The Evangelizing Power of Solemn Liturgy: A Witness from Montreal in the 1920s

A postcard from 1907

Here at the New Liturgical Movement we frequently feature photographs of beautiful liturgies celebrated all around the world in a variety of rites. We have also published from time to time testimonies from converts who were drawn to the Faith (or reverts drawn back to it) by the beauty of liturgies they happened to attend — often enough, out of curiosity, or at the behest of a friend, or even somewhat by chance.

The other day I was desultorily scanning the shelves of a parish library and noticed a book whose title caught my attention: All or Nothing by Murray Ballantyne, published by Sheed & Ward in New York in 1956. I took it off the shelf and began to read it, finding in its pages a delightful and well-narrated story of the author’s conversion in 1933 from a generically Protestant background to Roman Catholicism. His vivid description of the superficial gaiety and literary sophistication of his circle of friends in the 1920s is valuable for those who are interested in a firsthand account of the interwar period.

Of particular interest to me, however, was Ballantyne’s description of a Christmas Midnight Mass he attended at Notre-Dame in Montreal in the late 1920s (he does not specify a year, but it has to be in 1927 or later). The whole passage is worth sharing, because it so strongly confirms the intuition at the heart of NLM’s work that authentic Catholic liturgy in its grandeur — and its strangeness — has a peculiar power to make an impression on the soul and to sow doubts about the self-assured security of a modern secularist worldview. Ballantyne’s thoughts on kneeling are especially relevant to our times.

The basilica at night

“TWO EVENTS pierced the glossy shell of this self-sufficient life and once again brought the thought of Catholicism to my mind. They were accidental and unrelated. The first was when I went to Midnight Mass with two undergraduate companions. The other was when I saw, in the New York Times Book Review section, a large advertisement for the latest essays of G.K. Chesterton, from which it appeared that he was not only an ardent Catholic but a convert as well. Seemingly unimportant as these happenings may appear, they nevertheless played a decisive part in what was to become my own conversion.

“The French-speaking Canadians have always celebrated Christmas enthusiastically. It is the custom among them for the whole family to go to Midnight Mass, and then to celebrate with a gay supper of traditional dishes. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve has at all times had its own magic. In the larger churches of Montreal the innate appeal of this beautiful and grace-laden service is heightened by superb music and decorations. When I was young, curious Protestants frequently went to these services as to a show. They were drawn not only by the glamour of age-old ceremonial, but also by the thrill that always attends ventures into strange lands.

“With enthusiasm, then, I accepted an invitation to go to Notre Dame one Christmas Eve…. All was still and hushed as we walked through the silent business district, but by the church on Place d’Armes all was life and movement. Although it was more than an hour before midnight, crowds were already streaming towards the portico under the two high towers… As we stood waiting in the snow, Notre Dame’s great bass bell, the thirteen-ton Gros Bourdon, began to toll, seeming almost to shake the tower with its clangorous vibrations.

“My emotions were intense as I stood there in the crowd, watching the snow falling soft and white, listening to the great bell sounding, and sensing the warmth and colour that awaited us within. It was Christmas Eve, and Christ was born, and there was joy to the world. In this stimulated and receptive condition, I was aware of a certain fitness. A long train of historical legitimacy joined me to the distant past, and carried me back beyond even the Reformers to an almost immemorial era. There has been a church on the spot where I stood for more than two hundred and fifty years, and the Faith that had built Montreal’s Notre Dame was the same that had built Europe’s cathedrals long before that. The Catholic Church had seen the founding of all our sects and all our institutions. This was the real, the genuine article. We might think her wrong, but no one could deny her continuity. It was living history that I was about to witness. I was about to see much that Charlemagne had seen on the fateful Christmas of the year 800, and even then the Church had been twice as old as the Protestant churches are now. The Catholic Church might be a relic, but at least she was venerable.

“We were swept in from the cool silence of the snow night to the warm, vivid, and ornate interior of ‘La Vieille Paroisse.’ As we stood in the throng, I noticed near me a bearded, roughly dressed Habitant [native resident of French descent]. Being unable to move farther into the church, he fell on his knees and began to pray. I was thunderstruck. In my Presbyterian experience we had not even knelt in our pews for fear of emotionalism and of papist superstition. My first reaction was one of embarrassment that the man should have made such a spectacle of what should have been his private devotions. Talking to God was something to be accomplished in a mumble, not something to be performed openly. Why make the melodramatic gesture of kneeling? Why indeed make any gesture at all?

“Immediately I had another reaction. This man clearly was neither theatrical nor making a gesture. He had come in all simplicity to adore his God. To him, if he had given us a thought, we were merely others who had come for the same purpose. He had simplicity, and we had not. And then I saw that if a man believed in God it was right and fitting that he should worship Him and that the should kneel in His temple. This, and not the restrained self-consciousness of the Puritans, was the proper behaviour. The concept of God was immense and overwhelming. If God existed — staggering thought — then this was the normal and the right reaction. If one came consciously to worship Him, if one entered His very presence, then one should kneel, yes, even prostrate oneself as did the ancient Jews. If one believed in God, it would be absurd to be held back from worshipping Him by the presence of other mortals. If people really believed, this was the way I would expect them to behave.

“By a stroke of luck, we found balcony seats in that vast throng, and my first Mass began. I was fascinated by the seemingly weird and incomprehensible ceremonial that unfolded before me. Nothing in all my life had prepared me for the gilt-encrusted vestments, the incense, the strange chanting, or the inexplicable comings and goings. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was all about. Here was something totally unlike the ‘meeting-house’ service of my childhood. I felt as a child might at his first circus. And yet with it all there was not only the glorious music, but also the feeling that somehow a valid religious experience was taking place. There was a rapt silence, a profound devotion, a spirit of worship that was an unmistakable as it was inexplicable. Worship, adoration, thanksgiving, joy were in the very air. Something was happening. And so I came away from my first Mass puzzled, intrigued, and enchanted by the strange beauty of a rare event.” (pp. 52–56)

Murray Ballantyne (photo source)

Ballantyne then talks about how the thought of Chesterton’s conversion bothered him, because he had assumed that only a poorly educated and somewhat superstitious person could be a Catholic, but here was a highly intelligent and spirited man boldly defending the Faith against all comers. He bought the book of essays by GKC, and this began to provide an intellectual counterpart to the spiritual and aesthetic intuitions he had had at Midnight Mass. Later in the book, Ballantyne offers a fine defense of “incarnational” Catholic sacramental worship and of adherence to tradition.
 

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

Progressive Solemnity: Traditional Interpretations and Methods

Solemn Mass: the ancient norm and exemplar of the Roman Rite

In the world of the reformed liturgy, one encounters a concept of “progressive solemnity” that has little to do with the Latin liturgical tradition. Basically, the idea is this: start with a spoken Mass as your baseline, and then add things on to it ad libitum: for an ordinary day, sing the “presidential” parts; on a feast, add the propers; on a very special day, bring on the incense and chant the Introit, etc.

In practice, at least in my experience, it ends up being a random series of steps: on weekdays we sing the Alleluia but nothing else; on feasts, we sing the Gloria and the Alleluia; on Sundays we do the four-hymn sandwich and the celebrant sings his parts. Since there is much confusion about what rubrics, if any, govern these sorts of decisions, just about any mix-n-match combination can happen. [1]

With the traditional Roman rite, this confusion is simply not possible: a Mass is either a Low Mass or a Missa cantata or a Missa solemnis, etc., and each has strict requirements about what is to be sung (or not sung). As a result, followers of the traditional rite tend to use the forms of Mass as a way of distinguishing calendrical solemnity: ferias or low-ranking feasts will be Low Masses; high-ranking feasts are Missae Cantatae; Sundays and Holy Days are Solemn High Masses; and, on the most special occasions, a bishop may be invited in for a Pontifical High Mass.

While this is understandable for practical reasons (bishops are not commonly available to pontificate, and even a deacon and subdeacon can be hard to come by), we should recognize that it is not the primary way in which the liturgical tradition of the Church distinguishes degrees of solemnity. In a church sufficiently well equipped with ministers, such as a monastic community or a cathedral with canons, the liturgy will be sung every day; it could be solemn every day. The normative — in the sense of fundamental and exemplary — form of liturgy will always be the chanted rite in the presence of the bishop or abbot, or the nearest thing to it, the Missa solemnis.

On one of my visits to the Benedictine monastery of Norcia, I remember how beautiful it was to attend several solemn Masses in a week. It showed me that this can indeed be a norm rather than an exception. Moreover, since they were so skilled in the liturgy and the chant, and there was no homily, solemn Mass took less than an hour. Each day nevertheless had a distinctive feel to it because of the intelligent use of a plethora of other marks for distinguishing levels of feasts that Catholic tradition has developed over the centuries. In other words, taking the solemn form as normative does not mean placing everything at the same level of solemnity. The solemnity is distinguished rather by the accidents, the manner or mode in which the elements of the liturgy are configured.

Gradations in Gregorian Chant

While every liturgy should ideally be chanted, there are notable distinctions within the repertoire of chant itself. Fr. Dominique Delalande, O.P., observes:

It is too obvious to be denied that a celebration sung in the Gregorian manner is more solemn than a celebration which is merely recited; but this statement is especially true in the modern perspective of a celebration which is habitually recited. The ancients had provided melodies for the most modest celebrations of the liturgical year, and these melodies were no less carefully worked out than those of the great feasts. For them the chant was, before all else, a means of giving to liturgical prayer a fullness of religious and contemplative value, whatever might be the solemnity of the day. Such should also be our sole preoccupation in singing. As long as people look upon the Gregorian chant solely as a means of solemnising the celebration, there will be the danger of making it deviate from its true path, which is more interior. [2]

Put differently, Fr. Delalande is saying that the chant is integral to the expression of the liturgy, not a mere ornament tacked on, like a bow on a Christmas present, and that we do well to utilize the different spheres of chant rather than merely toggling back and forth between recited and sung.

Ordinary. For example, the Mass Ordinary given in the Liber Usualis for ferias is short and simple, while the Ordinaries suggested for Solemn Feasts (Mass II, Kyrie fons bonitatis, or Mass III, Kyrie Deus sempiterne) are melodically elaborate and grand in scope. Five Ordinaries (III–VIII), of varying complexity and length, are suggested for Doubles. Simpler feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, e.g., the Holy Name on September 12, might use Ordinary X, while loftier feasts such as the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption could use the great Mass IX, Cum jubilo.

Creed. Similarly, the Liber makes available six settings of the Creed (and still others are in circulation), which vary considerably in their ornateness or “tonality.” Once again, the choice of a Creed melody can reflect something of the nature of the feast or occasion.

Preface. The missal offers three tones for the Prefaces: simple, solemn, and more solemn (solemnior). For a ferial Mass, a Requiem, or a lesser feast, the simple tone should be used; for a higher-ranking feast, such as that of an apostle or doctor, the solemn tone could be used; for the highest feasts, such as Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception, or the Assumption, the more solemn tone would be highly appropriate. (In some versions of the anecdote, Mozart is said to have claimed that he would gladly exchange all his music for the fame of having composed the Preface tone. If he said this, he would doubtless have been thinking of the more solemn tone, which is indeed of rare beauty.)

Propers. The Proper chants should be sung in full in any case, but for a special occasion with incense and more ceremonial, a verse from the Offertoriale Triplex might be used, and at Communion time, verses and a doxology to go with the antiphon.

Beyond the chant, there are other obvious and subtle ways to elevate or lower the solemnity of a particular day on the calendar, so that ferias do not seem the equal of feasts of saints, and feasts of saints the equal of feasts of Our Lady, and these, in turn, those of Our Lord. It is true that many of the following presuppose a well-stocked sacristy the contents of which have been assembled over a period of time by people with good taste who understand that there is a symbolic value in having more than one kind of any given item.

In the Realm of Sight 

Since, as Aristotle says, the sense of sight is the one that gives us the most information about things, it is not surprising that the largest number of modes for signaling solemnity pertain to the visual domain.

(Photo courtesy of Liturgical Arts Journal)

1. Copes, chasubles, dalmatics, tunicles. It is obvious that plainer vestments should be used for ferias, more decorative ones for feasts, and over-the-top ones for solemnities. There are churches that have special sets used only at Christmas and/or Easter, or for a patronal feastday, etc.

2. Other vestments. For a feria, the alb can be plain; for a feast, it can be patterned; for a solemnity, with lacework. When worn with a Roman chasuble, the design of the alb becomes an important aesthetic element in itself. Similarly, the surplices of acolytes can be plain white or with worked bordered; the cassocks can be black throughout the year but red for Christmastide and Paschaltide.

3. Chalice, paten, and other vessels. It is obvious that these can be of simple or ornate design; in gold or silver or a combination thereof; with or without stones; taller or more squat, Romanesque, Gothic, or Baroque; engraved or plain; etc. This is one detail that is particularly noticed by the faithful, because of the custom of gazing upon the chalice as it is elevated and praying: “My Lord and my God!”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Solemn Music for a Wedding

Probably more than a few of our readers have experienced an important life event like a wedding or an ordination which, if not ruined, was at least diminished by bad music in the liturgy. I recently received notice about the following blog, Sed Una Caro, which documents the wedding in July of Alexander Ruder and Esther Kim at the church of St John the Evangelist in Lambertville, New Jersey. The couple put a great deal of thought into their wedding ceremony, as most couples do, but with particular and serious attention to the program of music to be used at the liturgy. The wedding was celebrated in the OF, with the chant Mass De Angelis, and a number of pieces by Mozart, Bach and Monteverdi, and some very good organ music. As one might imagine, it was well received by the guests, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. The whole set of musical pieces is linked on the blog; here is just one selection, Mozart’s Laudate Dominum from the Solemn Vespers of a Confessor sung at the bride’s entrance.

The church was also renovated recently, with the walls of the sanctuary redecorated, and a new organ installed, as documented on this page.

The front page of the wedding program includes an image by well-known Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui.

Congratulations to Alexander and Esther, and our thanks to them for sharing the images and sounds of their wedding, which they have done in the hopes of inspiring other Catholic couples in arranging theirs.

What Do “the People in the Pews” Deserve?: On the Right of the Faithful to Integrally Catholic Worship

In 2004, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments published the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, “On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist.” It makes for melancholy reading, given that this Instruction, like so many other damage-control documents, was summarily ignored by the liturgical establishment and most diocesan chanceries. In 2005 a friend of mine called her diocese one day to complain about an outrageous liturgical abuse and mentioned that Redemptionis Sacramentum had specifically declared it outlawed. The person on the other end, an officer of the chancery, said she’d never heard of it, but she would ask around to see if they had a copy. Some time later she came back and said: “No, no one here has heard of that document. Maybe you could send us a letter with your question?”

But I digress. Here is one of my favorite passages from Redemptionis Sacramentum:

Arbitrary actions [in the liturgy] are not conducive to true renewal, but are detrimental to the right of Christ’s faithful to a liturgical celebration that is an expression of the Church’s life in accordance with her tradition and discipline. … It is the right of all of Christ’s faithful that the liturgy, and in particular the celebration of Holy Mass, should truly be as the Church wishes, according to her stipulations as prescribed in the liturgical books and in the other laws and norms. Likewise, the Catholic people have the right that the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass should be celebrated for them in an integral manner, according to the entire doctrine of the Church’s Magisterium. Finally, it is the Catholic community’s right that the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist should be carried out for it in such a manner that it truly stands out as a sacrament of unity, to the exclusion of all blemishes and actions that might engender divisions and factions in the Church. (nn. 11-12) 

The document refers several times to the Church’s “patrimony” and “heritage,” which are to be preserved. I was thinking of all this recently in connection with a poignant quotation from an article by David Warren:

Through the centuries, and even to the present day, the faith of the Church has been communicated by music, as much as by words; the very Word, through the Church, embodied in music. … The Mass in its nature is sung, chanted; and the innumerable musical settings of the Mass are intrinsic to its meaning, to its universality, to the dimensionality: it is not “just words.” … I am convinced that the recovery of the musical traditions, within Holy Church, can do more to evangelize than any quarrelling with the world. For what we must do is not argue, but proclaim; and music in its nature does not argue. It proclaims.[1]

The traditional sacred music of the Church is part, and not a small part, of that patrimony and heritage that simply ARE Catholic and MAKE US more thoroughly Catholic when we embrace them for the God-given gifts they are. Redemptionis Sacramentum lays it out quite clearly: Catholics have a right to the sacred music of the Church as defined by the Magisterium of the Church, and pastors have a duty to provide it for our spiritual benefit.[2] Not to provide it would constitute a kind of liturgical abuse; not to seek it would amount to a form of acedia or spiritual laziness.[3] To love it would be the humility of the disciple; to be offended by it, the pride of autonomy, a non serviam. To sing it with gratitude would be one way of proclaiming the Good News to a world enveloped in warped or bad news.

Still, we all know that there are people who, for reasons great and small, despise sacred music and all sorts of other things that fall into the category of “patrimony” or “heritage.” What do we say about them? Should we make room for them and their latest version of worship, accommodate their views, cater to their tastes? Should there be a “Mass slot” for their sentiments and shenanigans?

This is where some tough love is in order, if we actually wish to be charitable. It can happen that people are looking for the wrong thing — and it’s not the Church’s job to give them the wrong thing, but to show them what is better. To Americans this sounds elitist, but it’s always been the way: to show a higher path, to live it as well as we can, and to beg the Lord to move people to follow. We do a disservice to evangelization when we entice people into the Church for the wrong reasons or with means that are non-catholic or even anti-catholic.[4] By consistently offering the divine liturgy and its sacred music in their better (i.e., more traditional) forms, and doing so without cultural apologies or the security valve of postmodern pluralism, we honor the great holiness of the inherited liturgy and we give good service to evangelization, which must be founded on the fact of having received something worthwhile to hand on.

Returning to the pastoral question, to what extent should we “make room” for that which is less good, less worthy of the liturgy (such as poor quality music), in order to avoid offense or exclusion? It seems to me obvious that one has to take an incremental approach wherever there has been, for 50 years or more, a smorgasbord or secularized approach. One shouldn’t expect to change everything overnight or attempt to do so, because one will lose not only those who are ill-disposed to any change, but also those who might come around given a little time and some experience of the beautiful. To avoid meandering and losing momentum, however, one must always preserve a single sovereign goal: feeding the faithful with the best of our Catholic tradition, which is what the people in the pews need and deserve, and what the clergy owe them. It is an act of love and respect to share our riches and not to hide them under a bushel basket; it is an act of obedience to submit to the given liturgical forms (e.g., the use of the Propers of the Mass, Gregorian chant, Latin, and the other things Vatican II called for) rather than randomizing or customizing them.

The liturgy is given to us as something objective, formal, public, and traditional — and we have terribly lost sight of that in the past fifty years, as we rushed to make it subjectively appealing, informal so as not to scare away the half-hearted, privatized in accordance with our social sectors, and full of novelties to win over the progressive, the bored, or the curious. It has all been a resounding failure, leaving us divided, scattered, and bleeding to death. We have learned, or we should have learned by now, that trying to figure out what “modern man” needs and then custom-fitting everything to that is certainly not going to work. What modern man needs is what man, as such, has always needed and will always need: worship in spirit and in truth, aided by the sensible elements of the liturgy, in continuity with apostolic tradition. Anything less than that leaves us prisoners to ourselves and our age; anything less is a form of abuse, open or subtle. Good liturgy is demanding because anything fine, noble, great, and transcendent is demanding.

Besides that, the liturgy cannot be expected to perform every job. We need social events, social outreach, catechesis, apologetics — and, most basic of all, the witness of good Christian lives. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in particular, is a very specific thing in the life of the Church, and it was never intended to be all things to all people. It breaks under that kind of impossible weight. The Mass will come to life again, and we will come to life through it, if we can just let it be itself — if we let the Mass be simply and totally the sacrifice of Calvary, nothing else, with all that is proper to it, and nothing that is foreign to it. It cannot be the youth rally, the senior club, the show of Padre Centro d’Attenzione, the Buddhist-Bauhaus zone of emptiness, or the Billy Graham Bible Study. Give it back its music, its ritual fabric, its tapestry of solemn, sung, and silent prayer handed down in hallowed forms, its gaze riveted on the bloody Tree of Paradise, and it will become once again the hidden font of torrents of grace.

Meanwhile, we poor servants of the mystery should not reproach ourselves about offering the liturgy as beautifully and worthily and reverently as we can, even if, by doing so, we lose some of our congregation. When Jesus preached the doctrine of feasting on His Eucharistic flesh and blood, He lost some disciples, too — or rather He allowed them to go away. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has ever been and will ever be a scandal to certain individuals, and this “scandal of the particular” includes all of its particularities: the fixed rites, the content of the prayers, the hieratic garments and gestures, the visible hierarchy of male ministries, the traditional music that is part and parcel of the liturgy, the ascetical demands placed on the faithful by the rites or their surrounding laws. These and all such things are or can become offensive to the fallen human mind with its resistance to the obedience of faith and the discipline of mysteries. What we must be thinking, instead, is that by God’s grace, which we must always implore, the human mind can be opened to faith and mystery, and once open, can be filled with holiness and grow into connaturality with the good, the true, and the beautiful.

The measure of our love for our neighbor is how willing we are to share with him what is best — not the mediocre, the bland, the banal, the has-been, the latest fad, or the good enough, but the best. The measure of a pastor’s love will be how eagerly he takes pains to learn what is truly best, to introduce and foster it in his community, and to make it prevail over false progress, grim habit, and tired indifference. This is no time for likes and dislikes; it is a time for love and hatred — love of the sinner and his genuine good, hatred of sin and all obstacles to transformation in Christ.


NOTES

[1] David Warren, "Oh Had I Jubal's Lyre."

[2] As the hypothetical bishop in last week's "A Blueprint for Parish Musical Reform" noted, Redemptionis Sacramentum explicitly states: “It is the right of the community of Christ’s faithful that especially in the Sunday celebration there should customarily be true and suitable sacred music” (n. 57).

[3] On this matter of acedia, see Mark Nowakowski's review of an exceptionally fine book that has recently appeared on the subject.

[4] Not that our efforts in recent decades have been especially successful in attracting or retaining members.

Is Lack of Solemnity a Cause or a Symptom of Our Problems?

The Ordinary Form at the Sacred Music Colloquium

The first chapter in my recently-published book is entitled “Solemnity: The Crux of the Matter.” Part of my argument therein is that when the liturgy is not celebrated “with due solemnity,” as St. Thomas would say, it falls short of its very essence as our participation in the heavenly liturgy, it grows slack in its power to sanctify us by forming our minds and hearts, and it fails to give to Almighty God the full measure of glory He ought to receive from His creatures. Thus, a failure to cultivate appropriately solemn liturgy causes the Mass, as well as the Divine Office (really, in either form of the Roman Rite), to become problematic, to be a cause of problems in the life of the Church and of the Christian.

When this essay first appeared in The Latin Mass back in 2008, a reader at the time submitted the following critique:

Lack of solemnity isn’t the cause of the problem with the Mass. It is a symptom of the problem with the Mass. Kwasniewski lays out the alternatives well enough: either a “fault endemic to the Ordinary Form of the Roman rite of the Mass, that which follows the Missal of Paul VI”, or a “problem with the people and their shepherds.” He wastes little time deciding on the latter.
          But not so fast. I cannot bring myself to believe that the problem is that for the past forty years we have been failing miserably the lofty standards set for us by Annibale Bugnini and his Mighty Fifteen. Kwasniewski is not saying that either, of course, but he is hewing to a course that leads us in that direction.
          Briefly, human behavior does not change in a vacuum. Devotion to liturgy does not evaporate unless the liturgy has itself evaporated, or at least become so eviscerated that people no longer know what constitutes proper response.
          The joy joy joy of participation theme comes right from Vatican II and its aftermath. It is most definitely NOT merely a failing of random weakly-trained priests, bishops, and laity. Joy and solemnity are note antipodes, as some seem to think, but neither are they compatible in any obvious way. We were exhorted to joyous participation, and we responded with pleasantry, diffidence, and informality—they call that being “welcoming.”
          Unsolemnity grew naturally and inevitably from the lack of rubric, lack of a sense of the need for discipline, and the proliferation of one “option” after another. Don’t like chant? Howzabout a little strummin’ for Jesus? This gospel passage a little strong for you? Bracket it and omit it. Don’t like this canon? Too long? Too many saints’ names? No prob — try this one, or this one — or do what 99.9% of American priests do: stick with the real short one. Reception on the tongue a bit yucky? Take it in the hand. Want a little wine with that?
          What you end up with is not a liturgy, but an anti-liturgy. That is, a “liturgy” which destroys itself by allowing so many options and so much innovation that there is little left to be solemn about.
          In other words, to a large extent Professor Kwasniewski has put the cart before the horse. It is the Novus Ordo liturgy and its lack of rubric that invites bad behavior, much more than it is bad behavior which spoils good liturgy. A solemn, “proper” Novus Ordo is, at best, a cosmetic solution to a much more serious problem.

I sympathize with what this writer is saying; so much of it is obviously true. Indeed, I had once thought that it was going to be easier to apply the hermeneutic of continuity to the Ordinary Form than it has proved to be, for the simple reason that there are as many versions of the modern Roman liturgy as there are dioceses, religious orders, and priests who use it, and almost no one agrees about anything definite. Inculturation has led to babelization. Catholic clergy, religious, and laity who have gratefully embraced Benedict XVI’s vision of a Reform of the Reform have not yet been able to prevail over institutionalized mediocrity and the inertia of bad habit. While there is no question that the Benedictine renewal is here to stay, especially among younger clergy, we cannot kid ourselves: the revival of an authentic liturgical spirit and the defeat of the malleable modernist model of the Mass is going to be a long drawn-out war, like the trench warfare of World War I.

One point on which I wholeheartedly agree with my critic is when he says: “Unsolemnity grew naturally and inevitably from the lack of rubric, lack of a sense of the need for discipline, and the proliferation of one ‘option’ after another.” Only a priest classically trained, with deep religious sensibilities, would be able to approach a liturgy so formless, so laden with options, and manage to celebrate it with solemnity — or let us say, invest that ritual with the solemnity that the Mass ought to have, patterning his ars celebrandi after the pre-rupture paradigm.

The Novus Ordo does not require solemnity, it merely permits it. For example, the Propers of the Mass are not required but permitted; traditional sacred music is not required but permitted; worship facing eastwards, the stance of nearly 2,000 years of Christian worship, is not required but permitted (although seldom seen); communion on the tongue, kneeling, is not required but permitted; and so forth. In general, continuity with the great tradition of Catholic worship is theoretically permissible, but almost never mandated — and rarely witnessed on the ground. To paraphrase Martin Mosebach, the problem with the new liturgy is that it may be celebrated reverently. (There’s more to that statement than meets the eye...)

The revolutionary change in the liturgy in 1969/1970, no matter what one thinks of its particulars, gave a lot of people the carte-blanche excuse they were apparently waiting for (or, in some cases, not waiting for as they rushed ahead with unauthoriazed experiments): now everything is up for grabs and we can do whatever we want with the liturgy. This, surely, is contrary to the very idea of a Missal or of rubrics at all. In a healthier period not so hell-bent on self-destruction, among clergy still animated with the fear of the Lord, the Novus Ordo Missae, for all its admitted faults, could have been the point of departure for dependably reverent celebrations, as can actually be seen in such rare groups as the Community of St. Martin, the Oratorians, or the Church Music Association of America. One might perhaps say that if you do not bring to the Novus Ordo Missae the spirit of reverence (presumably developed elsewhere, e.g., from the usus antiquior or from private devotions faithfully practiced), you will not find that spirit in its slim modern profile and minimalist requirements.

It would certainly be mistaken, however, to claim that the “joy joy joy of participation theme” comes from Vatican II. Rather, Vatican II was content to transmit the emphasis on active participation (participatio actuosa) that one finds in the exhortations of St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, themselves echoing the original Liturgical Movement’s earnest desire to have the people take rightful possession of the liturgy inasmuch as it pertains to them — following the prayers of the liturgy with understanding, chanting the responses and the Ordinary of the Mass, joining in public Vespers, and so forth. Having seen that the liturgy had become the specialized province of the clergy, Holy Mother Church rightly wished to remind the laity that the liturgy is theirs as well, the most sublime, pleasing, and sanctifying prayer for all Christians.

But this preconciliar program was premised on a fundamental truth: the liturgy is a gift to us from God through the generations that have preceded us, one that we must gratefully receive and enter into more and more fully. Participation thus meant entering into something already present in our midst, prior to our cogitation and volition; a transmitted body of symbols, cross-textured with words, melodies, gestures, actions, endowed with supernatural vitality and inexhaustible richness. It most definitely could not mean that we fashion something ourselves which, being in some way the image of our own mentality and our own age, we then “participate in,” as we create athletic games or board games that we then throw ourselves into.

The radical distortion of the concept of active participation is only slightly visible in Sacrosanctum Concilium, in the overemphasis on having people DO-SAY-SING stuff, as if this were always necessary at every step or as if, in and of itself, it guarantees true immersion in the liturgical act. Nevertheless, in most respects — including its insistence that participation is first interior before it is exterior and that the entire success of liturgical renewal depends on sound formation — this document is in continuity with the better tendencies of the Church-approved Liturgical Movement.

To return, then, to my critic, here is my agreement and my disagreement. The Novus Ordo is partly, but not exclusively, responsible for the loss of solemnity, and there is plenty of work that we can and should do, in regard to both forms of the Roman Rite, to intensify and elevate the solemnity of our liturgical celebrations. The ultimate solution, if we’re talking about a “Reform of the Reform,” can only be a Missal that is in deep and manifest continuity with the classical Roman rite. Indeed, as is generally acknowledged, even the Missal of 1962, as excellent as it is, already embodies the massive rupture of the post-1948 Holy Week ceremonies. Perhaps the distant path to liturgical peace and coherence will go by way of the 1962 Missal as the base text, with a restored pre-1948 Holy Week, and a few additional Prefaces, votive Masses, and saints’ feasts, so that the Missal is both up to date and manifestly Roman.

Ah, but now we are daydreaming. Our immediate work is somehow both simpler and more demanding: to offer the Sacrifice of Praise in both forms of the Roman Rite, as they now exist, with as much solemnity as possible, according to our circumstances, in continuity with the best of our tradition. Surely, in whatever capacity we serve our Lord, we may consciously strive, in all the ways at our disposal, for the “due solemnity” that befits the celebration of the Church’s sacraments and liturgies. Nothing less is worthy of our King to receive, nothing less is fitting for man to give.