Fiddling with the Collects of Ss Henry II and Louis IX: Wokeness Avant la Lettre

Stained glass window from St Dominic’s in London (Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew OP)

On July 15 in the old calendar, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Roman Emperor St. Henry II. His Collect in the Roman Rite reads as follows (the rationale behind the italics and underlining will become apparent in just a moment):

Deus, qui hodierna die beatum Henricum confessorem tuum e terreni culmine imperii ad regnum aeternum transtulisti: te supplices exoramus; ut, sicut illum, gratiae tuae ubertate praeventum, illecebras saeculi superare fecisti, ita nos facias eius imitatione, mundi huius blandimenta vitare, et ad te puris mentibus pervenire.
       O God, who on this day brought blessed Henry, your confessor, from the summit of earthly sovereignty into the eternal kingdom, humbly we implore you, that, as you, going before him with the abundance of your grace, granted him to overcome the enticements of the age, so may you grant us, through imitation of him, to shun the allurements of this world and attain unto you with pure minds.

The modern rite of Paul VI replaces this Collect with the following, loosely based on it:

Deus, qui beatum Henricum, gratiae tuae ubertate praeventum, e terreni cura regiminis ad superna mirabiliter erexisti, eius nobis intercessione largire, ut inter mundanas varietates puris ad te mentibus festinemus.
       O God, who having gone before blessed Henry with the abundance of your grace wondrously raised him from care of earthly government unto things caelestial, grant, through his intercession, that amid the diverse things of this world we may hasten toward/unto you with pure minds.

A similar set of changes may be observed in the Collect for St. Louis IX, King of France, whose feast we celebrate next month on August 25. The original Collect:

Deus, qui beatum Ludovicum confessorem tuum de terreno regno ad caelestis regni gloriam transtulisti: eius, quaesumus, meritis et intercessione, Regis regum Iesu Christi Filii tui facias nos esse consortes.
       O God, who brought blessed Louis, your confessor, from an earthly kingdom into the glory of the heavenly kingdom, we beseech you through his merits and intercession, grant us to be partakers of Jesus Christ, your Son, the King of kings.

The modern rite replaces it with this:

Deus, qui beatum Ludovicum, e terreni regiminis cura ad caelestis regni gloriam transtulisti, eius, quaesumus, intercessione concede, ut, per munera temporalia quae gerimus, regnum tuum quaeramus aeternum.
       O God, who brought blessed Louis from care of earthly government into the glory of the heavenly kingdom, we beseech you, grant through his intercession, that, through the earthly responsibilities that we bear, we may seek your eternal kingdom.

Fr. Antoine Dumas, who worked on the Consilium’s coetus for “prayers and prefaces,” wrote a famous article explaining why such a large number of Collects were revised, which Dr. Lauren Pristas, an expert on the subject of Collects, translated and commented on in her important article “Theological Principles That Guided the Redaction of the Roman Missal (1970),” in The Thomist, vol. 67 (2003): 157–95. She first quotes what Fr. Dumas says about the above prayers:

It is easy to understand why, in certain collects for Christian leaders, the expression: culmine imperii was changed to cura regiminis (Saint Henry), while terreno regno gave way to terreni regiminis cura (Saint Louis): a simple change of perspective for the same reality.

However, as Lauren Pristas points out:

The actual revisions to the two collects were far more extensive than Dumas reports. The revisions as a whole are underscored; those of the kind that Dumas mentions are also italicized. We will begin with the small change in each prayer that Dumas names.

She then continues (and I shall now quote at length from her article):

Window in St Sulpice in Paris (Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew OP) 

« Henry, a German king who became Holy Roman Emperor, died in 1024; Louis, king of France, died in 1297. The original collect for Henry describes his rule as it was understood in his own day. The revised version describes it in terms that reflect modern democratic sensibilities. It is anachronistic. The original collect for Louis does not explicitly mention his rule as king. This is supplied in the revision—but, again, in terms more reflective of our historical circumstances than his own. The revision may have been designed to accommodate a modern mentality. Its effect, however, is to obscure the truth that holiness is found in persons of every age and social rank. Henry and Louis were not simply entrusted with the care of earthly government; they were Christian rulers who became holy as they ruled because of the Christian way in which they ruled.
       In order to appreciate the nature of the other changes made to the collect for Henry, we need to know what the editors sought to achieve in their revision of the sanctoral orations. Dumas tells us: “In the sanctoral prayers we . . . put greater emphasis on the personality of the saint, his mission in the Church, the practical lesson that his example gives to men of today. All the corrections or new compositions in the new missal proceed in this direction.”
       When the editors excised mention of Henry “overcoming the enticements of his age” by the grace of God, they created a prayer that tells us nothing about Henry’s personality or his way of holiness. The failure of the corrections to this prayer to proceed in the direction established for all the sanctoral orations suggests that the editors of the new missal did not view Henry’s example of freedom from worldly enticements as something suitable for imitation by modern Christians, or that they thought the original collect posits too great an opposition between heaven and earth, or possibly both. Since these themes recur and become more explicit in later examples, we shall consider them as they reappear below.
       There are three other differences that a more extensive treatment would examine that can only be identified here. The new text (1) omits the reverential formula “humbly we implore you,” (2) asks that Henry intercede for us rather than that we imitate him (a change that flows directly from the decision to omit reference to Henry’s particular virtue), and (3) severs the connection between purity of mind and freedom from the attractions of this world established by the original prayer.
       The change in the petition of the revised collect for Louis is striking and shares common features with the new oration for Henry. The 1962 prayer for Louis begs that we may have partnership with Christ who is the King of kings—here, particularly, the King of King Louis—whereas the revised text asks that we may seek, but does not specify that we also find, “your eternal kingdom.” The petition of the revised text, therefore, is stunningly effete in comparison to that of the original collect which seeks nothing less than full incorporation into Christ. Similarly, the old collect for Henry begs that God make us attain unto, or reach (pervenire), himself, whereas the new version asks only that we hasten (festinemus) unto him. The verb pervenire stipulates arrival, festinare does not.
       A second feature common to both revised collects is a new emphasis on the things of this world which, in addition, are presented in a wholly positive light. In the revised prayer for Henry, we hasten “amid the diverse things of this world,” instead of asking, as in the original version, to be able to shun its allurements. In the somewhat convoluted revised collect for Louis, we ask God to grant, through the intercession of the saint, that we may seek his eternal kingdom “through the earthly responsibilities that we bear.” In the source text we ask to be granted partnership with Christ “through the merits and intercession”of the saint. »

By way of summary, Dr. Pristas concludes this section of her article with a warning:

The changes to these prayers, which are much more extensive than Dumas indicates, highlight the methodological importance of returning to the sources. Those who desire to gain a full and accurate understanding of the work of the Consilium must examine all the pertinent primary texts, and not rely exclusively upon even those articles, like Dumas’s own, that were written by the reformers themselves for the express purpose of describing and explaining their work. The number of changes is too great, and their nature too substantial, for even the most thorough summary to be adequate.

She is too kind to say it expressly, but authors like Dumas are not actually telling you the whole story. And it very doubtful that they are doing so because they are unaware of it or have just forgotten to do it. These men were über-experts in their subdisciplines, conversant with many languages, and compelled by committee work to share and explain themselves frequently. If, when they address a broader audience, they leave a lot out, it’s probably because they are aware that their audience will trust them to tell the truth and not bother to do the heavy lifting of consulting all the sources. Indeed, that is why certain defects in the new liturgy have taken decades to emerge into the light of day.

Turning our attention to the saint of today, Henry II, I would simply point out that the authentic Collect of his feast exhibits to perfection several aspects of the Catholic worldview:

• The subordination of the temporal to the eternal
• The need for self-denial and mortification
• The legitimacy and fittingness of earthly monarchs reflecting the divine kingdom

Thus, we can confidently say this figure would be hated by modernists and liberals for several reasons:

• They would despise his vow of virginity; even “conservatives” would likely mock it as contrary to the demands of the “theology of the body” popularly understood (aka, The Joy of Ethical Sex);
• They despise monarchy because they hold the ideological view—essentially indemonstrable and contrary to available evidence—that democracy is the best and perhaps the only legitimate form of government;
• They do not see political authority as being inherently from God and therefore given with a view to worshiping God and building up His kingdom on earth through the construction of churches, the endowment of monasteries, and the like.

That is, Henry II manages to wrap up in one package celibacy, monarchy, and integralism—a few of the least favorite things of the self-consciously modern and modernizing Christian. It’s actually rather surprising he was kept in the general calendar, where he manages to hang on to the status of Optional Memorial on July 13. I wonder how many choose the option… Meanwhile, at my parish, we will celebrate today the obligatory feast of the only Western Christian emperor-saint.

Window by Capronnier in St Stephen’s Catholic Church, Skipton (Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew OP)

The feast prompts a few melancholy reflections. The old Mass was sustained by a love of chivalry and ceremonial, noblemen and kings; indeed, these men were its principal benefactors who led Catholic culture to unequaled heights of magnificence. But that whole world was swept away by the Revolution: and the Mass has been in decline since then: the cathedral chapters were eradicated, noble patronage of art and religious orders ceased; and ideologically, nothing in that world will appeal to our latter-day Marxists (whether they proudly claim the label or merely correspond to its content).

We can see a strange change that comes over liturgical commentary in the later modern period. Commentators in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries have an instinctive love for ceremony and splendor. Their ideal is the imperial Rome of the Ordo Romanus I, with its high station liturgy. Later, after the Revolution… all of a sudden, everyone is tired of those things. The rich ceremonial life of pre-Napoleonic Europe gave figures like Benedict XIV, Bona, and Cancellieri a native understanding of and taste for liturgical ceremony that nineteenth and twentieth century writers generally sorely lack. The ceremonialists knew that their own experience was in direct continuity with St. Gregory’s seventh-century stational liturgy. Even if not moved by a particular ideology, a twentieth-century bourgeois has little to nothing in his experience of life that can relate to the ritual of the pontifical liturgy. So, he likes the simpler pseudo-apostolic “domus ecclesiae” house liturgy better.

The old Mass presupposes a whole culture that is vanished; and yet it hangs on, like St. Henry’s optional feast, by a thread: it is the option chosen, as a matter of principle, by a resolute minority who are as displaced as it is possible to be in a social body, enjoying neither official support nor ample resources. If John Senior is right to say that Christendom grew up around the Mass, will we discover over time if the old Mass still retains its inherent power to rebuild the world around it, as some creatures can rebuild their damaged bodies?

The liturgy cannot stand for long without a surrounding culture. That culture, in the West, was already teetering in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, wavering between sentimentalism and nihilism, and then came the coup de grâce of the Council and the reform. The revival of the traditional Mass is a risky experiment because it is like a floating city without a determinate “place” yet.

Reading the history of the Latin rite, I’m more and more convinced that communities of clergy are vital for liturgical life. The cathedral chapters and the monasteries are the only organizations that can do the full liturgy, from Matins to Compline, from the silent devotional Mass to the Solemn High Mass and pontifical ceremonies. They are the ones chiefly responsible for the health of the liturgical culture that they receive, foster, and hand down. When chapters and monasteries are strong, they set the tone for an entire territory. When they are weak or non-existent…

And yet, is it not strange, and hopeful, that so many young people today respond, at some level, even if incoherently and postmodernistically, to lavish displays of liturgical ceremony? That political conservatism is growing stronger again among the youth? I cannot imagine (in a sort of Freudian reductionism) that it is all about an emotional frisson or a fetishism for color and spectacle in a world of gray fashion and greenbacks. If depth calls to depth, then the depth of tradition calls to the depth of denuded, alienated postmodern man, and summons him to the heights of liturgy, fine art, political order, in the company of Henry II and Louis IX.

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

Enter His Courts With Praise: Liturgical Reverence for Christ the King

The following lecture was given at Mater Ecclesiae Parish in Berlin, New Jersey, on March 25, 2022. This parish is somewhat like St. Clement’s in Ottawa, in the sense that it has hosted the traditional Mass more or less uninterruptedly since the time of the liturgical reform; it is, moreover, that rarest of rare birds, a traditional diocesan parish. The pastor is Fr. Robert Pasley, the chaplain of the CMAA. I am grateful to the parish for supplying the video of the lecture; the complete text is published below.

Blueprint for Liturgy on Earth

According to Joseph Ratzinger, the last book of the Bible, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John, shows forth a kind of “archetypal liturgy” to which all our earthly liturgies must bear resemblance:

With its vision of the cosmic liturgy, in the midst of which stands the Lamb who was sacrificed, the Apocalypse has presented the essential contents of the eucharistic sacrament in an impressive form that sets a standard for every local liturgy. From the point of view of the Apocalypse, the essential matter of all eucharistic liturgy is its participation in the heavenly liturgy; it is from thence that it necessarily derives its unity, its catholicity, and its universality.[1]

Pope John Paul II makes a similar observation about the Canticle in chapter 5 of Revelation: 

The canticle . . . is part of the solemn opening vision of Revelation, which presents a sort of heavenly liturgy to which we also, still pilgrims on earth, associate ourselves during our ecclesial celebrations. The hymn of the Book of Revelation that we meditate today concludes with a final acclamation cried out by “myriads of myriads” of angels (see Rev 5:11). It refers to the “the Lamb slain,” to whom is attributed the same glory as to God the Father, as “Worthy is the Lamb … to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength” (5:12). It is the moment of pure contemplation, of joyful praise, of the song of love to Christ in his paschal mystery. This luminous image of the heavenly glory is anticipated in the Liturgy of the Church. In fact, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, the Liturgy is an “action” of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who celebrate it here, live already in some way, beyond the signs, in the heavenly liturgy, where the celebration is totally communion and feast. It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church make us participate when we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments (see nn. 1136, 1139).[2]

In his book The Lamb’s Supper, Scott Hahn writes: “I suspect that God revealed heavenly worship in earthly terms so that humans—who, for the first time, were invited to participate in heavenly worship—would know how to do it.”[3] The book of Revelation, Hahn suggests, offered help to the nascent church in discerning which elements of Old Covenant worship should be retained in the New Covenant, inasmuch as the new both concludes and includes the old.[4] The Church can, and should, have buildings, ministers, candlesticks, chalices, incense, and vestments, because her worship, being ordered to and derived from Jesus Christ, is the perfection of all that the old worship, with these typological symbols, pointed to as yet to be fulfilled. They do not cease to be the symbols that we need in order to perceive and enter into communion with Christ; they acquire a new purpose as symbols that point to a reality now accomplished, a salvation won on the Cross, a glory shared with the faithful who may now enter heaven. Indeed, since our earthly worship is still imperfect as compared with that of the heavenly kingdom, it is appropriate that we retain symbols that cannot be mistaken for the ultimate reality and yet not only bring it to mind but bring us into living contact with it.

Who is the central figure of the Book of Revelation? The slain and risen Lamb, the Paschal or Passover Lamb that is given to us in the Holy Eucharist, instituted by Jesus at the last meal He celebrated with the disciples before His atoning death. What is the central activity depicted in the book? Worship—either true worship (directed to God and the Lamb) or idolatrous worship (directed to Babylon, the beast, the whore, etc.). And what is the central metaphor? Marriage. We are either united as “one flesh” with the Lamb, washed clean in His blood and feasting at His table, or we are fornicating with the devil. The two cities are contrasted as a whore (the old, unfaithful Jerusalem) and a virgin bride (the new Jerusalem, the Church).

The very term apokalypsis means “unveiling.” At the time Revelation was written, this term was used to describe, among other things, the unveiling of the virgin bride as part of the wedding festivities. In short, the book of Revelation is about true worship of the true God, a mystical marriage with Him; and this is brought about through the Church’s worship, that is, the sacramental life, especially Baptism and the Eucharist. Apart from this life, there is error, folly, despair, horror, and destruction—the history of fallen mankind, which wages war against the Lamb.
 

It is interesting to note that this book has received a title of honor that was subsequently extended to, or rather, recognized in, the entire body of Scripture, namely, “revelation”; and it is not incidental that not just this book, called “Revelation,” is about true worship of the true God, but all of Scripture is about true worship of the true God. Christianity is a religion principally and fundamentally concerned with adoring, loving, and serving the one true God, in which man’s salvation and the very content of love of neighbor consists. Put differently, there is no such thing as an “ethical reduction” or a “philosophical distillation” of Christianity; it is inherently bound up with sacrifice and sacrament, by which we profess our faith in God and yield ourselves to Him in love.

Why does Sacred Scripture end with the Book of Revelation? The reason is as simple as it is profound: Revelation is not merely or even primarily the closure of a written book but the beginning of, or aperture to, something else that is intrinsically greater than Scripture: the living worship of the living Body of Christ. This is the subtle but poignant response, far ahead of time, to Luther’s invention of sola scriptura: Revelation ends the Bible because it depicts and invites us to the Eucharistic banquet of the Lamb, which is where the things that are spoken of in Scripture are really present, in their fullest intensity. The written signs lead us to the reality signified; the bread of the word leads to the bread of life, the book to the altar. As Hahn writes: 

For most of the early Christians it was a given: the Book of Revelation was incomprehensible apart from the liturgy. … It was only when I began attending Mass that the many parts of this puzzling book suddenly began to fall into place. Before long, I could see the sense in Revelation’s altar (8:3), its robed clergymen (4:4), candles (1:12), incense (5:8), manna (2:17), chalices (ch. 16), Sunday worship (1:10), the prominence it gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary (12:1–6), the “Holy, Holy, Holy” (4:8), the Gloria (15:3–4), the Sign of the Cross (14:1), the Alleluia (19:1, 3, 6), the readings from Scripture (chs. 2–3), and the “Lamb of God” (many, many times). These are not interruptions in the narrative or incidental details; they are the very stuff of the Apocalypse.[5]

In the final pages of the book, we behold the new Jerusalem descending from heaven. To where does it descend? Mount Zion, that is, the place where Jesus had eaten His last Passover and instituted the Eucharist, where the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, where the Christians in AD 70 were spared Roman destruction. “In other words, the new Jerusalem came to earth, then as now, in the place where Christians celebrated the supper of the Lamb.”[6] Liturgy is the anticipated Parousia, the ‘already’ entering our ‘not yet.’

If Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul II, and Scott Hahn are all correct in what they are saying about the connection between the earthly liturgy and the heavenly, we have a powerful and truly unanswerable argument in favor of the restoration of the sacred, the recovery of signs and symbols in every aspect of the liturgy from architecture, furnishings, and decorations to ceremonial and sacred music. It is an argument in favor of the preservation or reestablishment of continuity with traditional Catholic worship, and the overwhelming need to enrich and “celestialize” the often sterile and impoverished vocabulary of modern liturgical life. The music we hear, for instance, should be awe-inspiring, or at very least, effective in elevating the mind to divine things, so that we may catch a faint echo of angelic music; the church building should be an evocation of the heavenly city, the sanctuary a magnificent image of the Holy of Holies. The ceremonies, in their solemn and ordered splendor, should draw the mind upwards into the majesty and mystery of God.

If we do not strive to have and to do these things to the extent that it lies within our power, we are not just running away from a tradition stretching back 3,000 years (if we taken into account the Jewish background)—bad enough as that would be. We are showing that we have not understood, assimilated, and embraced the message of Divine Revelation as such. We are, in a sense, rejecting the root of our religion, which proclaims and actualizes the coming of the kingdom of God in our midst, “that we may receive the King of All, invisibly escorted by ranks of angels,”[7] and accompany Him into glory.

What we can and must learn from the Book of Revelation is the essential vocation of the Church: the glorification of God and the sanctification of souls in time of tribulation. To do this, we first of all need to consider the fundamental symbolic paradigm of worship according to Sacred Scripture and the entire Christian tradition—namely, that God is our great King, ruling over all with the sceptre of righteousness; that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Judge of the living and the dead; that heaven is His throne and earth His footstool;[8] and that, in His holy court, a vast multitude of angels minister unto Him. Yet immediately an objection will arise from the so-called “progressives”: isn’t all this royal, monarchical, courtly imagery—together with the old liturgy that relies so heavily upon it—merely a time-bound cultural construct, ready to be replaced with a more democratic or populist convention in our times? Shouldn’t each age have a liturgy that speaks to it from within its predominant sacro-political models?

Defending the courtliness of the liturgy

Fr. Anthony Ruff, a Benedictine monk of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota,[9] has this to say about the Second Vatican Council: 

The Council fathers didn’t get into all the specifics of the reform of the liturgy. They left most of that to a future commission under the pope. The fathers approved a major paradigm shift—from liturgy as Carolingian clerical drama to liturgy as act of all the people—and then left open what the implications of that shift would be. No doubt some or many of the fathers didn’t yet have in mind all the possible implications of the paradigm shift. Nor did they need to…. [10]

One wonders how many of the fathers of the Council would have said that the traditional liturgy as they knew it was “Carolingian clerical drama” and that they wanted to shift liturgy to an “act of all the people” in such a way that they expected no limitations on how the liturgy would be modified in order to achieve this nebulous vision. Besides, the implied criticism of the Carolingians does not match the more complex picture that emerges from the historical records we do have, but progressives never have a guilty conscience rewriting or ignoring history. In another article, Fr. Ruff states: “For liturgy, the paradigm shift is from Carolingian clericalized sacred drama to an act of the entire community. Just let the full weight of that shift sink in, including all the possible implications for liturgical practice.”[11]

Let us consider Fr. Ruff’s mention of the Carolingians, namely, the Franks of the early Middle Ages, whose greatest ruler was Charlemagne, and in whose empire the Roman liturgy mingled with Gallican elements to form the substance of the Tridentine rite in its high medieval maturity. The simple fact is that we know so little about the liturgy of the pre-Carolingian period that liturgists can attribute almost anything they want, i.e., anything they personally dislike, to the Carolingians, as an excuse to say that it is not “primitive,” and must therefore be expunged. References to the Carolingians and the supposed “purer” worship of their predecessors is to be taken with a Malta-sized grain of salt.

Moreover, if “clericalism” is supposed to be the problem, the Novus Ordo is a thousand times more clericalist than the old Mass could ever be. “Participation” in the new liturgy is effectively defined by lay usurpation of historically clerical roles, such as reading the Scriptures and giving out Communion. The clerical nature of these roles is underlined by the fact that it is still illicit for a layman to read the Gospel and for the celebrant to not distribute Communion. Lay participation in good music, in meditation and prayer, has been compromised by a nearly-universal tendency to electrically-amplified showmanship.

It is often said that the classical Latin liturgy is characterized by courtliness or court etiquette, that it is mixed up with (and corrupted by) expressions of Baroque secular politics. In other words, the progressives hold that the traditional Mass—think especially the Pontifical Mass—is an elaborate show of deference towards a prince or king, indebted more to secular high culture than to sacred precedent, and detracts from the humility, simplicity, and immediacy of the presence of Christ in the community, the brotherhood gathered around the table. Sounds plausible, doesn’t it? But there are some nagging counterindications that deserve the attention of honest inquirers.

In his work The Treasure of the Church, J. B. Bagshaw argues to the intimate connection between royalism or royalty and temple liturgy, and how, as a result, the image of “the court of the great king” was adapted early on to Christian liturgy and everywhere accepted as a normative framework—something it obviously already is in both the Old and New Testaments. In Bagshaw’s words: 

The very fabric of the church suggests the presence of God, and the adornment of the altar carries out the same idea. In principle it is very like the splendour and ceremonial of the king’s court. It is impossible for men to have royalty amongst them, and yet not have some external sign by which the king is pointed out and honoured. The ceremonial has, of course, differed widely at different times, but from the earliest king that ever ruled amongst men down to our own time, there has always been a royal display of some kind. It is impossible, in the same way, for men to believe that our Lord is amongst them and not to lavish on Him their most precious treasures, just as it was impossible for St. Mary Magdalen not to pour out her precious ointment on His feet (Jn 12:3).
          The church is His palace, and the altar is His throne. We take that glorious court of Heaven described to us in Holy Scripture, and try feebly to imitate it on earth. The candles, and the incense, and the flowers—the vestments and the ceremonial of priests—what are they, but an earthly image of that “great multitude which no man could number … clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands,” and of “all the angels who stood about the throne, and the ancients and the four living creatures, and they fell down before the throne upon their faces and adored God”? (Rev 7:9–11)

We cannot dismiss this language or imagery, pervasive in Scripture and the Patristic period, as a mere epiphenomenon of ancient near Eastern courts and kings, a superficial mood-setting backdrop quickly or easily left behind by “emancipated” modern minds. For the same conceptual world extends throughout the Byzantine emperors who reigned for over a thousand years after Constantine the Great; it embraces medieval courts, Renaissance courts, Baroque courts, and the professedly Catholic governments that existed well into the twentieth century.

Monarchy or princedom, the oldest and arguably the most natural form of political organization, has been a far more consistent part of the human experience and of the formation of Christian culture than the democratic/egalitarian ideology of “self-evident truths” of which we have persuaded ourselves in modernity. Regardless of whether we think democracy can be made to work or not,[12] democracy has no place in the realm of supernatural mysteries: Christianity is purely and entirely monarchical.

Against the backdrop of the Old Testament revelation of God as the (one and only) great King over all the earth, and of the people of Israel as a kingly, priestly people ruled by prophets, judges, and ultimately the Davidic dynasty, we profess that Christ is our King, the Ruler of heaven and earth, of all times, past, present, and to come, of this world and of the next; that His angels and saints are His royal court; that while He deigns to call us His friends and brethren, we know that we never cease to be His servants. We long for His courts and tabernacles. The thick “politicism” of the imagery points to the real, sovereign polity of the Roman Catholic Church as a perfect society (societas perfecta) and altogether perfected in the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the great King. Our ecclesial sacrifice, the Most Holy Eucharist, is a kingly and high-priestly oblation.

Consequently, the modern fixation on democracy, as if it were the best or the only good form of government, not only does not abolish our need for the language of kingship and courtliness, but makes it far more needed than ever before, in order to impress on our minds the way things really stand in the definitive reality of the kingdom of God. All of our democratic and egalitarian experiments will fall away at the end of time, as the glorious reign of Christ the King is revealed to all the nations, and those who have submitted to His gentle yoke will be raised to eternal life in glorified flesh while those who have rejected Him will wail and gnash their teeth, condemned to everlasting torment. The liturgy should reflect the truth of God—His absolute monarchy, His paternal rule, His hierarchical court in the unspeakable splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem—and not the passing truths of our modern provisional political organizations.

In short, to conduct the liturgy so that it appears to be less courtly, less regal, less hieratic, less splendid, is to make it appear to be that which it is not—to make it less truthful, less heavenly, less real. In this way it deceives the People of God, who are led further away from an encounter with the God whom no hands have fashioned, no mind fathomed. It is one of many ironies of our time that, in the new regime inaugurated by the “spirit of Vatican II,” the only “courtiers” are those who prance about in their vernacular theater in the round, turning a sublime sacrifice into a sorry spectacle from which the angels avert their gaze. If the way the liturgy is conducted allows people to think that the Mass is about them; that they are its primary protagonists; that the priests are somewhat like hired public servants who administer, in the name of the community, the business which actually belongs to it, such a liturgy is inculcating a pernicious lie.[13]

The liturgy is not “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It is the saving act of Christ, done by Him first and always, and by the ordained ministers who act in His name and by His authority; it is done for the glorification of God and only for that reason does it sanctify the people. One can say the liturgy is “for us” in the same way that one can say we ought to love ourselves, namely, by loving God first and foremost, with the sacrificial offering of ourselves in mind and body, which is how we truly love ourselves.

One of the greatest blessings of the traditional Latin liturgy, therefore, is its pure, open, unembarrassed representation of the court of the great King of heaven and earth, in all of its prayers, rubrics, and ceremonies, and in the magnificent art forms that emerged from its “courtliness” and reinforce the “drama” of the holy mysteries of our redemption. We find in it an uncompromised and unapologetic expression of the divine monarchy as it radiates through the panoply of sacred symbols and the ecclesiastical hierarchy endowed with fatherly potency. We are wrapped in an atmosphere of spiritual aristocracy, namely, the world of the saints, who reign with Christ. After all, this liturgy was not produced by a committee of experts, as laws and bills are manufactured in contemporary parliaments or congresses, but emerged slowly over time from innumerable currents of doctrine and devotion introduced by pious monks or bishops and assimilated by God-fearing laity.

The traditional liturgy, in short, challenges everything modern man has come to take for granted, everything he has persuaded himself to believe “self-evident.” It throws down the gauntlet to our modern assumptions, routines, and expectations. It is an enormous challenge to our collective social hubris and cultural pride. This is why the traditional liturgy is hated and feared by those who embrace modernity as a primary value that gives value to all else; this is why it is passionately loved by those who recognize in it a higher, deeper, and better vision of ultimate reality.

The Byzantine witness

When we are considering the courtliness of liturgy with its irreducible monarchical and aristocratic elements, we should not forget, moreover, to “breathe with both lungs” of the Church.

The Byzantine Divine Liturgy is positively bursting with courtly imagery and gestures, as befits its long sojourn in Constantinople. The Byzantines have retained many of these features because they did not succumb to the minimalism, utilitarianism, and democratic thinking that have poisoned the springs of Western social life and made of us men with hollow chests. Byzantine liturgy has all the same kinds of “courtly” rituals that the Roman Rite has, such as the kissing of the celebrant’s hands, the bowing towards persons, icons, and other objects, the candles, and the incense, rituals that had their origin in the veneration surrounding the emperor.[14] Nor should we be surprised: both the Byzantine court and the Carolingian court saw themselves as continuations of the Roman Empire, now consecrated in its new role as supreme governor of the Christian world, for the glory of God and the empire of Christ. It was completely natural to the clergy and faithful to adopt for their divine worship customs that accompanied the earthly ruler; indeed, in so doing, they restored the proper immovable and incorruptible object of veneration, bestowing on the ruler the privilege of being an earthly icon of the divine King. What began on earth was raised to heaven and seated there at the right hand of the Father; thence it descended to the human throne as a mantle of authorization and responsibility.

All four of the Cherubic hymns refer to Christ as King:

• The one for daily use sings: “We, who mystically represent the Cherubim, and chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, now set aside all cares of life that we may receive the King of all, Who comes invisibly escorted by Angelic Hosts.”
• At the Liturgy of the Presanctified is chanted: “Now the powers of heaven do serve invisibly with us. Lo, the King of Glory enters. O, the mystical sacrifice is upborne, fulfilled. Let us draw near in faith and love, and become communicants of life eternal.”
• On Holy Thursday: “Of Thy mystical Supper, Lord, let me partake, O Son of God, for of Thy mysteries I will not speak to Thy enemies nor kiss Thee like Judas, but like the thief on the cross I will confess Thee: In Thy Kingdom, Lord, remember me.”
• On Holy Saturday: “Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, ponder nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn...”[15]

Thus the Byzantine rite’s four chants for the Great Entrance refer to the coming of the King, including His post-resurrection life as king of the universe. This, of course, is nothing other than a consistent application of the imagery of kingship with which the Book of Revelation is rife: 

And the seventh angel sounded the trumpet: and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdom of this world is become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and he shall reign for ever and ever. Amen. And the four and twenty ancients, who sit on their seats in the sight of God, fell on their faces and adored God... (Rev 11:15–16)

Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night. (Rev 12:10)

And singing the canticle of Moses, the servant of God, and the canticle of the Lamb, saying: Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, O King of ages. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and magnify thy name? For thou only art holy: for all nations shall come, and shall adore in thy sight, because thy judgments are manifest. (Rev 15:3–4)

These shall fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, because he is Lord of lords, and King of kings, and they that are with him are called, and elect, and faithful. (Rev 17:14)

It was once common to say, and one still hears it said once in a while, that the Mass is a mystical representation of the life of Christ, that it makes His life present to us in all of its mysteries, as if recombining the spectrum into pure white light so that all the colors are virtually there in a single moment. Since this is true, we must say that all phases of the life of Our Lord are present and active, including the 2,000 years of His Mystical Body over which He reigns as the glorified King and Son of God (in the Davidic and more than Davidic sense). In fact, while the Mass is the sacramental renewal of the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary, we know at the same time that it is the offering of the risen Lord in His royal dignity, power, and beauty. Thus, however much we rightly emphasize the Passion, the Mass should be for us a tangible (i.e., sacramental) encounter with our glorious King. The traditional Roman rite, especially in its sung and solemn forms, has exactly this character, in company with all the Eastern rites.

It is currently, for some odd reason, fashionable to admire the colorful extravagance of the Byzantine liturgy while contemptuously dismissing anything in the Latin tradition suggestive of the same. People admire gigantic gold vessels and rich vestments in the East while settling for unsightly cups and drab drapes in the West; they catch their breaths at an impressive iconostasis, while shaking their heads at altar rails and other signs of separation between the nave and the sanctuary; they extol the marvelous poetry of the kontakion or troparion sung to a haunting traditional melody, while leaving their own incomparable Gregorian repertoire out in the cold.

I doubt any of you here today are afflicted with this peculiar double standard, but its ubiquitous presence in the halls of academia and power suggests that we are dealing with a psychological disorder, a kind of self-loathing that compels some people to strip themselves of the treasures of “the other” and to force themselves into a plainness that is almost a punishment or an echo chamber of one’s own emptiness. We can point to the beauty elsewhere, like a tourist passing through the halls of Versailles, as long as we deprive ourselves of it here and now, and suffer our democratic fate, which we deserve good and hard.

This is where the rejection of Christ’s kingship will lead, and has already led. His royalty will either be fully embodied in and expressed through our primary, fundamental, and culminating public, political, and civic action, namely, the sacred liturgy, which will form the reference point and stable basis of Christian society; or His royalty will be rejected and replaced with the tyranny of man over man, the tyranny of fashion or ideology: “We have no king but Caesar.” In this sense, the anti-royalism or anti-courtliness of the reformed liturgy is an expression of Christological heresy and a step along the path of apostasy.

Implications for the fine arts

Given a full-bodied understanding of the royalism or regality of the sacred liturgy in which God our King is adored in His holy court, what are the implications for the fine arts that are unavoidably called upon to aid us in offering this formal, solemn, public activity? I say “unavoidably,” because, apart from emergency situations such as a secret Mass in a concentration camp, the ministers must be attired somehow, the altar must be of some shape and style, the church building must be of this or that design, the words must have one or another register, the music must have a melody and a rhythm, etc. Simply as physical beings, as rational animals who communicate through the senses, our activities of worship are utterly bound up with artifacts, so much so that, as we have seen, the Book of Revelation does not even make the attempt to avoid them in depicting heaven but, if anything, pushes their use to an extreme of symbolic and gestural language. Our worship is inherently artistic, and the only relevant concern is whether the art will be good or bad, well-suited or poorly suited to the reality, done masterfully or done shabbily.

In a book on the modern composer Arvo Pärt, I read this inspiring passage: 

Under Archbishop Laud (1589–1645) there was a strong move towards greater ceremonial dignity in the church. As the house of God it was to be fitted out accordingly with the finest of human artistry, and its functions were to be conducted in a spirit of deepest reverence. The liturgy, the music, the sacred vessels, the very fabric of the building, all were to serve and make manifest the beauty of holiness. This phrase, which we find invoked time and again . . . derives from Psalm 96: “O sing unto the Lord a new song… O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”[16]

Laud was Anglican, of course, but his devout attitude was no different from that of Catholics.[17] Do we not need “greater ceremonial dignity in the church”? Why are the processions at the start of most Masses so slapdash, casual, and quick, almost as if people are embarrassed to be engaged in divine worship? Why are there so few processions outside of church? We could certainly use “a spirit of deepest reverence” in conducting our services. Less of the informal greetings, smiles, and handshakes—more of the reverential fear of the Lord that brings us to our knees in homage to the great King, begging for His mercy. We need music, vessels, and architecture that “make manifest the beauty of holiness.” In particular, we have all heard music that seems neither beautiful nor holy; its mawkish sentimentality, circus-like tunes, predictably syncopated rhythms, and simpering lyrics are an appalling combination from which beauty must hide her fair head while holiness flees to the mountains to bewail her virginity.

But why must we seek to do such laudable things? For one simple reason: because God, the greatest and best, deserves the greatest and best from us: date magnificentiam Deo nostro, “give ye magnificence to our God” (Dt 32:3). Deo optimo maximo. And there is a corollary: we human beings, created in His image and likeness, need to be able to offer “the finest of human artistry” to Him, lifting up our minds and hearts by means of it. If only we knew ourselves, we would see that we have a longing to give the best of ourselves to Him, not what is mediocre, humdrum, worldly, or two-faced. Does not an artist who takes pride in his work wish to give his very best to a patron? Do not lovers with pure intentions long to give the best of themselves to one another? God has given us the ability and the calling to reach out to His transcendent holiness with works of beauty that carry us along with them, past the realm of the profane into the sanctuary of divinity. As St. Thomas says, we worship God not to give Him something He does not already have, but to bring ourselves closer to Him by yielding what we owe Him. In this way we draw nearer to His goodness and grow in likeness to Him.

This explanation will always hold true for all human beings at all times. But we can say something more specifically Catholic. The “preferential option for the beautiful” rests on the truth that the Body and Blood of Jesus, really present, are offered in sacrifice in this building, on this altar, enacted by these rituals, sung in this music. The elements of the liturgy are not indifferent placeholders, like paper money or coins that have value only because someone arbitrarily declares them to be valuable. Rather, as gold is precious by nature and as the king’s image is honorable due to his office, liturgical signs represent Christ to the eyes and ears of faith, and offer Him to the loving heart. Whatsoever we do to the least of His symbols and ceremonies, prayers and chants, that we do unto Him. This is not so much a fearful vision of the danger of making mistakes as it is a joyful awareness of the many ways, little and great, in which we may pay Him homage and adore Him. The traditional liturgy reminds us in countless ways that we are dealing with the Lord of life and death, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is, who was, and who is to come—and (to borrow a phrase from another Anglican) He “is not a tame lion.”

This is why it matters, crucially, what we are doing, what we are endeavoring to do, when we worship God in public prayer. If we have got the wrong idea about it, we may do that which is seriously unfitting, unworthy, and displeasing to the Lord, whom it is our great privilege to serve and to please. If we follow the lead of the Church’s Tradition and the requirements or counsels of the Magisterium of the ages, we can be certain of giving glory to God and aiding, over time, the sanctification of His people.

The holy Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, starved himself on potatoes but spared no expense for the embellishment of the sanctuary. He knew, like Archbishop Laud, and like faithful Christians of every age, what came first and what came second. The same was true of St. Francis of Assisi, pace the falsification of his legacy by hippies who bow before Nature rather than adoring the Blessed Sacrament. Indeed, Franciscan churches are some of the most beautiful in Europe, magnificently decorated—even those that were built in periods when the friars themselves were dirt-poor beggars who scarcely knew where their next meal was coming from, though they trusted that the Lord would provide. They knew what came first; they knew that when it is God who is to be honored, the work must call forth everything in us, everything great and glorious we can muster, for His sake. This is why the Catholics of old never built cheap churches, if they could help it, and, at least on special occasions if not more often, brought together the best musical forces they could find, to provide the most glorious music.
 

St. Thomas Aquinas provides the essential rationale for the Church’s longstanding practice of supplying rich vestments, splendid vessels, glorious architecture, elaborate ritual, decorous music, and so forth for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office. Here’s what he writes: 

The chief purpose of the whole external worship is that man may give worship to God. Now man’s tendency is to reverence less those things which are common, and indistinct from other things; whereas he admires and reveres those things which are distinct from others in some point of excellence. Hence too it is customary among men for kings and princes, who ought to be reverenced by their subjects, to be clothed in more precious garments, and to possess vaster and more beautiful abodes. And for this reason it was necessary that special times, a special abode, special vessels, and special ministers be appointed for the divine worship, so that thereby the soul of man might be brought to greater reverence for God.[18]

If we had a proper religious formation, the trite songs infesting Catholic hymnals would evaporate and our churches would be filled with music of true artistic merit. We would insist that it happen; we would make it happen through personal sacrifices; we would absorb its fruits with gratitude as these heavenly harmonies penetrated and shaped our souls. The same would be true of the churches we build: their lofty architecture would captivate all who enter and move them to worship the Lord of hosts. In his final encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul II offered theological support for this exultant and sacrificial attitude:

Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no “extravagance,” devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the first disciples charged with preparing the “large upper room,” she has felt the need, down the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery. … The faith of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist has found historical expression not only in the demand for an interior disposition of devotion, but also in outward forms meant to evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event being celebrated.[19]

That the liturgy should be done with splendor and solemnity, in surroundings as magnificent as can be, evoking the transcendence, holiness, and glory of the Lord, is not a “debatable question” but a plain given as far as Catholic tradition is concerned. This is why the Church has always striven for and sponsored the finest of human artistry—and why the poor have always contributed to the building of churches of which they and their descendents are the rightfully proud beneficiaries. Such an unequivocal dedication to the sacred liturgy does not, of course, cancel out the need for personal prayer, works of charity outside the church doors, or energetic efforts of evangelization. But neither can these things ever replace the liturgy, which serves as their final end, from which they derive their meaning. Most simply, this is what we owe to God, and He comes first. “Glorify the Lord generously, and do not stint the first fruits of your hands” (Sir 35:8).

Beauty is not an extra or an add-on, a luxury or an indulgence, but an essential and inherent dimension of truth itself, an attribute of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His liturgy. If we abandon our pursuit of excellence in this domain, we will lose our faith, our ability to transform the world for God’s sake, even our sanity. Ugliness, like ignorance, error, and sin, is a privation and a deprivation, with a peculiar de-evangelizing force, while beauty, like truth and goodness, converts us, perfects us, and elevates us to God. Moreover, without supernatural faith, which orders everything in life to our final destiny in God, art itself can become a pernicious and soul-destroying force, as we have seen in modern times with so-called “modern art” and popular culture. Christianity is not only the art of salvation, it is the salvation of art.

Our Lord said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: “I will reign through my Heart.” But what do we find contained in that Heart of sinless flesh, pure love, and everlasting deity? The Litany of the Sacred Heart tells us that the Heart of Jesus is maiestatis infinitae, of infinite Majesty—the Majesty of the One who is rex et centrum omnium cordium, King and center of all hearts. It is the templum Dei sanctum, tabernaculum Altissimi, domus Dei et porta caeli: the holy temple of God, the tabernacle of the Most High, the house of God and the gate of heaven. In like manner, the sacred liturgy of our Catholic tradition is a holy temple in which we adore the divine King, a tabernacle of the Real Presence, a dwelling-place of God with man, a portal swinging open to the sublime and blissful worship of God in the courts of heaven. And just as the Heart of Jesus is omni laude dignissimum, fons vitae et sanctitatis, deliciae Sanctorum omnium—most worthy of all praise, the fountain of life and holiness, the delight of all the saints—so too is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that Our Lord gave to us in His immense wisdom and love; for through it we give Him, and the Father, and the Holy Ghost, perfect praise, and from it we receive the bread of angels, our food of pilgrimage and our consolation in this valley of tears—a delight for the saints who have gone before us, as it is for us today, and as it will be for our descendents. 

NOTES

[1] Joseph Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 110–11.

[2] John Paul II, General Audience, November 3, 2004.

[3] Scott Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 122.

[4] In Mt 5:17–18, “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled,” the Greek verb for “fulfill” means both to bring something to completion and to bring it to an end. The perfection of the Law both embodies all that is good in it and surpasses it with unexpected fullness.

[5] Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper, 66–67.

[6] Ibid., 102.

[7] From the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

[8] Cf. Is 66:1, Acts 7:49, Mt 5:35.

[9] In this respect, more akin to the modern Jesuits than the classical Benedictines. See Chapter 5.

[10] “Cardinal Sarah on Mass Not Facing the People,” published at PrayTell, May 26, 2016.

[11] “The Worst Reasons for Ad Orientem,” published at PrayTell, August 18, 2016.

[12] Its track record so far is vastly inferior to that of monarchy and aristocracy, if we look to the standard of beatified or canonized rulers and the preservation of the Faith in societies.

[13] Ratzinger saw all this very clearly. In his address “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium” (L’Osservatore Romano, English ed., 19 September 2001), he noted that the phrase “the People of God” quickly gave rise to a fundamental and dangerous misconception of the nature of the Church, in a Marxist or democratic vein. He saw, too, the liturgical implications of this politicized ecclesiology; see especially the essay “Image of the World and of Human Beings.”

[14] “The liturgy had taken over from the court ceremonial of the pagan emperors the symbolic language for the presence of the supreme sovereign: candles, which preceded the emperor, and the thurible. Whenever candles and incense appear in the liturgy, they indicate a new culmination of the divine presence” (Martin Mosebach, Foreword to P. Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness [Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017], xxii).

[15] The Byzantines currently use the last of these only on Holy Saturday, but it was the daily use Cherubic hymn for the Liturgy of St James, which is currently undergoing something of a revival among the liturgically outré. The traditional Old Church Slavonic version is incredibly impressive.

[16] Paul Hillier and Tõnu Tormis, On Pärt (Copenhagen: Edition Samfundet, 2005), 61.

[17] Need I mention the sincere hope of many Roman Catholics that the Anglican Ordinariates, by modeling that Laudian attitude and approach, will become a force of renewal for the rest of us?

[18] Summa theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 4.

[19] Emphasis in original.

Divergent Political Models in the Two “Forms” of the Roman Rite

A reviewer of my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017) made a point that got me thinking. He said that while he agreed with my critique of the Novus Ordo and himself preferred the traditional rite, he thought I should have wrestled more with the fact that there are flourishing religious congregations exclusively reliant on the Novus Ordo. He cited the Missionaries of Charity and the Nashville Dominicans as examples. Clearly, these communities are full of fervent disciples of the Lord who are nourished from the liturgy of Paul VI, so it cannot be the case that this liturgy is “all bad,” so to speak.

Now, apart from the fact that I have never argued and never would argue that the Novus Ordo is “all bad” (something that would be metaphysically impossible, in any case), I welcome this observation as an opportunity to think more closely about how exactly this phenomenon may be explained.

Such religious communities are bringing to the liturgy a spiritual disposition that enables them to benefit from the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist — a disposition they are not necessarily developing from the liturgy as such. The Novus Ordo can be fruitful for those who already have a fervent and well-ordered interior life, built up by other means; but for those who do not, it will offer few pegs on which to climb up. In this respect it is unlike the traditional liturgy, which has within itself enormous resources for enkindling and expanding the interior life.

One might make a political comparison to elucidate this point. The basic philosophical problem with the American regime is not that a good use cannot be made of its political institutions, but that they presuppose a virtuous citizenry in order to work at all. Time and time again, the American Founding Fathers say things like: “As long as the people are virtuous, they can govern themselves with these mechanisms.” But the aims of government do not include producing a virtuous citizenry; this is seen as above and beyond the government’s limited scope. Government is supposed to act like a police officer who regulates the flow of traffic; it is assumed that people know how to drive and basically drive well.

The traditional view, as we find it for instance in Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclicals, is that government has a God-given responsibility for the moral and spiritual welfare of the people, and must lead them to the observance of the natural law and dispose them as well as possible to the observance of the divine law. In this model, the government is more like a parent, teacher, and counselor who knows what the human good is and actively fosters the attainment of it by as many citizens as possible. This is why, for Leo XIII, a good government will necessarily involve the Catholic Church in educating the citizens of the regime, so that they may have the best possibility of developing virtues. Virtue does not develop spontaneously or accidentally.

The liturgical parallel is not hard to see. The Novus Ordo is like the American government. It is an orderly structure or framework within which free activity can take place, but it does not specify or dictate in a rigorous way how that activity ought to be pursued. It is like the benign and neutral policeman — a certain precondition for peace, but not the representative and spokesman of peace. The minimal rubrics function like boundaries on a sports field. The people who attend are assumed to know how to pray, how to “participate actively” (as if this is at all evident!), and how to be holy. They come to display and demonstrate what is already within them.

The traditional liturgy, in contrast, forthrightly adopts the attitude of parent, teacher, and counselor. It assumes that you are in a dependent position and must be shaped in your spirituality, molded in your thoughts, educated in your piety. Its rubrics are numerous and detailed. The liturgy knows exactly what you need in terms of silence, chant, prayers, antiphons, and it delivers them authoritatively, in a way that emphasizes the liturgy’s own perfection and your receptivity. The traditional liturgy establishes a standard of virtue and makes the worshiper conform to it. It does not presuppose that you are virtuous.

This helps to explain the intentionally Protean adaptability of the modern liturgical rites, in their optionitis and spectrum of artes celebrandi. Moderns don’t really think there can be a fixed and virtuous liturgy that should form them into its image. As heirs of the Enlightenment that enthroned human reason as king and assumed a supposedly rational control over all aspects of society, moderns feel they need to be in some way in charge of the liturgy. It has to have options to accommodate us in our pluralism.

In this way the Novus Ordo betrays its provenance in a democratic and relativistic age, in stark contrast with the traditional liturgy that was born and developed entirely in monarchical and aristocratic eras (and this, of course, by Divine Providence, since God knew best what human beings needed, and ensured that the rites would embody it). Even if one wished to say, for the sake of argument, that secular society is better off democratized — a claim that would seem counterintuitive, to say the least, especially if one could canvas the opinions of the countless millions of victims of abortion murdered under the free regimes of the Western world — one must nevertheless maintain as a matter of principle that the divine liturgy, being from and for the King of kings and Lord of lords, cannot be democratized without ceasing to exist. It must remain monarchical and aristocratic in order to remain divine liturgy, as opposed to a self-derived human patriotism.

If you are that fortunate person who has a robustly developed life of faith, whether from a Protestant upbringing prior to your conversion, or frequent attendance at adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, or a constant and childlike Marian devotion, you bring all of this fullness with you when you attend the Novus Ordo, and you fill the relative emptiness of the liturgical form with that fullness. In this case, your fullness (so to speak) meets Christ’s fullness in the Eucharist, and there is a meeting of minds and a marriage of souls. This, it seems to me, could be what is happening with those aforementioned religious communities that are flourishing in spite of the defects of the Novus Ordo as a lex orandi, in its anthropological assumptions, theological content, and aesthetic form.

With the traditional Mass, it is different. It produces an awareness of the interior life that is the first step to a more profound interior conversion. It contains ample Eucharistic adoration within it, and so, it feeds this hunger of the soul and intensifies it to the point that it overflows beyond the confines of the liturgy. Its spirituality is Marian through and through, so it tends to lead souls to Our Lady, who is waiting for them there. In every way, this Mass is actively calling into being a mind for worship and a heart for prayer; it carves out a space in the soul to fill it full of Christ. It does not presuppose that you are at that point, but pulls and draws you there, due to its confident possession of the truth about God and man. It is not leaning on you to supply it with force or relevance; it is not waiting for you to be the active party. It is inherently full and ready to act upon you, to supply you with your meaning. And paradoxically, it does all this through not being focused on you, your problems, your potentialities. It works because it is so resolutely and bafflingly focused on the Lord.

There is an irony here, inasmuch as the didacticism of the Novus Ordo seems to be aimed at explaining and eliciting certain acts of religion, while the usus antiquior seems to take for granted that one knows what to do. But in reality, the new rite's didacticism interferes with the free exercise of these acts of religion, and the usus antiquior's "indifference" to the attendees more subtly challenges them to build new interior habits proportioned to the earnestness and intensity of the liturgical action. By attempting to provide for the worshiper everything he "needs," the modern rite fails to provide the one thing needful: an unmistakeable sense of encounter with the ineffable mystery of God, whom no words of ours can encompass, whom no actions of ours can domesticate. The usus antiquior knows better, and therefore strives to do both less and more — less, by not leading children by the apron strings of a school teacher; more, in terms of calling into being new ascetical-mystical capacities that depend radically on a fixed and dense "regimen" of prayer, chant, and bodily gestures. “I have run the way of thy commandments, when thou didst enlarge my heart” (Ps 118:32). In this domain, the old rite shows us that (if we may paraphrase a contemporary author) space is greater than time. Having a capacious and symbolically dense space within which to "play" is of greater benefit, in the long run, than spending an hour doing verbal exercises in the confines of a modern classroom.

These differences, which play out in ways both subtle and obvious, cannot fail to have an impact on priestly and religious vocations and on the manner in which various communities understand their relationship to worship and contemplation.

(The argument of this article will be completed next week.)

Revisiting Courtly Liturgy

When I published an article here some time ago, “In Defense of Liturgy as Carolingian Court Ritual,” a reader shared with me the following comments:

Would you say that the monastic tradition of liturgy contrasts to the ‘courtly’ diocesan form of ritual, especially after Trent? That is my impression. My own sense and understanding of the traditional liturgy is more from reading the French Benedictines, and from Cardinal Ratzinger. It seems that most of the liturgical movement drew from the monastic tradition, as opposed to the Baroque and modern diocesan traditions of ritual. Might a renewal of the traditional liturgy drawing more from the monastic tradition answer the ‘needs of modern man’ more than a courtlier Baroque form?

This is an interesting point. If one doesn't look too closely at the age of Cluny, it would be true to say that monastic liturgy is, on the whole, simpler; nor is it surprising that so many of the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement were Benedictine monks who sought to share the wealth they had preserved, particularly in the form of the Divine Office, with modern people who still felt moved by the witness of the monks and nuns when the golden glow of the Baroque had long since faded. In every era until our own (and even now, in places where communities are faithful to their original charisms), the monastic liturgy has retained a profound consistency, tranquility, dignity, and loving attention to detail, which makes it especially suitable for emulation and transplantation. We should not forget, however, that the abbot, a prelate in his own right, is treated regally according to the rubrics of the traditional Mass, and that the equation of ‘monastic’ with austere, angular, and efficient is more a heritage of Collegeville than of any thriving monastery prior to about 1950.

Nevertheless, while I would want there to be a place for relatively simpler liturgy (as long as it was still thoroughly traditional), I also think we should not underestimate the “shock value” of Baroque liturgy. It is so different that it has something special to tell us right now. The Institute of Christ the King, with its French Baroque style of celebrating solemn functions, is making an important contribution to the life and mission of the Church today precisely by recovering and giving a suitable place to a rich part of our Catholic liturgical tradition that people who are too wedded to democracy and pragmatism have lost, or never cared to acquire. We need many tongues for proclaiming the Gospel; we have room for, and a need for, as many manners of celebrating authentic liturgical rites as our history has developed. One may go so far as to state that Baroque grandeur and excess are needed in direct proportion to contemporary reductionism and trivialization.

Photo courtesy of St Peter’s Seminary, Wigratzbad, Germany (FSSP)

Gregory DiPippo also pointed out to me another angle of argumentation that I had not exploited in my original post. When we are considering the courtliness of liturgy with its irreducible monarchical and aristocratic elements, we should not forget to breathe with both lungs of the Church. The Byzantine Divine Liturgy is positively bursting with courtly imagery and gesture, as befits its long sojourn in Constantinople. The Byzantines have retained many of these features because they did not succumb to the minimalism, utilitarianism, and democratic thinking that have poisoned the springs of Western social life and made of us men with hollow chests.

Byzantine Christians have all the same kinds of “courtly” rituals that the Roman Rite has, such as the kissing of the celebrant's hands, the bowing towards persons, icons, and other objects, the candles, and the incense, rituals that had their origin in the veneration surrounding the emperor.[1] Nor should we be surprised: both the Byzantine court and the Carolingian court saw themselves as continuations of the Roman Empire, now consecrated in its new role as supreme governor of the Christian world, for the glory of God and the empire of Christ. It was completely natural to the clergy and faithful to adopt for their divine worship customs that accompanied the earthly ruler; indeed, in so doing, they restored, as it were, the proper immovable and incorruptible object of veneration, bestowing on the ruler the privilege of being an earthly icon of the divine King. What began on earth was raised to heaven and seated there at the right hand of the Father; thence it descended to the human throne as a mantle of authorization and responsibility.

All four of the Cherubic hymns refer to Christ as King.

Daily use:

We, who mystically represent the Cherubim, and chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, let us set aside the cares of life that we may receive the King of all, Who comes invisibly escorted by the Divine Hosts.

At the Liturgy of the Presanctified:

Now the powers of heaven do serve invisibly with us. Lo, the King of Glory enters. O, the mystical sacrifice is upborne, fulfilled. Let us draw near in faith and love, and become communicants of life eternal.

On Holy Thursday:

Of Thy mystical Supper, Lord, let me partake, O Son of God, for of Thy mysteries I will not speak to Thy enemies nor kiss Thee like Judas, but like the thief on the cross I will confess Thee: In Thy Kingdom, Lord, remember me.

On Holy Saturday:

Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and in itself consider nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn.

The Byzantines currently use the last of these only on Holy Saturday, but it was the daily use Cherubic hymn for the Liturgy of St James, which is currently undergoing something of a revival among the liturgically outré. The traditional Old Church Slavonic version is incredibly impressive.

Thus the Byzantine rite’s four chants for the Great Entrance refer to the coming of the King, including His post-resurrection life as king of the universe. This, of course, is nothing other than a consistent application of the imagery of kingship with which the Book of Revelation is rife:

And the seventh angel sounded the trumpet: and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign for ever and ever. Amen. And the four and twenty ancients, who sit on their seats in the sight of God, fell on their faces and adored God... (Rev 11:15-16 DRA)

Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night. (Rev 12:10 DRA)

And singing the canticle of Moses, the servant of God, and the canticle of the Lamb, saying: Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, O King of ages. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and magnify thy name? For thou only art holy: for all nations shall come, and shall adore in thy sight, because thy judgments are manifest. (Rev 15:3-4 DRA)

These shall fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, because he is Lord of lords, and King of kings, and they that are with him are called, and elect, and faithful. (Rev 17:14 DRA)

It was once common to say, and one still hears it said once in a while, that the Mass is a mystical representation of the life of Christ, that it makes His life present to us in all of its mysteries, as if recombining the spectrum into pure white light so that all the colors are virtually there in a single moment. Since this is true, we must say that ALL phases of the life of Our Lord are present and active, including the 2,000 years of His Mystical Body over which He reigns as the glorified King and Son of God (in the Davidic and more than Davidic sense). In fact, while the Mass is the sacramental renewal of the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary, we know at the same time that it is the offering of the risen Lord in His royal dignity, power, and beauty. Thus, however much we rightly emphasize the Passion, the Mass should be for us a tangible (i.e., sacramental) encounter with our glorious King. The traditional Roman rite, especially in its sung and solemn forms, does exactly this, in company with all the Eastern rites.

It is currently, for some odd reason, fashionable to admire the colorful extravagance of the Byzantine liturgy while contemptuously dismissing anything in the Latin tradition suggestive of the same. We admire gigantic gold vessels and rich vestments in the East while settling for unsightly cups and drab drapes in the West; we catch our breaths at an impressive iconostasis, while shaking our heads at altar rails and other signs of separation between the nave and the sanctuary; we extol the marvelous poetry of the kontakion or troparion sung to a haunting traditional melody, while leaving our own incomparable Gregorian repertoire out in the cold. I doubt NLM readers are afflicted with this peculiar double standard or hypocrisy, but its ubiquitous presence in the halls of academia and power suggests that we are dealing with a psychological disorder, a kind of self-loathing that compels some people to strip themselves of the treasures of "the other" and to force themselves into a plainness that is almost a punishment or an echo chamber of one's own emptiness. We can point to the beauty elsewhere, like a tourist passing through Versailles, as long as we deprive ourselves of it here and now, and suffer our democratic fate.

This, eventually, is where the rejection of Christ's kingship will lead, and has already led. His royalty will either be fully embodied in and expressed through our primary, fundamental, and culminating public, political, and civic action, namely, the sacred liturgy, which will form the reference point and stable basis of Christian society; or it will be rejected and replaced by the tyranny of man over man, the tyranny of fashion or ideology: "We have no king but Caesar."

NOTES

[1] "The liturgy had taken over from the court ceremonial of the pagan emperors the symbolic language for the presence of the supreme sovereign: candles, which preceded the emperor, and the thurible. Whenever candles and incense appear in the liturgy, they indicate a new culmination of the divine presence" (Martin Mosebach, Foreword to P. Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness [Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017], xxii).