Humility of Service in Fixity of Form: The Policy of St. Benedict of Nursia

March 21 is the dies natalis of one of the most influential of all saints, Benedict of Nursia, Patriarch of Western Monasticism and Co-Patron of Europe. Highly pertinent to this blog’s concerns are the many profound liturgical lessons contained in the Holy Rule. Today I would like to consider a point from chapter 5.

According to St. Benedict, the root of humility is that a man must live not by his own desires and passions but by the judgment and bidding of another: ambulantes alieno judicio et imperio. When St. Benedict comes around to ordering the monastic liturgy, he makes continual reference to how things are done elsewhere: the psalms prayed by our fathers, the Ambrosian hymn, the canticles used by the Church of Rome. Even when fashioning his monastic cycle of prayer, he is constantly looking to the models already in existence. In like manner, chapter 7 warns us against “doing our own will,” lest we become corrupt and abominable.

This is the true spirit of liturgical conservatism, piety towards elders, and the imitation of Christ. We are not the ones who determine the shape of our worship; we receive it in humility as an “alien judgment” that we make our own. To do otherwise is to put the axe to the tree of humility. (St. Benedict allows for a redistribution of the psalms, as long as monks rigorously hold to the principle of praying the full psalter in one week. Therefore it would not conflict with humility for a monastic community to make some adjustments to the cycle of psalms, yet it would smack of temerity to reject the most ancient and stable pillars of the office, such as the praying of the whole psalter each week, and, to take a couple of specific examples, Psalms 109–112 for Sunday Vespers and Psalms 66, 50, 117, 62, and 148–150 for Sunday Lauds.)

Liturgical prayer has always been the foremost way of inculcating submission to Christ and His Church, so that we can learn His ways, and assimilate His prayer, and drink of His wisdom—which will certainly not be something we ourselves could have “cooked up.” Thus we take His yoke upon us…the yoke of tradition.

Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, it was taken for granted in Catholic circles that it is a special perfection of the sacred liturgy to be fixed, constant, stable, an immovable rock on which to build one’s spiritual life. The liturgy’s numerous and exacting rubrics were understood as guiding the celebrant along a prayerful path of submissive obedience, in which he could submerge his personality into the Person of Christ and merge his individual voice with the chorus of the Church at prayer. The formal, hieratic gestures transmitted an eternally fresh symbolism while limiting (if not eliminating) the danger of subjectivism and emotionalism. The priest or other minister was conformed to Christ the servant, who came not to do His own will but the will of Him who sent Him; he is commanded what to speak and what to do; he never speaks of himself.

The Father who abides in the Son does the work of the Son, and the Son who abides in the priest likewise does the work of the priest. In this way, even as the Son was “emptied of glory” in taking on the form of a slave, so, too, is the priest who enters His kenosis, sharing the hiddenness, humiliation, passion, and death of Christ. We may even say that the priest imitates and participates in the descent of Christ into hell by offering the Holy Sacrifice for the release of souls in Purgatory, which has a certain resemblance to the limbo of the fathers.

The last Holy Communion of St. Benedict

Our Lord, the great High Priest of the New Covenant said: “I cannot do anything of myself” (Jn 5:30). Here we have perhaps the most radical statement of the priest’s being tethered to the liturgy. It is a tethering so complete that he may truthfully say: “I cannot do otherwise.” If he thinks or acts otherwise, he has not yet become a slave, in imitation of the One who assumed the likeness of a slave. Worse, if he is allowed to do otherwise by a liturgical book, that book is a smudged and fractured mirror that does not reflect the Word.

This is why we ought to be unnerved by one of the most notable novelties in the Missal of Paul VI and in all the revised liturgical books, namely, that by which the celebrant is given many options among which he may choose, as well as opportunities for crafting his own speech: “in these or similar words.”[1] Confronted with such a phrase, one might legitimately ask: “How similar is similar?” In reality, the word of the liturgy and the word of the minister ought to be homoousios, of one and the same substance, not homoiousios, of a similar substance.

In the action of selecting options and extemporizing texts, the celebrant no longer perfectly reflects the Word of God who, as the perfect Image of the Father, receives His words and does not originate them, who does the will of another and not His own will. The elective and extemporizing celebrant does not show forth the fundamental identity of the Christian: one who receives and bears fruit, like the Blessed Virgin Mary; one who conceives with no help of man, by the descent of the Spirit alone.[2]

Instead, he adopts the posture of one who originates; he removes this sphere of action from the master to whom he reports; he carves out for himself a zone of autonomy; he denies the Lord the privilege of commanding him and deprives himself of the guerdon of submission; for a moment he leaves the narrow way of being a tool and steps on to the broad way of being somebody. He becomes not only an actor but a playwright; his free choice as an individual is exalted into a principle of liturgy. He joins the madding crowd that says, in the words of the Psalmist: linguam nostram magnificabimus, labia nostra a nobis sunt; quis noster dominus est? “We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is Lord over us?” (Ps 11:5).

But since free choice is antithetical to liturgy as a fixed ritual received from our forebears and handed down to our successors, choice tends rather to be a principle of distraction, dilution, or dissolution in the liturgy than of its well-being. The same critique may be given of all of the ways in which the new liturgy permits the celebrant an indeterminate freedom of speech, bodily bearing, and movement. Such voluntarism strikes at the very essence of liturgy, which is a public, objective, formal, solemn, and common prayer, in which all Christians are equally participants, even when they are performing irreducibly distinct acts. The prayer of Christians belongs to everyone in common, which means it should not belong to anyone in particular. The moment a priest invents something that is not common, he sets himself up as a clerical overlord vis-à-vis the people, who must now submit not to a rule of Christ and the Church, but to the arbitrary rule of this individual.

In the liturgy above all, we must never speak “from ourselves,” but only from Christ and His beloved Bride, the Church.

The deepest cause of the missionary collapse of the Church in the Western world is that we have lost our institutional and personal subordination to Christ the High Priest, the principal actor in the liturgy, the Word to whom we lend our mouth, our hands, our bodies, our souls. For the past fifty years it has not been perfectly clear that we are in fact ministers and servants of another, intelligent instruments wholly at His disposal. On the contrary, the opposite message has been promoted over and over again, ad nauseam, whether in words or in deeds: we have “come of age,” we are shaping the world, the Church, the Mass, the entire Christian life, according to our own lights, and for our own purposes. It is not difficult to see both that this is an inversion of the preaching of Christ and of the tradition of the Church and that it cannot produce renewal, but rather, confusion, infidelity, boredom, and desolation. We see here an exact parallel to what has happened with marriage: when so-called “free love” entered into the picture, out went committed love and heroic sacrifice, and in came lust, selfishness, dissatisfaction, and an unspeakable plague of loneliness. “Without me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). In the realm of sexual morality as in the realm of liturgical morality, we have given a compelling demonstration of what we can accomplish without Christ and without His gift of tradition—namely, nothing.

As if the Church had suddenly developed an autoimmune disease, churchmen in the twentieth century turned against ecclesiastical traditions, against greatness in music, art, and architecture, against rites and ceremonies, in a sterile love-affair with nothingness. We have witnessed an inbreaking of the underworld, an influx of demonic energy and chaos. Rejecting one’s past is rejecting oneself; this is what makes the comparison to an autoimmune condition apt. It does no good to pretend that we are dealing with anything less harmful than this, less dangerous, or less in need of exorcism.

I believe that we are much more on our guard now: the enemy of human nature has shown his cards and we are better prepared to detect his wiles. I would include in this category the flurry of thinking and writing that has taken place in recent years about the inherent limits of papal authority, the obligation of the pope to act as servant of the servants of God rather than an oriental (or South American) despot, and the inner connection between liturgy, dogma, and morality. As time goes on, I have no doubt that the truth of the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi will be made manifest in a blazing light of obviousness that will swell the ranks of Catholic traditionalists and expose the modernism of their opponents past all gainsaying.

The liturgical humility taught and practiced by St. Benedict will be, once again, as it had already been for so many centuries of Church history, a vital force in the restoration of worship for which we pray and labor.

NOTES

[1] See Rev. Paul Turner, In These or Similar Words: Praying and Crafting the Language of the Liturgy (Franklin Park, IL: World Library Publications, 2014). A synopsis may be found at http://paulturner.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ml-in-these-or-similar-words.pdf.

[2] See “The Spirit of the Liturgy in the Words and Actions of Our Lady” in Peter Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness: Why the Modern Age Needs the Mass of Ages (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017), 53–87.

From Extemporaneity to Fixity of Form: The Grace of Liturgical Stability

Catholics who love the traditional liturgical rites of the Church maintain that a fixity and stability of sacred formulas is essential both to the nature of liturgy as such and to the fruitful participation of the laity. But some liturgical scholars might object: Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised? The answer is: yes — and no. Few things are as important as understanding how and why we moved from liturgy-in-flux to fixed and stable liturgy.

For starters, in their gatherings for worship, ancient Christians do not seem to have practiced “casual” or “informal” prayer in the way in which the relaxed Christians of today might practice it. All the records we have indicate set prayer forms not only among the Jews whose Scriptures are full of formulaic prayers but also among the earliest Christians, several of whose hymns are preserved in the New Testament and in Patristic literature. Gregory Dix, Adrian Fortescue, Paul Bradshaw, and other scholars note that the prayers of the Christians, offered up by their leaders in a spontaneous but tradition-informed manner, acquired consistent formulaic patterns over time and settled into repeatable rites and ceremonies. After a few centuries of ever-solidifying praxis, improvisation ceased to be a feature of the liturgy — and this, for obvious reasons.

Christianity is a religion with deeply conservative instincts: we are holding on to what has been given to us once for all in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the depositum fidei. A devout bishop who celebrated the Eucharist would arrive at satisfactory ways of speaking to which the people became habituated [1], and his successor, drawn from within his own clergy, would naturally wish to follow in his footsteps and model his liturgical prayer after that of his father in Christ. As Michael Davies observes, when a community had a holy bishop who was accustomed to praying in certain ways, his successor would have had every reason to imitate him, and the people every right to expect that continuity. Otherwise, how would the ancient sacramentaries, with their carefully-formulated orations, have ever developed?

The eloquent and polished prayers we find in the oldest extant liturgical books did not suddenly drop down from heaven; they are the faithful reflection of the actual practice of Catholic communities gathered around their God-fearing bishops. In this way it was normal, one could say inevitable, that fixed anaphoras, readings, collects, antiphons, etc., would develop and stabilize over time. Thus, it should come as no surprise to find, no later than the seventh century and possibly as early as the fifth, a complete cycle of propers for the Roman Rite. Gennadius of Massilia (5th cent.) says of St. Paulinus of Nola, “Fecit et sacramentarium et hymnarium – he made both a sacramentary and a hymnal” (De viris illustribus, XLVIII). There is an account in Gregory of Tours of a bishop who had everything memorized, and when the book was removed (maliciously) he was able to do everything by memory.

In short, improvisation has not been a characteristic of the liturgy for 1,500 years. The evidence we have points to the relatively rapid development of fixed forms.

It is, moreover, absurd to think that the Holy Spirit did not intend this state of affairs as a positive good, or that the Church erred in remaining a jealous guardian of the spelled-out content of liturgical books. It would be no less ridiculous to assert that the same Spirit, after having willed such a state of affairs for 1,500 years, would suddenly will its dissolution, dilution, or replacement. So much for improvisation—or optionitis, which might be called a soft version of improvisation. [2] 

A key principle in liturgy is “the principle of stability.” The early Church was in a divinely-willed state of formation, and had wider and freer powers precisely because she was in an embryonic condition, growing rapidly and establishing her institutions under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. [3] The same Spirit guides her gently and gradually into set forms, which are the fairest flowers of those early developments. He prunes what is less worthy and nourishes what is more worthy. We should therefore expect, as time goes on, that the liturgy will become more and more solid, definite, fixed, and perfected. It will be handed down increasingly as a family inheritance, an approved profession of the Church’s one faith.

We see the same kind of development in the dogmatic debates of the early councils, with their ever more precise creeds that cut off all heretical depravity. We do not have the “freedom” to go back to the looseness and ambiguity of the early centuries, although modernists seem to wish they could do so. [4] Catholics have the immense blessing and privilege of carrying more refined and more precise formulas on our lips. Those who live after an Ecumenical Council — any of the councils except the last one, that is — are at a decisive advantage compared with those who lived before it, since they can now profess their faith in the Lord and confess His holy Name using a more perfect expression of the truth, and with less danger of lapsing into error about the highest, best, and most difficult things.

The development of the liturgy in this respect is much like the development of languages. Yes, a language such as French or German or English is ever developing, but it is much more the same than different from decade to decade and even, as time goes on, century to century. English as we write it today is much the same as that which was written 300 years ago; any literate person can pick up Samuel Johnson and read him without much difficulty (perhaps looking up a word here or there).

Yet a notable difference obtains between “hieratic” languages — those that, having attained a certain richness or fullness of development, were then taken over into religious practice as sacral tongues — and vernacular languages. The hieratic languages — e.g., Hebrew, ancient Greek, ecclesiastical Latin, Church Slavonic — are, as regards their use in divine worship, unchanging and unchangeable. They do not need to develop any more, since they are perfect at expressing what their respective liturgies need them to express. Only if revelation were to change would the language conveying it need to change. A hieratic language becomes an external sign of the internal stability, consistency, and timelessness of the religious truths conveyed through it. It does not deviate to the left or to the right in its unerring delivery of the message. Its linguistic completeness not only participates in divine attributes but helps bring about our participation in these attributes. In this way, a sacred language has a sacramental function.

A vernacular language, on the other hand, is intended to be the medium of daily discourse, the supple tool of life in the world, which is rife with change. The vernacular will never be done changing, reflecting the hustle and bustle of the people who use it. It is just this mutability and instability that explain why the religious instincts of all peoples have enshrined their highest forms of worship and doctrine in hieratic or classical languages. The vernacular is for this world of change, of Heracleitian flux; the hieratic is for the eternal world that always abides, like Parmenidean Being, and penetrates through the veil of this world in the form of dogma and doxology.

Think of the Eastern Christian liturgies, which are extremely conservative (at least where modern liturgists have not defaced them). The priest might add a personal intention during the litanies, but the fixed prayers are exactly that: fixed, finalized, admitting of no improvement. It would be a species of sacrilege to tamper with these glorious prayers. That, too, was the attitude of the Latin Church towards the pillars of the liturgy: the antiphons, the readings, the offertory, the Canon, the calendar, the use of certain psalms at certain times of the day or in certain seasons. We might augment, extrapolate, enhance, ornament, and even occasionally prune the dense growth, but in no sense did we throw off what earlier generations held to be sacred and great.

Hence, the essential response to the objection with which this essay opens — “Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised?” — is at once simple and profound: we are not in the same position as the early Christians. They had the first contact with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; they had the guidance of the Apostles and their immediate successors; they had to develop for themselves a liturgy out of Jewish precedents and apostolic oral tradition. It was a unique situation. Tollite vobiscum verba: “take with you words” (Ember Friday of September). The need to design or write a liturgy is, on the one hand, a sign of imperfection, because it belongs to a phase of institutional immaturity.

On the other hand, because of how central the liturgy is and will be for all future generations until the end of time, the writing of liturgy requires a special charism of the Holy Spirit — a profound spiritual maturity, discernment, and inspiration on the part of anyone who would dare to write liturgical texts or chants. It follows that already elaborated liturgical rites possess an inherent sanctity and nobility that will not and cannot be surpassed by later generations. [5] Since, as time went on, such rites had become more stable, refined, explicit, and expressive of their sacred content, Christians received them accordingly with reverence, as gifts handed down from their forebears. This process of development — which is at the same time a process of explicitation and solidification — must be held to be a work of the Holy Spirit, as Pope Pius XII reminded the Church in Mediator Dei. [6]

After 1,500 or 2,000 years of development, the situation is not and could never be the same for us as it was for the early Christians in the decades and centuries immediately after Christ. The reformers’ argument from antiquity is invalid from the word “go.” Nor has this argument the wherewithal to be taken seriously. Henry Sire demonstrates in Phoenix from the Ashes that the twentieth-century reformers invoked antiquity as an excuse for their modernist agenda, since as a matter of fact (1) they did not restore much that was ancient; (2) they abolished many things that were known to be ancient; (3) and they invented much that was utterly novel. How such people, whose motley work is clear for all to see, can expect us to credit their affected motives is quite beyond me.

The main argument of the postconciliar reformers, expressed in countless pamphlets and publications, boils down to this: “We are now celebrating the Mass as the early Christians did, and dropping away all the ‘accretions’ that accumulated like soot over time and obscured the original purity of worship.” But there are three devastating flaws to this argument.

1. We don’t really know what the early Christians did, and evidence from cultural history suggests that it was probably quite elaborate, rather than the contrary.

2. Many arguments based on antiquity have subsequently been shown to be false, such as the main argument in favor of Mass facing the people (St. Peter’s basilica).

3. Most importantly, Pius XII taught in Mediator Dei that we must believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages and that the developments that occur are part of God’s plan. So the development of “medieval liturgy” and “Baroque liturgy” are, if not in every detail, at least in the main, providential. To cast them away and try to return to a questionably reconstructed “primitive church model” is not only to exalt mere hypotheticals over real facts, it is an assertion that the Holy Spirit guides the Church less and less as time goes on, and that we must strip away what each age has added in order to return to the purity of the origins. This is liberal Protestantism, this is higher criticism, this is Modernism. All of it is condemned by the Church.

NOTES

[1] Funnily enough, we see this even today, among well-practiced Protestant preachers when they are offering public prayers, for which they have developed their own vocabulary and formulas. The result is not random but carefully channeled, almost predictable. I have seen the same thing in the Catholic Church. For example, in a certain diocese, almost every “spontaneous” prayer I have heard begins: “Good and gracious God…” I don’t know who originated this alliterative phrase, but it reproduces itself successfully in the wild.

[2] An objection might be raised: Are there not aspects of the old liturgy that are also up to the celebrant’s discretion? And should you not argue against them, as well? The truth is that the realm of choice in the old liturgy is extremely narrow, and is always a choice between fully articulated elements. In some commons, there is a choice between two epistles or Gospels. On a solemn day, a priest may choose to wear gold instead of a different liturgical color. He may choose to sing the most solemn Preface tone rather than the more solemn tone. If his missal has the Gallican prefaces, the rubrics allow him to use them on specified days. But notice how small a range of choice is allowed, and how its components are already fully spelled out — the priest invents nothing. There is no putative right to extemporize; and the most essential elements, such as the Canon, can never be altered. The holiest thing is beyond the realm of choice; it is a given. The Byzantine liturgy is the same: which of the anaphoras is to be used is dictated to the priest by the calendar, not left up to his pastoral discretion.

[3] One may consider what Charles Cardinal Journet said about the difference between the apostolic period and the succeeding ages, and apply it analogously to the early age of worship in contrast with later ages of worship.

[4] Pope Francis, for instance, preaches with such sloppiness that one would think none of the Ecumenical Councils had ever occurred, nor any of the Church Fathers had preached.

[5] John Henry Newman recognized this fact as well.

[6] To question, therefore, the inherited forms in the radical way they were questioned in the 1960s was nothing less than a sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin for which Our Lord says there is no forgiveness.

The Minor Options of the Old Rite and How They Avoid “Optionitis”

The most frequently repeated criticism of the new CDF decrees that allow priests ad libitum use (albeit under clear conditions) of new prefaces and the feasts of saints canonized after 1960 has been that the decrees introduce or risk introducing into the celebration of the usus antiquior an unwelcome and indeed uncharacteristic spirit of “optionitis.” Critics will say that the classical Roman rite is known and loved for its objectivity, stability, and fixity — these being the qualities of any perfected liturgical tradition — and that the clergy should not have options at their disposal.

While I agree that the classical rite has these desirable qualities, I think we should be careful not to exaggerate our case by speaking as if options do not have a longstanding place within it — a highly circumscribed place, to be sure, and one that does not threaten the integrity and “predictability” of the rite, but still, at the end of the day, options.

I will look at several examples: alternative readings; votive Masses and Masses pro aliquibus locis; multiple orations; some minor matters; and, paraliturgically, the style of vestments.

Alternative Readings

Unlike the new lectionary, the old lectionary, built into the missal, almost never gives an option as to what reading is to be used on any given day or for any given Mass formulary. However, there are a few instances in the Commons of “alternative readings.” For example:

• in the Mass Me exspectaverunt for Virgin Martyrs, the Gospel is Mt 13:44–52 or Mt 19:3–12;
• in the Mass In medio ecclesiae for Doctors, the Epistle is 2 Tm 4:1–8 or Ecc 39:6–14;
• in the Mass Salus autem for several martyrs, the Gospel is Lk 12:1–8 or Mt 24:3–13.

It gets really interesting with the Mass Laetabitur justus for a martyr not a bishop, where three epistles are listed: 2 Tim 2:8–10 and 3:10–12; Jas 1:2–12; and 1 Pet 4:13–19, as well as two Gospels: Mt 10:26–32 and Jn 12:24–26.

There is a rubric in the Commons section of the Missal — first appearing, I think, in the 1920 edition — that states that the Epistles and Gospels printed within one of the Commons can be used ad libitum for the Mass of a Saint, unless the Mass formulary directs otherwise. In the Sanctorale, there is either the minimal instruction to follow the Common or, more rarely, additional directions to use a specific Gospel. A rubrical expert I consulted had never seen diocesan ordines specifying these in any way; he has a collection of about 50 which, though differing greatly in style and content, make no reference to the choice of pericopes where several are given. We should see this as a small example of liberty within the otherwise (blessedly) monolithic old missal.

In my admittedly limited experience over the past few decades, priests rarely avail themselves of these alternative readings. It seems they follow the principle articulated by a friend of mine: “Whatever text will be the least trouble to read is the one that is likely to be read.” (He initially came up with this principle to explain why, with the new lectionary, priests so rarely break out of the mold of the lectio continua that plods along from day to day, even though for almost any of the saints they could choose a more appropriate reading if they wished.) Yet hand missals always print these alternative readings right alongside the other readings for the Common, so it is hard to see why they should not be used, at least occasionally. This is a case where admirable Scripture readings already given in the old missal are being neglected.

Votive Masses and Missae pro aliquibus locis

We take it for granted that any time there is a feria, when the Mass of the preceding Sunday could be said again, a priest is also free to make a choice of any of the Votive Masses contained in the Missal. There is a longstanding custom to use the Mass of the Most Holy Trinity on Monday; that of the Holy Angels on Tuesday; that of St. Joseph, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, or All Holy Apostles on Wednesday; that of the Holy Ghost, the Blessed Sacrament, or Jesus Christ Eternal High Priest on Thursday; that of the Holy Cross or of the Passion of Our Lord on Friday; and that of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday — but this is merely a custom and does not have any obliging force.

Beyond these popular Votive Masses are a host of others that some priests use quite regularly and others seem strangely unfamiliar with or uninterested in: Mass for the Sick (I have never actually been present when this formulary has been used!); Mass for the Propagation of the Faith (interestingly, this one has an alternative Epistle, 1 Tim 2:1–7; the Epistle listed first is Ecclus 36:1–10, 17–19); Mass Against the Heathen; Mass for the Removal of Schism; Mass in Time of War; Mass for Peace; Mass for Deliverance from Mortality or in Time of Pestilence; Mass of Thanksgiving; Mass for the Forgiveness of Sins; Mass for Pilgrims and Travellers; Mass for Any Necessity; Mass for a Happy Death. (I would add that when a priest is going to celebrate with one of these formularies, he should somehow announce it to the people, either in the bulletin if he has decided it in advance, or on a sheet posted near the inside church door, or in a brief mention after emerging from the sacristy and before starting the prayers at the foot of the altar.)

Moreover, altar missals usually feature a section towards the back called Missae pro aliquibus locis, Masses for certain places. Like Votive Masses, these too may be chosen under certain conditions. My 1947 Benziger altar missal, with a commendatory letter signed by Cardinal Spellman, has quite a substantive “M.P.A.L.” section: page (131) to page (196). It includes such worthy feasts as The Translation of the Holy House of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 10, the Expectation of Our Lady on December 18, the Espousal of the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph on January 23, the Flight of Our Lord Jesus Christ into Egypt on February 17, the Feast of the Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Tuesday after Septuagesima, and many others.

All of these feasts share in common the trait that they are not normally prescribed but allowed to be used when there is no other impediment. Therefore, they must be chosen; they are, in that sense, options.

Multiple Orations

One of the worst casualties of the 1960 rubrical revisions was the loss of multiple orations (collects, secrets, and postcommunions) at Mass and the Divine Office. This runs contrary to the Roman tradition in the second millennium, when multiple orations were a universal feature.

The history of the question of how many orations were allowed is quite complex and I intend to write more about it another time. Here it suffices to speak of the period after 1570, when it was normal for the priest to say the oration of the day, followed sometimes by a commemoration of a saint, other times by a required seasonal oration or required prayer (oratio imperata), and concluding with a third oration at his choice (ad libitum eligenda). There is a magnificent corpus of orations printed in the Tridentine Missal for precisely this reason, so few of which have remained in use after the draconian limitations imposed by the Roncallian rubrical reform.

We can see here, once again, that Holy Mother Church recognized a certain “ordered liberty” on the part of the celebrant, who was thus able to pray liturgically for his own needs, for those of the local community, or for those of the larger world.

Minor Matters

Five other areas in which a choice is required are:

1. Whether to precede the Sunday High Mass with the Asperges, or to start with the entrance procession accompanied by the Introit antiphon;

2. Whether to remain standing or to sit down during the Kyrie, the Gloria, and the Credo;

3. Which tone to use for the orations, readings, and Preface;

4. Whether or not to use incense at a Missa cantata;

5. Whether to observe an “external solemnity” for Corpus Christi and/or the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to enable the maximum number of faithful to participate in the Procession for the one, and devotions for the other. It is important to recognize that here we are looking not as an obligatory transferral, where the feast is simply packed up and moved — an aberration possible only in the Novus Ordo — but at a separate additional celebration of some feast, which has already been celebrated on the correct day.

It is true that the foregoing choices are limited and the things being chosen are entirely defined (no room for creativity or extemporization). Nevertheless, they constitute options.

Gothic vestments

“Roman” vestments

Style of Vestments

While this final example does not concern something in the liturgical rite as such but only something associated with it, it is (oddly) one of the most controversial among traditionalists: I refer to the simple fact that the celebrant has, in theory, the option of wearing either Gothic vestments or Roman vestments. (I say “in theory” because not every sacristy is equipped with both kinds.)

As far as I know, while Eastern Christian vestments vary a great deal in quality of material and ornamentation, they do not vary as regards the fundamental design: there are not radically different “styles.” In the Western tradition, on the other hand, the original vestments received their aesthetic perfection in the so-called Gothic period, but, over the course of the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, a strikingly different style emerged, known (more or less accurately) as the Roman style. The difference between a Gothic conical chasuble and a Roman “fiddleback” chasuble could not be more pronounced.

Some, especially in the Liturgical Movement which first sipped the chalice of medieval romanticism before drowning in the cup of modern rationalism, insisted that the Roman style was an outrageous corruption; for others of a reactionary bent, it has become a shibboleth of Tridentine identity. One still occasionally hears enthusiasts explaining to their neighbors at the coffee hour (at least back when such things existed) that “at the Novus Ordo the priest wears this full draping kind of chasuble, but at the Latin Mass he wears the old-fashioned Roman fiddleback.” If I overhear something like that, I share with them photographs of glorious traditional Masses from Australia, where Gothic is practically the only thing in existence, whether architecturally or vesturally.

Personally I think there is room for both styles. Noble vestments have been created along the entire spectrum; aesthetic preferences are not only allowed but inevitable. Again, to my knowledge, the Church has never specified that one or another style of vestments must be used, as long as every essential piece is present (including the amice and maniple); she allows an ordered liberty of choice.

St Thomas Aquinas: fittingly honored on March 7, even in Lent

Concluding Thoughts

The decree Cum Sanctissima permits, among other things, the observance of saints during Lent whose feasts were always impeded and reduced to commemorations by the 1960 code of rubrics’ insistence on privileging every feria of Lent. No one disputes that the Lenten ferias are absolutely wonderful, and they deserve their prominence. But it was poor thinking that allowed for no flexibility with regard to celebrating, even during Lent, feasts of saints who enjoy a particular prominence in this or that community. Surely for Catholic schools, St. Thomas Aquinas may get his full due on March 7; surely for seminaries and religious communities, St. Gregory the Great on March 12; surely for the Irish, St. Patrick on March 17. The CDF decree restores a reasonable flexibility, with the feria always commemorated. (The Novus Ordo runs into intractable difficulties because it has abandoned the wisdom of commemorations: when two things conflict, both should somehow be liturgically present, rather than one of them simply being dumped. The same problem, it must be admitted, already affects the 1962 missal to some extent — yet another reason to return to the 1920 editio typica.)

In regard to the foregoing examples, I would say that clergy and laity are so accustomed to the choices involved that perhaps they do not even notice that a choice is involved. What I mean is that we expect a priest to have the freedom to choose a Votive Mass on a feria, and everything else about the Mass is so predictable that it all seems inevitable, but a major choice was made beforehand to do the Votive instead of repeating the prior Sunday.

Not every choice need be construed as, or need have the psychological and pastoral effect of, the deservedly decried optionitis of the Novus Ordo. In the Tridentine rite, all options are safely folded within the dominating unity of its architecture and the exacting prescriptions of its rubrics, and therefore acquire the same rituality. In the Novus Ordo, in stark contrast, the options are so numerous, and concern such basic elements of the liturgy — its opening rite and penitential rite, the readings of the day vs. those of the Commons, whether the offertory is said aloud or silently, which Eucharistic prayer to use (!), what and when to sing, etc. etc. — that the rite itself can barely hold on to its rituality and becomes, in a sense, a giant Worship Option. This, it seems to me, is the fundamental difference between the usus antiquior, even with the new options placed at its disposal, and the usus recentior.

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On Feast of Holy Name, Tradition Crushes Rupture, 27–7

In a short but pungent article at CatholicCulture.org (“Guess Whose Name Is Missing?”), Phil Lawler notes the following curious fact about the optional memorial of the Holy Name of Jesus on January 3 in the Novus Ordo calendar:

Today, January 3, the Church calendar offers us the (optional) feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. At Mass the entrance antiphon reminds us, “At the name of Jesus, every knee should bend…” And then something curious happens. Through the rest of the proper prayers crafted especially for the day’s celebration, guess what Name is never mentioned. Right.
       Take, just for example, the Collect: “O God, who founded the salvation of the human race on the Incarnation of your Word, give your peoples the mercy they implore, so that all may know there is no other name to be invoked but the Name of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”
       Isn’t there an obvious place there, right before “Who lives and reigns,” for the invocation of the name of Jesus? I mean, isn’t that kinda the point?
       The Offertory prayer, similarly, speaks of “the Name that saves” — but does not mention it. The Communion prayer alludes to the sacrifice “to honor Christ’s Name,” which is honored in silence.
       Could someone please explain to me why, on the day that we celebrate the name of Jesus, we don’t celebrate the name of Jesus?

That is an excellent question, Mr Lawler. And given the fact that in many places, the “entrance antiphon” is neither sung nor recited, it is quite possible that what he is calling the “proper prayers” of the Novus Ordo Mass would not mention the Holy Name once on the putative and optional feastday in honor of it. [1]

How illuminating it is to turn, for the sake of contrast, to the traditional feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which is obligatorily celebrated on the Sunday after the Octave of the Nativity, that is, the first Sunday of the New Year (or, if that Sunday happens to be January 1, 6, or 7, then on January 2). For comparative purposes, I would like to enlarge the definition of the Proper of the Mass to include the readings of the day. A quick glance at the old Proper shows that the Holy Name will be mentioned (no options involved) TWELVE times. Notably, the full doxology is retained after the Secret and Postcommunion in the traditional rite, whereas the new rite opts for the short form “per Christum.” The theological richness of the prayers deserves to be noted, in comparison to their easy-listening replacements. [2]

Introit. In nomine Jesu omne genuflectatur, cælestium, terrestrium, et infernorum: et omnis lingua confiteatur, quia Dominus Jesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris. Ps. 8. 2 Domine Dominus noster: quam admirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. V. Glória Patri. In nomine Jesu…
(In the Name of Jesus let every knee bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and let every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Ps. O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy Name in the whole earth. Glory be to the Father. In the Name of Jesus…)

Collect. Deus, qui unigenitum Filium tuum, constituisti humani generis Salvatorem, et Jesum vocari jussisti: concede propitius; ut, cujus sanctum nomen veneramur in terris, ejus quoque aspectu perfruamur in cælis. Per eumdem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum…
(O God, Who didst appoint Thine only begotten Son the Saviour of mankind, and didst bid that He should be called Jesus: mercifully grant that we may enjoy the vision of Him in Heaven, Whose holy Name we venerate on earth. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ…)

Epistle. In diebus illis: Petrus repletus Spiritu Sancto, dixit: Principes populi et seniores, audite: Si nos hodie dijudicamur in benefacto hominis infirmi, in quo iste salvos factus est, notum sit omnibus vobis, et omni plebi Israel: quia in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi Nazareni, quem vos crucifixistis, quem Deus suscitavit a mortuis, in hoc iste adstat coram vobis sanus. Hic est lapis, qui reprobatus est a vobis ædificantibus: qui factus est in caput anguli: et non est in alio aliquo salus. Nec enim aliud nomen est sub cælo datum hominibus, in quo oporteat nos salvos fieri.
(In those days: Peter filled with the Holy Ghost, said to them: Ye princes of the people and ancients, hear: If we this day are examined concerning the good deed done to the infirm man, by what means he hath been made whole, be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Whom you crucified, Whom God hath raised from the dead, even by Him this man standeth before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner: neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.)

Gospel. In illo tempore: Et postquam consummati sunt dies octo, ut circumcideretur puer vocatum est nomen ejus Jesus, quod vocatum est ab Angelo priusquam in utero conciperetur.
(At that time: After eight days were accomplished that the child should be circumcised; His Name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before He was conceived in the womb.) [3]

Secret. Benedictio tua, clementissime Deus, qua omnis viget creatura, sanctificet, quæsumus, hoc sacrificium nostrum, quod ad gloriam nominis Filii tui, Domini nostri Jesu Christi, offerimus tibi: ut majestati tuæ placere possit ad laudem, et nobis proficere ad salutem. Per eumdem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum…
(May Thy blessing, by which all creatures live, hallow, we beseech Thee, most merciful God, this our sacrifice which we offer to Thee to the glory of the Name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that it may please Thy majesty and bring Thee praise, and avail us unto salvation. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ…)

Postcommunion. Omnipotens æterne Deus, qui creasti et redemisti nos, respice propitius vota nostra: et sacrificium salutaris hostiæ, quod in honorem nominis Filii tui, Domini nostri Jesu Christi, majestati tuæ obtulimus, placido et benigno vultu suscipere digneris; ut gratia tua nobis infusa, sub glorioso nomine Jesu, æternæ prædestinationis titulo gaudeamus nomina nostra scripta esse in cælis. Per eundem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum…
(O almighty and everlasting God Who didst create and redeem us, look graciously upon our prayer, and with a favourable and benign countenance deign to accept the sacrifice of the saving Victim, which we have offered to Thy Majesty in honour of the Name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: that through the infusion of Thy grace we may rejoice that our names are written in heaven, under the glorious Name of Jesus, the pledge of eternal predestination. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ…)

The sweet Name occurs over and over again, as if one could not speak it enough — as in the great office hymn “Jesu dulcis memoria.” One sees clearly how this feast originated with the Franciscans, one of whose greatest preachers, St. Bernardine of Siena (about whom I have written here), chose the Holy Name for his special devotion and insignia.

What if we add a consideration of the Ordinary of the Mass? In the traditional celebration of the Holy Name, the Mass (whether it falls on a Sunday or a weekday) always includes the Gloria and the Credo; the Novus Ordo celebration would not include either. The Gloria mentions the Holy Name twice; the Credo mentions it once; the prayer at the mingling of water and wine, once; the Suscipe sancta Trinitas, once; the Roman Canon, thrice; the embolism, once; the commingling, once; the priestly prayers of preparation for holy communion, thrice; the taking of communion by the priest, twice. Not including all the times the Holy Name is pronounced with each act of giving communion to the faithful (“Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi…), this adds up to FIFTEEN times, for a total of 27 (12+15).

In the Novus Ordo, the Ordinary of the Mass on this day would mention the Holy Name possibly once at the start, if the second or third greeting formula were chosen; not a single time during the Offertory; then a variable number depending on the Eucharistic Prayer chosen (for EP I, 3 times; for EP II, 2 times; for EP III, 2 times; for EP IV, once); once in the embolism; once in the post-embolism prayer; once in the priestly preparation for communion (since there is an option between two prayers). This adds up to anywhere from 4 to 7 times.

Taking the Proper and Ordinary together, this brings the total number of mentions of the Holy Name on its Novus Ordo memorial to 4 at a minimum and 13 at a maximum. If I were a betting man, I would place my bet on 7 as the most likely number, assuming the following: recitation of the entrance antiphon, the use of greeting #2, the standard lectionary readings rather than special ones, [4] and EP II.

So, in a comparison simply of texts, we would be looking at an obligatory 27 mentions of the Holy Name of Jesus in the course of the TLM, versus an optional approximately 7 mentions of the Holy Name in the Novus Ordo, give or take a few.

We know that the liturgy is so much more than the texts out of which it is composed. It is the chants to which the texts are sung (or not sung). It is the ensemble of gestures and ceremonies performed by the ministers, the collection of signs and symbols that bring to mind the mysteries of our Faith while pointing to what eludes our rational grasp. Nevertheless, the liturgy still IS a textual reality, however many other layers it has; and what we say — and how often we say it — matter profoundly. One cannot automatically assume that more is always better, since then we might as well say the Holy Name a hundred times, or a thousand. The liturgy, as such, is not the Jesus Prayer. But we can assume that a certain number of mentions is appropriate for a feast day held in honor of that very Name by which we are saved; we can assume, moreover, that a severe reduction in the number of mentions, against a fuller tradition of several centuries’ duration, is altogether inappropriate. This would not be, alas, the first or the only time the reformed liturgical books displayed such a disconnect from warm tradition and meet devotion.

It is comparisons like this — which are not difficult to come by on the internet or in books — that prompt one to ask: Where is the true patrimony of our Church, liturgical, devotional, theological, best preserved and celebrated? In the traditional rite, or in a “banal on-the-spot fabrication” that cannot even properly celebrate the personal name of the founder of Christianity?

A night that lasted fifty years is passing; a new day is at hand. As the Christmas season so often says, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, for the honor and glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

NOTES

[1] It is, as usual, difficult to talk about how often the Holy Name would be mentioned at a Novus Ordo Mass on January 3, because of the moving target nature of the options (something I discuss in an old article).

[2] For a comparison of the Collects, see this article.

[3] This is the totality of the Gospel! Only one verse: the shortest in the traditional calendar. The Novus Ordo also goes to this portion of Luke, but expands it to Luke 2:21-24, which does not have the same impact and focus; it becomes a mere doublet of the Presentation.

[4] There are multiple optional readings, with, accordingly, varying mentions of the Name: 3 times (1 Cor 1:1-3), 3 times (Phil 2:6-11), or once (Col 3:12-17) in the reading from Paul; and once in the reading from Luke. I have seen with my own eyes, and I imagine most who are reading this have also seen, that the regular daily lectionary readings are more frequently used than votive readings, regardless of what memorial is on offer, so there is no guarantee that any of the possibilities for the Votive Mass of the Holy Name of Jesus will be actualized on January 3.

Photos in this article are by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press, his SoundCloud page for lectures, interviews, and readings, and YouTube for lectures and sacred music.

Twelve Reasons Not to Prefer the Novus Ordo: A Reply to Fr. Longenecker

This article appeared on January 2nd at OnePeterFive. NLM is reprinting it today with permission from the original source.

Fr. Longenecker has written some fine books and articles. Years ago, I enjoyed and benefited from his book on St. Benedict and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and his recent book on the historical veracity of the Magi is interesting.

It would appear that in matters liturgical, however, Fr. Longenecker is out of his depth. Each claim he puts forward in his article “Twelve Things I Like about the Novus Ordo Mass” can be and has been refuted in the ample literature written on the subject, of which he appears to be ignorant. Indeed, the article betrays minimal knowledge of the history, process, and content of the liturgical reform (as, for instance, well documented in this biography of Annibale Bugnini) and of the contrasting richness of the traditional Mass.

Let us walk through Fr. Longenecker’s Twelve Things (printed in boldface).

1. It’s accessible. Having the liturgy in the vernacular helps it to be understood by the people. How can that be a bad thing?

It is characteristic of the rationalism of the liturgical movement (based on its Enlightenment precursors) to prioritize verbal comprehension over a more synthetic and holistic understanding of the mystery of faith, which draws on all the senses and appeals to the heart as well as the intellect. The use of Latin, in addition to being simply what the Western Church did for over 1,500 years, creates for worshipers a numinous and sacral atmosphere that invites meditation and adoration.

Moreover, seeking the goal of easy intelligibility led the reformers to dumb down much of the content of the Mass so that it might not be “too hard.” What is the heavy price we pay for the all too obvious “accessibility” of the Novus Ordo? Superficiality and boredom. It’s so accessible that it “fails to grip,” as P.G. Wodehouse would say. This is why we have a new self-help genre on getting over one’s boredom with Mass and various faddish movements like LifeTeen for pumping up the Novus Ordo. In contrast, the traditional Latin Mass is steep, craggy, and sublime, offering the worshiper the kind of challenge that befits his rational dignity and supernatural destiny, and opening up an endless vista of new discoveries in the age-old prayers and gestures.

Finally, no literate person is incapable of using a daily missal, where all the antiphons, prayers, and readings may be found in vernacular translations – but without any attempt at an “official” translation of the impossible-to-translate ancient Latin texts, thus avoiding the intractable battles over what “style” and “register” of vernacular should be used in the liturgy. The major prayers of the Mass are fixed and repeated from week to week, so it is not difficult to follow them, as one can see from wee lads and lasses who do this at the traditional Latin Mass.

2. It’s flexible. We’re supposed to honor Latin as the language of our church and it is easy enough to integrate a little or a lot of Latin into the Novus Ordo Mass. It is also flexible musically. You don’t have to use Haagan Daz, hootenany and soft rock music. Learn Gregorian chant and polyphony. It fits.

The idea that a liturgy should be a matter of “picking and choosing” among options is foreign to the historical development of Christian liturgy in East and West, which has always been toward greater definition, consistency, and stability of liturgical texts, chants, and ceremonies. A liturgy is a ritual action in which the actors lose their idiosyncratic individuality and adopt a persona that befits the mysteries enacted. The clergy should come across not as the ones steering and coloring the enterprise, but as stewards of a treasure they receive and place humbly before the people; the people, for their part, find it easier to pray when the liturgy is not a moving target, but one can enter again and again into the same sacred routine. This intrinsic quality of good liturgy is absent from the Novus Ordo by design.

Concretely, what does this flexibility end up looking like? We can choose the Roman Canon, that which defines the Roman Rite, or a Eucharistic Prayer patterned after a pseudo-anaphora written by pseudo-Hippolytus and finished on a napkin in Trastevere. We can have the chant that grew up for a thousand years with the rite, or some sentimental piano tune by an ex-Jesuit. We can have Mass facing East in accord with apostolic tradition (as St. Basil and others testify), or we can try our luck with the novel “closed circle” approach of versus populum. We can have people line up for communion in the hand like customers queuing for bus tickets, scattering fragments of the Body of Christ hither and yon, or place the Lord on the tongue of believers kneeling in a posture of adoration.  All this great flexibility! The devil delights in it, since it usually plays in his favor.

Such flexibility has also destroyed, for all intents and purposes, the distinctions among a Low Mass, a Missa cantata or High Mass, and a Solemn High Mass. In practice, one usually gets a bizarre mixture of high and low elements with no discernible order or hierarchy.

I address the spiritual dangers of this flexibility in a talk called “Liturgical Obedience, the Imitation of Christ, and the Seductions of Autonomy” (full recording here; some excerpts here).

The old Mass "traveling well"

3. It travels well. As much as we love beautiful architecture, music, vestments and pipe organs, there are times when the Mass is celebrated at camp, in prison, on the battlefield, in a tin hut or on a mission field, a mountaintop or a beach. The simplicity of the Novus Ordo means it can be celebrated more easily in such situations.

This is probably the flimsiest of the twelve reasons, given that thousands of the greatest missionaries the Church has ever known, as well as military chaplains in many wars (including both World Wars, as plenty of vintage photos online give testimony), offered exclusively the traditional Mass and carried on their backs what they needed for it.

Indeed, one of the objections raised by missionary bishops at the Second Vatican Council is that the proposed liturgical reform would greatly multiply the number of books necessary for liturgy. All a priest needs to celebrate the old Latin Mass in its integrity is a single altar missal. To celebrate the new liturgy in anything approaching completeness, on the other hand, one needs the altar missal, the lectionary, and a gradual or book of antiphons. A “sung Mass” requires a veritable library of books, as I know from firsthand experience as a choir director for many years at the Novus Ordo.

Here is a gallery of photos of priests celebrating the traditional Latin Mass outdoors, showing how well it can be done, including on backpacking trips many weeks long. Besides, as Martin Mosebach says, it’s not ultimately the architecture that makes the difference, but the Mass. The great Catholic Mass of tradition takes possession of the place where it is offered and dominates it; the Novus Ordo brings even a lofty cathedral down to its own impoverished simplism. This is why it usually feels so out of place in the great churches of the past.

It should also give us pause that prisoners would respond so positively to the Latin Mass coming into their lives. I received a letter from a prisoner in Louisiana who prays the old breviary and is requesting a weekly Latin Mass. Don’t prisoners also deserve and respond to that which is beautiful, rich, and profound? The modern world is already too much awash in abridgements, shortcuts, diet drinks, and lite snacks; we would benefit from the original version, the scenic route, the robust nourishment.

4. There is more Scripture read, and it is read in the language people can understand. How can it be a bad thing for there to be a wider range of Sacred Scripture being made available to the people?

All things being equal, familiarity with more of Scripture is better for the Christian people. But all things are not, in fact, equal.

First, the new lectionary is so cram-jammed with Scripture that it works against familiarity, whereas the old (indeed, ancient) lectionary features a more limited number of readings of optimal length and liturgical appropriateness, which encourages a deep familiarity with them. Since the Mass is not meant to be a Bible study, and no Catholic can be expected to acquire a well rounded understanding of the Bible from the liturgy (even the new lectionary features only 13.5% of the Old Testament and 54.9% of the New Testament outside of the Gospels), the claim that it is better to read more Scripture at the Mass is simply begging the question.

Second, the old lectionary, as limited as it deliberately is, demonstrably features more of the “tough sayings” of Scripture. It is not afraid to present the wrath of God, the evil of sin, or the danger of sacrilegious communions – the kind of passages that are frequently left out of the new lectionary, in spite of its much greater size. In other words, the new lectionary suppresses parts of Scripture that are “difficult” to “modern man.” Thus, it presents less of the total message of Scripture, even as the Liturgy of the Hours presents a reduced Psalter, expurgated of politically incorrect material.

Six major arguments against the appropriateness of the new lectionary may be found here; an explanation of the nature of the omissions and distortions in it may be found here; and a case study on the exclusion of 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 may be found here.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

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.)

On Liturgical Memory

As priests know better than anyone else, the smooth celebration of the usus antiquior requires the memorization of a significant number of prayers ahead of time, so that one need not be festooned with cards, surrounded by a cadre of servers with cheat-sheets, or embarrassed by long delays while one looks for the elusive page in the altar Missal. These prayers may include (depending on the design of the altar cards):

• Psalm 42
• Confiteor
• absolution and short dialogue
• Aufer a nobis and Oramus te
• blessing of incense
• Munda cor meum and Jube Domine
• Per evangelica dicta
• Orate fratres
• Supplices te rogamus
• Ecce Agnus Dei
• formula for communion
• Benedicat vos

This requirement of memorization, far from being a mere guarantee of efficiency, has its own profound value: it is one more way in which the ancient liturgy demands that the celebrant “put on the mind of Christ” — or better, enter His Heart — by means of “knowing by heart” certain prayers of the Church that mold him into the image of their sentiments.

Prayers run the risk of remaining external to the celebrant as long as they are merely written in the Missal, because their location is an external book. Memorized prayers, on the other hand, are already internal(ized) and, as such, are more available as a wellspring of piety within. The heart has become the book, the living book from which the Mass is celebrated.

In one of the many letters that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher Tolkien when the latter was in the Royal Air Force during World War II, we read:

If you don’t do so already, make a habit of the ‘praises’. I use them much (in Latin): the Gloria Patri, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Laudate Dominum; the Laudate Pueri Dominum (of which I am specially fond), one of the Sunday psalms; and the Magnificat; also the Litany of Loretto (with the prayer Sub tuum praesidium). If you have these by heart you never need for words of joy. It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstances keep you from hearing Mass. . . . Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many songs, or with his hands can touch the harp: his possession is his gift of ‘glee’ which God gave him.[1]

In the famous book He Leadeth Me, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., describes what he did to avoid going insane in his solitary confinement: “After breakfast, I would say Mass by heart — that is, I would say all the prayers, for of course I had no way actually to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice.”[2] Elsewhere he recounts how he and his fellow missionaries had prepared themselves in a lumber camp in the Urals for the hardships to come: “Over and over again in the evenings, when others were chatting or reading or playing cards, we would repeat to each other the prayers of the Mass until we had learned them by heart.”[3]

The culture to which J. R. R. Tolkien and Fr. Ciszek bear witness is a culture of sacred text, stability, repetition, memory, and inexhaustible meaning, even in the midst of the most barbaric conditions of war or imprisonment.

Fast forward to the optimistic post-War world of the 1960s, where sacred and secular are running together, where stability is mistaken for fossilization, memory is written off as nostalgia, morals are loosening, and the givenness of tradition — in reality, a weight of glory — is felt as a chafing burden.

With its programmatic variability, large number of texts, and paucity of obligatory prayers in the Mass ordinary, the reformed Missal strikes at the root of this age-old disciplining, stocking, and shaping of memory (and therefore of man’s mind and heart) by fixed liturgical formulas. Its novel instruction to speak “these or similar words” interferes with the ritual subjugation of the individual ego to the common voice of the Church. The fact that certain words are not fixed — not deemed worthy of being fixed, and worthy of being committed to memory forever — shows that the real appeal is not to memory but to imagination, the power of constructing rather than the power of conserving and contemplating.

When a priest knows and says the same thing at certain moments in the liturgy, he unites in this act with all the other worshipers who know (or can easily know) the same prayer. They are brought together even if the priest is praying silently and not facing them. Paradoxically, if a priest instead uses his imagination to say out loud a new formulation of words, this content from his mind is necessarily going to be different from what might be in your mind. Thus, when the priest “uses similar words,” he becomes, by that very fact, dissimilar from you, and so, over against you in his distinctiveness, rather than together with you in a common discipleship to the given liturgy. Memory and fixed forms draw us together and make of us one body with a shared past and a shared future. Imagination and loose liturgical forms assemble us temporarily into a sui generis body that links up with no past and no heritage, which intends no future and no permanence. It is like the difference between carving stone or wood, and drawing pictures in the sand.

Our identity comes from our “collective memory,” that is to say, the continually renewed remembrance of who and what we have been, and all the cultural forms that embody it. This remembrance is not primarily conceptual or intellectual but dwells in concrete, visible, audible, tangible expressions that serve as prompts for significant feelings and actions.

I once read an author who described how every traditional culture has a literary canon of some kind, often made up of myths told in epic and lyric form, histories of heroes, and law codes. The artists of this culture do not see the all-pervasive presence of the canon as a burdensome limitation to their creativity but as the necessary condition for their own fruitfulness, a perpetual source of inspiration and direction that channels and intensifies their powers. They so internalize the canon that it becomes less like an object external to them and more like their own eyes and hands, through which they see and feel the world. The canon equips them with tools that nature could not have supplied, a vast vocabulary that surpasses what any individual could arrive at.[4]

The traditional Roman liturgy was just such a literary canon for the clergy, for intellectuals and artists, for the pious folk who flocked to it and were shaped by it, century after century, father to son, mother to daughter. It was the internal linguistic form of the Western Church that gave her her very identity; it was the eyes and hands through which she saw and felt creation. The liturgy was the core of the Church’s collective memory, since it was the one reality that concerned everyone, all the time, drawing the many parts into unity, and imparting a definite character to the whole. All this happens when there is a stable sacred text of inexhaustible meaning that permeates the memory of man. It still happens wherever the traditional Roman liturgy lives on.

I think here of my experience learning the server’s responses at Mass as a young adult. I printed a tiny card for myself with the responses from the prayers at the foot of the altar and so forth, and used to keep it tucked into my shirtsleeve when serving. After a time, I had internalized the prayers so that the card wasn’t needed. This felt like a new step into freedom: the prayers of Mass are now completely within me. One night, when I had trouble falling asleep, I found myself running through the prayers at the foot of the altar, reciting all of Psalm 42, and the subsequent prayers. It draped a wonderful peace over my soul. When my mind is racing or I am suffering from stress, I begin to recite Psalm 42 slowly, and, comforted by its words, I become calm.

Disciplined internalization of traditional ecclesial prayer leads to freedom, peace, and joy. For the one who attends to what he is doing, it opens ever more layers of meaning and levels of self-surrender. For the entire Church, it provides the inspiring example of the fusion of a person and his office, or better, the submersion of a person in his office, and weans us from the distinctively modern temptation of originality, a quality that is proper to God alone. To Him be all glory and honor, now and for ever, Amen.


NOTES

[1] The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 66; dated 8 January 1944. The last line is J. R. R.’s translation of Anglo-Saxon verses from the Exeter Book, which he had just quoted in their original form.

[2] Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., with Fr. Daniel Flaherty, S.J., He Leadeth Me (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 54.

[3] He Leadeth Me, 124.

[4] It is for this reason, of course, that we should have a venerable translation of Scripture, one that preserves a sacral register and culturally weighty phrasings. Such a translation is more memorable precisely because it is poetic, striking, and resonant. This is why the New American Bible — written in “Nabbish,” a “bumping boxcar language,” as Anthon Esolen dryly calls it — is a translation that is built to fail and will never be the inspiration for any high culture. Moreover, the changing translations of Scripture and liturgical texts, such as the psalms and hymns, make it more difficult for the sacred formulas to find a place in the heart. The text of the Gloria in Latin — that marvelous hymn that has been set to great music countless times, in chant, in polyphony, in homophony, in every style — has not changed since the fourth century (!). Meanwhile, the vernacular translations of it will never be stable for long, and their musical settings are appropriately transitory. If we value divine, eternal, essential truth, as we claim to do in our Catechism, then we ought to take more seriously the potent counter-message that is being uttered by our liturgical habits.

Photo courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed. All rights reserved.