Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making “Pastoral Adaptations”

The Gospel being read in French, versus populum, at the Solemn Pontifical Mass

Over the past twenty-five years, I have assisted at traditional Latin Masses in many states and countries. What I have seen has largely been edifying: clergy who love the liturgy, offering it in accord with its Roman spirit and the appropriate rubrics, and faithful who are grateful to have access to this powerhouse of sanctity.

But there are some shadows as well.

A friend shared with me the video of the traditional Pontifical Mass celebrated by Robert Cardinal Sarah in Chartres cathedral. It was going along magnificently, as one would have every reason to expect from this crown jewel of the Latin liturgy — until we reach the Lesson and the Gospel (the Epistle may be found at the 1:08:50 mark, the Gospel at 1:17:40, of the above video). At this point, the subdeacon faced the people rather than the East, chanted only the title of the reading in Latin, and proceeded to speak aloud a French translation. The Latin reading was never chanted ad orientem in its ancient and thrilling tone. Then along came the deacon, and instead of chanting the Gospel in Latin facing northwards, he again faced the people, and after singing the title, proceeding to read the Gospel in French.

This practice is contrary both to the spirit of the ancient Roman liturgy and to the rubrics that govern its celebration. Most recently, in 2011, the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei states:

26. As foreseen by article 6 of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, the readings of the Holy Mass of the Missal of 1962 can be proclaimed either solely in the Latin language, or in Latin followed by the vernacular or, in Low Masses, solely in the vernacular.

Only in a Low Mass, therefore, is it permitted to substitute vernacular readings for Latin — and note, it is permitted, not required or recommended. In fact, it is always better practice to read the lessons in Latin first, and then read them in the vernacular from the pulpit if it is judged pastorally wise. But at a High Mass, a fortiori a Solemn High Mass, a fortiori a Pontifical Mass, the readings are always to be sung in Latin, with the correct ceremonial and orientation. What we saw in the Chartres Mass is a liturgical abuse, no different in kind from the host of abuses with which the Novus Ordo is plagued.

This violation of rubrics was no doubt intended as a “pastoral adaptation” or “accommodation.” Nevertheless, it is an example of exactly what we must be careful not to do. Many of the worst aberrations and deviations in the 1960s, when the old Mass was already being subjected to torture and dismemberment, and subsequently the ruinous missal of Paul VI, arose exactly from such supposedly “pastoral considerations.” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who worked at the Bugninian abattoir before regretting his complicity, already caught the whiff of a weird pastoralism in the 1950s. For Bouyer, liturgy is first of all

a given, a traditional given. From a material point of view it is a precisely circumscribed object: the whole of the rites and ceremonies, of readings and prayers that are written down in the books called the Missal, the Breviary, and the Ritual. It is something we can desire to enrich, as every living Christian generation enriches Christian spirituality, Christian morals, even dogma; but it is something that has first to be received, received from the Church.[1]

A major difference between the theology of the classical Roman Rite and that of Paul VI’s modern rite is the difference in how lections are understood. The lections at Mass are not merely instructional or didactic. They are an integral part of the seamless act of worship offered to God in the Holy Sacrifice. The clergy chant the divine words in the presence of their Author as part of the logike latreia, the rational worship, we owe to our Creator and Redeemer. These words are a making-present of the covenant with God, an enactment of their meaning in the sacramental context for which they were intended, a grateful and humble recitation in the sight of God of the truths He has spoken and the good things He has promised (in keeping with Scripture’s manner of praying to God: “Remember, Lord, the promises you have spoken!”), and a form of verbal incense by which we raise our hands to His commandments, as the great Offertory chant has it: “Meditabor in mandatis tuis, quae dilexi valde: et levabo manus meas ad mandata tua, quae dilexi.”

The chanted Latin lection is an expression of adoring love directed to God before it is a communication of knowledge to the people, and the form in which it is done should reflect this primacy. In the ancient liturgy, always and everywhere God enjoys primacy. Nothing is done “simply” for the people. Holy Communion, which is clearly for the benefit of the people, is treated with adoration, reverence, care, and attentive love, being distributed exclusively by the anointed hands of the ordained, on the tongues of the kneeling faithful, with a paten held underneath, and, perhaps, a houseling cloth. All eyes are thus fixed on the Eucharistic Lord, giving Him the primacy that is His due. It should be no different with the utterance of the divine words, in which we find a symbolic incarnation of the Word of God which nourishes our souls in preparation for the divine banquet of the Most Holy Sacrament.[2]

Vernacularization and recitation of the lessons at High Mass betrays the rationalism and utilitarianism of the Synod of Pistoia. The chanting of the Word of God is not just for instruction but also a quasi-sacramental action in and of itself (as Martin Mosebach argues with regard to the use of incense, candles, and the prayer “Per evangelica dicta, deleantur nostra delicta”).[3] It is part of the activity of worship, and like the other prayers of the Mass, it should be set apart by words of a sacral register, hallowed by tradition. No one will complain if this formal liturgical chant, which takes only a few minutes in any case, is followed up with a recitation of the vernacular texts before the homily. But the latter should never be substituted for the former.

I have learned about priests in France and Germany who, in keeping with this cavalier pastoral attitude, also change the “Ecce Agnus Dei” and “Domine non sum dignus” into the vernacular. Seriously: has it ever really caused difficulty for the faithful to understand what is meant by these phrases, which are repeated at every Holy Mass? Additionally, some clergy in Germany, who have apparently learned nothing from the past fifty years, persist in recycling the old saccharine Schubert Masses and other German paraphrases, which they fob off on the people instead of sharing with them the riches of Gregorian chant, as every Pope has urged from 1903 to 2013.[4]

Then there are practical concerns, those stubborn little things known as facts. Congregations who attend the usus antiquior today are often made up of faithful of diverse linguistic backgrounds, because in many locales only a single Latin Mass is available, and all the people of the surrounding territory gather for it. I was recently visiting St. Clement’s in Ottawa, in which about 40% of the faithful are Francophone and 60% are Anglophone. Latin is the common liturgical language that unites them. In the United States, when Hispanic Catholics attend a Latin Mass, the Latin is closer to their native tongue than English. In another city parish of which I am aware, there are families who speak English, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Italian, and Spanish. Quite apart from fidelity to the rubrics, such situations present a genuine “pastoral” reason for the consistent use of Latin!

In this respect, the Chartres Mass afforded us a spectacular lack of pastoral common sense. This is an international pilgrimage of people for whom French is certainly not a common language. To read the lessons only in French reveals a nationalist, regionalist, and culturally imperialist attitude. As Pope John XXIII noted in Veterum Sapientia, only the use of the venerable and universal Latin tongue is exempt from such problems.

It would be opportune for the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, as well as religious congregations and societies of apostolic life that utilize the usus antiquior, to monitor such liturgical abuses and correct them before they spread. How can clergy expect the faithful to show due obedience to their fathers in Christ, if these same fathers are not faithful to the inherited liturgy? Is it too much to ask that priests follow the spirit and the letter of the Roman Rite as it has been passed down to us, without introducing the deviations and creative adaptations of the Liturgical Movement? We have seen where those ended up: the Novus Ordo.

The faithful deserve and have a right to a traditional Mass offered in accordance with the wise slogan “Say the Black, Do the Red.” After decades of confusion, the Church is being given an unparalleled opportunity to restart the celebration of the liturgy with a correct attitude and praxis. If we mess it up this time with short-sighted pastoral adaptations, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when we slide into a second liturgical reform, from which Divine Providence may not rescue us.

[1] “Après les journées de Vanves. Quelques mises au point sur le sens et le rôle de la Liturgie,” in Études de pastorale (Paris: Cerf, 1944 and Lyon: Abeille, 1944), 383, cited in John Pepino, “Cassandra’s Curse: Louis Bouyer, the Liturgical Movement, and the Post-Conciliar Reform of the Mass,” Antiphon 18.3 (2014): 254–300, on 270.

[2] For a more extensive treatment of the topic, see my article “In Defense of Preserving Readings in Latin.”

[3] Another confirmation of this thesis is found in the traditional rite for the ordination of deacons, as a commenter at Fr. Zuhlsdorf noted (and here I quote):

After the bishop vests the new deacon in the stole and dalmatic, he presents the Gospel book and says: “Accipe potestatem legendi Evangelium in Ecclesia Dei, tam pro vivis, quam pro defunctis. In nomine Domini.” “Receive the power of reading the Gospel in the Church of God, both for the living and for the dead. In the name of the Lord.” The part about reading the Gospel for the dead would be nonsense if the reading were merely a practical instruction for those members of the Church Militant who happen to be present at a particular Mass. (The rite for subdeacons has a similar formula withe the Book of Epistles, with reference to power to read them both for the living and the dead.)

[4] I would not necessarily object to vernacular hymns being sung at a High Mass, provided that the Gregorian Ordinary and Propers were sung first, and the hymn functioned as a kind of popular motet. But to supplant what is liturgical with what is non-liturgical is Protestant, not Catholic or Orthodox.

Confronting the Heresy of Activism with the Primacy of Prayer

In Henri de Lubac’s Vatican Council Notebooks — a resource already put to good use here at New Liturgical Movement in discussions of splendor and Latin — we find the following summary of a speech by Cardinal William Godfrey, archbishop of Westminster, on Friday, November 9, 1962, during the debate over the Divine Office:

Some people exaggerate the onus sacerdotum in opere pastorali [the burden of priests in pastoral work]. I have been a parish priest; I see a large number of priests; I have never met any who have told me that they no longer have time for the breviary. Do not legislate universally for a few exceptional cases. Be careful of the haeresis bonorum operum [the heresy of good works]. Work must be subordinate to prayer. The breviary has already been made lighter. It must remain the essentiale nutrimentum nostri laboris [the essential nourishment of our work]. … In our cathedral, the office is recited or chanted every day; our work is not neglected because of that. [1]

On Saturday, November 10, Bishop Martin Jaime Flores of Barbastro, Spain, made the rather obvious but important point that “Oratio est labor pastoralis”—prayer is, in a way, a pastoral work: it is something that benefits the people more than any other work. [2] Later that day, Bishop Luigi Carli of Segni spoke out against what he called “activismus exaggeratus,” an exaggerated activism, and said that the reduction of the breviary would be “shocking, a scandal to the whole Christian people.” [3]

Bishop John Ireland, father of Americanism

To find the roots of this “exaggerated activism” — which Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., went so far as to call a “heresy” [4] — we need to go back to the Americanist controversy of the late nineteenth century. Fr. Walter Elliott’s 1891 biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulists, appeared in a French translation in 1897. This translation included the controversial Introduction by Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul, which was to occasion Leo XIII’s letter Testem Benevolentiae of 1899, addressed to Cardinal Gibbons and the American bishops. As related in the 1976 book Histoire des crises du clergé français contemporain by Paul Vigneron, the biography of Hecker became a bestseller among the French clergy then under siege from an anticlerical government. Soon there was a turning away from the interior life towards activism, or, as we might nowadays call it, “being pastoral.” Vocations to the diocesan priesthood plunged. Only the publication of Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard’s book L’Ame de Tout Apostolat [The Soul of the Apostolate - 1907, 1909, 1913] would reverse the trend. Vocations flourished until 1946, by which time over 250,000 copies of Chautard’s book had been sold. Then, Fr. Marie-Dominique Chenu, national chaplain of the worker priests, publicly attacked L’Ame de Tout Apostolat as outdated: the conditions under which Dom Chautard wrote no longer exist. Vocations to the diocesan priesthood plunged, never to recover. [5]

Marie-Dominique Chenu, opponent of Dom Chautard

Thus, by the time of the meeting of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the battle lines were fairly well drawn up between those who, in accord with Catholic tradition as enunciated by Chautard, saw the inherent priority of prayer and contemplation over works of the active life, and those who, following the modern trend from Ireland to Chenu, wished to lessen the “burden” of prayer in favor of pastoral efficiency.

There is no doubt about which side won in practice: all of the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church, from the sacramental rites to the Divine Office to the blessings, were greatly shortened, simplified, and streamlined; the people were given much to “do,” and the celebrant was given the more “active” roles of interlocutor, animator, commentator, improviser. Religious life was redefined in terms of social apostolate. Contemplatives, in particular, felt they had to justify their existence by pointing to concrete benefits they conferred on society. As vocations to the diocesan priesthood plummeted, so too, and for much the same reason, religious vocations plummeted, never to recover in the mainstream Church. [6]

Today, many decades into the weary aftermath, the costly “collateral damage,” of all this frenzied activism, we are in a position to see more clearly than ever the wisdom of Godfrey, Flores, and Carli, the wisdom of Leo XIII, Chautard, and Aumann. No less a figure than Joseph Ratzinger frequently and perceptively writes about the problem of activism, which he considered symptomatic of a loss of confidence in the reality of Jesus Christ and the primacy of His kingdom. In a poignant section of The Ratzinger Report, he speaks of the loss of the dimension of feminine receptivity in the Church:

Activism, the will to be “productive,” “relevant,” come what may, is the constant temptation of the man, even of the male religious. And this is precisely the basic trend in the ecclesiologies . . . that present the Church as a “People of God” committed to action, busily engaged in translating the Gospel into an action program with social, political, and cultural objectives. But it is no accident if the word “Church” is of feminine gender. In her, in fact, lives the mystery of motherhood, of gratitude, of contemplation, of beauty, of values in short that appear useless in the eyes of the profane world. Without perhaps being fully conscience of the reason, the woman religious feels the deep disquiet of living in a Church where Christianity is reduced to an ideology of doing, according to that strictly masculine ecclesiology which nevertheless is presented — and perhaps believed — as being closer also to women and their “modern” needs. Instead it is the project of a Church in which there is no longer any room for mystical experience, for this pinnacle of religious life which not by chance has been, through the centuries, among the glories and riches offered to all in unbroken constancy and fullness, more by women than by men. [7]

In a lecture he gave on “The New Evangelization” in the year 2000, Ratzinger, like Chautard, pointed to the necessary foundation of apostolate in prayer:

“Jesus preached by day, by night he prayed.” With these few words, he [Don Didimo] wished to say: Jesus had to acquire the disciples from God. The same is always true. We ourselves cannot gather men. We must acquire them by God for God. All methods are empty without the foundation of prayer. The word of the announcement must always be drenched in an intense life of prayer. … Theocentrism is fundamental in the message of Jesus and must also be at the heart of new evangelization. … To proclaim God is to introduce [others] to a relation with God: to teach how to pray. Prayer is faith in action. And only by experiencing life with God does the evidence of his existence appear. [8]

Pope Benedict XVI returns to this theme in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, of 2005:

Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. Piety does not undermine the struggle against the poverty of our neighbors, however extreme. … It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work. Clearly, the Christian who prays does not claim to be able to change God’s plans or correct what he has foreseen. Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the Spirit to him and his work. … Our crying out [to the Father] is, as it was for Jesus on the Cross, the deepest and most radical way of affirming our faith in his sovereign power. [9]

Vermeer’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1655)

One of the most developed treatments of this theme is found in Benedict XVI’s General Audience of April 25, 2012, explaining the Apostles’ decision to ordain deacons to assist them. The pope sees in the Apostles’ focus on the Word and the deacons’ handling of the poor a reflection of the distinction between Mary and Martha of Bethany, and notes that each aspect supports the other: prayerful meditation on the Word leads to its convincing proclamation, and, at the same time, the men to be chosen for works of mercy must be imbued with the Holy Spirit, not mere social workers. He then comes to his central point, which deserves to be read with the “burden” of the recitation or chanting of the Divine Office in mind:

We must not lose ourselves in pure activism but always let ourselves also be penetrated in our activities by the light of the word of God and thereby learn true charity, true service to others, which does not need many things — it certainly needs the necessary things, but needs above all our heartfelt affection and the light of God.
          In commenting on the episode of Martha and Mary, St. Ambrose urges his faithful and us too: “Let us too seek to have what cannot be taken from us, dedicating diligent, not distracted, attention to the Lord’s word. The seeds of the heavenly word are blown away, if they are sown along the roadside. May the wish to know be an incentive to you too, as it was to Mary; this is the greatest and most perfect act.” And he added that “attention to the ministry must not distract from knowledge of the heavenly word” through prayer (Expositio Evangelii secundunm Lucam, VII, 85; PL 15: 1720).
          St. Bernard, who is a model of harmony between contemplation and hard work, in his book De consideratione, addressed to Pope Innocent II to offer him some reflections on his ministry, insists precisely on the importance of inner recollection, of prayer to defend oneself from the dangers of being hyper-active, whatever our condition and whatever the task to be carried out. St Bernard says that all too often, too much work and a frenetic life-style end by hardening the heart and causing the spirit to suffer (cf.II, 3).
          His words are a precious reminder to us today, used as we are to evaluating everything with the criterion of productivity and efficiency. ... Without daily prayer lived with fidelity, our acts are empty, they lose their profound soul, and are reduced to being mere activism which in the end leaves us dissatisfied. … For pastors, this is the first and most valuable form of service for the flock entrusted to them. If the lungs of prayer and of the word of God do not nourish the breath of our spiritual life, we risk being overwhelmed by countless everyday things: prayer is the breath of the soul and of life.[10]

Looking back over these valuable texts from Ratzinger (and there are many more like them), we cannot avoid posing some uncomfortable questions for ourselves—for clergy, religious, and laity who are striving for holiness, which we know is not a product of our actions but a gift given to those who ask for it in prayer, who seek, who knock.

Do we actually believe in God? If we do, we will believe in His lordship, His primacy, His precedence over all created things, material or spiritual, visible or invisible—such that He always deserves priority in our daily life, the best of our time, energy, attention. That goes for liturgical prayer as well as private prayer.

Do we believe Our Lord’s word when He openly says: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt 6:33), or when He says: “Without Me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5)? If so, we will reject at its very root the secular Pelagian mentality that has crept into and corrupted so many “good works” sponsored by the Church or practiced in the name of Christianity.

Do we believe that Our Lord receives more honor and glory when we put on our lips and fix in our hearts the words of the very Psalms He inspired for Himself to recite as man on earth, as the Church bids us do in the Divine Office? If we do, our thinking about the “burden” of the Office will change; we will consider taking up some form of the preconciliar breviary, be it Roman or monastic; we will not seek shortness, speed, and efficiency; nor, if we are praying in Latin already, will we cut corners by a thoughtless rapidity of recitation.

Do we believe that the same Lord Jesus Christ is really, metaphysically, bodily, personally present to us at Mass? If we do, it should be obvious in the way we are worshiping, and the place that worship occupies in our daily life.

Ultimately, do we believe in the power and mystery of prayer? That is the question Cardinal Godfrey’s words, spoken 55 years ago, should prompt in us today.

NOTES

[1] Henri de Lubac, Vatican Council Notebooks (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015), 1:258–59. The Latin is not italicized in the book.
[2] Ibid., 266.
[3] Ibid., 268–69.
[4] Jordan Aumann, O.P., “The Heresy of Action,” in Cross and Crown, vol. 3 (1951), pp. 25–45.
[5] I owe this information to Anthony Sistrom. Vigneron cites more than 300 biographies and memoires of French priests in establishing his narrative.
[6] See Hilary White’s fine article "What is the Catholic Religion Actually For? A Monastic Answer."
[7] The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 103.
[8] Available here.
[9] Deus Caritas Est, nn. 36-38.
[10] Available here.

Dom Mark Kirby on Paul VI -- and a Note on the Term “Pastoral”

I noticed recently a couple of fine NLM-pertinent posts by Dom Mark Kirby, Prior of Silverstream, whose blog Vultus Christi is an ongoing source of refreshing spiritual wisdom.

In the attention given to Pope Paul VI in the time leading up to his beatification, one notices a deafening silence on those many respects in which this pope either was, or at least seems to have intended to be, a proponent of the “hermeneutic of continuity” avant la lettre. While it’s true that Paul VI is a complex and even at times contradictory figure who contributed to the problems inherited by his successors and all of us (see my earlier article on this very subject), it is only a matter of plain common honesty and justice to paint a fair portrait that includes elements essential to modern-day traditionalism. These would have to include not only Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and Mysterium Fidei, but also his unambiguous reaffirmation of the Catholic faith in the Credo of the People of God and his 1966 Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, whose defense of the traditional choral office in Latin deserves to be much more widely known.

Dom Mark offers the complete text of this short Apostolic Letter, along with an introduction. Highly recommended.

Dom Mark also devoted a daily reflection (again, with the complete text of the document) to how important the Credo of the People of God was to him in his personal life as a monk living in a confused and volatile period. Published less than a month before Humanae Vitae, the Credo was perhaps the most quickly buried and forgotten document in the history of the Magisterium. It is nevertheless worth revisiting, and is sure to raise more than a few eyebrows when one sees how the creed Paul VI professed, unambiguously reiterating dogma on faith and morals, has been slowly and consistently undermined in subsequent decades.

While we’re speaking about Paul VI, I would like to recommend to NLM readers a newly posted article by my colleague, Dr. Jeremy Holmes, “Saving ‘Pastoral’ from the Wolves”. We are all rightly disturbed, I think, by the serious abuse that has been made of the term ‘pastoral’, and how many acts of negligence and deviations it has covered since the Second Vatican Council. We might, in fact, be tempted to throw the word away. But we do not do well to let the enemies of the Faith seize hold of vocabulary and claim it as their booty. As the Sensible Bond likes to point out (in league with George Orwell and Josef Pieper), language is power, and abuse of language is abuse of power. Dr. Holmes examines the authentic notion of the pastoral, that which has to do with the shepherd truly taking care of his flock by taking them seriously and yet leading them where they need to go. There are some interesting liturgical and moral examples. Check it out.