“Modern formlessness is repellant... We are beginning, perhaps, to recover from our blindness”

What modern liturgists thought we needed... (source)

The reaction of an Italian reader to the Italian translation of my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Nobile bellezza, sublime santità, Fede & Cultura, 2021), struck me as quite interesting and I wanted to share it, slightly adapted, in English.

It is not surprising that the Church has been infected by the temper of the times and its denigration of beauty — albeit as a laggard follower of contemporaneity, with the usual delay and very little awareness of changing fashions. Modernity was already giving up the ghost to postmodernity when a Council was called finally to meet and embrace it.

Since the death of Pius XII, there has been a vocal urgency in Catholicism, fatuous yet urgent, to recover the “Jewishness” of Christ, supposedly obliterated by two millennia of Latinity (there is much irony here, considering that the reformed liturgy removes so many Jewish elements that had had a place there); the “Kerygma” or “original message of the first community,” supposedly obscured by twenty centuries of commentary and interpretation; the “simplicity and poverty” of the liturgy, which is felt to be distorted by Latin and Gregorian chant and really anything elaborate or majestic.

Purveyors of novelty rewrite hymns and paintings to the measure of little kids, who, I suppose, are to them a symbol of a “new” humanity without history or education. They ask ultra-modern architecture to build churches as much like “tents” as possible (because God “pitched His tent among us”), or that at least look like casual, unadorned containers of refugee crowds (since we are a “people on the move”): denied the lofty vaults and uplifting domes, the roofs have to be flat jetties or skylights, the walls of bare concrete so that brutal matter gets the better of form (perhaps form would be a distraction from what is essential…). Everything reminds one of industrial architecture, the highest point of coincidence — according to a certain way of thinking — between the Archaic and the Functional.

The whole approach has an unequivocal meaning: the ecclesiastical innovators believe they are hurling the (original) Revelation against the (subsequent and deviating) Tradition. Neither do they realize, I fear, that the era of the contemporary as a return to the archaic, which has scattered external and internal carnage and ruin, is coming to an end — has run its course. The exhaustion of totalitarian ideologies is its most conspicuous symptom.
 

...was not the tradition in which Catholics were at home, and in which many still feel most at home, in spite of decades of suppression (photo from 1950s: source).

A subjective indication of that exhaustion is the combination of nausea and boredom we feel in the face of yet another “abstract” or “informal” painting, or yet another rational and functional piece of architecture, even as painters and architects continue to recycle their tired utilitarian forms, unable to find a beautiful form for the “postmodern” breakthrough to which they pay lip service. Yet it was (in some disciplines at least) precisely the penetration of the true archaic layers of humanity that began to put us on the road to recovery, the road to rediscovering the primal sources of religion in awe, wonder, mystery, infinity, and the necessity of sacrifice, purification, and rituality. But our reformers have managed to make the archaic not a source of new life, but a stylized archaeological remnant of past (and sometimes imaginary) phases of Christianity.

Every human coexistence — except our own “mass” one — is the present emergence of a traditionary past. We begin to guess that the archaic removed from the living process of handing-down is nothing more than museum residue, enigmatic and dead. That is why what Christians were arguably doing in the year 300 is much less important than what they were doing, well or poorly, throughout all the modern centuries right into the decades before the Council. That continuity with a truly active tradition, whatever its flaws (and flaws are never absent in human endeavors), was and remains the most faithful channel for us to tap into the origin of our culture: the living Archaic that it preserves and passes on. There is more of the Church of the year 300 in the Tridentine Mass than there could ever be in the reformed one, in spite of this or that oration plucked from an old manuscript.

My hope is that one day the Catholic world will realize this, too. Contemporary forms that disgust us by their vacuity, artificiality, or arbitrariness indicate that we are beginning to miss Tradition, that we feel a terrible want, and that our modern formlessness is repellant, at least among those who have a sense of beauty left within. We are beginning, perhaps, to recover from our blindness.
 

From a midnight Mass in 2023, in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe: modern men gratefully participating in an age-old ritual.

As a number of authors have emphasized in recent years, it is the stubbornly unmodern character of the traditional Roman Rite that wins for it a uniquely potent place in the "marketplace of ideas" or, for that matter, the "marketplace of religious practices." It does not present itself as a product of our own technical skill, or an expression of our (purportedly) superior judgment as we gaze out over a past littered with discarded prejudices; it is not an appendage to any program, party, or philosophy. It is more like a literary tradition that grows over many centuries and retains a unity-in-diversity that is stronger than the various tendencies of all of its parts, and greater than any one participant in it.

This rite offers itself to us as a whole and complete body of rite, symbol, text, chant, and gesture that belongs to no one and opens itself to every one. This overwhelming trait makes it both deeply challenging (for it is vast and subtle) and serenely unthreatening (for it remains aloof, inevitable, and impersonal) — at least, to those who are serious about prayer.

Right the way it is and has been and will be.

St. John Henry Newman, the Traditionalist

This is the kind of atmosphere Newman associated with the Mass.
(The photo is recent — the New Evangelization banner gives it away —
but the feel is timeless, and not simply because the photo is monochrome.)

It is ironic, to say the least, that Cardinal Newman is so often hailed as “the theologian of the Second Vatican Council” or the great proponent of reforming trends within the contemporary Church, when — at least on matters concerning fundamental theology, Christian morality, and sacred liturgy — he argued strenuously and consistently throughout his career against rationalism, emotionalism, liberalism, and tinkeritis. In the realm of liturgy in particular, he was staunchly opposed to ritual modifications and modernizations designed to “meet people where they’re at” or to (as Paul VI put it in his April 3, 1969 Apostolic Constitution promulgating the Novus Ordo) “accommodate the mentality of today.”

Newman was not just anti-liberal (which he says expressly of himself); he was not just a Burkean conservative with a loathing for revolutionary schemes. He was what is now called a traditionalist in matters dogmatic and liturgical, one who would have lambasted the entire conciliar project, and certainly the liturgical reform carried out in its name, as misguided and doomed to failure. “What points in common are there between the easy religion of this day, and the religion of St. Athanasius, or St. Chrysostom? How do the two agree, except that the name of Christianity is given to both of them?” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, sermon 25, Feasting in Captivity).

In his Essay on the Development of Doctrine he claimed that the Fathers of the Church, were they to return to England in his day, would bypass the grand houses of worship owned by the Establishment and seek out a little Catholic chapel, in the liturgy of which they would be able to recognize the spirit and the reality of their own faith:

Did St. Athanasius or St. Ambrose come suddenly to life, it cannot be doubted what communion he would take to be his own. All surely will agree that these Fathers, with whatever opinions of their own, whatever protests, if we will, would find themselves more at home with such men as St. Bernard or St. Ignatius Loyola, or with the lonely priest in his lodging, or the holy sisterhood of mercy, or the unlettered crowd before the altar, than with the teachers or with the members of any other creed. And may we not add, that were those same Saints, who once sojourned, one in exile, one on embassy, at Treves, to come more northward still, and to travel until they reached another fair city, seated among groves, green meadows, and calm streams, the holy brothers would turn from many a high aisle and solemn cloister which they found there, and ask the way to some small chapel where Mass was said in the populous alley or forlorn suburb?

Is there any doubt, did Newman come suddenly to life in our midst, that he would (with consummate politeness and decorum, of course) ask the way to some small chapel where Mass was said as he knew it and said it, and where he would find himself at home?

Newman was, I maintain, a Catholic traditionalist avant la lettre. One can see this in so many writings from every period of his life, and of every genre, that it takes little more than opening pages at random to be able to start a fine personal collection of polished gems of perennial, hence anti-modernist, wisdom. (Next week, I will share an annotated florilegium of such texts.) Because the postconciliar “progressives” in the Church are accustomed to craft and lying, which is how they have obtained the mastery of all important positions right up to the top (for the devil is lavish with his own), Newman has been selectively misquoted and misrepresented as a friend of their cause, which has led to his falling under a cloud of suspicion in the minds of more conservative or traditional Catholics who do not know his work well. He has even been accused of being a modernist himself, although in fact one finds him expressly refuting the modernists, in many cases long before their ideas became fashionable and widespread.

Moreover, it is worthy of note that Newman has always been a favorite author for traditionalist writers. Michael Davies edited a volume of his sermons entitled Newman Against the Liberals; Arlington House publisher and conservative American littérateur Neil McCaffrey, founder of The Latin Mass magazine, quotes Newman frequently; and two of our most appreciated Catholic clergy who were former Anglicans, Fr. John Hunwicke and Fr. Richard Cipolla, are steeped in the thought and words of the great Cardinal.

Another recent photo, but it might as well be from 19th-century England.

Newman played a crucial role in my own intellectual and spiritual “conversion” to traditional Catholicism. In college, I got hold of the one-volume Ignatius Press edition of his Parochial and Plain Sermons and somehow persevered in reading the entire book, over 1,700 pages of glorious (Anglican!) preaching. It did not make me think of Anglicanism per se; it made me think: “So this is what serious, biblical, Patristic, earnest Christianity looks like! It’s not anything I ever saw in the Catholic Church growing up in suburban New Jersey.” That book was one among many influences (reading Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, were two more) that prompted me to search harder to find this Christianity, if possible. As we know, some people are led by that search to the Catholic Eastern rites or to Eastern Orthodoxy; others, myself in their number, are led to the full-blooded, 2,000-year old reality of Western or Latin Catholicism that finds its supreme exemplar in the Tridentine Roman Rite and the culture of faith and beauty that surrounds it, of which the postconciliar establishment has been like a photographic negative or an algebraic cancellation.

In the exploration of the tradition(s) of the Church, Newman has long been for me a compagnon de voyage. This fall, with all the buzz about the canonization, I decided to make a study of his writings on worship, reverence, and ritual. What I discovered amazed me anew with its richness, variety, and eloquence. In addition to a few passages already well-known to traditionalists — such as where he says that the Church never abolishes her traditional liturgical rites, but always carries them forward (tell that one to the Consilium!) — Newman has page after page on the beauty and solemnity of Holy Mass, the importance of its aesthetic and linguistic qualities, the spiritual fruitfulness of objective predetermined ceremonial, the ample room that exists within set forms for differences in individual devotional engagement, and similar themes, all of them current in the traditionalist movement.

I therefore decided to create and publish a collection of all of the best texts of this sort that I could find, and the book is now available (from different sources, depending on one’s location). Below are the cover, the description, and links:

DESCRIPTION: The life and thought of John Henry Newman were permeated with the ceremonies and hallowed texts of Christian liturgies, which he celebrated for over six decades, starting as an Anglican deacon in 1824 and ending as a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. It comes as no surprise that allusions to liturgical worship are ubiquitous in his writings. The “ordinances” of the Church, her rich panoply of rites handed down through the centuries, are, for Newman, doors or windows into the heavenly society for which we were created and to which God is calling us throughout our lives. As Newman says in a number of places, we are given our time on earth to begin to live, through personal prayer and corporate worship, the life of the blessed in heaven. This new book gathers over seventy texts from a large number and wide range of Newman’s writings in all periods of his career, including forty-four of his incomparably great sermons. That Newman deserves his reputation as one of the finest English writers and theologians of all time is abundantly demonstrated in these spirited and subtle reflections on the duty of reverence, the benefits of ritual, and the privilege of divine worship.

Those in Europe may order from Amazon:

• Amazon.co.uk
• Amazon.de
• Amazon.it
• Amazon.fr
• Amazon.es

Those in the USA may order from Lulu:



Here is the Table of Contents for those who wish to see what is included (the pages are cropped and combined for convenience):

May St. John Henry Newman, who gave us a marvelous example of seeking the light of truth wherever it leads and who persevered in ecclesial prayer with Mary the Mother of God and the Apostles, intercede for us on earth, as we strive to love that same truth and to restore the lost splendor of our divine worship.

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

Learning from the French Foreign Legion and the Story of Victor

In an article this past May, I suggested that the advice of an MIT professor on the need for a “new habit of mind” for modern Westerners fits surprisingly well with the habit of mind inculcated by participation in the traditional Latin liturgy.

Another article, of October 2018, looked at how the Marines recruit new members, and compared it with how the Church recruits seminarians. The Eastern Orthodox and the SSPX imitate the Marines’ appeal to challenge and radical self-donation, while the mainstream Catholics offer milquetoast vocational videos that would cause most straight young men with an ounce of idealism to wince.

I would like to offer another analogy from secular culture — this time, a video on the French Foreign Legion. The full video may be found here, but I am most interested in the closing 2-minute segment, which has been excerpted for this article. The clip concerns the crucial importance of time-honored rituals, “carved in stone” as it were, for maintaining the cohesion and integrity of the Legion. The ritual we see here is the receipt of the soldiers’ pay in their coveted kepis, which they drag with them all the way out to Afghanistan, for no other purpose but to carry out this ritual:

The commanding officer explains how such rituals bind Legionnaires together from all around the world. The minutely-prescribed choreography of the Legion’s rituals constitute a sort of common language, which they can all relate to, no matter what the member’s country of origin. (Sadly, the video cuts out just before the officer finishes his remarks.)

As I watched this, I was struck by the obvious parallel with the function of Latin in the traditional Mass, the value of the precise rubrics lovingly observed and cherished, and the ineffable importance of the full pleroma of accompanying rites and ceremonies and sacramentals. It isn’t just the meaning of the language or the “intellectual content.” It is the whole action as something to be performed, a thousand times always the same, and so deeply satisfying every time — a fixed star in the chaotic night of combat, to which eyes from all nations can turn. Doubtless, if Church officials had not stopped thinking of the Church on earth as the “Church Militant,” they would no sooner have abandoned her immemorial rituals and traditions than the French Foreign Legion would consider dropping its cherished customs.

When success really matters — as in, say, life-and-death situations — you stick with what has proven its worth. You do not change the slightest symbol. You don’t act like the Knights of Columbus, now completely altering their uniforms in an aggiornamento that has the membership divided. Those who love their identity love also the signs by which it is proclaimed, the rituals by which it is cemented.

The Knights of Columbus: their internal "Novus Ordo" moment

*          *          *

A friend sent me a video about Victor, a young man who grew up Russian Orthodox but converted to the Catholic Faith and was eventually ordained a priest. The video is in German, but those who don’t speak the language can still follow the beautiful videography and get a sense of what’s happening:

Victor’s first step was recognizing that the Catholic Church taught the truth and that he had to become Catholic. But when he saw the Novus Ordo liturgy he was confused by its worldliness, especially in contrast to the Orthodox liturgies he had known before. He was, in fact, utterly perplexed: how can the Church that teaches the truth worship in a manner so totally at odds with her doctrine? He might have remained frozen in this no man’s land had he not found the traditional Latin Mass through the SSPX.

Victor left his family and his fatherland to go to the seminary at Zaitzkofen in Germany. He was ordained according to the rite that developed without interruption from the time of the Apostles. In other words, he encountered a perfect unity between doctrine and symbol, idea and expression, truth and ritual.

How many other Victors are there who are kept from conversion, or from priesthood or religious life, or from a coherent and mature Catholicism, because of the jarring divorce of realities so obviously meant to be wedded and, in their wedlock, fruitful? “What God hath joined together, let no pope put asunder.”

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).