Forgotten English Rituals: A New Research Project by Nico Fassino

Our thanks to Mr Nico Fassino for sharing with us this account of his latest research project, on the 1954 English Ritual. He is the founder of the Hand Missal History Project, an independent research initiative dedicated to exploring Catholic history through the untold and forgotten experiences of the laity across the centuries. Learn more at HandMissalHistory.com or @HandMissals

The Rituale Romanum, that priestly manual containing the texts of the sacraments and blessings of the Roman rite, is a beautiful and fascinating book. Despite being frequently used for mundane moments and life-changing milestones alike, it is one of the most overlooked of all the liturgical books of the Catholic Church. It has received far less study than the missal or the lectionary, for example, and is often misunderstood.

Title page of the Rituale Romanum of 1614

In the popular conception, the Roman Ritual is viewed as a relatively recent creation (first published in 1614) and therefore is judged far less venerable than the texts of the Roman rite of the mass which stretch back more than a millennium before that. Because it is distinctly separate from the missal, and used in so many ordinary circumstances, it can sometimes be thought of as more ‘informal’ or less central to the Christian life than the liturgy of the Mass.

But the ritual is a unique and compelling book deserving of a great deal more study. Though the Roman Ritual itself dates to the Counter Reformation, the content is ancient and draws from a pan-European tradition of printed Catholic rituales dating back to the early medieval ages. It is also no minor or ancillary part of the spiritual life. As Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard wrote, the ritual book is one of the most crucial tools given to priests as part of their charge to be “craftsmen of universal rehabilitation”:

In the Church his is the task of reconciling all created things with God; not overnight or without a struggle, but progressively, starting with the smallest things. One has only to open that wonderful book, the Ritual, to see that this is so. Nowhere else does the Church manifest more clearly her maternal love and concern for the passing companions of our earthly journey. The liturgy neglects nothing.

It blesses houses, bread, eggs, fruits. It thinks of fountains, ships, stables, fields, sick animals. It does not forget bees, wax, tools. It sanctifies water, light, fire, incense. There is nothing it does not encounter with sympathy, even tenderness. It is surprised at none of the most recent discoveries: machines, railways, automobiles, airplanes, telegraph, seismograph and soon television. It encompasses everything, it admits everything for man’s good use and as related to his eternal destiny for which, as stressing in the liturgy, those mysterious elements serve as symbols. (Priests Among Men (New York: Integrity, 1950). Page 63.)

Conventional Narratives

Because the standard text of the ritual is in Latin, it is commonly thought that the beauty of the ritual and the full richness of the sacraments were not understood by the laity for most of Christian history. Conventional histories of Catholic liturgical reform assume that advocacy for the vernacular in the sacraments, and pastoral concern for the laity, were modern trends stemming from the twentieth century Liturgical Movement. Thanks to these calls for reform (so the narratives go) the Second Vatican Council finally changed things and ushered in a new era of vernacular ritual books where the laity could understand things for the first time beginning in 1964.

The Catholic Transcript, Aug. 20, 1964, p. 1, via Catholic News Archive

The 1954 English Ritual

But that was not the first time that a Vatican-approved vernacular ritual had been published and promoted around the globe. More than a decade before, in November 1953, the American Bishops unanimously approved a version of the ritual for the United States which allowed almost all the sacraments and blessings it contained to be said officially in the English. This ritual – which is now almost entirely forgotten – was approved by the Holy See and published to great fanfare in December 1954.

The St Louis Register, Dec. 24, 1954, p, 9, via Catholic News Archive.

The 1954 English Ritual was titled Collectio Rituum, or “Collection of Rites.” It was heralded as a major victory for the Liturgical Movement in America, which had worked to promote the project since 1947. The English Ritual had been championed by Bishop Edwin V. O’Hara of Kansas City, Missouri (a long-time supporter of the Liturgical Movement and one of the most influential American prelates of the twentieth century), and brought to fruition by two key Liturgical Movement figures: Rev. Gerald Ellard, SJ, and Rev. Michael Mathis, CSC.

The US Bishops’ news service heavily promoted the 1954 English Ritual, and everyone anticipated it would be popular and widely adopted. Although it had been originally created for use in America, interest in the 1954 English Ritual soon spread to English-speaking lands throughout the world. Within one year of publication, the Holy See had granted permission for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya to use the American ritual.

But it soon became clear that the 1954 English Ritual was not very popular after all. There was no widespread clamor for the ritual amongst the clergy and laity, and the reactions of the bishops themselves were mixed. Some bishops only partially permitted its use in their dioceses, while others (like Francis Cotton of Owensboro, Kentucky) refused to authorize it at all, despite the fact that they had voted to approve it only a year prior!

St Louis Register, Jul. 29, 1955, p. 2 of sec. 2; via Catholic News Archive

In November 1956, less than two years after initial publication, the American bishops secretly voted to put an end to the failed Collectio Rituum and replace it with a new edition. The replacement ritual, eventually published in 1961, contained substantially less vernacular than the original and undid almost all of the innovations of the 1954 edition.

It was a bitter defeat for liturgical reform. Those in the Liturgical Movement took pains to avoid any public discussion of this reversal, and they redoubled their efforts to secure lasting victory for the vernacular at the upcoming ecumenical council.

The Pittsburgh Catholic, Sept. 28, 1961, p. 7 of the arts section; via Catholic News Archive

A New Study of Ritual Books

In a research project more than two years in the making, “Forgotten English Rituals: The Collectio Rituum of 1954 and the untold history of the vernacular administration of the sacraments”, I use uncited primary and archival sources to provide a comprehensive study of the origins, demise, and cover-up of the landmark American Collectio Rituum. But the story of vernacular administration of the sacraments does not originate with the English Ritual of 1954. Indeed, there is a vast and almost totally neglected history of the official use of English in Catholic ritual books which I also explore for the first time.

For centuries, rituals used in English-speaking lands throughout the world contained officially permitted vernacular. There are so many different versions that it is frankly impossible to list them all. In an appendix, for example, I offer an incomplete bibliographic catalog of 25 different ritual books which contained English permissions. Even with this limited list of 25 different rituals, I discovered at least 128 editions issued by at least 35 Catholic publishers. Of these, fully 112 editions of 18 titles were published before 1954!

The ‘Visitation and Care of the Sick’ permitted in English. Page detail from the 1812 Ordo Administrandi Sacramenta, the ritual book published for official use in England and Wales.

To better explore the history of English in the administration of the sacraments, I analyzed the content of 21 different rituals published between 1738 and 1962. I chose 16 different sacramental rites and blessings from the ritual, (e.g. baptism, marriage, extreme unction, blessing of sick children, etc) and discretely analyzed which portions of each of these ceremonies were officially permitted to be given in English as the authentic liturgical text.

List of the 21 English Rituals studied in Forgotten English Rituals

List of the 16 Sacraments and blessings studied in “Forgotten English Rituals”

Findings

Through this content analysis, we gain a much richer understanding of the centuries-long tradition of vernacular in the administration of the sacraments and are able to compare different rituals on a one-to-one basis. The results are fascinating: for some sacraments and blessings, these older rituals contain just as much official vernacular text as the 1954 English Ritual… in some cases, they contain more!

Summary table of vernacular content analysis

Table of vernacular content analysis for the sacrament of marriage, from “Forgotten English Rituals”. Blue “E” sections are permitted in vernacular, while White “L” or “L (pe)” sections are required in Latin.

To help set the history of English vernacular rituals into a wider context, I also studied the official vernacular content in the Sacrament of Baptism across 26 additional European rituals between 1450 and 1929. These rituals are mainly drawn from Spanish, French, German, Hungarian, and Czech lands, but there were many others which could also have been included. Indeed, there are such a vast number of these rituals that this research cannot hope to be more than an introduction and starting point.

While there has long been awareness of the existence of vernacular in some historic European ritual books, particularly from German-speaking lands, this research breaks new ground by quantitatively analyzing the content of the rituals from multiple nations and comparing them in the same one-to-one manner as the English rituals mentioned above. It also includes previously unstudied ritual books (for example, none of the 16 German-language ritual books included in this research are cited in Hermann Reifenberg’s magisterial 1971 study of medieval German rituals and their vernacular content).

List of the 26 European Rituals studied in “Forgotten English Rituals”

The use of vernacular in these historical European rituals is fascinating. In some, the vernacular is printed alongside the Latin and the rubrics state one or the other can be used... in other cases, only the vernacular is printed without Latin even as an option. In several rituals, even the sacramental form itself was officially permitted in the vernacular!

Portions of various European ritual books. At top: the renunciations from the sacrament of baptism in Ritual #V (1803 Paris), an example of both Latin and vernacular being printed in the ritual text with either permitted (“Latin or French”). Middle: the introductory dialogue from the sacrament of baptism in Ritual #C (1597 Coutances), an example of only the vernacular being printed in the ritual text, without Latin even as an option. Bottom: the conditional form of baptism given exclusively in French in Ritual #J (1642 Orleans).

Conclusion

In addition to the rediscovery and analysis of historic vernacular ritual books, this research also surveys the campaign for modern reform which swept the church beginning in the very first years of the twentieth century – preceding even the modern Liturgical Movement. These modernization efforts ultimately resulted in an ever-expanding push for vernacular permissions (beyond the organic customs of the past) and the revision and replacement of the ritual texts themselves (many of which had remained nearly unchanged since at least the eighth century). The rise and fall of the remarkable 1954 American Collectio Rituum, told in full for the first time, is thus revealed to be both a crucial bridge between ancient traditions and the modern age, as well as a hitherto overlooked ‘tipping point’ in the story of liturgical reform.

“Forgotten English Rituals” overturns conventional histories by demonstrating the widespread and official use of the vernacular in the administration of the sacraments in the centuries before the Second Vatican Council. These findings also complicate modern debates about the role of the vernacular itself as a contributing factor to the catastrophic post-conciliar decline of sacramental practice.

Beyond the narrative history, the study includes almost 60 pages of photographs and 40 pages of detailed data in appendices. It is my hope that this work can serve as a starting point for future research, which this subject so clearly deserves.

What Vernacular Hymns Can Be: The Case of Old Polish Songs

Many Catholics suffer week after week from a repetitious diet of Four-Hymn Sandwiches, first imported decades before the Council by well-meaning liturgists who thought it would be a nice way to add calories to the Low Mass and give the folks mandibular exercise. When Fr. Longenecker once claimed that good hymns “lift hearts in worship, express faith, and help to catechize,” it made me wish that the U.S. bishops had appointed him a one-man censor librorum over all hymnals to be produced in the country. The number of trees destroyed would dramatically decline, and the catchy but scratchy catechesis of our modern-day Arianizers would suffer a major blow. Yet we mustn’t be narrow-minded about what vernacular hymnody might sound like if it emerged within a real Catholic culture, rather than being fabricated by ecumenists with John Denver envy.

A friend contacted me some time ago to tell me about the so-called “Polish Mass.” This refers not to a vernacular Novus Ordo, but to a Low Mass in the usus antiquior where the dialogue is done between a priest and a server while the congregation is occupied in singing a Mass-long hymn in Polish. There are many such hymns in Poland; they are sung in a special style, mostly in minor tonality, meditative, slow and sober. Their theologically sound lyrics are designed to bring the minds into meditation on the life and especially the Passion of Christ. The hymn starts at the beginning and continues throughout Mass, pausing only at the Sanctus (for which the Sanctus bells are quite useful!), and picking up again after the consecration. This “Polish Mass” is said to have been the standard way of celebrating Mass in Poland before the Second Vatican Council (and before the Soviet times, most probably).

Although it would not meet the demands of the Liturgical Movement for “participatio actuosa” (and it’s a bit too close for comfort to the German Schubert Masses), one could maintain that this deep and rich folk tradition is not incompatible with the liturgy, but rather harmonizes with it and enhances the faithful’s access to the mysteries. It’s hard to describe these hymns adequately in English (a rhymed translation would be a great challenge), but we have, thanks to Justyna Krukowska, an accurate translation of a 23-stanza Polish Mass hymn, from which a popular Christmas song has subsequently been derived. This is probably one of the most famous Christmas carols in Poland, and is often used as the entrance hymn at Mass. It may be worth noting that in Poland everyone has a number of Christmas carols committed to memory, so if you got a random group of Poles together and started singing it, the odds are that most, if not all, would be able to join in.

Here is how it looks, with the corresponding parts of the Mass indicated. In stanza 10 one can even see the “rubric” which says “kneeling,” because the words are the paraphrase of “et incarnatus est.”

START OF MASS

1. In the silence of the night, a voice emanates:
“Rise, shepherds, God is being born unto you:
Go as fast as you can,
Rush to Bethlehem to greet the Lord.”

2. They went and found the Child in the manger,
With all the signs that had been given to them.
They honored him as God, and greeting him,
They called out with great joy.

3. Welcome, O Savior, desired for so long,
Expected for four thousand years.
Kings and prophets have been waiting for You,
And this night You have revealed Yourself to us.

4. We are also waiting for You, O Lord,
And as soon as You come at the voice of the priest,
We will fall down on our faces before You,
Believing that You are under the veil of bread and wine.

GLORIA

5. The singing of the angels
resounds all the way to heaven.
Let us sing along with them:
“Glory to God in the highest
And peace to men here below.”

6. Eternal Father, heavenly King
Who gave us the Son, we adore You.
“Glory to God…”

7. O Son of God, accept our thanksgiving
For Your birth to us today.
“Glory to God…”

8. You, in the glory of the Father, are Yourself holy,
Together with the Holy Spirit, God inconceivable.
“Glory to God…”

CREED

9. I believe in one God in heaven,
The Father, who created this world for Himself,
And in Jesus, his Son,
In all things equal to the Father, Our Lord.

10. Who in order to save us, the human race,
Descended down to earth from upper heavens, [kneeling]
Conceived of the Holy Spirit,
Is born among the beasts, of the Virgin Mary.

11. He died, and then when he rose alive
He went up to heaven, God and true man,
Whence, when the trumpet will wake us up for the judgment
He will come to judge all men on judgment day.

12. I equally believe in the Holy Spirit,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
I believe in the Church: in her there is salvation.
I believe in the forgiveness of sins and life eternal.

OFFERTORY

13. Let us hurry to the manger with our gifts;
Let us give to the Child the sacrifices of our hearts.
Along with the offering of wine and bread,
May the Divine Child accept them as his property.

14. May he deign to make these hearts holy
And may he forgive us all our trespasses.
After all, this Jesus, for love of us,
Came down to save us.

SANCTUS

15. Sing together with your voices
Angels in heaven, and we on earth:
Holy, Holy, always Holy God of hosts,
Incomprehensible in his majesty!

16. The heavens are full of Your glory, O God,
The earth is full and the whole world.
May they all be amazed,
May they all sing: Holy to our God.

BENEDICTUS

17. Welcome, Jesus, born today
And hidden in this Sacrament!
We fall down on our faces before You,
Believing that You are under these veils.

18. Blessed are You, who came for us,
Came out of the pure Virgin womb.
We sing Hosanna to You,
Who were born of the Virgin Immaculate.

AGNUS DEI

19. Lamb of God, Who came to take away
Human faults, O One and only God,
And immediately from birth
You commence Your sufferings:
Forgive us, O Lord.

20. Lamb of God, Who took upon You
The debts of the world in the form of a servant,
And Who pay out superabundantly,
Sacrificing Your life for us:
Forgive us, O Lord.

21. O Lamb of God, Immaculate,
Who bore wounds on the Cross for us,
To You we sinners call out,
Your mercy we seek:
Forgive us, o Lord.

COMMUNION

22. O dear Jesus, we desire You so!
Through You we will reach heaven.
Even though we are poor, we are dear to Your heart.
Come and console us!

ITE MISSA EST

23. Through the Mass they brought You gifts,
Gifts greater than the royal gifts [of the Magi],
Since we gave to the Almighty—
Even though we are all small before You—
Infinite honor.
AMEN.

(I’ve placed the original Polish text at the end of the article.)

Such were the old Polish hymns: they were a catechism and, even more, a “lifting of the hearts up to the Lord.” There were plenty of hymns and chants for any occasion and liturgical season.

In this video of a Dominican-rite Low Mass at Ars Celebrandi in 2017, notice how the chanting goes on throughout the entire liturgy, not even stopping for the Gospel or the Canon! It is the purest example of “parallel liturgy” I have ever seen. Showing it to a Western liturgy professor might earn you a sentence for first-degree manslaughter. As beautiful as the modal chanting is, it cannot be ideal, from a liturgical point of view, to superimpose one gigantic hymn onto the entirety of the liturgy. Not even the German “paraphase Masses” are quite so continuous and monotonous (in the literal, not pejorative, meaning of the word):

Another type of traditional Polish Mass music is mediaeval vernacular music based on Gregorian chant tones, as well as rhymed offices for Polish saints like St. Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr. Here are two videos of Bartosz Izbicki, a musicologist, organist, and choir director, conducting such music:

The Poles also had their own interesting variants of Roman chant in liturgical books revised after the Council of Trent, as well as excellent Baroque composers who contributed richly to both Latin and vernacular repertoire.

So, before we complain about vernacular hymns, we should pause and ask: Which vernacular hymnody are we referring to, and why is ours today, in the modern West, so singularly rotten? Well, that is a question for another day. 

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

A Glimpse into Catholic Life in Ireland in the Early Sixties

Some weeks ago, a priest friend alerted me to the online archives of Radharc, “one of Ireland’s most important independent documentary production companies,” founded in 1959 and the producer of “over 400 documentaries which were screened on RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, between 1961 and 1996.” My correspondent was particularly interested in the short films made from 1961 to 1966, with two priests, Fr Peter Dunn and Fr Desmond Forristal, as the hosts. It should be noted—and this is a matter of surprise especially for Americans—that it did  not seem strange in any way for a public film project to be run by priests and to center so closely on religious and cultural matters (which were often the same).

Several of these films would be fascinating to NLM readers, so I shall comment on my favorites. There are many more worth exploring at the Irish Film Institute Radharc archive. (As the videos are not on YouTube, only still shots can be inserted here.)

The New Ritual

For an absolutely fascinating glimpse into Catholic life at the time of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, watch the seven-minute film from 1962 about “The New Ritual.” “New,” at this time, refers to the Tridentine sacramental rites done partly in Latin and partly in English. The film speaks as if this modest step is a sufficient response to modern needs.

As regular readers will know, I’m opposed to having so much vernacular in the traditional rites of the Church of Rome, but no one can deny that if what the video shows had been the only step taken towards liturgical reform, the faithful wouldn’t have been thrown into disarray and there would be a great deal more peace and unity in the Church today. The traditional movement as we know it would not exist were it not for the flagrant overreaching of the Consilium and the accompanying absolutism of Paul VI.

Most interesting to me is the interview at the end with an Irish liturgist who says: “Some people want the Foremass [Mass of Catechumens] in English, but the rest of the Mass—especially the Canon, the heart of the Mass—will remain in Latin.” He seems quite sincere in his assertion. How many, at this time, could have imagined what would be happening only a few short years later? (On this point, I recommend William Riccio’s fine article “Back to the Future? No Thanks, I’ve Been There,” in which he recounts, inter alia: “We were told the Canon, that most untranslatable prayer, would never be in the vernacular because it is too steeped in meaning. In 1967, it was put in the vernacular.”)

Sick Calls

This four-minute video was made in 1962, when the traditional rite of the sacrament of extreme unction was still being used by everyone. Today it is used by communities like the FSSP and the ICRSS, and, I would suppose, by individual diocesan priests who are familiar with it.

What a remarkable glimpse into how sick calls used to be done — and, please God, how they can and should still be done today!

Blessing the Airplane Fleet

Made in 1962, this film tells the viewer about Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline. Each plane is named after an Irish saint—and after showing us lots of examples, the film gives a quick history of Irish missionaries of old. (As far as I know, the Aer Lingus airplanes have retained their saint names to the present.) We get a tour of the primitive instrumentation panel of a Boeing. We see a priest blessing the fleet with holy water, and a Sunday Mass conducted in the hangar. We get to see the prayer card (I’m not kidding) that used to be included in every seat of an Aer Lingus plane, and a view of nuns wearing habits one would never see today.

In general, the people flying on the planes as well as those seeing them off are dressed impeccably. One would not have dreamed of going out in public any other way.

The Village with the Most Vocations

Another remarkable film concerns a village in rural Ireland that had a long history of high numbers of priestly and religious vocations. A fascinating glimpse into Irish village life in 1962: there’s not even a hint of the collapse that would come later.

All the explanations given about why this village’s vocations flourished are quite similar to the reasons we might give today for the greater number of vocations among traditional Catholics: hard-working family life, the family Rosary, the cheerfulness of the sisters, and a relatively simple life. The sisters don’t put pressure on the girls; certainly no “vocations office,” “discernment retreats,” or baby-faced agents.

The sisters depicted in this 1962 film left for good in 2016, after 151 years. Seduced by the “spirit of the Council,” they had become “Eucharistic ministers” and Lord only knows what else. Corruptio optimi pessima.

People often say to traditionalists: “If Catholicism was so great before the Council, why did it fall apart so quickly?” And I reply: “How well do you know yourself? There but for the grace of God go I…” We don't have to pretend that there were no problems before the Council (and Ireland surely had its problems too) to know that things were a far sight better than they were afterwards, when the spirit of rebellion had taken hold and churchmen couldn't throw off the shackles of commandments, customs, and cultural heritage quickly enough. Things can fall apart rapidly when we let fallen human nature take the driver’s seat. Look at the history of Israel, God’s chosen people. Look at the Church in various periods of her checkered history. It’s not as if we should be shocked. Greatness is a daily moral and spiritual conquest, and it can fall to pieces in a matter of years, months, even days. These objectors might as well pose their question to Our Lord: “If you are the Son of God, why did one of your Apostles betray you, and the others run away?” It was not the fault of Our Lord; and neither was the (post)conciliar apostasy the fault of the Catholic tradition built up over the ages by the Holy Spirit, sent to the God-loving disciples in the one and only Pentecost of the Church, which lasts until the end of the ages.

Did the Reformed Liturgical Rites Cause a Boom in Missionary Lands?

This recent letter exchange may be of interest to NLM readers, as a sort of follow-up to my article last month “How the Traditional Liturgy Contributes to Racial and Ethnic Integration.”

Dear Professor Kwasniewski,

In my many discussions with fellow Catholics about the subject of the 20th century liturgical reforms, the objection often comes up that they directly coincide with the incredible explosion of Catholic faith in many parts of Africa and Asia.

I generally respond by saying that just because the totality of reforms may have had such positive impacts doesn’t justify any particular one of them, and a dispensation could have been allowed to use some vernacular in the Mass in mission territories without the enormous overhaul that was taken. However, I’m not sure this is a massively convincing response and wondered if you had ever given the idea some thought yourself? It seems like a gap in pro-Traditonal Liturgy discourse to me. It seems that for the legitimate points to be made about reverence, attendance, understanding, and so on deteriorating after the promulgation of the 1969/1970 Missal, one also has to take into account the positive fruits of the post-Conciliar era.

In Christ Jesus,
N.

*       *       *

Procession in China in the 1950s

Dear N.,

African missions were experiencing considerable growth throughout the 20th century, including (as I’m sure you know) the missions of the Holy Ghost Fathers under the guidance of Archbishop Lefebvre. There is every reason to believe that this upward trajectory would have continued, quite possibly even stronger, had tradition not been derailed. There was no proof that the traditional Roman rite was incapable of being introduced and cultivated among natives of many lands, together with a reserved and sensible approach to inculturation, and some use of the vernacular, especially for readings and music.

On a darker note, the loosening up of doctrine and worship after the Council has allowed abuses to flourish in missionary lands, since a patient and persistent will to curtail and correct them was no longer operative: the mingling of pagan and Christian rituals and beliefs, polygamy, clerical concubinage, and so forth.

+Lefebvre in the Congo

The growth witnessed in recent decades can be accounted for demographically without the need to invoke Vatican II or the reformed liturgy as a primary cause. This would seem to be a classic case where the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc might be operative — a fallacy that has often been thrown in the faces of traditionalists when they argue that Vatican II and/or the liturgical reform caused, or prompted, a massive decline in religious practice, at least in the Western nations. The latter claim, however, is at this point beyond dispute, whereas the claim that Vatican II and its reforms prompted the growth of churches in other parts of the world is by no means easy to argue. (Indeed, whether any good can be attributed to this Council has been the subject of intense conversation lately, prompted by writings of Archbishop Viganò and Bishop Schneider; links and discussion may be found here.)

Catholicism in Asia was generally experiencing steady growth in the 20th century with traditional modes of worship intact. Case in point: in China, the persecuted underground Church remained strong with the TLM until the late 1980s, when the Novus Ordo was first introduced with the collusion of the Communist Party. The situation in China today certainly cannot be said to be superior to what is was before. The Vietnamese were just as devout and single-minded in their Catholicism under tradition as under novelty, and today many who have rediscovered the TLM love it.

Chinese Trappists, 1947

As the book The Case for Liturgical Restoration argues (see especially chapters 25, 31, and 32), the Far Eastern mentality, broadly speaking, is well-suited to the contemplative ceremoniality and symbolism of the TLM (one need only think of the famous Japanese tea ceremony). Put differently, the novel aspects of the Novus Ordo that some modern people find appealing are the same aspects they will find — albeit usually more successfully — in Protestant Evangelicals and Pentecostals. It is therefore hardly surprising that Third World countries have experienced an explosion in conversions to (and, tragically, Catholic defections to) such Protestant sects. There are, needless to say, many other factors as well, such as a drift away from preaching the Word of God and fostering sound popular devotions, into alignment with socialist political programs. For those who are seeking God, for those who want to be saved by Christ, this will be a major turn-off.

It is true that a concession for some use of the vernacular was sought by some missionaries (although we may note that a large number of bishops at Vatican II spoke up against vernacularization), and there is no particular reason to think that this concession is necessarily a bad idea. However, there is much in the Catholic liturgy that remains constant from day to day; that content should certainly remain in Latin (for further argumentation, see, e.g., here, here, and here).

In my new book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright, I say the following (p. 12, n. 3), which I think is relevant to the topic at hand:

That there have been a few saints after and under the Novus Ordo does not prove that it is equal in its sanctifying power to the traditional Latin Mass, just as the fact that some demons can be expelled by the new rite of exorcism does not contradict the general agreement of exorcists that the traditional Latin rite of exorcism is far more effective. At most, such things prove that God will not be thwarted by churchmen or their reforms. As theologians teach, God is not bound to His ordinances: He can sanctify souls outside of the use of sacraments, even though we are duty-bound to use the sacraments He has given us. Analogously, He can sanctify a loving soul through a liturgy deficient in tradition, reverence, beauty, and other qualities that ought to belong to it by natural and divine law, although in the normal course souls ought to avail themselves of these powerful aids to sanctity.

One might say something similar about “good fruits” after the liturgical reform. Are they precisely because of that reform, or are they rather in spite of it? God wills the salvation of mankind, so He will use whatever instrument the Church provides Him: a sharp knife or a blunt knife. The sharp knife will cut better, but the blunt knife will still serve in many cases. Yet it would be far better to have kept the sharp one, or to get it back as soon as possible.

Cordially in Christ,
Dr. Kwasniewski

A missionary bishop in China: traditional Catholicism inculturated

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

How the Traditional Liturgy Contributes to Racial and Ethnic Integration

Pax at a Solemn Pontifical Mass: the source of our peace

The unrest in the United States in recent weeks has prompted a great deal of soul-searching, though it is not yet clear that the soul-searching has reached deep enough in Catholic circles. An excellent start, from the angle of Catholic Social Teaching, is Kevin Wells’s article at OnePeterFive: “George Floyd and How the Church Abandoned the Inner Cities.”

An observation I recently read—“since the United States was never a Catholic country, it has historically lacked the full means that Catholic nations had to unite the different races”—made me think about the liturgical resources for unity that the Church has historically possessed, and how her postconciliar rulers have squandered those resources thanks to a misguided movement of modernization, lowest-common-denominator localization, and narrowly-construed inculturation.

The old Latin liturgy united nations, clans, tribes, races. Everyone had (more or less) the same kind of liturgy. It was in a high style, said in a language no longer anyone’s vernacular; it was celebrated “just so,” in a way that was distinctively its own, because it came from so many centuries and influences. In an article for the Southern Nebraska Register, Fr. Justin Wylie writes:

Only a language owned by no one in particular belongs to everyone universally. Truly, Latin has rendered our Faith Catholic (which is to say, universal) in time and space. Babel’s curse of linguistic segmentation was remedied by the Pentecost miracle of a Church that evangelizes all nations in a single tongue, with parity of understanding. The pagans of ancient Greece and Rome, Europe’s barbarian tribes, and the New World’s disparate peoples were evangelized by the common denominator of our Latin liturgy.

Even into modern times, one could see very diverse congregations gathered in the same church for the same Latin Mass, engaging with it in various ways depending on their needs and abilities: servants and their employers; rich and poor; “blue-collar” and “white-collar” workers; the educated and uneducated; devout daily Mass-goers and stubbornly dutiful Sunday regulars. Even if parishes were often set up along ethnic lines, there was still, beyond this, a strong sense of belonging to the one Catholic Church, the great equalizer and leveler.

Something greater than the community has to draw us into church.

In Phoenix from the Ashes, historian Henry Sire makes some mordant comments about the sociological results of the reform of the sixties:

By cutting off the life of the Church from a timeless tradition, the Modernists have immersed it in a contemporary social setting. The foible is especially noticeable in Germany, where the radicalism of the reformers has produced a parish Mass of comically bourgeois style; but that is the tone of the modern liturgy in all the Western countries. In an ordinary Mass today the sense one has is not the offering of an eternal sacrifice but a lecture conducted by the priest and two or three women of the public-librarian class, to whom the readings and other duties of the church are allocated. The verbosity and preachiness of the liturgy is itself a middle-class characteristic with which many ordinary parishioners feel little rapport; and the alienation of working-class worshippers, in a way that was never true of the old Mass in poor parishes, has become a peculiar feature of the liturgical reform.

Sire’s critique was empirically verified by the research of Anthony Archer in his 1984 study The Two Catholic Churches, well summarized by Joseph Shaw in a pair of articles: “A sociologist on the Latin Mass” and “The Old Mass and the Workers.” [1] To sum it up: the liturgical reform homogenized and narrowed the reach of Catholic liturgy, in particular cutting off all those people (and they are, and will always be, very numerous) to whom immediate verbal and rational comprehension of people-directed vernacular discourse with obligatory responses was not an appealing mode of engagement, or worse, was an impediment to prayerful engagement.

The imposition of the vernacular and the lack of ritual and rubrical discipline has separated us into little enclaves. You end up with Masses for white upper-middle-class golfers, Mass with African-American Gospel music, Mass for Hispanics, Mass for Vietnamese, etc. etc. How can the Church “unite the different races” if she can’t even unite us in a single recognizably Catholic worship?

Thus the aforementioned Fr. Wylie, who grew up in South Africa, notes with sadness:

Apartheid did less to divide Catholics of many races in South Africa than the introduction of the vernacular in the liturgy, for whereas before, these worshipped together easily in Latin, since its loss, now find themselves deeply divided at diocesan celebrations.

Traditional practices appeal to a universal sense of reverence before God.

My experience with TLM communities around the world has been dramatically different. Almost everywhere I go, but especially in urban parishes, I see different races and ethnicities side by side in the pews: Asians, African-Americans, Africans, whites of all European backgrounds. [2] The commonness of the worship and its deep reverence unite us all. The traditional Latin liturgy chanted by the minister and choir in the church is one and common to all, binding us together as a fixed, stable, reliable external “gold standard.” It is the center of gravity that draws us all towards Christ—and therefore towards each other. Prayer happens within and between the ancient Latin chanted aloud, the modern vernacular quietly available, and the prayer of the worshiper’s heart, which transcends all linguistic differences. [3]

In his masterpiece Democracy in America, published between 1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville describes a Catholic Church that seems almost no longer to exist:

On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and the needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak; it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent more than to render them equal. Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign be removed, all the other classes of society are more equal than in republics.

Churchmen after the Council foolishly abandoned this remarkable power of a single Creed, acknowledged and taught as such; a single observance with real asceticism; and, above all, a common body of Latin liturgy to draw together people of different races, ethnicities, languages, classes, backgrounds, and vocations. We may truly say that the practice of the traditional liturgy has been, and is capable of becoming once again, the Catholic Church’s “secret weapon” for unity among the faithful of the far-flung and demographically highly diverse Latin rite. The Collect of Easter Tuesday beautifully captures this aspiration, reflected in the very externals of traditional Roman rite:

O God, Who dost make all nations, how diverse soever they be, to become one family in giving praise to thy Name, grant unto all them that are born again in the fountain of baptism to live ever in oneness of faith and godliness of works.

The world needs genuine signs and sources of unity more than ever, not farces like white people claiming to “renounce their whiteness” (or, for that matter, Catholics renouncing their own great tradition). We need to find our unity and healing not in social justice campaigns or police reforms, whatever value those may have in their way, but in the grace and truth of the one Savior of mankind and His one Church, vividly symbolized, in the West, by the common Latin liturgical inheritance still embodied—and happily returning—in the usus antiquior.

The iconic outfit of the server: black and white together.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Interviews with Catholic Composers — (6) Paul Jernberg

Many NLM readers will need no introduction to Paul Jernberg, whose beautiful music has been mentioned in the past by my colleague David Clayton. Jernberg’s work is characterized by a Byzantine flavor of harmonization that he brings to settings of both Latin and vernacular liturgical texts.

Tell us about your musical background: when and how you began singing or playing instruments, your most influential teacher, how your interest in composing sacred music was enkindled. 

Born in Chicago in 1953, my earliest musical formation came from being immersed in beautiful music in my home and church. My paternal grandmother was a concert violinist, my father was also a fine violinist, and several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were accomplished musicians. In the Baptist church which we regularly attended, there was always inspirational singing by the choirs and the congregation. Whenever our family gathered for holidays, there was also much singing and music making!

I began piano lessons at six years old, studied and performed throughout high school, and then continued as a music and piano performance major in college. While still in high school, I also began studies in music theory and composition at the American Conservatory of Music in downtown Chicago. It was my great privilege to study privately there with the great Irwin Fischer, himself a student of Nadia Boulanger and Zoltan Kodaly. Although at this time I had no thought of composing Catholic sacred music, Mr. Fischer helped me to discover the greatness of Palestrina and all the Renaissance masters, through my classes with him in Modal Counterpoint. At this point the composing which I did was generally as homework; it wasn’t until many years later that the sense of a vocation to compose music for the Sacred Liturgy became clear.

Salve Regina

Is there a sacred music composer—or are there several composers—whose work you find most captivating, either as a source of delight, or as direct inspirations and models for your own work? 

It is true that as a source of musical delight, I continue to be captivated and transported by the sacred works of the great composers of our Art Music tradition: Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, etc., and their many brilliant successors up until the present. However, as I began to discover the Catholic Liturgy during my time living and working in Sweden (1983-1993), I realized that the great patrimony of Gregorian Chant and Byzantine Chant has a specific genius, distinct from (though related to) the glory of Art Music, for drawing us into the contemplative dimension of the Mass. Part of this genius is in its discreet, sacred character which while beautiful is always pointing away from itself to the Mystery.

In the West, from the Renaissance and onward, the culture became increasingly oriented toward the flourishing of human artistic capacities in secular venues. This new cultural movement was in itself a magnificent thing, strongly influenced by its Christian, Catholic roots, and capable of reflecting the glory of God. Nevertheless, the standard parameters of music composition made a significant shift away from their traditional orientation to the Liturgy, to a new orientation to the secular venues of the opera hall and concert stage. This secular cultural orientation has continued to our present day. Even though there have been many devout Christians and Catholics who have contributed their extraordinary talents to the service of the Liturgy, the standard formation for serious musicians – including these church musicians – has continued to be based upon the Art Music tradition. While such a formation is a good and praiseworthy thing, it is nevertheless distinct from a thoroughly liturgical formation.

By contrast, the great composers of Eastern Europe, while participating in the Art Music movement, tended to maintain a clearer distinction between sacred and secular composition. In this regard I find the liturgical works of Russian Orthodox composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rachmaninoff to be particularly inspiring. Among the several brilliant Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic composers of our own day, I am particularly influenced by those who aim to maintain this “Little Way” of inspired simplicity. One of the greatest of these, in my view, is my friend Roman Hurko. He is a Ukrainian-Canadian composer living in New York; his Liturgy No. 3 (in English) is a magnificent example of the integration of artistry and spirituality in an authentically liturgical style.

But having said all of the above, my own musical identity is deeply rooted in the Roman Rite, and most especially in our patrimony of chant and polyphony. It has been both a duty and a delight for me to be immersed in both of these great forms, which provide an indispensable foundation for anyone who aspires to integrity in composing music for the Mass.

The Lord’s Prayer (from the Mass of St. Philip Neri)

If you were given an unlimited budget for musicians for a solemn pontifical Mass, what works would you put on the program? 

An unlimited budget would not necessarily be a good thing, just as winning the Lottery has often been highly problematic for many people! St. John Vianney’s holy extravagance towards all that was related to the church building and the Liturgy is a radiant model for us; however, this prodigality was in the spirit of the poor widow giving her mite. He gave everything he had out of his poverty, rather than from a surplus of resources. And I am convinced that a vitally important dimension of our work is in recovering the sense of holy littleness that characterizes Our Lady’s Magnificat.

Having said this, I have actually been very blessed, through the generous support of others, to prepare a number of Liturgies in which we have been able to pursue such an “ideal” program. These have always included a combination of Gregorian chant, classic polyphony, and new works which are able to “harmonize” deeply with this chant and polyphony. We have also been able to sing the entire Mass, with Priest, Deacon, Cantor, Choir, and Congregation fulfilling their respective parts of the Ordinary and Propers. In February 2019 we recorded one of these Masses – a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit – which can be viewed and listened to here:

Or for a one-minute taste:

The language of sacred music, as of Catholic worship in general, remains a controversial subject. What are your thoughts about the place of Latin in the liturgy? 

Latin was and is the traditional liturgical language of our Roman Rite. As a healthy piety calls us to honor our liturgical patrimony, it also calls us to honor the language which is an integral dimension of this patrimony. Sadly, most Catholics have now been effectively cut off from this treasure, just as our Western culture has generally been cut off from its vital connection to its linguistic roots in Latin and Greek. This poses the question of how to move forward in a way that integrates piety, prudence, and charity.

In affirmation of the direction of Pope Benedict XVI in this regard, I would advocate an approach that facilitates a robust renewal of the study of Latin, and of its use in the Sacred Liturgy. And the resurgence of the TLM is a sign of such a renewal in those communities which have embraced this form. Beyond this, it seems evident that those who are charged with the formation of priests, deacons, and church musicians have a responsibility to provide them with a thorough immersion in our great Latin liturgical and sacred music traditions. And as they teach them how to do and sing them well, they also need to communicate the fire of love which is at the heart of these traditions.

Having said all this, it is also important to realize that Latin itself was once “secular” in relation to the Sacred Liturgy. It required a long period of holy adaptation, from its Aramaic and Greek precedents, so as to become the great liturgical language that it is. Furthermore, this same process of holy adaptation has taken place in many of the other Rites of the Catholic Church, producing other venerable sacred languages such as Coptic, Ge’ez, Armenian, and Church Slavonic.

The use of the vernacular in the Mass of Paul VI has often caused concern among those who would preserve the integrity of the Roman Liturgy, because of the extent to which it has been used as a tool of desacralization. On the other hand, the longstanding witness of the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches indicates that it is possible – however long and difficult the task may be – to adapt and sanctify our vernacular languages for their holy liturgical use.

As a musician, I am grateful to have participated in both of the above dimensions of liturgical renewal: singing, conducting, and composing for the Latin liturgy, but also working within the vernacular (primarily English, but also Spanish, French, and Swedish) to develop a holy repertoire that is worthy of our great heritage.

Lamb of God (from the Mass of St. Philip Neri)

In recent years many have been pointing out the strong generational dynamics in the Catholic Church: older people seem to want the popular or secular styles of art, while (at least some, generally the more serious) younger people are intrigued by traditional forms that have an archaic feel to them. Would you agree or disagree with that assessment? 

I would phrase it a bit differently. From my own experience it does seem indeed that the “Vatican II generation,” those of us who are now in our 50’s and older, have often grown accustomed to the “new way” of celebrating the Mass, which has often been permeated by elements of desacralization, unsound teaching, and moral compromise. If this has been our steady liturgical diet, how could we avoid its having had a strong impact on our general approach to culture and art? Thankfully, there have been many notable exceptions to this generational tendency, who have faithfully pursued integrity in their approach to the Liturgy and culture.

Regarding younger people, we see a multitude who have abandoned the Faith altogether – and consequently, any sense of Christian culture – which in my mind is one of the most tragic, devastating effects of the disintegration of the Liturgy. For those who have returned or remained faithful, I do see a tremendous longing for integrity, for the robust pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. This holy longing, and this pursuit, is manifested in a variety of ways. Many young people are indeed attracted to more traditional forms of the Liturgy and Art; others are more naturally attracted by opportunities to deepen their philosophical, theological, biblical, and spiritual formation. While none of the above are mutually exclusive, in practice one does see how different personalities and temperaments tend to be drawn to different expressions of the same fundamental aspiration.

If you have experience with the “traditionalist” movement, what are some strengths and weaknesses you see in it, particularly from a musical point of view? 

The first great strength, as I see it, is the rediscovery and cultivation of our great liturgical and sacred music traditions. Secondly, for many people it has given a holy framework of Liturgy and life that has been a life-saver in the midst of a sea of irreverence, corruption, and secularization.

The weaknesses, in my opinion, are not inherent to these traditional forms, but rather the result of our human frailty – and as such they should be addressed and remedied as much as possible. I have observed at times a tendency toward formalism; by this I mean an emphasis on the external observance of the (necessary and holy) forms, without a corresponding emphasis on the spiritual, intellectual, and apostolic vitality of the faithful. In some notable cases, an apparent coldness and insularism among the traditionalist faithful has pushed away seekers who would otherwise be open to discovering the beauty of our sacred liturgical traditions.

Regarding the music of the TLM, I have witnessed some magnificent examples of integrity and artistry over the past ten years or so. However, I think we need a continued vigorous cultivation of both the artistic and spiritual dimensions of the music in the TLM. Without such efforts, the music can easily be “correct” but not particularly inspired or edifying. With such a movement, the singing can become more faithful to the Divine Love which is at its heart, and draw people more effectively to the Mystery which it is meant to serve.

What are you doing now in the realm of sacred music?

I am presently the director of the Magnificat Institute of Sacred Music, based in central Massachusetts, whose mission is to promote an authentic renewal of sacred music in the Roman Rite. This is a full-time job as well as a labor of love, for which I am profoundly grateful. My work consists in composing, conducting, recording, writing, teaching, consulting, and a variety of other related tasks.

What are some of your future plans as a composer? How can people get in touch with you?

Within the coming year I am planning, Deo volente, to publish and record several more of my completed compositions for the Liturgy. These include a Missa Parva (a setting of the Latin Ordinary), the Mass of St. Monica, various settings of Vespers and Compline, many settings of the Mass Propers, and music for numerous other sacred texts in both Latin and English.

Beyond all these, I am also well under way on a new Mass setting – Misa del Camino - that has been inspired by my son’s recent pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.  I hope to be able to share more details about this within the coming months. And as if all of this were not enough, I am always open to requests and commissions for new compositions.

I would ask all of your readers to pray for me, and for the work of our Magnificat Institute. I can be reached through either one of our websites, magnificatinstitute.org or pauljernberg.com. And thank you so much, Peter, for this opportunity to participate in the ongoing conversation on NLM!

To listen to more of Paul’s wonderful music, visit his SoundCloud page.

The other interviews in this series:
1. Nicholas Lemme
2. Mark Nowakowski
3. Tate Pumfrey
4. Ronan Reilly
5. Nicholas Wilton

Also pertinent:
Interview with Elam Rotem

A Resource for Polyphonic Sacred Music in the Vernacular

Are you looking for authentic polyphony for the Mass in English? Perhaps you feel you have resorted to Tallis’ If Ye Love Me once too often? If so, then you should investigate the scores available at EnglishMotets.com.

This is a project created by Heath Morber, who has adapted music by de Victoria, di Lasso, and Palestrina to English translations of motets and liturgical texts including the Ordinary of the Mass. The complexity and difficulty of the arrangements vary, so there are some suitable for beginners and some for more experienced singers. There are arrangements are for two, three and four parts.

When he started this project, Heath had in mind Catholic musicians who wanted to expose their congregations to the beauty of Renaissance polyphony, and think that the vernacular may be a safe way to introduce this music to people in the pews who may balk at the use of Latin.

He already has already made over 200 pieces available, and is adding more month by month. At the moment he is asking for a one-time payment of just $30 in exchange for access to the full and expanding library of titles, as long the site and the internet exist.

Here are two samples from the site. First, Answer My Prayer, an STB three-part arrangement of Exaudi Me Domine by Orlando di Lasso:

The second is Whoever Follows Me, a two-part (TB or SA) arrangement of Qui Sequitur Me, also by Orlando di Lasso.

For more details, go to EnglishMotets.com.

What a Catholic Hymn Should Be

Over a decade ago, I read an article by Joseph Swain, “St. Mark’s—A Liturgy Without Hymns,” that profoundly shook up my way of thinking about music in divine worship. (Swain, by the way, is the author of one of the best books I’ve ever read: Sacred Treasure: Understanding Catholic Liturgical Music. The price of this book has steadily gone down over the years, so it’s almost affordable now.) Swain basically says: Why do we think congregational hymns are so important, as if a liturgy could not be well conducted without them? Why do we have a narrow, univocal, and horizontalist conception of active participation? Our forefathers knew better: they thought of participation in a multi-sensory or synesthetic manner, as an entering into liturgical actions, movements, and symbols that unfold over the course of the rite and impress themselves upon us. Sometimes, as John Paul II once said, the best and most active thing we can do at a certain moment is look and listen well. Swain’s article gives a detailed description of how he saw a solemn (Novus Ordo) Mass conducted at San Marco in Venice. It was thrilling, it involved the faithful in all kinds of ways, but there wasn’t a single congregational hymn.

I suppose that not too many readers of NLM would disagree with this perspective. Most would probably also agree that vernacular hymns can and do have a place; however much we might debate what exactly that place is. The Anglican Ordinariate liturgies may freely help themselves to an immense patrimony of English hymnody. TLM parishes often sing vernacular hymns at the start and the conclusion of High Mass; between these pre- and post-liturgical hymns, only Latin chants, polyphony, and congregational responses are to be heard. The solutions that have been attempted in the Wild West of the Novus Ordo vary from alternating hymns and propers, to always pairing them (either the antiphon first and then a hymn, or vice versa), to finding hymns whose texts match the propers as closely as possible, and so forth. In any case, it seems that, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, hymns are here to stay.

Now, if we want the balance to tilt towards “for better” and “for richer,” we have to look at two things above all: the quality of the music, and the quality of the text. The music should be stately, well-crafted, soaring in melody but reasonable in range, rarely syncopated, and altogether lacking in sentimentality or schmalziness. The text, for its part, should be excellent poetry that actually rhymes, using proper English grammar and rhetorical tropes; it should be not only doctrinally orthodox (which rules out a great deal of the tripe sold by GIA and OCP), but vivid, robust, and insightful.

Two recent books analyze classic hymns that exemplify all these principles: Fr. George William Rutler’s The Stories of Hymns and Anthony Esolen’s Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church. For its part, the long-awaited Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal from the folks who run Corpus Christi Watershed is, hands down, the best Catholic hymnal ever to be published, in spite of the unfortunate choice of wording for the cover. [1] Its copious selection of hundreds of tunes and texts, including favorites, forgotten gems, and new commissions, all beautifully formatted and presented in a surprisingly compact hardcover volume, is not only unparalleled by any other current hymnal, but well exceeds that of any hymnal I have seen from any period.

In honor of the upcoming feast of the Most Blessed Trinity, I would like to share here a French hymn that I encountered in my visit to St. Clement’s parish in Ottawa. This is what a church hymn should be, if it is to be at all: noble poetry, dogmatic content, and sturdy, artful music that has a certain formality and dignity to it, rather than a meandering melody and emotionally manipulative clichés. Naturally, the translation does not have the poetic qualities of the original, but it does show the strength of the text (with the possible exception of the first line of the second verse, which still has me scratching my head).

1. O Trinity, who will be able to fathom
The sublime heights of Thine immense being?
May our faith, in its humble silence,
At least know how to adore Thy greatness.

2. Thou unitest three august Persons
In the unity of one single and same God;
Saints, at His feet lay your crowns—
Glory to Him alone, in every time, in every place!

3. Divine Spirit! O Son! and Thou, O Father!
You possess the same divinity,
The same riches, the same brightness of light,
The same power and the same eternity.

4. O Seraphim! You cover with your wings
The radiant throne of the living God,
And your songs of His holy Name,
Spirits ever faithful, make the skies resound.

5. Holy Trinity, attend to our prayer,
And be propitious to the wishes of Thy children.
Grant that here below, walking in Thy light,
they may one day ascend triumphant to heaven.

NOTE

[1] The hymnal says on the cover: “Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal for Both Forms of the Roman Rite.” I know from experience that this language of “two forms,” a clever canonical fiction of Benedict XVI deemed necessary to deal with an unprecedented rupture in tradition, has begun to wear thin on both sides of the liturgical divide; those who are still principled proponents of the NO resent the idea that their liturgical books are not the definitive Roman Rite as apparently willed by the Council and Paul VI, while traditionalists, including most FSSP and ICKSP clergy and laity known to me, do not believe for a second that there are two equal forms of the Roman Rite. Their position is that of Msgr. Klaus Gamber: there is one authentic Roman rite, and there is a modern deviation from it which does not deserve the same name. It would have sufficed if the hymnal cover had said “for the Roman Rite” (leaving it ambiguous, and therefore acceptable to anyone in the debate), or even “for the Catholic liturgy,” which is broad enough to include not only the TLM and the NO, but the Anglican Ordinariate as well. Perhaps a future edition will modify the cover accordingly. I have spoken with priests and music directors who have said that the cover, by itself, is the reason they could not adopt the Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal, though I would think that a color image printed on card stock and carefully glued to the cover might do the trick. It is such a fantastic hymnal that it deserves to be in the pews of every Catholic church.

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