services have grown in richness and solemnity as tradition unfolds. The development of Byzantine hymnography has brought new textual layers and features to the Liturgy and offices; the musical tradition has also seen great growth, with new genres of hymns over the millenia; the development of iconography has seen the portrayal of new themes and the development of the ikonstas; the arrangement of the temple has developed to what we see and know today.
       So... we need to be cautious about saying things are not traditional if they were not earlier practices.

He is right. We are not antiquarians, but at the same time, we will not assume that any and every possible change will be a good one. Growth is inevitable, as Newman says, but we still have to compare any new practice or idea against the background out of which it emerged to ensure that it is moving in a straight line rather than off at some bizarre angle. Plenty of examples come to mind, such as we discuss here regularly at NLM. To take only a most obvious one: communion on the tongue to people kneeling is a development that comes straight out of increasing awareness of the adorable mystery of Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist and of the special consecration of His ministers at the altar. It is just not hard to see that this development is a deepening expression of what the Church already believed, but of which it had not yet found the fullest or most emphatic expression. Many more examples can be given in the realms of clerical vestments, church architecture, and liturgical hymns and orations. And then there will be simply issues of pluralism: some churches give the sacraments of initiation all at once to infants, while others spread them out in acknowledgment of the role of reason and free will. Is one necessarily right and the other wrong? Couldn’t they both be right, because they’re looking from different legitimate angles?

Thus, it stretches credulity for any Orthodox to claim “we’re doing things just like they were done in the ancient Church.” No, you’re not. All legitimate living churches show development; indeed, all must struggle with and against corruption — liturgical, theological, ethical, political, or what have you. All must welcome reform movements and distinguish them from revolutions. All must pray for conversion, personal and institutional. The moment we stop doing these things, on any side, in any community, we have truly give up the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost has not abandoned any of the apostolic-sacramental churches, since all of them give abundant evidence of the operations of the Spirit: faith, hope, charity, the gifts and fruits, miracles. But I do think that (1) there has been a widespread deliberate rejection of charismatic graces on the part of the Church’s hierarchy; (2) God in His Providence has permitted this period of hard and soft apostasy to test, purify, and animate us, without reneging on His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail; (3) we will see either a dramatic restoration of Catholicism or the end of the world — one or the other.

Of all apocalyptic fiction I have read, the most convincing to me is the “Short Story of the Antichrist” by Vladimir Soloviev. At the end of time, in the face of mass defection of Christians, the last pope, the last patriarch, and the last pastor come together in the Catholic Church to face the enemy and to welcome the King.

Let us pray and pray often for the reunion of the churches in truth and in charity.

“Holy Father, I know you want to breathe with both lungs, but surely…”

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