A Formidable Apologia for Traditional Catholicism, by Dr Joseph Shaw

In a time like ours, when ignorance, half-truths, and outright lies seem to dominate the airwaves, classrooms, halls of power, and even church pulpits, Catholics need access to the unvarnished truth of the Faith as it powerfully confronts the errors and misdirections of the modern age. But where are we to find such help?

Dr. Joseph Shaw, president of the International Federation Una Voce and Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, has distinguished himself as one of the finest writers today on a host of difficult and controversial questions. Os Justi Press is pleased to announce the release of Dr. Shaw's latest book: The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity.

The book is divided into three parts.

The first part examines the place of the ancient Catholic liturgy in modernity, defending it, against the misunderstandings of modernists, as something supremely suited to engage our deepest instincts towards the worship of God. Chapter 1 tells what Shaw discovered about the Church along the path of discovering the ancient Roman rite; chapter 2 looks at the purpose of liturgy; chapter 3 gives an account of the history of liturgy, explaining how it is conceptually and practically possible for a heritage to be both received as a “changeless given” and also enhanced and developed over time; chapter 4 develops the role of Latin in fostering participation (yes, you read that correctly!); and chapters 5 and 6 delve into the ways in which rituality, contrary to a standard narrative, is a cause of freedom rather than of confinement.

The second part turns to the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and addresses a series of lines of attack on those Catholics attached to the traditional Latin Mass—notably the attempt to link them to the crisis of clerical abuse. Here Dr. Shaw fearlessly probes what Vatican II actually accomplished “on the ground”; the intimate link between orthodoxy in doctrine and tradition in liturgy (and the contrary); true and false notions of diversity; the Freudian origins of the discourse about the “rigidity” of conservatives or backwardists; the need to assess rightly the meaning of “clericalism” and how it relates to abuse; and the damage done by means of so-called “sex education,” which has been allowed to take over unresisted by the postconciliar hierarchy.

In the third part Dr. Shaw addresses one of the most contested issues of our times, sexuality and gender roles, and asks what, if anything, the Church can still say about them. Partly agreeing with and partly correcting the theory of Leon Podles, Shaw explains the sense in which there has been a “feminization” of Christianity -- yet one that was to a large extent resisted in the Catholic Church by a patriarchal theology, liturgy, and structures until after the Council. He offers what is certainly one of the best expositions of male headship, natural and supernatural, in any available literature, and offers a powerful critique of the sexual revolution as a betrayal of women. Lastly, he looks at the family as the locus of culture and transmission of the faith, especially in an era when the hierarchy have largely abandoned both.

Your gut feeling that something has gone badly wrong in the Catholic Church is, in fact, correct; your intuition that it has something to do with our divine worship is right on target; your instinct that the response must come from deep within the family and deep within our bimillenial tradition is entirely accurate. Dr. Shaw's book explains just how all this is true; how we ought to evaluate the secularizing path the Church has trodden in recent decades; and what we, who wish to live the Faith, can do, here and now, to restore a healthy and sacred culture.

The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity is available either directly from Os Justi Press (shipping within the USA) or from any Amazon outlet.

Here is a video about this book:

“Shaw doesn’t propose that we turn back the clock, but reveals a path ahead out of the current crisis through a mature dialectic with those modern ecclesiastical developments that allow for a recovery of the tradition that belongs to all Catholics by a claim of right.” – Dr Sebastian Morello, European Conservative

“I commend it very enthusiastically.” – Fr John Hunwicke, Mutual Enrichment Blog

“With this book, Joseph Shaw provides Traditionalist Catholics with an antidote to such madness when dealing with our own deepest concerns, showing how the problems of the liturgy, the family, and the crises brought about by Modernity's Original Sins must be tackled as a unit, and with respect for historical mistakes.” – Dr John Rao, Roman Forum

“For after all these years, it is rare to find something as fresh, as thought-provoking, as original as the exploration of the crisis in these pages—one that marries acute, up-to-the-minute observation of unfolding secular trends with a striking inquest into the deep, underlying reasons for these trends (or rather tragedies).” – Roger Buck, author of The Gentle Traditionalist

“These essays are marked not only by clarity of style and breadth of knowledge, but also by something even more welcome: fresh thinking.” – Fr Thomas Crean, O.P., author of The Mass and the Saints

* * *

N.B. For readers in the United Kingdom:

There will be an official book launch with a talk by the author, refreshments, and a chance to buy the book at a reduced price, on Thursday, March 9, at 6:30 pm, in St Wilfrid's Hall at the London Oratory.

The Participation of Women in the Priestly Work of Liturgy

It seems almost impossible these days to read anything coming from the Vatican without reading about desires to “increase women’s roles and responsibilities” in the Church. Yet somehow suppressed is the truth that there cannot possibly be, in any possible or actual universe, a higher role or responsibility for women than (1) to be mothers and (2) to pray, in some combination of the two, ranging from a wife and the mother of a family to a consecrated virgin and spiritual mother. I am all the more confident in saying this, in spite of not being a woman, because all of the best, holiest, wisest, and happiest women I have ever known agree with this view; in fact, they are the ones who taught it to me, much as Diotima taught Socrates.

As Bishop Athanasius Schneider says:

[The faithful Catholic women during Soviet times] would never have dared to touch the holy hosts with their fingers. They would refuse to even read a reading during Mass. My mother, for example…when she first went to the West, she was shocked, scandalised, to see women in the sanctuary during Holy Mass. The true power of the Christian and Catholic woman is the power to be the heart of the family, the domestic church, to have the privilege to be the first who gives nourishment to the body of the child and also to be the first who gives nourishment to the souls of the child, teaching it the first prayer and the first truths of the Catholic faith. The most prestigious and beautiful profession of a woman is to be mother, and especially to be a Catholic mother. (source)

No doubt Bishop Schneider would say, in accord with the traditional teaching of the Church, that the religious profession of a consecrated virgin exceeds even this most beautiful natural calling, for it is an especially lofty and pure reflection of the nature of the Church as Christ’s Immaculate Bride, and the fullest outpouring of faith and love for the heavenly Bridegroom. All this could be said to be John Paul II’s perspective as well, but of course he has been thrown under the bus by the feminists and their allies who now occupy the positions of authority.

My own views on the irreducibly distinct and complementary roles of men and women in the Church may be found in my book Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion, which is intended to be nothing other than a presentation and defense, in modern language, of traditional teaching and practice.
 

But it seems to me valuable to share a passage from the famous Eastern Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov, who paints an attractive picture of the necessary and valuable involvement of women in making and repairing items for the liturgy. The following is taken from The Spiritual Diary (pp. 132–33), an entry written on March 20, 1925.

How lovely are Your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord [Ps. 84:2–3 Douay-Rheims]. The lot of the priest—how joyful, how elect, for the sparrow has found herself a nest [Ps. 84:4].
          Though not all are priests, still the Lord allows those who are not to reach out and to touch the sanctuary and to rejoice in it. I behold women, old and young, making clerical vestments and veils for the holy mysteries of Christ, and my heart expands as I rejoice in their love, in the miracle of God’s mercy. Unceasingly created and continually traversed is the grace-bestowing ladder between earth and heaven [John 1:51]. This ladder is brought into being even now by timid and obedient fingers. For whatever is intended for the sanctuary is already holy by virtue of its purpose, it is holy in its consecration, and, after entering through the curtain of fire, is taken out of human hands to remain in consecrated hands alone, for in truth consecrated hands are no longer human (no matter how sinful or wretched my right hand may be, O Lord). And that which is sewn and woven in our daily, mundane life is already regenerated and sanctified in [priestly] hands and becomes a thing of another world, of the new heaven and new earth.
          The Lord has elected the most skilled and endowed them with the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the completion of their work for the tabernacle [cf. Ex. 31:1–6]. But this gift, having once come down for the elect, remains and is passed down even now in the Church. It rests even now on those who worthily and prayerfully complete this work.…
          Through them, a bridge is created between the sanctuary and the outer courts, a link by which angels ascend and descend from heaven to earth and back. And the woman who offers the Lord her love and her work is like the woman who bought the alabaster jar of expensive oil and poured it on the feet of the Savior and filled that home with fragrance; and the Lord said of this blessed woman that she hath wrought a good work.… Yes, may there also be a blessing for those women who do a good work today by offering a vial of the precious oil of love from their hearts [cf. Matt. 26:6–10].

These words bring to mind the many women over the years whom I have worked with or have heard of, who are sewing and repairing vestments, altar cloths, altar frontals, who are rinsing, washing, mending, doing all sorts of behind-the-scenes work without which the liturgy would not be fittingly offered. The Lord knows of their service and He will reward it.

I think about this YouTube channel, humbly entitled “Vestment Lady” (nowhere will you find out her name—she would not even use her name in our email correspondence): 

 

Or the many makers of fine vestments you can find with a minimum of searching, like Altarworthy or Traditional Vestments. And who can forget the charming pair of ladies featured in Mass of the Ages who continued to sew and repair traditional vestments all through the dark days of the 1970s when such vestments were being thrown away, and who were blessed by God with the sight of a burgeoning new demand for the same?

Indeed, even “those who are not priests” still “reach out and touch the sanctuary and rejoice in it” by the labors of their hands and by the love in their hearts. What is needed today is not a feminist advancement of laywomen into higher and higher bureaucratic posts or more and more semi-clerical occupations—the same is true, mutatis mutandis, of laymen—but a revolution of mentality, a metanoia, a putting on the mind of Christ, Who came not to be served but to serve, and Who gave Himself as a ransom for the many. This is the true model of the priesthood, both ordained and baptismal. It is a model that has become well-nigh indecipherable in the postconciliar period’s smoke and mirrors, culminating in the booby hatch of the Synod on Synodality. May we find our way once again to the humility of tradition by a future servus servorum Dei who does not subscribe to the utilitarian horizontalism and depersonalizing functionalism of the modern West.

Photos of the Guild of St Clare by Joseph Shaw.

Review of The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, by Dr Carrie Gress

Anyone seeking to understand just how powerful and detrimental to modern society the feminist movement has been, and the reasons. for this should read this book. You can get it from the publisher’s website here: https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/the-anti-mary-exposed.html

“Toxic” is the right word for the forces that have wreaked such havoc. If this book comes to their notice - and I hope it does - it is likely to elicit a response containing all the characteristic viciousness that those who typically object to such a thesis can muster.

We should be clear. This is not a call for the subjugation of women. Rather it seeks a place for women in a society that asserts authentic femininity, and which expresses itself in harmony with, not in opposition to, authentic masculinity. Only the Christian understanding of the human person can conceive of this fully. The first society to which we belong is family, and it is from this all other aspects of authentic society are it developed. The destruction of family relationships not only destroys the family, but detrimentally affects every person who is denied full participation in it - women, men, and children.

I spoke to Carrie on Episode 16 of my podcast recently, and we discussed her book. She told me that the Anti-Mary of the title is not envisaged as an individual who actually exists; rather, it is a personification of the radical feminist philosophy that is so powerful an influence on society today. It hates the true femininity which genuinely “empowers” women. That femininity is embodied, in contrast, in a real person, Mary, the Great Mother of God. The grace of God can overcome all things, of course, and there is always hope for the innocents who are affected by this, for every single one of us is given a way to happiness through Christ from where we are at this moment in time. But this does not excuse what has happened.

I reproduce the publisher’s description here:

In the late ’60s, a small group of elite American women convinced an overwhelming majority of the country that destroying the most fundamental of relationships—that of mother and child—was necessary for women to have productive and happy lives.

From the spoiling of this relationship followed the decay of the entire family, and almost overnight, our once pro-life culture became pro-lifestyle, embracing everything that felt good. Sixty million abortions later, women aren’t showing signs of health, happiness, and fulfillment. Increased numbers of divorce, depression, anxiety, sexually transmitted disease, and drug abuse all point to the reality that women aren’t happier, just more medicated.

Huge cultural shifts led to a rethinking of womanhood, but could there be more behind it than just culture, politics, and rhetoric?

Building off the scriptural foundations of the anti-Christ, Carrie Gress makes an in-depth investigation into the idea of an anti-Mary—as a spirit, not an individual—that has plagued the West since the ’60s. Misleading generations of women, this anti-Marian spirit has led to the toxic femininity that has destroyed the lives of countless men, women, and children.

Also in The Anti-Mary Exposed:

• How radical feminism is connected to the errors of Russia, spoken of by Our Lady of Fatima.
• The involvement and influence of the goddess movement and the occult. 
• The influence of “female” demons, such as Lilith and Jezebel.
• The repulsive underbelly of radical feminism’s chief architects.
• A look at the matriarchy, a cabal of elite women committed to abortion, who control the thinking of most women through media, politics, Hollywood, fashion, and universities.

The antidote to the anti-Mary is, of course, Mary, the Mother of God, known widely as the most powerful woman in the world and the source of the belief that women ought to be treated with dignity. She is a beacon of all the virtues and qualities—purity, humility, kindness, beauty—that oppose this sinister force that has cast its spell upon so many women. Mary’s influence is unparalleled by any woman in history. She is the perfect model of Christian femininity, who desires to be a spiritual mother to us all, leading us to her Son, and to the fulfillment of our heart’s deepest desires.

For those who are interested, you can watch the podcast here:

And here is the wonderful painting by Tiepolo, from which the detail on the cover is taken. This is my favorite Immaculate Conception and I analyze its content and style here. It conveys simultaneously gentleness and strength, grace and power so brilliantly!

St. Thérèse of Lisieux on the Sacristans of Her Convent

Many readers will be familiar with this wonderful photograph of St. Thérèse, shown posing in her work of filling the ciborium with hosts (among other typical functions of a sacristan) for the daily conventual Mass:

This, of course, is much in keeping with the usual customs of women’s monasteries, where the sisters perform many of the tasks that would otherwise be assigned to clerics, such as leading the entire Divine Office and chanting its readings and prayers; making the responses at low Mass from outside the sanctuary in situations where no servers are available; and, in some rare cases, chanting the epistle at Mass (see Shawn Tribe’s “Carthusian Nuns and the Use of the Maniple and Stole”).

A photo that is much less known, and which I myself saw only for the first time recently, shows Thérèse with, if I may so say, her liturgical assistants in November 1896. Three of them are her blood sisters Marie, Pauline, and Céline (Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, Mother Agnes of Jesus, and St. Geneviève of the Holy Face) and one is her aunt Marie Guérin (Sr. Marie of the Eucharist). Sr. Marie of the Eucharist, Sr. Marie of the Angels (not in the photo), and St. Thérèse were the sacristans, while her three blood sisters were altar bread bakers[1]:

St. Thérèse was a gifted amateur poet and playwright who composed a surprising amount of literary work in her spare moments during her nine years as a Carmelite nun. Some of her work was intended for public occasions such as recreations, birthdays, and feastdays, while other pieces were more private, sent to one or a few of her religious sisters.

In the same month of November 1896, she wrote a poem called “The Sacristans of Carmel,” in rhyming octosyllabic verse, which I wish to share with readers in honor of the Little Flower’s feast (whether you are celebrating it today on the new calendar or two days from now on the old calendar).

The poem was written for Sr. Marie Philomena, who had asked Thérèse for something she could sing while baking; but it was first read by her aunt. Later, all of the sacristans and altar bread bakers got to know the poem, and apparently sang it regularly in their work, to whatever familiar tune they chose that would match the meter. In this we see a splendid example of the genre of a “work song” that has nearly disappeared from the world of mass-marketed and passively consumed entertainment. One may hope such work songs still survive in the Carmels.

The religious and theological content of the song are quite worth of attention. Here is the ICS translation, slightly modified to make it more literal[2]:

1. Here below our sweet office
Is to prepare for the altar
The bread and wine of the Sacrifice
Which brings to earth—“Heaven”!

2. Heaven, O supreme mystery!,
Hides itself under humble bread,
For Heaven, it is Jesus Himself,
Coming to us each morning.

3. There are no queens on earth
Who are happier than we.
Our office is a prayer
Which unites us to our Spouse.

4. This greatest honors of this world
Cannot compare
To the peace, profound and heavenly,
Which Jesus lets us savor.

5. We bring a holy envy
For the work of our hands,
For the little white host
Which is to veil our divine Lamb.

6. But his love has chosen us.
He is our Spouse, our Friend.
We are also hosts
Which Jesus wants to change into Himself.

7. Sublime mission of the Priest,
You become our mission here below.
Transformed by the Divine Master,
It is He who guides our steps.

8. We must help the apostles
By our prayers, our love.
Their battlefields are ours.
For them we fight each day.

9. The hidden God of the tabernacle
Who also hides in our hearts,
O what a miracle! at our voice
Deigns to pardon sinners!

10. Our happiness and our glory
Is to work for Jesus.
His beautiful Heaven is the ciborium
We want to fill with souls!...

The original draft

I heartily agree with the Carmelite commentators who find this poem both charming and insightful:

The sacristans are the untiring agents of this mysterious exchange [between heaven and earth]. In this poem, they readily call to mind something like Jacob’s ladder. These stanzas are full of “gentleness.” There is the discreet gentleness of the “housewife,” if we dare call it that: of the spouse “happier than a queen” whose heart remains attentive to her Husband, while her hands are diligently working for Him. There is also the discreet gentleness of the Carmelite nun, who is associated with the apostle at the altar in the role that is hers, that of the hidden companion. In both cases, the assistant becomes like the one she assists. …
       Here she [Thérèse] sings of her concrete way of sharing immediately in the “sublime mission of the Priest.” “Transformed” into Jesus by the Eucharist, “changed” into Him, does she not then also become an “alter Christus”…? She cannot leave her cloister to “preach the Gospel,” but Jesus, the first Missionary, walks in her and through her. He “guides her steps,” as He does those of the apostles she prays for, loves, and struggles for.
       She cannot absolve from sins. But Jesus present in her through the Eucharist gives her a share in his ministry of reconciling sinners.
       She will never fill the ciborium with consecrated hosts. But she is spending her life “filling Heaven with souls”—living hosts in which Christ lives alone from then on. …
       So Thérèse has no inferiority complex toward “men” or priests. She has no presumption either. For her, it is Jesus who acts in collaboration with men—and women. Even in 1892, she wrote to Céline: “I find that our share is really beautiful; what have we to envy in priests?”[3]

In fact, if we may use the awkward expression “holy envy,” it will always be the case that each Christian vocation has reason to admire the goods of every other, since these goods are not, simply speaking, compatible with one another. The priest may well “envy” the female religious her total and silent dedication to prayer, which he will almost never attain in his active ministry; the married man or woman may “envy” the consecrated soul its undivided attentiveness or availability for the things of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor 7); the consecrated man or woman may “envy” the married their sacramental realization of the faithful, fruitful union of Christ and the Church, which brings new immortal souls into the world, to complete the number of the elect. In the Mother of God alone do we find united that which nature cannot unite, combining and exceeding all Christian states of life: she is the wife unwed, the child-bearing virgin, mother inviolate, mediatrix of all grace as the inseparable minister of the High Priest. In her all vocations are at one, like white light before it splinters into a spectrum of colors. For the rest of us, the individual colors are distinct, complementary, and beautiful, as they are intended to be, for our individual benefit and for the common good of the Church.

St. Thérèse’s poem serves as a profitable meditation on several intertwined mysteries: the unique, exalted, and irreplaceable nature of the ministerial priesthood; the lofty participation in Christ the High Priest enjoyed by all who are baptized into His sacerdotal and royal dignity; the special position of consecrated religious, who follow the priestly and sacrificial Lamb whithersoever He goeth; and the value in God’s sight of the quiet, humble work done by sacristans whenever they reverently prepare the materials and environs required for worthily offering the sacrifice of praise.

NOTES

[1] For this and other details, I am indebted to the excellent commentary in The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. Donald Kinney, OCD (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 169–70.

[2] The translation is found in Kinney, Poetry, 170–71, as well as at this website. The French is contained in Kinney, pp. 301–302.

[3] Kinney, Poetry, 169–70.

The fair copy

Doctrinal Foundations of All-Male Sanctuary Service and the Problem with Ignoring Them

In the Temple of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies was a place solemnly set apart, separated from the rest of the temple and its surrounding courtyards, on account of the mystery contained within it: the presence of God above the mercy seat, in the midst of the physical reminder of the covenant in blood. Out of fear and reverence for the Lord, lay men and women, lower ranks of priests and Levites, would not dare to enter the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter, under precise conditions, ready to offer to the Lord his own prayers and the prayers of all the people.

Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, has pierced the veil and entered into the true tabernacle not made with human hands, preparing for us a way to follow Him into beatitude — even preparing for us, in this mortal life, a mystical banquet of His precious Body and Blood, so that we may be made sharers of the food of immortality. Yet, for all this intimacy of communion, He remains no less the Sovereign High Priest, crowned with glory, and we are no less His lowly servants in via. As we walk in pilgrimage towards the heavenly temple, there is still the distinction in kind between sacred and profane, baptized and unbaptized, the holy and the sinful, as well as the distinction of offices between ministers and laymen.

Far from being cut off from its ancient roots, worship in the New Covenant retains the spirit of chaste fear before the Lord, the awareness of stages of ascent into the holy presence of God, and a ministerial hierarchy that reflects the nature of the cosmos and the descent of grace from the Redeemer through the members of His mystical Body. These truths are consummately expressed in the spaces and structures of classic church architecture, furnishings, vestments, and vessels, and poignant prayers and gestures of homage, adoration, and humility.

Traditionally, the sanctuary above all was seen as the domain of Christ the High Priest, and therefore an area symbolically set apart from the rest of the Church, with all-male ministerial service — a custom that Roman Catholics kept intact for nearly 2,000 years in continuity with the Israelites who went before us, and that the Eastern Churches preserve in full integrity to this day.

Let us recall the rationale behind the custom of limiting service in the sanctuary and at the altar to men only. Servers and lectors are in some way an extension of the ministry of the priesthood, to which it properly belongs to handle the divine mysteries and all that is associated with them. Only men can be priests; therefore only males are suited to priestly functions. Moreover, servers and lectors are a substitute for clerics in minor orders, who, in optimal conditions, are the ones called upon by the Church to fulfill these very offices. The formal ministries of acolyte and lector, even after Pope Paul VI’s simplification and reconfiguration thereof, are open only to men. Ministers are men set apart by the Church for a special function that is not equivalent to general lay participation in the liturgy. Finally, serving as an altar boy was and still is a much-valued way to encourage vocations to the priesthood.[1]

Not long after the Council, this hitherto unbroken practice was abandoned, with the allowance of female lectors and, later, female altar servers. Now women and men freely mingle in the sanctuary and even at the very altar of sacrifice. Not only is this development contrary to the religious instincts of most cultures[2] and to well-known psychological requirements of boys,[3] it is also contrary to the common good of modern Christians who are living in an age of massive sexual confusion, where distinctions are blurred and the combination of reductive feminism and democratic egalitarianism treats men and women as if they were interchangeable.[4]

While Christian anthropology is sufficiently different from that of other cultures and religions to allow St. Paul to say that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28), the context itself and the exegesis of the Church Fathers show us that the Apostle is referring to the dignity of baptism and the goal of salvation: the grace of eternal life is freely available to all, with no distinction of race, class, or sex. Heroic charity is in the reach of every baptized man, woman, and child, and the hierarchy of heaven is established according to charity. This fundamental truth simply does not touch on how the Christian religion, as visibly and socially embodied in this world, makes use of the God-authored order of creation (and, in particular, the permanent features of human nature) for the hierarchical form of its organization and worship.

The ideological shotgun wedding of feminism and egalitarianism strikes at the fundamental language of revelation, wherein God/Christ is the bridegroom who acts and fertilizes, becoming the father and head of the family, and man/Israel/the Church the bride who receives as wife and bears fruit as a mother. As I have written elsewhere:

To ignore differences of sex or to pretend that such differences make (or should make) no difference in the fulfilling of liturgical roles is surely to ignore, and probably to contradict, the “theology of the body” given to the Church by Pope John Paul II. Especially in our times, when confusion about sexuality is rampant, how we conceptualize and implement male and female roles in the Church cannot fail to have huge ramifications in our theological anthropology, moral theology, and even fundamental theology, extending all the way to the inerrancy of Scripture and the trustworthiness of apostolic Tradition.[5]

At the very least, it is not beneficial to the faithful to allow traditional practices to be canceled out as if they were arbitrary exercises of power, mistaken to begin with — particularly when these practices have sound anthropological and dogmatic foundations.

In the case at hand, the gradual breaking down of various distinctions such as those between sanctuary and nave, ordained and non-ordained, ministers and recipients, has been able to feed into and feed upon the larger societal dissolving of distinctions between men and women, creating a perfect storm of confusion for the faithful.

A failure to see how the natural distinction of sexes is ordered to the common good of mankind and of the Church has, without a doubt, led to many abuses of power on the part of pastors or laity who take it upon themselves to create, abolish, or innovatively redefine offices, functions, symbols, and rites.

Pastors concerned with communicating and reinforcing authentic Catholic doctrine should become more concerned with the many ways, open and subtle, in which our liturgical practices symbolize certain truths of creation and redemption or, on the contrary, obfuscate that symbolism and risk undermining those truths.


NOTES

[1] See this article for further argumentation.

[2] See Manfred Hauke, Women and the Priesthood: A Systematic Analysis in Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, trans. David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), esp. 85–194; cf. idem, God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does It Lead?, trans. David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).

[3] I am referring here to the oft-observed pastoral phenomenon of male servers dropping away and recruits drying up when girls flow into the ranks and take over (something known to be off-putting for boys of a certain age range in particular), and the opposite phenomenon of boys and young men volunteering in large numbers to serve when the ministry is all-male, exacting in its duties and run along the lines of a disciplined band of soldiers.

[4] See Peter Kwasniewski, “Incarnate Realism and the Catholic Priesthood,” originally published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review 100.7 (April 2000): 21–29; online here.

[5] Published as Benedict Constable, “Should Women Be Lectors at Mass?”