On Monday, I published the first part of this set of photos of the first Mass of Fr Isaac Lind, which he offered on Pentecost Sunday. He was ordained for the Fraternity of St Peter on May 26th along with two others, Frs Quinn Gomez and Evan Schwab. Here is the continuation of the series, starting from the Offertory. Thanks once again to Mr Ron Lawson for sharing these beautiful images with us.
21. Preparing to incense the offerings.
22. Since this is the priest’s second Mass ever, the deacon, as a kindly older brother, is reminding him of the order of incensation, which is rather elaborate.
In case anyone is wondering what “order of incensation” refers to, here’s a diagram from a Roman Missal with all the indications:
23. ...incensation, continued...
24. The deacon incenses the priest. By now the subdeacon has the paten, which he has covered in the humeral veil and is holding up before his eyes, blocking his view of the unfolding mysteries. Note the servers waiting at the edge of the sacristy to emerge for the Lavabo.
Fr. Isaac Lind, FSSP, one of the priests ordained on Friday, May 26, celebrated his first Sunday Mass two days later, on Pentecost, in the Fraternity’s chapel in Lincoln, Nebraska. St. Francis of Assisi is truly a Gothic gem of a church; it was once a chapel (!) for a Franciscan hospital, which explains its stained glass windows, but that’s a topic for another post. Fr. Lind’s first Mass, on the vigil of Pentecost, was offered at a Carmelite monastery where two of his sisters are nuns; joining him for the solemn Mass was his older brother, a monk of Clear Creek monastery. The Lind family is doing some heavy lifting vocationally! (Of your charity, please say a prayer for all of them.)
The subdeacon of the Mass was a fellow member of the FSSP; in the sanctuary were yet other seminarians; and in the choir loft, still more seminarians, joining the dozen or so regular singers (including yours truly). What an monumental occasion, from Veni Creator at the start to Te Deum at the end!
Thanks to fellow chapel associate and resident photographer Ron Lawson, I had a magnificent portfolio to choose from. I have picked my favorites and will offer some commentary. There are many perspectives on the ceremonies here that would be difficult to see from most places, or to see at all, and once again we can and should be thankful for the “ministry of photography” that has spread the healthy contagion of tradition all over the world. As Matt Menendez famously said at the New York Sacra Liturgia Conference, contrasting the first generation of trads with today’s, “They had the trauma; we have the internet.”
1. Vesting in the sacristy. Always a busy place before Solemn Mass!
2. Fr. Lind vesting for the procession.
3. Entering the church, between the holy water angels.
4. A packed house, including a bunch of FOCUS missionaries who happened to be in town. (Yep, “the kids are old rite!”)
5. In the place where I (on the left) spend most of my time in church on Sundays... together with some future choristers.
6. The priest sprinkles the people with holy water during the Vidi aquam.
7. After the Vidi aquam, the priest doffs his cope and dons the chasuble, assisted by the deacon & subdeacon (as indeed he is assisted by the two of them throughout the Mass).
In his extremely entertaining and somewhat melancholy autobiography One Foot in the Cradle, well-known spiritual writer Dom Hubert van
Zeller (1905–1984) describes a particularly memorable February 2nd in his life
as a Benedictine novice at Downside Abbey, in the school of which he had been
enrolled for a decade as a student. (Since there appear to be no archival photos of any Candlemas at Downside, I found a photo that perhaps suggests a similar spirit: Candlemas at Westminster Cathedral in 1938, with plenty of schoolboys in attendance.)
Dom Hubert had entered religion one year after
graduation, in 1924, and so still had friends among the older boys. At this
point in his life he is struggling with his vocation — whether to remain in the
monastery, or to go back to the world, to which he was drawn by many
affections. The account deserves to be shared on this eve of Candlemas. Afterwards I will share four points of reflection.
* * *
“It was a little later, when the school reassembled after the Christmas
holidays, that the proximity of the boys and of all that went with them began
to trouble me. Up till now I had been so busy learning what to do as a novice,
and finding satisfaction in the fulfilment of what had been so long awaited,
that I had not found the presence of the school within hailing distance any
great distraction. But now the whole question of my place in Benedictine
education became more acute. The immediacy was brought home to me on February
2, the feast of the Purification.
“At Downside the Candlemas procession, everyone holding a lighted
candle, moves round the cloisters. Following the cross and acolytes come first
of all the boys, then the monks, then the celebrant and ministers. So it was
that together with my fellow junior novice (Brother Maurice, né Reggie) I came close upon the heels
of the two most senior boys in the school. These were Maurice Turnbull and
Robert Arbuthnot — Robert as well as Maurice being a very particular friend of
mine. By stretching out my candle I could have singed the hair of either of
them. I was as close as I had been to the Field Marshal’s ears in Egypt.
“While the Purification antiphons were going on and we wound our way
from one cloister to another I was conscious of a dualism at work inside me
which so boiled up as to make me wonder for a moment which part of the
procession I was in. I felt that there was a significant difference between
belonging to those who walked in front of me and belonging to those who walked
behind me. I was caught in the middle between two environments. Spiritually I
was in one, emotionally in another. It was like a bad dream, because I could
not tell where the one ended and the other began. I knew only that for me there
were two quite separate worlds, and that one or other must win in the end.
Must, indeed, be winning now. I knew in which world I willed to be — namely among
the monks who were just behind me in the procession — but was the will strong
enough to override the pull of the emotions which drew me towards those in
front?
“This Candlemas procession came to be, during the months which
followed, something of a symbol to me. It was one which carried particular
urgency as the time for taking vows drew near: I must know in good time where I
was in the procession, and where it was leading me.
“Things were not made any easier by such glimpses and echoes of school
life as inevitably came my way. The roar of laughter from a classroom well
beyond novitiate bounds, light music played on gramophones in rooms whose doors
had been open to me eighteen months ago, the sound of a band-practice, the
cheering at a rugger match, the sight of teams on their way up to the field,
the crowding in to Mass and Benediction, the group of rather cheeky boys whom I
had known as fags [i.e., boys who acted as servants to older schoolmates] who would
bump into me on purpose in the church and then laugh and look away: all this
made for matter of further self-searching.
“It is commonplace to observe that the human mind can want two opposite
things at once. I wanted very much to be under the rule which forbad novices to
speak to anyone not in the novitiate, and at the same time wanted to talk to
people. Everything all round me told me that the school was an essential part
of the life, that it was an extension of the community, that the boys belonged
to the procession as much as the monks did. It was not even a question of one
world impinging on another: they coincided. But until I could myself feel this,
and not merely see it as an identification which others could feel, I knew I would
never be at peace. Without the experience of such a harmony, I would always be
a misfit.
“While in America not long ago I was saying Mass at a convent where the
community runs a large high-school for girls. Some few of the students are
boarders, but the majority are day-girls. These, the ‘day-hops,’ arrive noisily
in cars and school buses just in time for the first class of the day which begins
at a quarter to nine. I had said Mass at eight and was about to leave at a
quarter to nine when I noticed a young nun rinsing out the cruets at the
sacristy sink. Cars were still racing through the campus and skidding to a
gritty stop at the school entrance. I could hear the car doors being closed
with a rich plunk, the loud cries and
shrill laughter, the hurrying of feet and the dropping of books. The young nun
was hearing it too, and I watched her face as she looked out of the window. She
was too preoccupied to know that I was there, that the tap was running, that
the cruet needed no more drying. My guess was that she had been in the school a
year or two before. I felt like telling her to keep her wits about her at the
next Candlemas procession.” (One Foot in
the Cradle: An Autobiography [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966],
134–36.)
Downside boys ice-skating in the 1930s
Several things about this account are striking to me.
First, it was precisely by having such a Candlemas procession that the
young novice was able to have a sort of “peg” on which to hang his thoughts, a
palpable “axis” around which he could arrange his thoughts of discernment. It’s
a brilliant example of how the so-called “externals” of Catholicism in fact
constitute something like a spiritual gravitational field that gathers our
scattered selves into coherent entities. The procession became a symbol of the new
monk’s life, and helped him to sort out where he belonged. If we diminish or
abolish such symbols — as the postconciliar liturgical reform did, both on paper and especially
in its iconoclastic implementation — we are eliminating solid walls, ceilings,
windows, and doors for the interior castle in which we are capable of living. We
take away the centripetal power of rituals and leave the field open to the
centrifugal force of fallen mindlessness and worldly distraction. As
conservatives never seem to realize, it is not enough, most of the time, to “desire
to be a good Catholic”; the desire has to be suggested, shaped, nourished,
solidly built up by the structures of ecclesial life.
Second, only traditional Catholic communities today could actually
understand and relate to the liturgical experience van Zeller is describing,
since they alone (with a tiny number of exceptions) have retained the candle
procession with the Latin Gregorian antiphons Dom Hubert is talking about. Such
communities are continuing to do nearly the same thing he was doing (with
perhaps some unfortunate modifications from the 1960 code of rubrics).
Third, monastic life at this time was exuberantly flourishing. As van
Zeller describes it in the book, every religious community in England was
pretty well packed with vocations. This is the kind of record that gives the
lie to the myth — propagandistically repeated so often that it is now practically assumed as
self-evident — that the Church before the Second Vatican Council was in desperate
straits and needed radical reform. In fact, it was precisely the sudden
explosion of radical ideas in the 1960s that precipitated the crisis of faith
that undermined the consensus and common life of Catholics, leading to a
decline from which the Church in the Western world has never recovered (except,
incipiently, in those traditional communities against which Pope Francis and
his nostalgic advisers have aligned themselves). As Martin Mosebach says
somewhere, it was inevitable that there would be some crashing challenges to
the Church in the post-War era, but the very best thing churchmen could have
done is to meet those shocks with an adamant refusal to budge, rather than with
a slippery willingness to move wherever the world moved.
Fourth, the genres of autobiography and detailed historical accounts of
individuals and particular places are extremely valuable in achieving an
accurate Catholic sense of the past and of what a Catholic culture looks like. Monasteries
that still practice refectory reading have long shown a preference for these
genres, and one can understand why: a robust awareness of belonging to a
tradition is best achieved by learning about those who belonged to it before,
and how they faced and either surmounted or failed to surmount the anti-traditional
forces that opposed their way of life. General history, fiction, and theology obviously
have their honorable places, but let’s not forget about books like One Foot in the Cradle, which have a lot
to teach us.
The Dedication of the Downside Abbey Church in 1935
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.
The next monastic experience weekend for men at St Mary’s Benedictine Monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts, will take place at the end of the month, May 31 - June 2. It is open to men aged 18-40 years of age. This is now the third year that they have put this on, and each time the response has been positive. The hope is to attract vocations, which has happened in the past, but there are great benefits to both attendees and the community alike, regardless if any ever come back again. There is a poster with contact details below, and as before, Fr Dunstan has recorded one of his slightly off-the-monastic-perimeter-wall videos.
Their rule for discerning vocation is interesting: listen twice, act once. This is very similar to what my icon painting teacher Aidan Hart always says in regard to artistic inspiration: think twice, paint once. The discernment of vocation is, in one sense, looking for inspiration on how to paint the picture of our life for which each of us the artist, so it is not surprising that the two contemplatives, artist and monk might adopt a similar approach.
In his video and in the poster, there is a request for prayers for the community, as they say, people often forget to pray for the pray-ers!
Fr Gregory and the Vocations Team, St Mary’s Monastery:
At the Fota XI conference in Ireland in July 2018, which had the Divine Office as its theme, many participants made remarks about the way in which the recitation of the postconciliar Liturgy of the Hours has severely fallen off in practice. Many clergy, apparently not seeing it as a serious obligation, either don’t pray it at all, or skip it all too readily. This is perhaps less a problem among younger clergy than among older generations, who, in the confusion following the Council, threw off many obligations (clerical clothing, daily Mass, daily Office, etc.) as so many out-of-date constraints by which their “work in the world” was being hampered—or so they thought. In reality, what finally killed their work in the world was the death of the spiritual life, the loss of the primacy of the cult of God over the “needs,” real or imaginary, of Man. This inversion and perversion is what is killing the Church in the West, wherever it is dying.
It is true that, as Matthew Hazell showed in his talk at Fota, there were a fair number of vota from bishops and superiors prior to the Council asking that the “burden” of the Divine Office be mitigated — sometimes considerably, as by the suppression of certain canonical hours, or by the rendering optional of the little hours. As we know, in the end the ancient office of Prime was suppressed without further ado, and the entire breviary stripped down and reorganized into what some critics have called (not unreasonably) “the Liturgy of the Minutes.”
I found most interesting an observation someone at the conference made, who said: If you make a certain obligation too easy, it becomes all the more easy to hold it in contempt. One feels that it is hardly worth the trouble. (A good example of a light burden readily shirked off is the current one-hour Eucharistic fast.) A heavier burden, because it feels heavy, feels serious, and the absence of it is, oddly, uncomfortable. If you are used to bearing a yoke, and suddenly the yoke is lifted, one can feel off-balance, deprived of a companion, naked and exposed, at a loss.
The old office had weight or gravity to it, and the duty to pray it was emphasized strongly in canon law and priestly formation. (It makes little difference, for our present ascetical theme, whether we are speaking about the pre-Pius X or the Pius X breviary; for both placed considerable demands on the clergy.) The sight of a Catholic priest praying his breviary in the sanctuary before Mass, in the pews after Mass, in the bus, on the train, in practically any spare moment, was a familiar sight. One of the participants in Fota told a story about how, before the Council, an elderly priest would stop his car at night, get out, and finish his breviary by the car headlights, in order not to fail in his responsibility.
Now, I have noticed that, as a general rule, there are two and only two ways of making an appeal to young men to discern the priesthood, and something similar can be said for appeals about religious life. The first way is to say (through words, images, music…): “This is going to be incredibly hard. It will demand everything you’ve got. Many won’t be able to hack it. But with God’s help, you just might. We’re not desperate for you, though, so don’t bother to come if you’re not serious.” The second way is to say: “The life of a Catholic priest is wonderful! You get to be so helpful to people every day. It’s bright and cheerful, even fun at times. We need you. We’ll make it work out for you and nothing will be too hard.”
I was thinking about this in connection with a vocations video my son showed me, made by the Russian Orthodox:
This “trailer” for the longer version (also worth watching) obviously and beautifully illustrates the first type of message. And even though it makes use of the nowadays almost obligatory “Gandalf slaying the Balrog” type of soundtrack, it is impressive in its earnestness.
Contrast this virile message with the flaccid tone of all too many Roman Catholic vocational videos, where it is all smiles, handshakes, coffee hours, and the like. For example, this one, from the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., starts off with a soundtrack that can’t quite decide whether it’s jazz, classical, easy listening, or a movie soundtrack, then features a slick cardinal doing his shtick, followed by jolly junior students — regular guys just like you and me!
This one, from the same diocese, is even worse — especially for the wild west liturgical life it gives us a sneak peak of. It would be hard to imagine most serious young Catholic men finding this appealing.
Why don’t we contrast the Archdiocese of Washington with the SSPX’s vocational video? It's enough to watch a minute to see that this is going to be very different.
Now, I will be the first to admit that the script could have been more interesting. It follows the somewhat hackneyed “day in the life of…” model. Nevertheless, what do we find here? The soundtrack is Renaissance polyphony. The narrator tells us about the symbolism of a liturgical vestment and shows the seminarians filing in for the office of Prime (believed by some beatniks to have been abolished — don't break it to them that it survived the purge!). Beautiful images of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are followed by a panning shot that features the Angelic Doctor, who is repeatedly referred to. Cassocked teachers lead seminarians in prayer on their knees before class begins. Athletics make a required but thankfully brief appearance. A man is shown repairing a chasuble, which I consider very forward-thinking. All in all, the SSPX video is far closer to the Eastern Orthodox one, and would be similarly appealing to a man in search of a great cause to which to dedicate his life.
All this fits in well with the oft-observed phenomenon that the prospect of challenge or difficulty is what attracts intrepid spirits to make huge commitments. The U.S. Marines have capitalized on this strategy for years. They seek to attract not just warm bodies but talented candidates looking for the best, prepared to endure hardship to win glory. In other words, an elite. In fact, the strategy is as old as Our Lord, who says “take this teaching — if you can” (cf. Mt 19:12), and St. Paul, who compares Christians to olympians in training (cf. 1 Cor 9:24–27). Why, then, are we so afraid of this idea of an elite?
The apostles are often presented nowadays as a ragtag and bobtail crew, but let us consider for a moment how false this picture is. Several were strong and dedicated fishermen who knew how to labor day and night. They were not lily-livered wimps. Another was a Jewish zealot, the desperate sort who would have been ready to ambush Roman soldiers and strangle them. Another was a tax collector, which meant someone who could dominate and intimidate people, and keep a close eye on money in and money out. Two were nicknamed “sons of thunder,” presumably because of their temperaments.
The psychology at work — if you want to recruit good men, set them a towering challenge and then push them hard in its pursuit — seems obviously true in the realm of the military, athletics, and extreme outdoor activities; but it proves no less true in the realm of priestly and religious vocations. If a young man or a young woman is going to commit his or her entire life to the Lord, should it not look and feel quite serious, all-encompassing, demanding everything, but also promising everything? It will take all your mind, heart, soul, and strength, every waking minute, your voice, your lips, your senses, your imagination, your memory — “take it all, O Lord, I give it all to Thee,” as St. Ignatius prayed — but it promises to give you deification, eternal life, a hundredfold now and forever.
For this admirable exchange to be believable — that is, to be able to believe that the Church believes in the reality of this exchange — the way of life it entails must be radical and all-consuming; from the vantage of fallen human nature, it will be burdensome. But this is a necessary step along the path to that “freedom of the children of God” for which we long.
The traditional Latin liturgy is this way, too: it demands more and delivers more. It requires a fuller participation of the whole man, soul and body. We are given more to do spiritually and physically. It makes nothing easy for us — except praying, the one thing we need to do most of all. All of the difficulty is for the sake of breaking open our minds and hearts for communion with God, which will not be won cheaply, lest it be held cheap.
There are a lot of people out there in media, public relations, and, dare I say it, the Church hierarchy, who need to figure out this lesson. The Synod could use a serious injection of the same realism and nobility. (It won't help, since the whole thing has been rigged from the start, but it never hurts to say what the Synod might have been, had it been run by sane people in touch with youth.)
The most obvious way we can recover the toughness, challenge, and lofty purpose we have lost is to take up again the old breviary and the old Mass, and move on from there to a future full of promise.
Os Justi Press (my spare-time republishing entity, which still doesn't have its own website...) is pleased to announce new reprints of five works that should never have gone out of print in the first place. All are available from Amazon sites; the links are below.
Robert Hugh Benson. The King’s Achievement. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1957. Repr. Os Justi Press, 2018. xiv + 368 pp. Paperback, $16.95. Robert Hugh Benson. By What Authority?New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1957. Repr. Os Justi Press, 2018. x + 372 pp. Paperback, $16.95.
I will start with my two all-time favorite historical novels, both by Robert Hugh Benson: The King’s Achievement, set in the times of Henry VIII, St Thomas More, St John Fisher, and the dissolution of the English monasteries, and By What Authority?, set in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and St Edmund Campion. The words "suspenseful, poignant, lyrical, brutal, and triumphant" come to mind in describing this pair of novels, in which Benson vividly depicted a world vexed and torn by religious debates, intrigues, and violence.
Indeed, the author, who profoundly researched the Reformation period and, although the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, ended up converting to Roman Catholicism, knew what he was talking about both historically and personally. He writes with remarkable psychological penetration into the motives, the good and bad will, found on all sides, and convincingly portrays holiness, indifference, ambition, and evil. I found these novels illuminating about our contemporary situation, as well, since the Catholic Faith and fallen human nature never change.
The publisher's description of The King's Achievement:
One of the most coldly calculated acts of Henry VIII during the Reformations was the dissolution of the monasteries. Monks and nuns were driven from their cloisters; the abbeys were plundered and turned over to greedy courtiers. From these ignoble proceedings came Robert Hugh Benson's inspiration for this great historical novel, the story of a house divided against itself. The Torridon brothers are sworn to serve different masters; one is a monk, in love with the Mass and the Faith of Ages, the other an agent of Thomas Cromwell, in love with a protege of Sir Thomas More. Among the giant figures who move through the tale are those of St John Fisher and St Thomas More, the ruthless King Henry VIII, and the grasping Cromwell and Cranmer. Their actual deeds are carefully woven onto this harrowingly romantic tale of the attempted destruction and resilience of the Catholic Faith in England.
The publisher's description of By What Authority:
The fates of two young people caught in a conflict of ideals is the theme of this stirring and tragic novel, set in the England of Elizabeth I. At a time when to follow the Old Religion meant at the least heavy fines and at the worst death, Puritan-bred Anthony and Isabel Norris find themselves drawn to the Church of their forefathers. Monsignor Benson has peopled his story with characters who, while remaining staunchly themselves, nonetheless illustrate the tensions of the time: low intriguers, valiant men and women, heroic figures such as Edmund Campion and the inscrutable Queen Elizabeth. In a story which delves into the deepest reaches of the Catholic and Anglican dilemma, Benson's own life struggles shine forth, ultimately finding their solution in the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church."
These novels went out of print decades ago, and until now have been available only in the most disgracefully OCRed, typo-ridden, badly formatted versions. To remedy this problem, Os Justi has scanned and made available the novels as published in 1957 in New York. The covers on both sides have been ornamented with period portraits suggestive of the characters in the novels. (I have my son Julian to thank for these beautiful cover designs.)
Canon A. Croegaert, The Mass: A Liturgical Commentary. Vol. 1: The Mass of the Catechumens. Trans. J. Holland Smith. Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1958. x + 251 pp. Paperback, $17.95. Canon A. Croegaert, The Mass: A Liturgical Commentary. Vol. 2: The Mass of the Faithful. Trans. J. Holland Smith. Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1959. x + 311 pp. Paperback, $18.95.
This pair of volumes, conveniently divided between the two parts of the Mass, is a testimony to the discriminating historical sense, robust theology, and fervent spirituality of the original Liturgical Movement in its healthy phase, and a melancholy reminder of what intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of Catholic tradition looked like on the eve of the Pauline revolution, before that tradition was swept away.
Now that the genuine Mass of the Roman Rite is returning to so many places, it is time that resources like these should be available again, not only for theoretical purposes but for a living and practical knowledge of the traditional rites of our religion, on the part of clergy who celebrate them, religious who live from them, and laity who assist at them.
The author, Canon Croegaert of Malines, follows a "conservative" line in the sense that he narrates how the liturgy developed over the centuries but instead of expressing skepticism or dismay about medieval and Baroque developments, he grasps the deep logic of their development and explains how they are beneficial. He occasionally points out abuses but is generally so entranced with the beauty of the liturgy as a whole and in all its parts that he is content to offer the history, make observations about elements that have fallen away or been modified, and point out ceremonial issues for the clergy. Here is the publisher's description:
Many priests express a desire for a deeper knowledge of the meaning and history of the rites and prayers of the holy sacrifice they celebrate every day, but have neither the leisure for research nor the sources, which are scattered through a great number of books, pamphlets and reviews. It has been our aim to provide a methodical and practical book for the clergy — one which will be useful both for their own instruction and in their apostolate. The order of the parts of the traditional Latin Mass has been followed throughout and each of the ceremonies is described separately. Each of the chapters provides a general introduction to its subject, a summary of the history of its origins and development and a description (where applicable) of the rite itself. The emphasis throughout is on the practical: on doctrine, history, liturgy and ascetic theology.
Two short quotations from the work: "The Mass is the sacrifice of redemption itself, set before men, and made present in the midst of them, with all its power of glorification in honour of the Holy Trinity, with all its power of life and sanctification for us." And: "Christ has ordered the adoration of the Father by the Church in a definite pattern — through the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments, the rites and ceremonies of which have been defined in every detail by the Church."
Rev. Pierre Chaignon, SJ. The Sacrifice of the Mass Worthily Celebrated. Trans. Most Rev. Louis de Goesbriand. With a preface and meditation aids by Dom Bede Babo, OSB. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1951. Repr. Os Justi Press, 2018. x + 214 pp. Paperback, $14.95.
This work is a translation (by the late bishop of Burlington, Vermont, no less) of a work originally composed in the 19th century by a Jesuit who specialized in the spiritual direction of priests. The book belongs to that wonderful genre, alas nearly gone extinct after the asteroid impact of the Council, of liturgical spiritual reading for clergy to aid them in offering the holy mysteries digne, attente, devote (worthily, attentively, devoutly).
Thus, Part I is about due preparation, and speaks of the excellence of the sacrifice of our altars, the holiness required by the altar, the particular virtues foremost at the altar, the power of sanctification made available to the priest at the altar, and immediate preparation, while Part II concerns the aims and methods a priest may use during the very celebration of the Mass to increase his concentration, fervor, and benefit, together with the obligation and the blessings of making a good thanksgiving. (As a layman, I also found its contents applicable by analogy to those who are striving to make the most out of their time in church during divine worship.)
Here is the publisher's summary:
Very much has been written in more recent times about the Mass and the cooperation of the laity in it; comparatively little, however, has been written concerning the attitude of the priest towards this Holy Sacrifice. And yet, if St. Thomas Aquinas is right to say “every time we celebrate the memory of his Host, we exercise the work of our redemption” (Summa III.83.1), then so mighty a work requires the best preparation. Father Pierre Chaignon, S.J. (1791–1883) was a French Jesuit priest and spiritual writer who devoted his life to the spiritual direction of other priests, giving an estimated three hundred retreats to French clergy over the course of thirty years. His deep love for the clergy and his concern for their sanctification shines forth in this beautiful book, which helps the priest to prepare well for Mass, celebrate it well, and then make a good thanksgiving afterwards. To stress the importance of his theme, “the worthy celebration of Mass by the priest,” the author incorporates in his work the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas, the fervor of St. Alphonsus de Liguori, the spirit of St. Charles Borromeo, and the zeal of St. Ignatius. Since its appearance, this work has been found very serviceable for meditation and spiritual reading. Father Chaignon’s clarity of thought and exactness of reasoning make the book well adapted to modern conditions under which priests also find themselves compelled to do things in a hurry.
Fr. William Doyle, SJ. Vocations. First published in 1913. Many editions in Ireland and beyond. Repr. Os Justi Press, 2018. vi + 48. Paperback, $7.00.
This classic from 1913, written by the lovable and heroic Fr. Willie Doyle who has been receiving a great deal more attention in recent years (including being the subject of a docudrama at EWTN), became an instant bestseller when it was first released, and was sold in the hundreds of thousands, in at least ten languages. Scores of clergy and religious told Fr Doyle later on that it was instrumental in awakening them to their vocations. I am not at all surprised, as it is probably the most clear-talking, inspiring, inviting, and positive booklet about priestly and religious vocations ever written.
In a letter to his father in 1917, shortly before his death on the battlefield as a World War I chaplain, Fr. Willie wrote: "After my ordination ... I was struck by the fact that there was nothing one could put into the hands of boys and girls to help them to a decision except ponderous volumes, which they could scarcely read." This little booklet is different: it gets right to the point, basing itself squarely on the sayings of Our Lord and the examples of His saints. Some of the chapters include "What is a vocation?," "Signs of a vocation," "Motives for entering religion [i.e., religious life]," "Trying a vocation," "Importance of following a vocation," "Opposition," "Objections," "Advantages of religious life."
If you are discerning a vocation; if you know people who are; if you are a parent who hopes and prays for vocations; if you are a priest or religious encouraging vocations; if you are working with children or young adults and are looking for good reading to give to them — I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of this, give it a read, and see what you think. Fr. Willie's powerful little book (less than 50 pages) deserves to reach a great readership.
(For those who'd like to read more about Fr Willie, my daughter Genevieve published a short biography of him with choice quotations at OnePeterFive, on the exact 100th anniversary of his brave death on August 16, 1917.)
Many readers will be familiar with this wonderful photograph of St. Thérèse, shown posing in her work of filling the ciborium with hosts (among other typical functions of a sacristan) for the daily conventual Mass:
This, of course, is much in keeping with the usual customs of women’s monasteries, where the sisters perform many of the tasks that would otherwise be assigned to clerics, such as leading the entire Divine Office and chanting its readings and prayers; making the responses at low Mass from outside the sanctuary in situations where no servers are available; and, in some rare cases, chanting the epistle at Mass (see Shawn Tribe’s “Carthusian Nuns and the Use of the Maniple and Stole”).
A photo that is much less known, and which I myself saw only for the first time recently, shows Thérèse with, if I may so say, her liturgical assistants in November 1896. Three of them are her blood sisters Marie, Pauline, and Céline (Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, Mother Agnes of Jesus, and St. Geneviève of the Holy Face) and one is her aunt Marie Guérin (Sr. Marie of the Eucharist). Sr. Marie of the Eucharist, Sr. Marie of the Angels (not in the photo), and St. Thérèse were the sacristans, while her three blood sisters were altar bread bakers[1]:
St. Thérèse was a gifted amateur poet and playwright who composed a surprising amount of literary work in her spare moments during her nine years as a Carmelite nun. Some of her work was intended for public occasions such as recreations, birthdays, and feastdays, while other pieces were more private, sent to one or a few of her religious sisters.
In the same month of November 1896, she wrote a poem called “The Sacristans of Carmel,” in rhyming octosyllabic verse, which I wish to share with readers in honor of the Little Flower’s feast (whether you are celebrating it today on the new calendar or two days from now on the old calendar).
The poem was written for Sr. Marie Philomena, who had asked Thérèse for something she could sing while baking; but it was first read by her aunt. Later, all of the sacristans and altar bread bakers got to know the poem, and apparently sang it regularly in their work, to whatever familiar tune they chose that would match the meter. In this we see a splendid example of the genre of a “work song” that has nearly disappeared from the world of mass-marketed and passively consumed entertainment. One may hope such work songs still survive in the Carmels.
The religious and theological content of the song are quite worth of attention. Here is the ICS translation, slightly modified to make it more literal[2]:
1. Here below our sweet office
Is to prepare for the altar
The bread and wine of the Sacrifice
Which brings to earth—“Heaven”!
2. Heaven, O supreme mystery!,
Hides itself under humble bread,
For Heaven, it is Jesus Himself,
Coming to us each morning.
3. There are no queens on earth
Who are happier than we.
Our office is a prayer
Which unites us to our Spouse.
4. This greatest honors of this world
Cannot compare
To the peace, profound and heavenly,
Which Jesus lets us savor.
5. We bring a holy envy
For the work of our hands,
For the little white host
Which is to veil our divine Lamb.
6. But his love has chosen us.
He is our Spouse, our Friend.
We are also hosts
Which Jesus wants to change into Himself.
7. Sublime mission of the Priest,
You become our mission here below.
Transformed by the Divine Master,
It is He who guides our steps.
8. We must help the apostles
By our prayers, our love.
Their battlefields are ours.
For them we fight each day.
9. The hidden God of the tabernacle
Who also hides in our hearts,
O what a miracle! at our voice
Deigns to pardon sinners!
10. Our happiness and our glory
Is to work for Jesus.
His beautiful Heaven is the ciborium
We want to fill with souls!...
The original draft
I heartily agree with the Carmelite commentators who find this poem both charming and insightful:
The sacristans are the untiring agents of this mysterious exchange [between heaven and earth]. In this poem, they readily call to mind something like Jacob’s ladder. These stanzas are full of “gentleness.” There is the discreet gentleness of the “housewife,” if we dare call it that: of the spouse “happier than a queen” whose heart remains attentive to her Husband, while her hands are diligently working for Him. There is also the discreet gentleness of the Carmelite nun, who is associated with the apostle at the altar in the role that is hers, that of the hidden companion. In both cases, the assistant becomes like the one she assists. …
Here she [Thérèse] sings of her concrete way of sharing immediately in the “sublime mission of the Priest.” “Transformed” into Jesus by the Eucharist, “changed” into Him, does she not then also become an “alter Christus”…? She cannot leave her cloister to “preach the Gospel,” but Jesus, the first Missionary, walks in her and through her. He “guides her steps,” as He does those of the apostles she prays for, loves, and struggles for.
She cannot absolve from sins. But Jesus present in her through the Eucharist gives her a share in his ministry of reconciling sinners.
She will never fill the ciborium with consecrated hosts. But she is spending her life “filling Heaven with souls”—living hosts in which Christ lives alone from then on. …
So Thérèse has no inferiority complex toward “men” or priests. She has no presumption either. For her, it is Jesus who acts in collaboration with men—and women. Even in 1892, she wrote to Céline: “I find that our share is really beautiful; what have we to envy in priests?”[3]
In fact, if we may use the awkward expression “holy envy,” it will always be the case that each Christian vocation has reason to admire the goods of every other, since these goods are not, simply speaking, compatible with one another. The priest may well “envy” the female religious her total and silent dedication to prayer, which he will almost never attain in his active ministry; the married man or woman may “envy” the consecrated soul its undivided attentiveness or availability for the things of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor 7); the consecrated man or woman may “envy” the married their sacramental realization of the faithful, fruitful union of Christ and the Church, which brings new immortal souls into the world, to complete the number of the elect. In the Mother of God alone do we find united that which nature cannot unite, combining and exceeding all Christian states of life: she is the wife unwed, the child-bearing virgin, mother inviolate, mediatrix of all grace as the inseparable minister of the High Priest. In her all vocations are at one, like white light before it splinters into a spectrum of colors. For the rest of us, the individual colors are distinct, complementary, and beautiful, as they are intended to be, for our individual benefit and for the common good of the Church.
St. Thérèse’s poem serves as a profitable meditation on several intertwined mysteries: the unique, exalted, and irreplaceable nature of the ministerial priesthood; the lofty participation in Christ the High Priest enjoyed by all who are baptized into His sacerdotal and royal dignity; the special position of consecrated religious, who follow the priestly and sacrificial Lamb whithersoever He goeth; and the value in God’s sight of the quiet, humble work done by sacristans whenever they reverently prepare the materials and environs required for worthily offering the sacrifice of praise.
NOTES
[1] For this and other details, I am indebted to the excellent commentary in The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. Donald Kinney, OCD (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 169–70.
[2] The translation is found in Kinney, Poetry, 170–71, as well as at this website. The French is contained in Kinney, pp. 301–302.
I am sure our readers will find this vocational film made by the Dominican Order in 1960 very interesting, despite the almost completely expressionless voice of the narrator. It was filmed at St Albert the Great College in Oakland, California, and seems to have been made not by professionals, but by the fathers of the house themselves. There are several scenes of the Mass, and one of the Exsultet being sung at the Easter vigil; there is also a brief but lovely scene of a young friar caring for an elderly one, while the narrator recites the words from the antiphon Media vita, the prayer that “we not be cast off in our old age by the Lord, but when our strength shall have failed, He shall not depart from us.” (This was the verse that St Thomas Aquinas could never hear without weeping.) As is almost always the case with such videos from the late ’50s and early ’60s, there are also a few worrisome signs: the almost featureless chapel of the cooperator brothers, the table-altar in the student brothers’ chapel, with a very modern-art crucifix, and the chasuble used at Mass.
Receiving letters from thoughtful NLM readers is one of the most rewarding parts of being a contributor to this blog, and although I do not always have the time or the wherewithal to respond adequately, I am grateful for all well-intentioned reactions, both positive and negative. I would say the same thing about the comments posted here on the blog, which lately have been surprisingly numerous, detailed, and intense. This is all to the good, as far as I’m concerned.
Not long ago, I received a remarkable letter concerning two articles I had published in close proximity. It is from a college-age Catholic who wanted to explain how her own experience resonated with my observations about the appeal of the traditional liturgy to young people. The letter has such a winsome freshness that it seemed only fitting to share it with NLM readers (of course, having previously secured the author’s permission).
* * *
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
Thank you for your recent New Liturgical Movement article titled “Divergent Political Models in the Two ‘Forms’ of the Roman Rite.” Each one of your points resonated with me very much. I am a twenty-five year-old woman who discovered the Traditional Latin Mass only a year and a half ago, but prior to that I attended the Novus Ordo Mass, prayed my Rosary daily, and benefited from weekly Eucharistic adoration. As a cradle Catholic, my upbringing took place in a fairly “mainstream” American parish. I donned my white altar-girl alb to serve Holy Mass, served as a lector, and played St. Louis Jesuit tunes on my clarinet in the sacro-pop choir. I think this upbringing in the “normal” Catholic world puts me in a good position to comment on the points made in your article. For what it’s worth, I would like to tell you I agree with everything in it.
Your following statement is, for me, a lived reality: “The Novus Ordo can be fruitful for those who already have a fervent and well-ordered interior life, built up by other means.” Those other means in my life were the catechesis I received as a homeschooled child brought up in a large family with two revert parents who, although not acquainted with the traditional Catholic sphere, had an innate respect for dogma and unwatered-down truth. You mention in the essay that the faithful will bring other things to the Novus Ordo Mass. I certainly did. I brought explanations of Church dogma that I heard on Catholic radio, I brought lives of the saints that I read in the many books my parents supplied, and I brought my own imagination that I developed in reading fiction and poetry to beautify a liturgy that I began to find increasingly bare. By these means, I never forsook my faith, but I must say the banal liturgy began to feel like a veritable ball and chain on my interior life. So perhaps the only nuance I would add to your thesis is that the N.O. does suffice for those who are able to supplement their faith life from other sources, but as they grow in their faith, they will most likely become increasingly discontent with the N.O. liturgy.
This brings me to your insightful statement: “The people who attend [the N.O. Mass] are assumed to know how to pray, how to ‘participate actively’ (as if this is at all evident!), and how to be holy. They come to display and demonstrate what is already within them.” I could not agree more. All the years I attended the N.O., I didn’t realize the enormous effort I was making to foster an awareness of the profundity of the Sacred Mysteries. I fostered this awareness by prodding my interior senses to recognize the beauty of the Holy Mass, the sacrificial splendor of Calvary re-presented, the absolution of my sins, the priest as the figure of Christ, the participation of the angels and saints, the awesome wonder of adoring the consecrated host, and the time-bending transcendence of the Holy Mass. The liturgy, which by working on the external senses ought to enliven and assist the interior senses, offered me no help at all in contemplating these mysteries and often even offended me.
In the fall of 2016, I attended my first Traditional Latin Mass. My life has never been the same since. Although there were many things in the traditional liturgy I didn’t understand on an intellectual level, it had an amazingly natural feel to it. Given my understanding of the Eucharist, it was natural that there should be solemnity, reverence, and grandeur. It was natural there should be profound silence, wonder, awe, and radiance. This liturgy not only corresponded with the understanding I brought in my interior, it surpassed it, nourished it, and fed it. My cradle liturgy, the N.O. with its casual minimalism, contradicted my knowledge of the reverence due to our Lord in a jarring banality that could only ever feel foreign even after thousands of Masses I attended in the course of my life.
At the T.L.M., I was astonished by how easy it was to pray. I just watched the breathtaking reverence and listened to that indescribably full silence. When I acquired a hand missal, I encountered yet a new layer of prayer. The psalms and scripture became living organisms like flowers growing in a spiritual ecosystem, my Eucharistic devotion skyrocketed after suffering stagnation so many years, my love of the Sacred Priesthood, my reverence for priests, and my deep gratitude for them reached heights I had never imagined possible. These men who stood before God, facing God on my behalf filled me with wonder.
This quantum leap in my spiritual life should not be surprising to you because you should see that I was simply feeling the liberating effects of attending a liturgy that “is not leaning on you to supply it with force or relevance.” It does not require me to be a responsible citizen in a rigid governmental framework, but rather allows me to be a daughter in the court of my King and my Father. It truly is a liturgy that is, as you say, “inherently full and ready to act upon you.”
I must also tell you how much I enjoyed reading the related essay, “Traditional Liturgy Attracts Vocations, Nourishes Contemplative Life, and Sustains the Priesthood.” Again, I could not agree more with your observations, and the experience in my life seems to confirm your hypothesis. Since my family’s discovery of the Traditional Liturgy, I have seen two of my sisters join religious communities that pray the old Divine Office and assist at the Traditional Mass daily. They could not be happier. My two brothers who had discerned for several years in a diocesan seminary both decided to leave the seminary at large financial cost to themselves in order to join seminaries and orders in which they could offer the T.L.M. regularly. These stories describe nothing other than the seduction you so aptly point out in the article. While my experience with this holy seduction has not been as visibly dramatic as that of my siblings, the radical growth and change for the better it has occasioned in my interior life has been more wonderful than I will ever be able to describe.
Finally, I agree most especially with your point stating the N.O. liturgy is all too often a source of embarrassment. This statement of yours summed it up: “The reformed liturgy in its Genevan simplicity has never won any awards for seductiveness. It can barely be looked at head on before people feel embarrassed about its nakedness and try to clothe it with every accoutrement they can find or invent.” Even from my childhood I had a sense that there was a grievous disconnect between what the liturgy expressed and what I believed. I would wonder about what my non-Catholic friends would think if they came to Mass, and I always had a sneaky suspicion that the children standing in the sanctuary leading the faithful in the sign language of Our God is an Awesome God would surely belie our assertion that the God of the universe dwelt in the Tabernacle. I feared that if a non-Catholic came to church some Sunday this is all he would see, and I began to feel an uncomfortable feeling that the liturgy was at odds with my evangelical efforts.
Unfortunately, this fear was confirmed in my college years when I did bring some friends to Mass. One of them sat back as if he were at a rather silly elementary school variety show and the other man, a Jew, said, “Well, it wasn’t that different from any other Christian church I’ve been to. Do you know where I could go to a Latin Mass?” Nowadays when I bring non-Catholics to church, I no longer need to wince and figure out how I’ll explain away the multitude of conversion-killing banalities so typical in the N.O. liturgy. I bring my non-Catholic friends to the T.L.M. and watch it provoke in them the wonder, awe, and questions that are the first steps of conversion.
In Christ, N.
An increasingly common sight
* * *
What Gregory DiPippo has so often reported on — that “Tradition is for the Young” — is captured very well in this reader’s epistle. And those of us who work in the mission territory of university education can verify that this reaction happens over and over and over again, wherever the powerful witness of age-old forms of worship is allowed to operate freely.
Why, then, is this revival of traditional piety, devotion, and liturgy so fiercely opposed by so many in the Church? The best succinct explanation I have ever seen is that offered by Joseph Shaw in a recent post at LMS Chairman. I strongly recommend reading what he has to say there.
Meanwhile, may the Holy Spirit continue to raise up young people who, free of the prejudices of the post-Council, can embrace Catholicism in its good and beautiful historical embodiment, the culture of beauty and the sacred cultus that once made the Faith feared, loved, and lived.
My thanks to an old friend, Mr John Boyden, for bringing to my attention this film made by the Franciscans to promote vocations in 1962, starring Jack Nicholson, (yes, the Jack Nicholson!) as a young friar looking back on how he found his way to the priesthood. It is interesting to see some of his characteristic facial expressions and accents applied to such a role.
The film is perhaps a bit melodramatic for modern tastes, very much in the tenor of its times, but no less interesting for all that. The strong emphasis on the theology of the priesthood as a spiritual ministry, rather than a form of social work, is very edifying, especially for those of us who grew up in the era immediately following, when this was very much out of fashion. Also in keeping with the tenor of the times, no one thought it was out of place for the good Padre to be shown reminiscing about his journey to the priesthood while smoking; I think this would earn it a PG-13 today. Much has changed since this film was made, for better and for worse, but some things never change in Hollywood; if Nicholson looks a little old for a high school senior here, it’s because he was 25 when he made this, just as Tom Holland, the actor who plays high-school student Peter Parker / Spiderman in the Marvel Universe films, is 22.
In my post “Divergent Political Models in the Two ‘Forms’ of the Roman Rite,” I argued that people who bring a well-developed life of faith to the Novus Ordo are equipped to derive spiritual benefit from it, while those who attend the traditional Latin Mass are confronted by a strong and definite spirituality that drives them deeper into the mysteries of faith and the exercise of theological virtues. The new form is a loosely-demarcated playing field for liturgical intramurals, whereas the old form is an ascetical-mystical bootcamp through which soldiers of the Lord are driven. The former presupposes virtue; the latter produces it.
Can we find any external confirmation that this analysis is correct?
I would say yes. A sign of its truth is how often one encounters young people who either converted to the Faith or discovered a religious vocation precisely through the traditional liturgy. It was the liturgy itself that powerfully drew them in. Conversion and vocation stories in the Novus Ordo sphere seem to have a lot more to do with “I met this wonderful person” or “I was reading the Bible” or “I found this great book from Ignatius Press” or “I got to know the sisters in my high school” or “their devotion to the poor was so moving.”
All these motives are truly good, and the Lord wants to use them all. But it is still noteworthy that the Novus Ordo is rarely the powerful magnet that draws them in; it is a thing that people who are already drawn in for other reasons will go ahead and do as a regular prayer service. It’s the difference between relying on a neighbor for help and falling in love. Young people today rely for help on the Novus Ordo; they fall in love with the traditional liturgy. Or it is like the difference between acting from duty and acting from delight. We dutifully attend the Novus Ordo because it’s seen as “good for us,” like oatmeal; we get excited when the Latin Mass is available, because it’s delicious to the spiritual palate.
Perhaps readers may object that I am exaggerating the contrast. It may be that I am. But I can only speak from my own experience, as well as from conversations I’ve had as a teacher, choirmaster, or pilgrim with hundreds of young people over the past twenty years. There seems to me to be a vast difference in the perception of the attractiveness or desirability of the old liturgy versus that of the new — so much so that if a Catholic college or university wished to increase daily Mass attendance, all they would have to do is to provide the old Mass, or to provide it more frequently, and the number of communicants would significantly increase. It might seem utterly counterintuitive, and yet it is borne out again and again at chaplaincies across the world.
A psychologist or a sociologist would say that this can have many causes, but what concerns me at the moment is that there is a real theological explanation. One can see, in liturgical terms, why the old form of Mass (and Office and sacraments and blessings, etc.) would be powerfully attractive to today’s youth who discover them. These age-old, pre-industrial, pre-democratic forms are so much richer and denser, more symbolic, involved, and mysterious, pointing both more obviously and more obscurely to the supernatural, the divine, the transcendent, the gratuitous, the unexpected. They are seductive, as only God can be seductive. Seduxisti me, Domine, et seductus sum: fortior me fuisti, et invaluisti (Jer 20:7). This, after all, is what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he wrote to all the bishops of the world: “It has clearly been demonstrated that young persons, too, have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.”
The reformed liturgy in its Genevan simplicity has never won any awards for seductiveness. It can barely be looked at head on before people feel embarrassed about its nakedness and try to clothe it with every accoutrement they can find or invent. We have to bring to it a devotion or a seriousness of purpose that we ourselves possess, if we are going to be in a position to benefit from the divine sacrament it spartanly houses. Without love of the Lord presupposed, this would be a wearisome, unrewarding business, rather like having to convince an indifferent person to be friends with you. It’s an uphill battle from the start. Why should young people be interested in something that is so boringly lecture-like, so logical and efficient, or so much in need of artificial sweeteners, like sacro-pop music? Most of them would rather be anywhere else.
In attempting to understand how liturgy helps or hinders priestly and religious vocations, we should also take into account the demands of active life and contemplative life. Religious communities nowadays tend strongly in the direction of the active life, with apostolates in the world. As Dom Chautard and others have pointed out, modern people are strongly tempted to fall for the “heresy of activism,” whereby we believe that by our hard work we will bring about the kingdom of God on earth. Liberation Theology is an extreme example of the same tendency, but it has been at work since at least the heresy of Americanism diagnosed by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae, according to which the so-called “active virtues” of work in the world have surpassed in worth and relevance the so-called “passive virtues” of religious and contemplative life.
Since the Novus Ordo valorizes the active and denigrates the passive, it seems to fit well with the activist or Americanist mentality. Thus it seems that active religious orders could find it somehow amenable, as long as they could keep bringing to it an interior life cultivated largely through other means. But the priesthood, which must be rooted in the mysteries of the altar in order to remain strong and fruitful, and the contemplative religious life, which focuses on offering up the sacrifice of praise and not on an external apostolate, cannot flourish on a subsistence diet. What may seem “good enough” for the laborer in the vineyard is perilously inadequate for the priest and the contemplative, who need a truly sacerdotal and contemplative liturgy if they are fully to realize their great callings.
Am I saying, then, that the (relatively few) healthy religious communities that use the Novus Ordo would be even better off with the Vetus Ordo? Yes, absolutely. The good they have would be multiplied, their power of attraction and intercession greatly intensified. Unfortunately, however, even those who have come to recognize the superiority of tradition will be discouraged by the hostile climate introduced under this pontificate from returning to the Church's authentic lex orandi, lest they suffer the fate of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate or the Trappists of Mariawald. In this official opposition to the desperately-needed restoration of Catholic tradition we can see the telltale signs of the Devil's implacable hatred for the celibate priesthood and the contemplative religious life.
But neither human nor angelic opposition should prevent any community from quietly and judiciously incorporating the traditional liturgy into its daily life. “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints” (Rev 13:10). The ancient Latin liturgical rites and uses have nourished the saints of the Western Church for over 1,600 years. They have an imperishable power to do the same for all the saints Our Lord desires to raise up today. Traditional liturgy never failed to attract vocations of every kind or to support the Christian life of the laity; it continues to exercise the same fascination and fortification among us. The new-fangled liturgical rite of yesterday, like the Americanist world in which it was inculturated, is failing. A healthier Church, a healthier spiritual polity, is in the making.
22. Since this is the priest’s second Mass ever, the deacon, as a kindly older brother, is reminding him of the order of incensation, which is rather elaborate.
In case anyone is wondering what “order of incensation” refers to, here’s a diagram from a Roman Missal with all the indications:
24. The deacon incenses the priest. By now the subdeacon has the paten, which he has covered in the humeral veil and is holding up before his eyes, blocking his view of the unfolding mysteries. Note the servers waiting at the edge of the sacristy to emerge for the Lavabo.
