Why Are Laity So Involved in the Liturgical Debate? And Why Is the Continued Struggle Necessary?

These cartoons were published during Vatican II

This Paix Liturgique Letter 776 was published in French (source) on December 18, 2020, but never translated into English. It is really good and deserves to be available to English readers. And it has only improved with age. — PAK

On the occasion of the publication of Cyril Farret d’Astiès’ book Un heureux anniversaire? Essai sur les cinquante ans du missel de Paul VI, we asked him about this work, with the aim of highlighting the importance that laity have played, and continue to play, in defending the traditional Mass.

When the Tridentine Mass was de facto banned [now more than] fifty years ago, its users, obeying the instinct of the Christian people’s faith — the sensus fidelium — fought to ensure that it continued to be celebrated: this is why it was maintained and borne down to us. They supported, and sometimes even helped to enlist, the courageous priests who continued to say it, and then they assisted the communities that organized themselves in order to continue supplying traditional priests: the Society of St. Pius X and, later, the Ecclesia Dei institutes. These efforts were very concrete — material aid to priests and communities; driving many kilometers every Sunday to attend the Holy Sacrifice — but also intellectual and editorial, through the publication of magazines, brochures, and essays. Just think of the importance of the publications of Jean Madiran, Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira, Louis Salleron, Romano Amerio, and so many others, alongside priests like P. Calmel, Abbé Dulac, and bishops like Mgr Lefebvre and Mgr de Castro Mayer.

Today, it’s Cyril Farret d’Astiès’ turn to peacefully, but uncompromisingly, explain the immense damage to faith and piety caused by the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council. The approach of all these laity who, for half a century, have been militating in this way through their religious practice or their pen seems like a paradoxical fruit of Vatican II, which, in its decree Apostolicam Actuositatem on the apostolate of the laity, affirmed “its desire to make the apostolic activity of the People of God more intense”!

Paix Liturgique. You’re a layman who continues the work of many laity who have gone before you in defending the liturgy. How do you explain the very important role played by laity in defending and promoting the traditional liturgy?

Cyril Farret d’Astiès: Yes, I’m a layman with a family and a variety of professional and associative activities. I’m not a theologian or a historian, yet I’ve long wanted to write an essay on the central and essential subject of liturgy. I’d already tackled the liturgical subject a little, but in a roundabout way, in my novel Balade buissonnière and in a collection of short stories. And in that respect, I’m not exactly a trailblazer. The defense of traditional liturgy from the mid-1960s onwards was largely the work of laity from various backgrounds: Tito Casini, Jean Madiran, Cristina Campo, Michel de Saint-Pierre, Marie Carré, Louis Salleron, and even Serge Lama or Agatha Christie to some extent! I don’t pretend to be on a par with them, but I’m extremely grateful to them for having perceived the essential stakes of liturgical reform at an early stage, for having fought tirelessly and shown the way.

It seems to me that there are two main reasons why laity are so involved in the liturgical debate.

First, while ministers of religion have been clerics since Christ Himself instituted the sacraments, the faithful attend and participate in all liturgical actions. The public prayer of the Church is the action of the whole people of God. It’s our first duty as human beings: “hallowed be Thy name!” We’ve always been encouraged by the clergy to take part in Vespers, to attend Mass during the week, to take part in processions. We’re very much involved. So it’s only logical that laity with a little knowledge or insight should be concerned about what was going to be imposed on them — especially as the reforms were being carried out under the pretext of making worship “more accessible and understandable to the faithful”!

The other reason, it seems to me, lies in the greater freedom and independence of the laity. The obedience owed to their bishop by priests and promised on the day of their ordination (even if it is subordinate to the Truth which is Christ Himself) is an important aspect of the hierarchical Church in the most supernatural sense of the term. This is even truer of those in religious vows. By their very nature, laity do not have the same relationship of obedience to the clergy. While loyalty to a parish and belonging to a diocese are important bonds, the stability of the laity fluctuates — even more so in modern times. That’s why laity were quick to express their astonishment and to question their pastors in view of the total transformations they were seeing everywhere and in every field.

You insist on the obedience imposed on clerics and laypeople alike. Do you think this question of obedience is important?

CFA: It’s essential for understanding how the new missal was imposed, and just as important for understanding how to restore the old one. First of all, let’s remember that obedience is a great and beautiful thing. It’s a virtue that’s not always easy to acquire, especially for strong, independent characters! It requires education of the will and discernment, for obedience is not an end in itself. It is necessarily subordinate to truth, goodness, and morality.

Allow me to digress for a moment, in a digression which after all is not so far removed from our subject. I note with joy and gratitude that bishops, for the first time in a very long time, have called for disobedience to political power in the absurd matter of limiting the number of worshippers in places of worship to thirty.

In a homily, Pope Benedict XVI reminded us that “the authority to teach in the Church implies a commitment to obedience to the faith.” Clearly, the obedience we owe to religious authorities is very precisely based on faith. It is because religious authorities transmit revelation in apostolic succession and in fidelity to tradition that we must obey them, even in small things. Disobedience is a serious act, so the motive for it has to be serious too. If some of those who opposed the liturgical reform refused to adopt the new missal, it was precisely because they felt there was more at stake [than mere “changeable disciplines”].

As Jean Madiran wrote in L’hérésie du XXe siècle: “You are quite mistaken in imagining that we would walk anywhere and accept any religion, pushed by a blind party-attachment, provided the new directives had an episcopal guarantee…. We don’t obey jokes. Because we take obedience and authority very seriously, we have always known that no obedience to men can pretend to make us go against obedience to God.”

So some disobeyed, refusing to celebrate (or attend) the new Mass and continuing to celebrate (or attend) the old one. For this reason, they were singled out and pushed aside by those who required obedience to the new laws and adoption of the new practices as a norm. But, wham! We now know that the old missal could not be abrogated, has not been, and never will be! It turns out the prohibitions were illegitimate, the obligations abusive. In 1986, a cardinal’s commission ruled on the thorny question of the legal status of the old missal, which was then almost completely settled by the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. This necessarily calls for a rereading of the events that have unfolded since the 70s!

It would be extremely salutary, therefore, if the liturgical question were now dealt with on its own merits, putting aside the question of obedience, which has no place here. Is the traditional liturgy in itself more in keeping with worship, the understanding of mystery, respect for the Holy Eucharist, and the edification of the faithful? These are the only questions that clerics and laity should be asking themselves today.

You title your book Un heureux Anniversaire? [A happy birthday?] Isn’t it an opportunity to take stock of the crisis that has shaken the Church for 50 years and more — and to draw some conclusions?

CFA: Absolutely! The liturgical reform promised a springtime for the Church. We were going to see all that we were going to see! Well, we have seen. Spring has been rainy, extremely rainy. The faithful fled. Belief in the main dogmas of the Catholic faith has collapsed, not only among the faithful who remain, but among the clergy and right up to the highest levels of the hierarchy. Not a stone upon a stone of the ancient edifice remains. Who can argue with that? No special issue of La Croix, no special solemnity at the meetings of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) in Lourdes, no text of any importance either in Rome or in France, is necessary for that purpose. The failure is so bitter that everyone looks the other way and pretends not to notice. Everyone.

Liturgy is both the revelation of the crisis and its fuel.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the promulgation of the new missal that gave birth to Modernism, that sewer collecting all heresies that so worried St. Pius X. However, it is undeniable that all the modern thinking of the twentieth century paved the way for liturgical reform; the reformers were all in love with new ideas and had experimented, more or less clandestinely, with their pastoral whims, which found concrete and definitive application in the new missal — suppression of the Offertory, horizontal participation, abandonment of eastward orientation, systematic use of the vernacular, methodical simplification of all rites, and so on. Once these radical transformations of the entire liturgical edifice had been imposed, the faithful and the clerics who had to apply them ended up integrating as well their suspicious theological foundations, and in 2020 we’ve come to see bishops receiving Communion from the hands of a young girl, veneration given to Pachamama in the heart of the Vatican, bishops knowingly giving the Eucharist to Protestants as well as to civilly remarried divorcees... the list goes on.

Even if worship is not itself a catechism, its expression is necessarily a reflection of belief. Liturgy expresses faith. And faith is expressed and spread through worship. As Fr. de Blignières so beautifully put it during the pilgrimage to mark the tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, ritual makes truth tangible.

The liturgical crisis is therefore naturally linked to the crisis of faith. And if the restoration of the liturgy is the top priority because it concerns God himself, truly present in the Eucharist and through the sacraments, then the restoration of catechism, canon law, and pastoral care must accompany this liturgical restoration.

Many of our contemporaries think that if the Church had used a more intelligent pedagogy, it would have succeeded in imposing its reform.

CFA: Perhaps... Perhaps the vexations, the contempt, the clericalism, the authoritarianism, the headlong rush, the outrageousness, is what made some Catholics keenly aware of the breadth and depth of what the liturgical reform actually entailed [as opposed to what was said on its behalf]. Perhaps this awareness has given rise to a movement that is numerically quite small, but dynamic, combative, resolute, and fruitful.

On the contrary, I believe that if the Church had been patient — if it had immediately offered indults and the possibility of keeping the old books for those who wanted to keep them — the reform would probably not have been able to be implemented as it was [that is, to the virtual exclusion of the old rite]. Under those conditions, many of the Catholics whom Yann Raison du Cleuziou defines as “observant” — I’m thinking here of the Saint-Martin community, Opus Dei, and a host of other priests and faithful — would have simply kept the old Mass, for these “observers” seek and aspire to a liturgy that fully corresponds to its purpose as public worship of God. And you can see that this brings us right back to the question of obedience.

That’s why it seems to me that it’s high time for those “observant” Catholics who have chosen to use the new missal conjuncturally (out of obedience!) to objectively examine the difficulties of the new missal and to become aware of all that they are depriving themselves of by not celebrating with the old Ordo.

So liturgical questions are not just ritual or aesthetic or a matter of sensitivity, but directly linked to our faith?

CFA: In a 1969 issue of the journal La Pensée Catholique, a group of theologians remarked: “We have good reason to fear that, by no longer highlighting the Sacrifice of Jesus, the Ordo Missæ is in fact dooming it to oblivion; for this Sacrifice is too supernatural a reality for man to be able, without a sign, to remember it and live by it.” This remark is essential: it was totally prophetic. I could have written it as an epigraph to my essay, so much does it sum up the whole problematic of the comparison of the two missals.

I’d like to touch on a point that seems very sensitive to me, but which it is essential to address. I’m not sure I’ve managed to do so in my book. The liturgical question is one of great emotion and sensitivity, because the subject has unleashed passions, imposed clear-cut positions, and forced personal (but also family and community) public choices. It’s undeniable that reasons of sensitivity, aesthetics, and habit explain certain choices. All of which means that, for psychological reasons, it’s difficult to restate the liturgical question in a cold, theoretical way.

The motu proprio of 2007 — a considerable event, and one for which I’m still grateful — did have one drawback, however: it made the choice of liturgical form both personal and, in a way, relative. One of the aims of this motu proprio was to appease all parties by offering an extremely wide opening for the use of the old missal, while at the same time trying to preserve unity, hence the attractive (but perhaps above all tactical) idea of “two forms” of a single Roman ritual. However, if aesthetic considerations or sensitivities are always legitimate in the context of an objective good — one can be personally very keen on the Dominican liturgy, or one can well prefer “Gothic” vestments to “Roman” ones — the fundamental choices that guide the adoption of the old Mass once and for all are based on criteria of faith.

The reform was undertaken for two essential reasons: “that this restoration organize the texts and rites in such a way that they express with greater clarity the holy realities they signify” (SC 21) and that “the sacrifice of the Mass, even in its ritual form, obtain full pastoral effectiveness” (SC 49). But the pastoral care derived from this liturgy has driven God’s people away. The majority of those who remain no longer know what happens at Mass, what the sacraments are, what the Church is. With the celebration of both missals authorized, it’s high time we returned to the old ways!

What would you say to all those who are about to discover your book?

CFA: This essay of mine is aimed at all sincere Catholics, “observant” Catholics. Based on official Church texts, I attempt to unpack the spirit and letter of the new missal, and to show that its native and structural weaknesses led (and lead) to a massive loss of understanding of the supernatural realities covered by the liturgy.

But beyond this quasi-systematic risk, by depriving ourselves of the old books we are not only depriving ourselves — our family, our faithful, our community — of ritual riches of incomparable depth and great spirituality, we are also depriving God Himself of the perfection that 2,000 years of Christianity have slowly shaped to render Him the worship that is His due!

We must never forget that everything in the liturgy must be directed towards our Creator. So come and see, dear friends of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True: the treasure of the ancient liturgical books is the common treasure of all Latin Catholics, not the privilege of a small, privileged caste. The traditional liturgy is of such profound richness that it nourishes a whole life of contemplation, preparing our soul for its eternity, which will be nothing other than participation in the heavenly liturgy. There’s no better way to strengthen our desire for heaven than with this liturgical form, so mystagogical, so Christ-centered! The traditional liturgy is — today perhaps even more than yesterday — the remedy for our spiritual sluggishness, for the seduction of the world, for the pretensions of the old man of sin.

As Archbishop Thomas Gullickson said during a meeting with priests who celebrate the ancient ritual: “I sincerely believe that the ancient Mass is the future of the Church.”

Is the Laity’s Offering of the Mass a Post-Conciliar Re-Discovery?

Archbishop Roche — like everyone trained by modern liturgists — keeps saying that the new rite finally recognizes that the faithful are also part of the offering of the Mass, instead of it just being the priest's work:

In the former [rite], he says, it was the priest who “represented the intentions of the people” and took that to God in the liturgy. Vatican II changed that. “With the understanding of the priesthood of all the baptised it’s not simply the priest alone who celebrates the Eucharist, but all the baptised who celebrate with him. That surely has to be the most profound understanding of what ‘participation’ means.” (Interview with Christopher Lamb in The Tablet, February 24, 2022)

This view is so common that one can stumble upon it as upon a cat or a pair of shoes in whatever direction one walks. Let me give some examples “in the wild.” From the Swinging Sixties:

To understand this religious program and to enjoy its hoped-for results we must all change our settled way of thinking regarding sacred ceremonies and religious practices as calling for no more than a passive, distracted assistance. (Paul VI, General Audience, January 13, 1965)
       The Council has taken the fundamental position that the faithful have to understand what the priest is saying and to share in the liturgy; to be not just passive spectators at Mass but souls alive. (Paul VI, Homily, March 27, 1966)

And a more recent sighting: 

Without going into much detail here, suffice it to say that one of the great scandals of the Roman Rite over the centuries has been its progressive disconnect from the people. Slowly over time, partly from a desire to preserve Latin as the language of worship, partly due to increased complexity and dramatic elements introduced by Frankish liturgists, and partly due to historical factors I will not rehearse here, the Mass became a purely clerical affair. The priests and other ministers would be gathered around the altar saying the Mass, and the people would be observing, almost like they were attending a play…. Why do you think the last 57 years have been liturgically so chaotic? Because the Church is suddenly trying to focus on something that she has not deeply considered for more than a millennium. The Church is trying to answer the question of how to include the people in the liturgical action of the Mass. (Fr. Jeffrey Moore, “Liturgical Participation,” February 2, 2020)

The trouble is, the view recycled by Archbishop Roche, Fr. Moore, and so many others, like its analogues in Pope Paul VI, corresponds to nothing that was ever taught to Catholics, nor does it correspond in the main to the experience of the laity who assist at the Latin Mass. Let’s have a look at two splendid examples from the tradition.

The first is from Fr. Martin von Cochem (1630–1712), who wrote the following in his extremely popular book Die Heilige Messe für die Weltleute [Holy Mass for the Laity], published in 1704:

Ponder well, O Christian, what the holy Catholic Church, infallible in matters of faith, declares to us.... She expressly states, and imposes on our belief, that no other work can be performed by the faithful so holy and divine as the tremendous mystery of the Mass. This does not only refer to priests, but to the faithful in general.
       Priests can indeed do nothing more holy and divine than celebrate Mass; the laity can do nothing more holy and divine than hear Mass, serve Mass, join in offering Mass, have Mass said for their intentions, follow the prayers and unite in spirit with the celebrant. Since to do this is of all works the most holy and divine, it stands to reason that it should also be the most profitable and meritorious....  (238, Benziger edition; TAN Books also has an edition, with different pagination)

And again: 

One of the greatest graces which are granted to the children of the Church is that the privilege of offering to the Divine Majesty the sacred and sublime sacrifice of the Mass is not the prerogative of priests alone, but belongs to the laity as well, to men, women, and children. This favor was not shown to the Jews; no one but the priest was permitted to offer the holocaust, or to kindle the incense in the temple....
       In the New Testament the case is very different; under this dispensation it is graciously permitted to ordinary people to offer, not incense only, but the precious blood of Christ in the holy Mass.... The faithful of either sex are members of a spiritual priesthood, and have received from God the power to offer spiritual sacrifices. But when they offer the Mass by the hands of the priest they do more, they offer what is better than a spiritual oblation, namely, a visible one, even the self-same victim Whom the priest holds in his hands.
       Happy indeed are the laity in being thus privileged, through the divine bounty, to purchase the inestimable treasure of the body and blood of Christ, and with a few words to offer it to God for their own immeasurable profit ! Make frequent use, O pious Christian, of this thy glorious prerogative; it is the easiest way of acquiring eternal riches. This sacrificial act is the chief, the most important, part of hearing Mass, for without it thou wilt neither gain much profit to thyself nor give pleasure to God. “Hearing Mass,” says a spiritual writer, “does not merely consist in being present in person when it is celebrated, but in offering it to God conjointly with the priest.”
       All this is undeniably true. It is not enough to be present at Mass in order to share in the fruits of the Mass: we must make a definite offering of it to God in union with the officiating priest. The Mass is a sacrifice, and it appertains to the nature of a sacrifice that it should be offered to the Deity. Therefore those persons who fail to do this, either with their lips or in their heart, do not derive half the benefit from the Mass that others do, although they fulfil the precept of the Church, whilst piously reciting other prayers that have nothing of the character of an offering. (298ff., Benziger ed.; TAN ed., 320–22)

And yet again: 

Ponder well the immense favor Christ bestows on thee in making thee a mystical priest, and empowering thee to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, not for thyself alone, but also for others. Bishop Fornerus tells us: ‘It is not the priest alone who offers the Mass for himself and for others: every Christian who is present may do the same, for his own needs and those of his friends.’ This is expressed in the prayer following after the Sanctus: “Be mindful, O Lord, of thy servants N. and N.; and of all present, whose faith and devotion are known, for whom we offer, or who offer, up to Thee this sacrifice for themselves, their families and friends…” The meaning of these words is too obvious to be mistaken.
       Moreover, when the priest says the Orate fratres, he turns towards the people and invites them to help him  in offering the holy sacrifice: ‘Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.’ As if he would say: I am about to perform a work of great importance, to offer an oblation which in my own strength I cannot do; I ask you to pray for me and assist me with your cooperation, for it concerns you nearly, the sacrifice is yours as well as  mine, and for this reason you are bound to help me. (Benziger, 301–2)

A near-contemporary, Saint Leonard of Port Maurice (1676–1751), another popular preacher of his day, addressed the same topic in his book The Hidden Treasure (also still in print from TAN Books). First, he establishes that it is Our Lord Jesus Christ who is the principal celebrant, which I assume no one would criticize as clericalism:

At every hour, then, in various parts of the world, this most perfectly holy Priest offers to the Father His Blood, His Soul, and His whole self for us: and all this He does as many times as there are Masses celebrated in the whole world. O boundless treasure! O mine of inestimable stores thus possessed by us in the Church of God! O happy we if we could but assist at all these Masses! What a store of reward would be thus acquired! What a heaping up of graces in this life, what a fund of glory in the other, would be the fruit of so loving an attendance!

Then he talks about how the faithful also offer the holy sacrifice:

But what is implied in this word “attendance”? Those who hear Mass not only perform the office of attendants, but likewise of offerers, having themselves a right to the title of priests. ‘Fecisti nos Deo nostro regnum et sacerdotes’ (Apoc. v. 10). The celebrating priest is, as it were, the public minister of the Church in general; he is the intermediary between all the faithful, particularly those who assist at Mass, and the invisible Priest, Who is Christ; and, together with Christ, he offers to the Eternal Father, both in behalf of all the rest and of himself, the great price of human redemption.
       But he is not alone in this so holy function, since all those who assist at Mass concur with him in offering the sacrifice; and, therefore, the priest turns round to the people and says, “Orate fratres ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium acceptabile fiat - Pray, brethren, that mine and your sacrifice may be acceptable to God”, in order that the faithful may understand that, while he indeed acts the part of principal minister, all those who are present make the great offering together with him. So that when you assist at Holy Mass, you perform, after a certain manner, the office of priest.
       What say you, then? Will you ever dare, from this time forward, to be at Mass sitting, prating, looking here and there, perhaps even sleeping, or content yourselves with reciting some vocal prayers, without at all taking to heart the tremendous office of priest which you are exercising? Ah me! I cannot restrain myself from exclaiming, O dull and incapable world, that understandest nothing of mysteries so sublime! How is it possible that anyone should remain before the altar with a mind distracted and a heart dissipated at a time when the holy Angels stand there trembling and astonished at the contemplation of a work so stupendous? (pp. 5-6)

Now, these two authors, Martin von Cochem and St. Leonard of Port-Maurice, were not obscure figures writing esoteric tomes for religious scholasticates. They were, as already mentioned, popular preachers and writers and highly typical figures of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. The traditional doctrine they preached was being spread all over the place as part of the Church’s response to Protestant errors and as a means for encouraging the laity to live a a devout liturgical life.

One might object: Would they need to have insisted so much on these truths if the laity had not forgotten them and if the liturgy they were accustomed to did not foster the contrary attitude?

My response: the truth about the identity of the baptized as co-offerers of the Sacrifice of Christ is always in danger of being forgotten because it is a matter of faith, not something patently obvious to the senses. It will always need to be taught, regardless of the form the liturgy takes. But we can go a step further and say that the form the Mass takes will have a lot to do with how much the laity can perceive it to be the mystical offering of the sublime sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and how much opportunity and incentive it gives them for entering profoundly into that sacrifice.

Ultimately, the problem is not that the old Mass encourages passivity or laziness. Laity can be uninvolved in any liturgy. (I don’t know when’s the last time Arthur Roche has observed teenagers at the Novus Ordo, texting and surfing on their phones — and not just teenagers, I’m afraid.) The real problem is that the modern liturgists tend to have a Protestant understanding of what active participation means: they think it must look just like what the priest is doing, so if the priest is speaking, the laity must speak; if he sings, the laity must sing; if he stands at the altar, at least some of the laity have to go stand at the altar with him; if he is distributing communion, some of the laity should as well. It is only a barely lingering sense of decency that has prevented (in most cases) laity from lifting up the consecrated host and chalice along with the priest at the elevations.

In short: the Novus Ordo theoreticians tiptoe as close as they possible can to the heresy that the laity are priests in the same way as the priest is a priest, and so it bothers them a great deal if there is a liturgical rite in which there is a clear and sharp distinction externally between how the priest offers Mass and how the laity offer it with him and by his hands. Their complaint, in other words, appears to be directed at the “sacerdotalism” of the Catholic Mass. They would like to overcome it as much as possible, while (at least sometimes) not technically running afoul of the canons and decrees of Trent.

The great irony, then, becomes this: for over half a century, Catholics have been habituated by the Novus Ordo into thinking that if they show up for Mass, sing, speak, sit, and stand, and especially if they “volunteer to minister,” they have actively participated: they can, as it were, punch the ticket. What it all means for my inner prayer life is, sadly, quite untouched; people are too busy and too distracted to get to that level. Yet the Magisterium of the Church, together with the pars sanior of the Liturgical Movement, have always said that the interior spiritual dimension is the more fundamental and the more important dimension of participatio actuosa, and that the external activity is worthwhile inasmuch as it supports the internal engagement in the Mystery of Faith.

With the emphasis on doing and the paucity of intense personal prayer, the current regime strikingly calls to mind the warning of Our Lord: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cumin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone” (Matt. 23:23). That is, translated into this conversation, you should do the little active things with your body when and as appropriate, but don’t forget the weightier things of the spiritual order.

Fr. Hunwicke recently cited a most relevant passage from Dom Gregory Dix:

If the word had not come to have as offensive a sound for many as “clericalism” itself, the old term “sacerdotalism” might well be used to describe the reconciling principle of the primitive church, so dear to S Paul, “that there are diversities of ministries, many members, yet but one Body,” in which they find their hierarchic unity; and that all are necessary to the perfection of the Church, the Body of Christ. Clericalism, I take it, means in itself simply undue exaltation of the person and importance of the minister, whether he claims priestly character and special sacramental power, or not. “Sacerdotalism,” on the other hand, means simply the belief that certain men are given by God certain priestly powers on behalf of their fellows, which their fellows have not got. These are not the same thing ... the pre-Nicene Church was certainly not “clericalist,” but it was profoundly “sacerdotalist.”

The “sacerdotalism” of the old rites, in which the clergy — bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, those in minor orders or their substitutes — are manifestly the primary agents executing the services, and the congregation attends, or to use an old-fashioned term, “assists” in a mostly quiet and apparently passive way, is uniformly deplored by modern liturgists as a form of clericalism and a separation or exclusion of the people from the liturgical action. Yet they fail to grasp the paradox of the spiritual involvement, attraction, and even fascination provoked by the hieratic “distance” of the clergy in the sanctuary, the architectural boundaries and barriers that turn spaces into symbols, and the entrustment of rites to men who exemplify the worship of God in their ceremonial vesture, scripted words, and carefully-controlled motions.

In other words, something that is routinely assumed to be anti-participational and anti-corporate is nothing of the kind. The development that took place in history accentuated features already clearly present in the old covenant and continued in the new covenant in the Cross of Christ — a covenant pre-interpreted in an Upper Room cut off from the marketplace, consummated on a mount cut off from the city, achieved in the torturous separation of Body and Blood, echoed in the Nolite me tangere (“Do not touch me,” John 20:17) of the risen Lord who must ascend beyond us that we may follow him: Trahe me, post te curremus (“Draw me, we will run after thee,” Song 1:3). A certain kind of hierarchic and bodily differentiation and separation is part of the essence of the Christian religion as lived in this in-between time, between the Fall and the Second Coming; when lived rightly, it serves charity and spiritual union.

As our two Counter-Reformation preachers remind us, the message of the laity’s real participation in offering the Mass has always been a part of Catholic catechesis. We should not be too quick to trust the examples of corruption furnished by the class of professional liturgists as pretexts for their radical makeover of the Roman Rite.

New Book Defends All-Male Liturgical Ministry, Subdiaconate/Minor Orders, and Proper Roles of Clergy and Laity

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest book, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Crisis Publications).

When this project was first conceived over a year ago, my initial idea was to write a critique of Paul VI’s attempted suppression of the subdiaconate and minor orders, of John Paul II’s permission of altar girls, and of Francis’s innovation of female “acolytes” and “lectors.” During its writing, however, the scope of the book considerably broadened to include a full-scale presentation and defense of the traditional sevenfold manifestation of Orders — priest, deacon, subdeacon, lector, acolyte, exorcist, and porter — together with an explanation of the distinct but mutually supporting roles of clergy and laity. In order to accomplish this, I stepped back further to look at the distinction and complementarity of the sexes in the order of creation and the order of redemption, a perspective that provides the ultimate foundation for the Church’s entire teaching on states of life, roles, and ministries. In this way the book serves as a response to the “gender madness” that afflicts the world and increasingly infects the Church.

The summer’s anti-TLM motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the mounting threats against the former Ecclesia Dei institutes that avail themselves of the traditional rites of ordination conspire to make the book’s overall argument more urgent still. (Fortunately, subsequent to July 16 I was given the opportunity to do some last-minute revisions to the text in order to take this new scenario into account. Nothing of substance had to be changed in the overall argument.)

Ministers of Christ analyzes the problems with recent popes’ successive innovations in the area of ministry, showing how they have created a theologically and liturgically incoherent situation—a categorical rupture from a tradition firmly rooted in the most profound anthropological, Christological, and ecclesiological principles. In this regard the Church stands in desperate need of the correct (and corrective) witness of the usus antiquior. This will remain true even if a tyrannical attempt is made to prohibit the ancient rites of ordination, an act that would have no more legal validity than Traditionis Custodes itself.

Part I, “Foundations,” looks at the most fundamental questions: how sexuality and the body have personal significance and therefore moral, theological, and liturgical significance as well; the connection between the Incarnation of Our Lord and the male priesthood and male sanctuary service; the blessing on womanhood conferred in and through Our Lady, the Virgin Mother of God; the Old Testament background and New Testament roots of the diaconate, subdiaconate, and minor orders, seen as radiating outward from the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the solemn tradition behind this ecclesiastical hierarchy; and the proper role of the laity in the great world outside the churches, where they exercise their primary responsibilities.

Part II, “Deviations,” takes a critical look at practices that entered the Church after the Second Vatican Council—above all, the attempt to sideline the subdiaconate and minor orders and the habitual use of female lectors and altar servers, whether filling in as “substitutes” or, as Pope Francis would have it, installed as ministers. It explains how these distortions and novelties misconstrue and muddle the callings of laity and clergy as well as their diverse but complementary modes of participation in the liturgy. In the course of the chapters, the notion of “active participation” is freed from its harsh captivity as a slogan trafficked by modern liturgists.

Part III, “Restoration,” charts a path out of this mess into a healthier church life, making the case for several related proposals:

– the universal reestablishment of the subdiaconate and minor orders, which have never been and cannot be abrogated and which remain in use to this day;

– a return to the traditional lex orandi of the classical Roman rite, which embodies true doctrine about states of life, ministries, and sexes;

– the wearing of veils by women in church as a sign of their dignity and role within the Mystical Body;

– the full acceptance of the supernatural and sacrificial vision of priesthood and consecrated life that attracts vocations today as it always did in the past, together with a firm repudiation of the “heresy of activism” that extinguishes the primacy of prayer and the ultimacy of contemplation;

– a reversal of the mad race of aggiornamento, to be replaced by the serene embrace of the essential changelessness of the Christian religion, which worships the immutable God in His eternal truth, reflected in traditional liturgical rites.

This book also includes the definitive versions of two essays by Bishop Athanasius Schneider: “The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy” and “Healing the Rupture: A Call for the Restoration of Minor Orders.”

Ministers of Christ concludes with three litanies for private devotional use. The first is for the clergy in general. The second and third, based on the Roman Martyrology, remind us that the Church’s history provides many examples of saintly subdeacons, lectors, acolytes, and exorcists whom we ought to invoke. Lastly, there is a select bibliography divided into topics.

Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion.
   By Peter Kwasniewski, with two chapters by Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
   Foreword by Leila Marie Lawler.
   Manchester, NH: Crisis Publications, 2021.
   xliii + 285 pp.
   Paperback $19.95.

Available directly from the publisher or from Amazon.com.

Here is a short video (by no means professional...) that has more or less the same content as the post above, for those who prefer the video format.

A Look Back on the Festival of Saint Louis 2021 (Guest Article and Photos)

NLM thanks Anna Kalinowski for her detailed commentary on the second annual Festival of St. Louis, once again a great success (as the stirring photos help convey).

The Apotheosis of St. Louis in Forest Park, where Catholics of St. Louis, Missouri, meet weekly year-round to pray the Holy Rosary

A few weeks ago, Catholics in Saint Louis, Missouri, outdid themselves once again in celebrating the feast of their city’s beloved patron. Faithful from all over the archdiocese and many out-of-state visitors came together to participate in an impressive series of liturgical and paraliturgical events known as The Festival of St. Louis.

The celebrations, which were organized primarily by the Oratory of SS. Gregory and Augustine, began officially in the Archdiocese’s mother church, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, with Solemn First Vespers on the evening of Tuesday, August 24^th. Solemn seven-cope vespers may very well have been a first in the basilica’s history of a hundred-plus years.

The proper chants for Vespers were taken from a manuscript of an Office composed just after St. Louis’s canonization in 1297 for use at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. It was for many years the most widely celebrated Office for Louis, King of France.

Procession into the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis for Solemn First Vespers

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Lay Ministries Obscure Both the Laity’s Calling and the Clergy’s

The recent motu proprio Spiritus Domini has a personal resonance for me. Under the regime of progressive Catholicism in which I grew up, I recall hearing one message loud and clear: “Show your faith by signing up for XYZ ministry.” The underlying assumption was that merely assisting at Mass was not quite good enough; that was for the uncommitted, the uninterested, the unmotivated.

So I dutifully signed up to be first an altar boy, then a lector, and finally, an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion (this would have been in the 1980s). Throughout boyhood and adolescence, I didn’t understand at all what the Mass was about; I hardly had a clue what the Eucharist was; I’m not even sure my views would have differered, in essence, from how Protestants view their services. Actually, that’s not true; a Protestant would have had a much higher view of Biblical inspiration and inerrancy than I would have had. I was serving at something, I knew not what; I was reading something, I knew not what; I was distributing something, I knew not what.

It was for me a huge breakthrough, a profound liberation, to discover through the traditional Latin Mass that one can simply be at the liturgy and soak it in like a sponge; one can come to find this receptivity utterly fulfilling. Perhaps that is the saddest lesson of Spiritus Domini: its change to canon law makes sense only in the context of a liturgy that has lost its raison d’être.

The motu proprio once again raises the question of the vocation of the laity. What are laypeople supposed to be doing? Have they a proper work of their own, or do they just collect the scraps that fall from the clergy’s table — better yet, climb up and jostle elbows?

The Church’s answer has always been consistent: the laity’s work is to influence, purify, and elevate temporal affairs, bringing them as much as possible into conformity with the law of God and the Church’s mission to glorify God and save souls. The Second Vatican Council espoused this traditional point of view: Gaudium et Spes exhorts the laity “to impress the divine law on the affairs of the earthly city” (n. 43), while Apostolicam Actuositatem sets as our goal “rectifying the distortion of the temporal order and directing it to God through Christ” (n. 7).

The latter document establishes a distinction between those who teach principles and those who implement them: on the one hand, “Pastors must clearly state the principles concerning the purpose of creation and the use of temporal things and must offer the moral and spiritual aids by which the temporal order may be renewed in Christ” (ibid.); on the other hand, the “apostolate in the social milieu,” which is proper to laity, involves “the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives” (n. 13). As John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia in Oceania: “It is the fundamental call of lay people to renew the temporal order in all its many elements. In this way, the Church becomes the yeast that leavens the entire loaf of the temporal order” (n. 43).

Police taking part in a Sacred Heart procession

Thus, in spite of Pope Francis’s talk about the “co-responsibility” of the ordained and the lay faithful, we may say that the true responsibility of the laity is not the taking on of tasks inside the church, but taking on the world outside the church. Confronting unbelief with Christian witness, defeating secular narrowness with the grandeur of the Gospel, leavening temporal occupations with a supernatural perspective and motivation, and doing all this consistently and courageously, is far more challenging — and far more urgent — than mounting an ambo and reading a text, or donning an alb and passing cruets. In fact, the more that laity see themselves as fulfilled in aping the clergy, the more they will be deceived into thinking that they have done what they were supposed to do as Catholics. They have, as it were, punched their religion ticket, and can get back to secular life in its total secularity.

In the sacred liturgy, the laity exercise the Marian role of receiving divine gifts, which is the creature’s highest activity. No charism can be more honorable or more important than this receptivity. The gifts bestowed upon the clergy, and the various liturgical ministries, are at the service of the charity and holiness of the Church; they do not exist as ends in themselves, but as instruments for the pilgrimage of mankind to the City of God, where there will be no sacraments and no temple, since God will be “all in all” (cf. Rev 21:22–23; 1 Cor 15:28). The Marian receptivity of laymen and laywomen furnishes the light and strength necessary for their active, transformative mission in the family and in the world. Without drinking deeply from the wellspring, there can never be watered gardens. How ironic and how tragic that the laity’s misplaced liturgical activism seems inversely proportional to their zeal for the irreplaceable mission that is theirs in the home, on the land, in the city! The laity are meant to offer themselves up in sacrificial love (cf. Rom 12:1), so as to be a leaven in the world. That is their domain, that is their honorable and salvific “service.”

The Catholic peasants and aristocrats of the Vendée lived a pure Marian faith during the Terror by fully assuming their role to defend the Faith, to protect Catholic cities and families, to do battle against hostile forces; never did they try to substitute for clergy when their priests went missing. They knew, intuitively, the teaching of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 — how the Body of Christ has many diverse and unequal members that depend one upon another; that the eye has to be the eye, the hand the hand; each part has to be just what it is, to the best of its ability, and not a poor substitute for some other one. The “dignity” of the laity is in no way augmented by their taking on of quasi-clerical liturgical functions, just as neither is their dignity diminished by being spouses, parents, workers, citizens.

The Virgin Mary receiving her Son from the hand of St John

I couldn’t help noticing this past weekend in the usus antiquior, in which we celebrated the Second Sunday after Epiphany, that “the liturgical providence of God” furnished us with an Epistle and a Gospel that both referred expressly to “ministries.” We can learn some important lessons from meditating on these readings.

The Epistle is Romans 12:6–16:

Brethren: Having different gifts, according to the grace that is given us: either prophecy, to be used according to the rule of faith; or ministry, in ministering [Vulg.: ministerium in ministrando]; or he that teacheth, in doctrine; he that exhorteth, in exhorting; he that giveth, with simplicity; he that ruleth, with carefulness; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good: loving one another with the charity of brotherhood, with honour preventing one another: in carefulness not slothful: in spirit fervent: serving the Lord: rejoicing in hope: patient in tribulation: instant in prayer: communicating to the necessities of the saints: pursuing hospitality. Bless them that persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep: being of one mind one towards another; not minding high things, but consenting to the humble.

The Apostle gives us here a rich portrait of the true variety of gifts to be found in the Holy Church of God. There are gifts of ministry, but there are also gifts of prophecy, teaching, exhorting, ruling, and works of mercy. The passage then shifts from special charisms to the fundamental Christian vocation of loving: loving without dissimulation, with the charity of brotherhood; hating what is evil and cleaving to what is good; honoring, serving, praying, and offering hospitality.

When we read about offering hospitality, should we not be thinking of the baptized and confirmed laity? Hospitality has always been seen as one of the great duties and privileges of lay people: to open their homes, to share with the needy, to welcome friends and strangers. Indeed, what greater hospitality can husband and wife exercise than by giving food and shelter, love and education, to the children who are their common bond and the chief calling of their life? They own and manage property precisely for that reason: to share generously. Their primary calling is to bring Christian prayer, witness, and virtues into the home, and thence, into the workplace and marketplace, the political arena, the broad world of culture. The sanctuary is not their home, but their home can become an extension of the sanctuary. They do not “mind high things,” as if seeking a rank or a task that does not belong to them; rather, they consent to be found among the humble (another translation has: “do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly”).

The clergy, stewards of the mysteries of Christ, are busy with their own proper work, according to the gifts bestowed on them in the Mystical Body. Their primary calling is within the temple of God, offering Him exalted praise and ministering to the people, and in this work they will find fulfillment and sanctity, if — and this is a crucial if — they enjoy the freedom to be fully what they are and to utilize fully the armory and treasury of the Church’s liturgical inheritance. In short, they must have the best wine, drink it freely, and give it to others to drink.

The Gospel for the Second Sunday after Epiphany is John 2:1–11:

At that time there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the marriage. And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus saith to Him: They have no wine. And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to Me and to thee? My hour is not yet come. His mother saith to the waiters [ministris]: Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye. Now there were set there six water-pots of stone, according to the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three measures apiece. Jesus saith to them: Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And Jesus said to them: Draw out now, and carry to the chief steward of the feast. And they carried it. And when the chief steward had tasted the water made wine, and knew not whence it was, but the waiters [ministri] knew who had drawn the water: the chief steward calleth the bridegroom, and saith to him: Every man at first setteth forth good wine: and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee; and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

In this Gospel, Jesus is the Eternal High Priest who will offer the perfect sacrifice when “his hour” has come to glorify the Father (note how His Holy Name is mentioned seven times, which underlines His perfection as God and man — readers of St. John will know that this is anything but accidental); wine will be the symbol of the sweetness and abundance of His redemption. The architriclinus or chief steward is like the deacon who ministers to the priest at Solemn Mass; the “waiters” (ministri in Latin) are like the subdeacon and the acolytes who minister, in turn, to their superiors.

The guests at the wedding feast are the congregation. They are not serving, they are not busy with providing the food and drink; they are simply taking it all in and feasting. Theirs, in a sense, is “the better part” of Mary of Bethany.

The Virgin Mary is neither a minister nor a simple guest. Like the ministers, she brings about results, but in the mode of an intercessor — one who joins the power of the priest to the needs of the people, even as she joined in her womb the supreme deity with the neediness of human nature. Like the guests, she gratefully and joyfully receives good things from the Lord.

The Epistle and Gospel of the Second Sunday after Epiphany remind us of the wisdom of the Catholic Church in her traditional hierarchical and Christocentric liturgical praxis. Compared with the irrefutable coherence of the usus antiquior as it returns to more and more altars, the “polyesterdays” of liturgical experimentation are shown to have no staying power, no future — even on the artificial life support of canon law. 

Are Pews in Churches a Problem—and, If So, How Much of a Problem?

This article may be considered a continuation of the one entitled “Should the Postures of the Laity at the TLM Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised?,” which generated such lively dialogue.

A reader once sent me the following letter:

I would like to ask you what is your take on church pews, their place (or lack thereof) in the Traditional Roman Rite and what the Traditionalist movement should do about them. Almost unknown in the East, they have become the norm in the Western Church in the last centuries. There are informal (sometimes odd) ‘rubrics,’ with wide variations from place to place, that direct the faithful to stand, sit, or kneel at different parts of the Mass.
          A priest from the Institute of the Good Shepherd, who is also very familiar with the Byzantine Liturgy, instructing some of us about the Mass and the real meaning of ‘active participation,’ said we ought not to worry about when to sit, kneel, or stand in Mass, as long as we remain standing for the Gospel and kneeling during the Consecration. As to anything else, his advice was simply to follow the local custom. His reason was that pews in the church are a rather recent phenomenon that has never been officially incorporated into the rubrics for the usus antiquior, and that before the introduction of pews the faithful used to remain standing, or would sometimes walk in the church during Mass, as the faithful still do in the Eastern Rites.
          Also, from my own research, I discovered that pews are mostly a Protestant invention. The Protestants emphasized the pastor’s preaching as the most important part of the Liturgy and understood the church to be some sort of ‘school,’ where the ‘students’ had to be able to sit to learn the Bible from their pastor. It was also a way to raise money via pew rents.
          The more I attend the Traditional Latin Mass (which hopefully will recover its rightful place as the sole ‘Ordinary Form’ of the Roman Rite), the more I am uncomfortable with the pews and the mechanical, sometimes almost nonsensical, ‘novus-ordoish’ sequence of standing-kneeling-sitting-standing-etc. during Mass. The pew feels almost like a ‘cage.’
          Do you hold a similar stance? Are pews a good or a bad thing? Should we accept them as a fact, as a good ‘organic development’ like the shortened Roman chasuble, or should traditional Catholics recognize them as foreign to the Roman Rite and start using their wood for a better purpose, like keeping the church and rectory warm in the winter?

I find this reader’s note admirable in its directness. The question of pews is indeed an interesting one. I am convinced it was not a good idea to introduce pews into Catholic churches, in imitation of the Protestants, for all the reasons mentioned. An Eastern Orthodox writer offers a vigorous set of arguments in “A Call For the Removal of Pews in Orthodox Churches,” the main contentions of which are summarized by Richard Chonak:

• pews make the laity into passive observers;
• pews teach us to want Christian life to be without inconvenience;
• pews remove the freedom to engage in devotional acts such as lighting a candle during the liturgy;
• pews make the processions overly regimented;
• pews particularly isolate young children from the liturgy.

Chonak continues: “Going without pews would be a bigger deal for us Latin Catholics in the US than for Orthodox, since a fair number of their churches already lack pews, so that their faithful would have experienced worshipping without them. Most US Catholics won’t have seen a Catholic church without pews unless they have visited one of the medieval cathedrals.” As far as I can tell, no one advocates abolishing all seating, since there are nursing mothers and elderly folk (among others) who will need places to rest. It is more a question of opening up the space in the nave of the church.

George Rutler addressed the question in a 2015 article “The Problem with Pews,” saying, inter alia:

For most of the Christian ages, there were no pews, or much seating of any sort. There were proper accommodations for the aged (fewer then than now) and for the infirm (probably more then than now) but churches were temples and not theatres.  One need only look at the Orthodox churches (except where decadence has crept in) or the mosques whose architectural eclecticism echoes their religion’s origin as a desiccated offshoot of Christianity, to see what churches were meant to look like.  The word “pew” comes from the same root as podium, or platform for the privileged, indicating that if there were any pews in the Temple of Jerusalem they were those of the Pharisees who enjoyed “seats in high places.” The first intrusion of pews into Christian churches was around the twelfth century and they were rare, and mostly suited to the use of choir monks in their long Offices. But filling churches with pews was chiefly the invention of the later Protestant revolution that replaced adoration with edification.

Racks, Butchers, and Choirstalls

According to Dr. John Pepino, the term “pew” appears in an official Vatican document for the first time in 1969, in the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani promulgated together with the Novus Ordo Mass (link)—the first time in Catholic history that the laity’s postures were dictated to them in the same way that ministerial rubrics were dictated:

VIII. De locis fidelium
273. Loca fidelium congrua cura disponantur, ut ipsi oculis et animo sacras celebrationes debite participare possint. Expedit ut de more scamna seu sedilia ad eorum usum ponantur. Consuetudo tamen personis quibusdam privatis sedes reservandi reprobanda est. Sedilia autem seu scamna ita disponantur, ut fideles corporis habitus a diversis celebrationis partibus requisitos facile sumere possint et expedite ad sacram Communionem recipiendam accedere valeant. Caveatur ut fideles sive sacerdotem sive alios ministros non tantum videre, sed etiam, hodiernis instrumentis technicis adhibitis, commode audire valeant.

In the 2002 edition of the IGMR, this text was slightly modified, to privilege the word scamna:

311. Loca fidelium congrua cura disponantur, ut ipsi oculis et animo sacras celebrationes debite participare possint. Expedit ut de more scamna seu sedilia ad eorum usum ponantur. Consuetudo tamen personis quibusdam privatis sedes reservandi reprobanda est. Scamna autem seu sedilia, præsertim in ecclesiis noviter exstructis, ita disponantur, ut fideles corporis habitus a diversis celebrationis partibus requisitos facile sumere possint et expedite ad sacram Communionem recipiendam accedere valeant. Caveatur ut fideles sive sacerdotem sive diaconum et lectores non tantum videre, sed etiam, hodiernis instrumentis technicis adhibitis, commode audire valeant.

The USCCB translation of the latest version of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal renders the passage thus:

Places for the faithful should be arranged with appropriate care so that they are able to participate in the sacred celebrations, duly following them with their eyes and their attention. It is desirable that benches or seating usually should be provided for their use. However, the custom of reserving seats for private persons is to be reprobated. Moreover, benches or seating should be so arranged, especially in newly built churches, that the faithful can easily take up the bodily postures required for the different parts of the celebration and can have easy access for the reception of Holy Communion. Care should be taken to ensure that the faithful be able not only to see the Priest, the Deacon, and the readers but also, with the aid of modern technical means, to hear them without difficulty.

Note the word used in Latin, scamnum (stool, step, bench), a word with an interesting history. In the Salic Law, 5th cent., it means “the rack,” for the torture of slaves (Lex Salica tit. 42. §1: Servus super Scamnum tensus; ibid. §8: Et qui repetit, virgas paratas habere debet, quæ in similitudinem minimi digiti grossitudinem habeant, et Scamnum paratum habere debet, ubi versum ipsum tendere possit). How suggestive of the experiences of many Catholics with the postconciliar liturgy! According to a Latin dictionary, the word also signified a butcher’s display table, which prompts comparisons with extemporaneous liturgical creativity. By the 12th century, the term had acquired the meaning of “choirstall” (ad vesperas monachos in scannis residentes se vidisse palam asseruit: Ordericus Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica III 13, p. 138).

The compilers of the IGMR might equally well have chosen the Latin term transtrum, or rower’s bench, which makes for an equally suggestive image: the faithful confined to their benches, heave-hoing in unison as they labor to propel forward the ship of the Church! Smelling of tar and sweat, the term would have been appropriate for the workerism that was substituted for the contemplative engagement in which participatio actuosa finds its summit.

The Relation between Pews and Postures

Nevertheless, the question of the postures of the faithful is somewhat independent of the question of pews, for the faithful would have stood, knelt, and quite possibly sat ad libitum in open churches long before the advent of pews. The key question here is whether or not the postures of the laity should be regimented. Prior to 1969, the postures of the faithful were never officially regulated in the traditional Mass. They varied by custom, and even then, there was not the same sense of obligation as we have now. If a person felt sick or tired, he could sit; if someone felt especially fervent in prayer, he could kneel the whole time. In my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, I gave the following description:

None of these bodily actions is scripted in the sense that a rubric requires the people to do them, since the usus antiquior is blessedly free of rubrics dictating how the people are (or are not) to participate at every moment. As a result, different people at worship do some or all of these actions, according to their knowledge or inclination, or even what they happen to notice as the Mass progresses, and no one minds this diversity. There is a healthy sense of freedom of movement a little reminiscent of what one may find among the Eastern Orthodox who may walk about during the liturgy lighting candles and venerating icons. The Novus Ordo, on the contrary, perversely takes for granted the Protestant innovation of cluttering open sacred space with benches or pews and turns sitting on them into a scripted pseudo-sacred action befitting its wordy worship. (p. 202, note 24)

The regimentation of lay posture occurred, as we have seen, in 1969 with the Novus Ordo, which enforces specified moments of sitting, standing, kneeling, speaking, singing, or exchanging a sign of peace (though this particular routine has fallen out of fashion nowadays).

But shouldn’t we, in good Thomistic fashion, allow the other side to have its say, too?

A Modest Defense of Pews for the TLM

Pews can be helpful in several ways. First, they are like an extended prie-dieu, making it easier to kneel for long stretches—and this, to my mind, is a good thing. Not many people are ready yet to kneel for an hour or more on a marble floor without a prop to support them. The usus antiquior already requires more asceticism; it seems counterproductive, at this early stage in its restoration, to demand in everyone a footsoldier’s capacity for discipline.

Second, pews seem to foster a more focused and leisurely contemplation of the unfolding ceremonies of the Mass; one can too easily imagine how a group of people amassed in an open space could be disorderly, particularly if a large number of small children were escaping from their families and causing distraction to many.

Third, since we live in a literate age and have grown accustomed to reading our missals at certain points during Mass, it is convenient to have a place to put down and pick up one’s book. The use of a daily missal has permitted me to memorize large parts of the Mass and to meditate on them. It has familiarized me with the calendar of seasons and saints. This is not incompatible with a lack of pews, but I very much doubt it would work as well.

Fourth, until the usus antiquior is again the norm in every church for every Mass, most Catholic families have to deal with inconvenient times of Mass, and it can be a great relief to let the small child sleep in the pew if Mass happens to be very early in the morning or in the mid-afternoon.

One can admit that comfort-seeking is a spiritual error and danger for the Church—the carpeted, air-conditioned churches of suburbia are, in fact, deadly for the spirit of prayer—while not writing off completely the modest convenience of a pew, which might be compared with heating in the winter or electric fans and short-sleeve shirts in the summer.

Such are my thoughts. The great handicap is that it is so rare to have the experience of a Catholic church without pews. One can still see them in Europe, but seldom are traditional Latin Masses held without at least folding chairs being placed out. The closest thing in my experience has been attending silent Low Masses at monastery side chapels, where often there is no seating; one simply kneels near the entrance to the chapel. I would relish the opportunity to worship for a year in a church without pews, and then revisit the subject with the benefit of extended experience.

This church cries out to have (at least some of) its pews removed

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

Should the Postures of the Laity at the Traditional Latin Mass Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised?

One plan; not the only plan.

Over the years, I have noticed an interesting group of people who are passionate on the subject of the postures of the laity at the traditional Latin Mass. They sometimes have the zeal of crusaders warring against a stubborn enemy, be it Indifference (laity who couldn’t bother to care who’s kneeling or standing or sitting, when, or why), Diversity (varying customs from country to country or even church to church), or Disorderliness (lack of uniformity at the same Mass). To them, it is very important that a consistent rubric derived from custom or argument be created and implemented.

One can, after all, sympathize with them. We all know about the mayhem that can occur inside a church when the congregation is made up of a mix of regular attendees and newbies who are clueless about what’s going on in the TLM. At various moments, certain decisive individuals kneel decisively, and people look around sheepishly as if to figure out what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes you have a visiting European, or perhaps an American who intensively studies Liturgical Movement brochures, who follows a different set of customs; the confusion multiplies. One can understand, from a purely pragmatic point of view, why a common rubric might be helpful.

This is the perspective offered by a friend who sent me the following letter:

Ever since I started attending the Latin Mass last year, I have wondered about the physical gestures done by those around me. For example, making the sign of the cross during the prayer after the Confiteor, during the Gloria, and during the Sanctus, as well as striking the breast during the consecration. I am not sure if I am supposed to be doing all these or not (or even what all of them are—is there a list somewhere?).
       Having grown up in the Novus Ordo, I have been accustomed to seeing people all doing the same thing, and I had always been told that it was wrong when certain individuals did their own thing (e.g., kneeling during the Agnus Dei), on the basis that “since the Church doesn’t say we’re supposed to do these gestures, we’re not supposed to do them.” Am I mistaken in thinking that a gesture of the people must be approved or instructed to be done by the GIRM? Would this assumption only apply to the Mass of Paul VI?
       I suppose my inclination toward uniformity in gestures comes from a desire to have the “say the black, do the red” consistency of the Tridentine Mass equally present for both the priest and the people. I want to go to Mass and (as you said in this article) “know what I am going to see and hear. The same texts, the same gestures, the same ethos, the same Catholic religion.” Am I misguided in desiring that consistency among the congregation?
       In one way, I lean toward desiring to perform more gestures as a layperson. I’m not sure why, but it seems like a more wholly immersive experience if my arms are symbolizing a truth of the liturgy in addition to my legs (kneeling and standing). On the other hand, my desire to “do” more might just be the permeation of the faulty desire of the late Liturgical Movement to create more opportunities for “active participation,” as if my standing there in reverent, attentive participation isn’t enough. I am torn and don’t know what to do, in both the old and new Mass.

IKEA’s worship aid. (This version is missing the other 67 languages.)

My response was as follows.

You raise a great question about bodily participation. The wonderful thing about the old Mass is that the laity’s bodily postures and actions were never regulated. For nearly 2,000 years, and even now, there are no rubrics that govern what the laity do. Whether they stand, sit, kneel, beat their breasts, make the sign of the cross — all of this is up to them.

The liturgical reformers, who were generally of a bureaucratic and even fascist mentality, were disturbed about this lack of uniformity, which struck them as devotionalistic if not dissolute, and succeeded in creating, in the Novus Ordo, a totally regulated set of actions for the congregation. The problem is, what they agreed on is rather minimalistic, so that one ends up with the surprising paradox that the old rite tended, in the customs that grew up around it, to promote more bodily activity during the Mass, while the new rite tends to encourage something more rationalistic and passive. In this article (which became a chapter in this book), I document the wide variety of actions that are often seen at the TLM (note: as customs, not as requirements).

I suggest that you relinquish the very modern idea that everyone should be doing the same thing at the same time. It may be fitting to make certain physical gestures, but they simply can’t be imposed or demanded. It seems better that books (or occasionally homilies) should explain to the faithful how their discreet imitation of some of the priest’s gestures can be a way to make their prayer more holistic, more “whole-person,” and more likely to elicit real prayer—without any of it being required. Basically, if it helps, do it; if it doesn’t, no bother.

To my mind there is a judgment call with the Novus Ordo. If one attempts to do all of the old gestures at it, one will probably become a distraction to others, and perhaps to oneself. If, on the other hand, no one is likely to notice you, why not do some of the same gestures that one would do during the old Mass? It may be a form of “mutual enrichment,” such as Benedict XVI called for. When I was still attending the Novus Ordo, I found myself making all sorts of “extra-rubrical” signs of the cross, kneeling when I wasn’t “supposed” to, and so forth. I could get away with it easily enough because I basically lived in the choir loft!

Has our thinking become permeated with the GIRM?

To this, my intrepid friend responded:

The article you linked from 1P5 does a good job clarifying that active participation is more perfectly present in the TLM, a point I remember reading about in Resurgent too. I am, however, still left with some confusion.
       You said that I should relinquish the modern idea that everyone should be doing the same thing. I can see why this idea is wrong when it is motivated by bureaucratic and fascist intentions, but I do not understand what could be wrong with it when it springs from an authentic desire for liturgical unity among the laity, consistent with the precise liturgical unity demanded of priests during the Mass. If it is demanded down to the last detail that the priest have specific physical gestures, why is it unreasonable to similarly demand specific physical gestures from the laity?
       It seems like such a demand would promote the liturgical unity and consistency you so often extol. I remember you telling me once about why the rubrics of the traditional Latin Mass were originally “nailed down”: years of regional liturgical variances had resulted in a certain anarchy within Catholic worship. To recover liturgical unity in the face of the Protestants, the Church demanded that priests adhere to the rubrics she put forth, which were not novel but had organically developed through the centuries.
       The situation with the laity seems similar to me. Even if distraction by what others are idiosyncratically doing during Mass is the sole detrimental result of the lack of gestural unity, that lack itself seems to contradict the marvelously regimented spirit of the old Mass. Would it not be helpful for the Church to put forth a set of TLM rubrics that definitively list the physical gestures she wants the people to follow, as long as the gestures on the list are the ones that have organically developed throughout the centuries of tradition?
       Perhaps I am misunderstanding the shortcomings of a regulated set of actions created by the liturgical reformers. In order to avoid the danger of minimalism, doesn’t it seem better to establish a more thorough and rightly-ordered rubric?
       Your advocacy of “extra-rubrical” gestures in the Novus Ordo surprises me, considering what GIRM 42 says (2011 ed., USA): The gestures and bodily posture of both the Priest, the Deacon, and the ministers, and also of the people, must be conducive to making the entire celebration resplendent with beauty and noble simplicity, to making clear the true and full meaning of its different parts, and to fostering the participation of all. Attention must therefore be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and by the traditional practice of the Roman Rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice. A common bodily posture, to be observed by all those taking part, is a sign of the unity of the members of the Christian community gathered together for the Sacred Liturgy, for it expresses the intentions and spiritual attitude of the participants and also fosters them.”
       The part I put into italics sounds reasonable to me; am I barking up the wrong tree?

In response, I wrote:

There is something indescribably beautiful about people being allowed to pray in their own way, and peacefully. Now, obviously, some large-scale postures can be expected of everyone: this is consistent with piety, and who would complain? We all stand at both Gospels (the Gospel of the day and the Last Gospel); we all kneel at the “Et incarnatus est” and during the Canon. There are some other widespread customs.

But the moment one tries to legislate details such as “everyone makes the sign of the cross at these eight times, and everyone beats their breast at these four times, and everyone should bow their heads at these five times,” etc., it becames extremely difficult to implement and enforce, and also turns into an occasion for policing and hectoring. It’s too complicated to ask it of everyone all the time. Heck, I don’t even do quite the same thing each time I attend Mass. It partly depends on how slowly or quickly the priest is celebrating it, or how well one can hear the priest and servers! [1]

To achieve total uniformity, one would have to “put people through their paces,” like a marching band or a squadron of soldiers. In addition, one would be forced to simplify to a minimalist extent, as has indeed occurred with N.O. rubrics for the laity. The very thought of it makes me cringe. I honestly don’t think it’s either possible or desirable. It is good to have some broad agreement on major postures and then broad latitude about everything else.

Even with the major postures, customs differ from country to country. Why should the bishops or liturgists of the USA or Canada, the United Kingdom or Ireland, Poland or Germany, etc., get to be the ones who decide how the rest of the world will behave?

Jacques and Raïssa Maritain were convinced that Rome was the friend of liberty in this regard — even as late as the years just before the Second Vatican Council; and perhaps, indeed, she once was. Here is what they say in a book published in French in 1959 and in English in 1960:

Against the pseudo-liturgical exaggerations it behooves one to defend the liberty of souls. . . . Rome has always been vigilant in opposing any attempt to regiment souls. She knows that the spirit of the liturgy requires respect for the Gospel liberty proper to the New Law. On the contrary, in holding as valid one single form of piety, that in which each one acts in common with the others, and in demanding of all that by word and gesture they obey the liturgical forms with a military precision; in challenging or putting in question private devotions, nay even the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass, those who confuse liturgy and pseudo-liturgy impose on souls rigid frameworks and burden them with external obligations which are of the same type as the observances of the Old Law. [2] 

The Maritains, earlier in their career

So, in a truly Catholic spirit, we should let the Irish kneel throughout High Mass if that is how they pray best, and let Americans stand a lot instead; we should let some countries or parishes make all the Mass responses, and others say a few or none. Catholicity involves both holding the most important things in common, and having a wide variation and flexibility in how things that are not matters of natural or divine law are conducted. I am reminded of the old saying, which is no less true for being vague and overused: “In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas” — in necessary matters, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in everything, charity. I think one would be extremely hard-pressed to argue successfully that a regulated uniformity of lay postures and gestures during Mass is something essential to our fruitful participation in the liturgy.

As Michael Fiedrowicz writes:

In typical Catholic vastness, a great variety of individual possibilities for participation accompany the rubrical strictness of the rite that do not need to be regulated in any way, but should be respected. Even being silently present and merely watching do not necessarily indicate a lack of interior involvement. The very act of listening, be it with the ears or with the heart, is assuredly a form of active participation. (The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite [Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020], 228)

I would hazard to guess that most traditional Catholics prefer it when everyone is doing the same things in regard to the major actions of standing, sitting, and kneeling, as it removes occasions of confusion and distraction and assists in prayerful engagement with the liturgy. But this much has become clear to me from my travels: whenever I am somewhere unfamiliar, I don’t sit in the front row but rather towards the back, and, keeping my wits about me, I look at what the majority are doing, and follow the local custom, as St. Augustine recommended long ago in his Letter 54 to Januarius. Few things are worse than the stranger who acts like an angel sent by God to correct singlehandedly the waywardness of backwater yokels. If it matters much to you to keep your own postures, be sure to sit far in the back where you won’t be a bother to the rest. (Fr. Z offers similar advice.)

There is but one further angle to examine: the Problem of Pews. Since nearly every Catholic church in the West is now equipped with pews, usually bolted down for permanence, the topic is far more speculative than what we have discussed heretofore, and deserving of a separate treatment.

NOTES

[1] I recommend two articles for further reading: “ASK FATHER: Excessive pious gestures during Mass”; “Is Passivity Mistaken for Piety? On the Perils and Pitfalls of Participation.” Concerning the GIRM, this article discusses two different approaches to rubrics in the Novus Ordo.

[2] Liturgy and Contemplation, trans. Joseph W. Evans (New York: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1960), 88–90.

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