Consecrated Buildings and Their Officially Sponsored Profanation

The back of the monastery chapel in Norcia

The Rule of St. Benedict has as one of its many virtues the ability to capture an entire vision of things in one lapidary phrase. There is not a single wasted word; what Benedict means to say, he says with vigor, brevity, and clarity. A splendid example is chapter 52, “Of the Oratory of the Monastery,” where the Patriarch writes:

Let the oratory be what its name implies, and let nothing else be done or kept there. When the Work of God is finished, let all go out in deep silence, and let reverence for God be observed, so that any brother who may wish to pray privately be not hindered by another’s misbehavior. And at other times also, if anyone wish to pray secretly, let him just go in and pray: not in a loud voice, but with tears and fervor of heart. He, therefore, who does not behave so, shall not be permitted to remain in the oratory when the Work of God is ended, lest he should, as we have said, be a hindrance to another. [1]

I have often wished that this text would be carved into wood or stone and mounted at the door of every Catholic church throughout the world, printed in every bulletin, and preached from every pulpit, with such unfailing regularity that the pervasive anteliturgical and postliturgical chitchat by which the reverent silence of the temple of God is globally snatched away Sunday after Sunday might begin to be suppressed and reduced to naught. I don’t know if it would work, but I’ve often wondered why so few pastors ever make the attempt to restore “deep silence” to our churches. It may have to do with a sinking feeling that the good habits of preconciliar days are gone forever and will not return among the cellphone barbarians in the pews; it may have to do with a simple loss of belief in the church as a sacred place. Considering that many suburban churches fall somewhere along the spectrum between a Jet Propulson Laboratory and a beige-carpeted athletics facility, it may not be surprising that the sense of sacrality is absent, even eradicated.

Earlier in the Rule, in chapter 19, “On the Discipline of Psalmody,” St. Benedict bears witness to the dignity of the church and of the opus Dei that takes place in it, deducing thence what our inner and outer attitudes should be:

We believe that God is present everywhere and that the eyes of the Lord in every place behold the good and the evil (Prov. 15, 3); but let us especially believe this without any doubting when we are performing the Divine Office. Therefore, let us ever remember the words of the prophet: Serve ye the Lord in fear (Ps. 2, 11); and again, Sing ye wisely (Ps. 46, 8); and, In the sight of the angels will I sing to thee (Ps. 137, 2). Let us then consider how we ought to behave ourselves in the presence of God and his angels, and so sing the psalms that mind and voice may be in harmony. [2] 

This text helps us to grasp two lessons: the sacred liturgy is the time when, by God’s own design and good pleasure, we are most of all held to be standing in His divine Presence, yielding up our minds and hearts to Him; and the oratory or church in which we are doing this “Work of God” is a place like no other, a place consecrated for the sole purpose of worshiping God. In a well-known passage, Augustus Welby Pugin conveys this point with Victorian lavishness:

[The church] is, indeed, a sacred place; the modulated light, the gleaming tapers, the tombs of the faithful, the various altars, the venerable images of the just, — all conspire to fill the mind with veneration, and to impress it with the sublimity of Christian worship. And when the deep intonations of the bells from the lofty campaniles, which summon the people to the house of prayer, have ceased, and the solemn chant of the choir swells through the vast edifice — cold, indeed, must be the heart of that man who does not cry out with the Psalmist, Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae, et locum habitationis gloriae tuae. [3]

Drawing on the insights of Benedict and Pugin, we might state this principle: The church building is the most sacred space we have; as a result, it is there that we will learn — or not learn — the meaning of the very distinction between sacred and profane. If there is not a strong sense, upon entering a church, of passing from one domain to another, of leaving the world (to some extent) and entering a different realm, of going from an earth-bound atmosphere in which we are at ease to a celestial temple that calls forth reverential fear, I am afraid there will usually be nothing else that offers an equally powerful communication of the distinction. There are, to be sure, other ways to evoke the distinction, such as the sound of Gregorian chant even in a Mass celebrated outdoors or in a humble tent; but the sacred space, the “oratory,” is normally the most obvious, impressive, durable, stable, all-encompassing sign of the sacred that we have. It either says to you: “This is God’s house, where you will meet Him in a special way — tread quietly, watch and pray”; or it says “This is just a building, where you can amble around, talk, text, take selfies, joke, sleep, or eat a snack.”

Selfie in a church

Eminent liturgical theologian Msgr. Nicola Bux writes in his book No Trifling Matter: Taking the Sacraments Seriously Again (a book I highly recommend):

Jacob understood, once awakened from sleep: “Indeed, the Lord is in this place.” He became conscious of the fact, he was afraid, and said: “How awe-inspiring is this place! This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.” [4] The divine presence pushes the patriarch to fashion the stone, on which he had slept and received the dream, into a stele, the primitive altar, and to anoint it on top. We would say: to consecrate it. God, in fact, had established his abode, his house; for this reason he changed the name and called that place Bethel, in Hebrew, house of God. That stone founded the house of God.
          Consecration renders the Lord always present in a place made by human hands, and increases reverent fear and devotion for the abode and house of God. Consecration changes the designated use of the place: it cannot be used for profane purposes.
          But unfortunately today things are not always like that! And so God leaves us, is not with us, does not protect and accompany us in the journey of life, does not feed us, does not make us return safe and sound to our home. [5]

Later on, Bux speaks at greater length of the grave significance of the consecration of a church — something that changes it objectively and permanently. His words are worth quoting in full:

Though much emphasized as regards the effects and the changes it calls forth in the place that has been chosen for the purpose, the dedication of a building to Christian worship is very quickly forgotten these days: in fact, one is frequently present at the profanation of everything that was offered to the Lord with such a rite. …
          In the Ordinary Form of 1977, the Mass of dedication underlines the will of the ecclesial community to dedicate the new building to divine worship, in an exclusive and perpetual way. In particular, the presence of the sacrament and the altar do not permit any other use; in fact they are there to recall to us that the church is the sign of the heavenly sanctuary where Jesus Christ has penetrated, in order to appear before the sight of God on our behalf (Heb. 9, 24).
          Liturgists would say that for the sake of the truth of the sign, a church cannot be employed for purposes other than worship, on pain of gravely offending the Lord to whom it has been offered. Besides, its dedication is rightly commemorated every year on the anniversary day, especially within the church that was consecrated. It is therefore a grave error that, in practice, the consecration we have just described is emptied of meaning in our day by the actions of priests themselves, with the holding of events incompatible with the sacred place: concerts, performances, ballets, meetings of every type, which at one time were done outside or “in front of the temple,” as the Latin word pro-fanum recalls; the phenomenon of using churches for concerts of not only sacred but also profane music seems unstoppable. Acts that are not sacred, and normally done elsewhere, bring with them a profanation of the church. …
          Welcome cannot be given to profane actions of this type, or to any others, in the place where the divine mysteries are celebrated. How is it possible that bishops and priests have forgotten that such a place as that, so often built with sacrifice by the faithful, has been “dedicated” — a word that recalls the act with which something very personal is offered to someone who is loved. To dedicate something means that it is no longer mine, but his. If I were to take it back, that would be a betrayal. It is a grave matter, because we take from God that which is his, what we ourselves had sworn we would give him. The rite itself of dedication shows that it is a kind of oath or vow, that is, a sacred act. What need is there for such solemnity, if afterwards the sacred place is employed for profane uses?
          Liturgists exalt the rite of dedication, but in contradiction with that, they go silent and speak not a word in the face of the transformation of churches into multi-purpose halls. This is worse than what was done by totalitarian atheist regimes, which had transformed these places into theaters, gymnasiums, and stores. It is a very serious phenomenon, because it means, first, that the sense of the church as a place offered to God, for the worship owed him, has been lost; we have consecrated something, and then we take it back in order to do purely human things there. In the second place, we favor in this way the eclipse of the divine presence, because in the church we practice activities proper to a theater or an auditorium, such as speaking, eating, applauding, and other attitudes typical of places of entertainment. When a church becomes a theater where people laugh, applaud, and shout, it then becomes difficult to demand, for the same place, the proper attitudes for worship: listening, recollection, silence, adoration, because the conviction that one is standing in a versatile locale has taken root. That conviction leads to obscuring the principal and characteristic function of a church, which is adoration, and to prohibiting kneeling for prayer, either when the liturgy is being celebrated in the church, or outside the liturgy. But in reality, the church remains a place of presence and prayer, and of silence, even when there is no liturgy being celebrated. [6]

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Doctrinal Foundations of All-Male Sanctuary Service and the Problem with Ignoring Them

In the Temple of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies was a place solemnly set apart, separated from the rest of the temple and its surrounding courtyards, on account of the mystery contained within it: the presence of God above the mercy seat, in the midst of the physical reminder of the covenant in blood. Out of fear and reverence for the Lord, lay men and women, lower ranks of priests and Levites, would not dare to enter the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter, under precise conditions, ready to offer to the Lord his own prayers and the prayers of all the people.

Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, has pierced the veil and entered into the true tabernacle not made with human hands, preparing for us a way to follow Him into beatitude — even preparing for us, in this mortal life, a mystical banquet of His precious Body and Blood, so that we may be made sharers of the food of immortality. Yet, for all this intimacy of communion, He remains no less the Sovereign High Priest, crowned with glory, and we are no less His lowly servants in via. As we walk in pilgrimage towards the heavenly temple, there is still the distinction in kind between sacred and profane, baptized and unbaptized, the holy and the sinful, as well as the distinction of offices between ministers and laymen.

Far from being cut off from its ancient roots, worship in the New Covenant retains the spirit of chaste fear before the Lord, the awareness of stages of ascent into the holy presence of God, and a ministerial hierarchy that reflects the nature of the cosmos and the descent of grace from the Redeemer through the members of His mystical Body. These truths are consummately expressed in the spaces and structures of classic church architecture, furnishings, vestments, and vessels, and poignant prayers and gestures of homage, adoration, and humility.

Traditionally, the sanctuary above all was seen as the domain of Christ the High Priest, and therefore an area symbolically set apart from the rest of the Church, with all-male ministerial service — a custom that Roman Catholics kept intact for nearly 2,000 years in continuity with the Israelites who went before us, and that the Eastern Churches preserve in full integrity to this day.

Let us recall the rationale behind the custom of limiting service in the sanctuary and at the altar to men only. Servers and lectors are in some way an extension of the ministry of the priesthood, to which it properly belongs to handle the divine mysteries and all that is associated with them. Only men can be priests; therefore only males are suited to priestly functions. Moreover, servers and lectors are a substitute for clerics in minor orders, who, in optimal conditions, are the ones called upon by the Church to fulfill these very offices. The formal ministries of acolyte and lector, even after Pope Paul VI’s simplification and reconfiguration thereof, are open only to men. Ministers are men set apart by the Church for a special function that is not equivalent to general lay participation in the liturgy. Finally, serving as an altar boy was and still is a much-valued way to encourage vocations to the priesthood.[1]

Not long after the Council, this hitherto unbroken practice was abandoned, with the allowance of female lectors and, later, female altar servers. Now women and men freely mingle in the sanctuary and even at the very altar of sacrifice. Not only is this development contrary to the religious instincts of most cultures[2] and to well-known psychological requirements of boys,[3] it is also contrary to the common good of modern Christians who are living in an age of massive sexual confusion, where distinctions are blurred and the combination of reductive feminism and democratic egalitarianism treats men and women as if they were interchangeable.[4]

While Christian anthropology is sufficiently different from that of other cultures and religions to allow St. Paul to say that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28), the context itself and the exegesis of the Church Fathers show us that the Apostle is referring to the dignity of baptism and the goal of salvation: the grace of eternal life is freely available to all, with no distinction of race, class, or sex. Heroic charity is in the reach of every baptized man, woman, and child, and the hierarchy of heaven is established according to charity. This fundamental truth simply does not touch on how the Christian religion, as visibly and socially embodied in this world, makes use of the God-authored order of creation (and, in particular, the permanent features of human nature) for the hierarchical form of its organization and worship.

The ideological shotgun wedding of feminism and egalitarianism strikes at the fundamental language of revelation, wherein God/Christ is the bridegroom who acts and fertilizes, becoming the father and head of the family, and man/Israel/the Church the bride who receives as wife and bears fruit as a mother. As I have written elsewhere:

To ignore differences of sex or to pretend that such differences make (or should make) no difference in the fulfilling of liturgical roles is surely to ignore, and probably to contradict, the “theology of the body” given to the Church by Pope John Paul II. Especially in our times, when confusion about sexuality is rampant, how we conceptualize and implement male and female roles in the Church cannot fail to have huge ramifications in our theological anthropology, moral theology, and even fundamental theology, extending all the way to the inerrancy of Scripture and the trustworthiness of apostolic Tradition.[5]

At the very least, it is not beneficial to the faithful to allow traditional practices to be canceled out as if they were arbitrary exercises of power, mistaken to begin with — particularly when these practices have sound anthropological and dogmatic foundations.

In the case at hand, the gradual breaking down of various distinctions such as those between sanctuary and nave, ordained and non-ordained, ministers and recipients, has been able to feed into and feed upon the larger societal dissolving of distinctions between men and women, creating a perfect storm of confusion for the faithful.

A failure to see how the natural distinction of sexes is ordered to the common good of mankind and of the Church has, without a doubt, led to many abuses of power on the part of pastors or laity who take it upon themselves to create, abolish, or innovatively redefine offices, functions, symbols, and rites.

Pastors concerned with communicating and reinforcing authentic Catholic doctrine should become more concerned with the many ways, open and subtle, in which our liturgical practices symbolize certain truths of creation and redemption or, on the contrary, obfuscate that symbolism and risk undermining those truths.


NOTES

[1] See this article for further argumentation.

[2] See Manfred Hauke, Women and the Priesthood: A Systematic Analysis in Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, trans. David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), esp. 85–194; cf. idem, God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does It Lead?, trans. David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).

[3] I am referring here to the oft-observed pastoral phenomenon of male servers dropping away and recruits drying up when girls flow into the ranks and take over (something known to be off-putting for boys of a certain age range in particular), and the opposite phenomenon of boys and young men volunteering in large numbers to serve when the ministry is all-male, exacting in its duties and run along the lines of a disciplined band of soldiers.

[4] See Peter Kwasniewski, “Incarnate Realism and the Catholic Priesthood,” originally published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review 100.7 (April 2000): 21–29; online here.

[5] Published as Benedict Constable, “Should Women Be Lectors at Mass?”