Musings of a Pertinacious Papist

Yesss!! Christian Europe finally pushing back

2009-11-21T21:17:00.001-05:00

Hilary White, "Italian Mayors Order Crufixes Put in Classrooms in Revolt against European Court Ruling" (LifeSiteNews.com, November 17, 2009):

Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski and the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church have both hit out at a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) attempting to ban the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools. At the same time, a general revolt against the ruling in municipalities all over Italy has been started by public officials, who are now ordering the display of crucifixes in schools, and levelling fines for non-compliance.

[Hat tip to M.H.]

Who's worried about the swine flu?

2009-11-20T21:19:00.005-05:00

"Million Hit by 'Plague Worse than Swine Flu'" (Daily Express, UK, November 19, 2009):

A deadly plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic.

A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu.

... Universities, schools and kindergartens have been closed, public meetings have been banned and theatres shut. Last week several border crossings in the country were also closed.

... A doctor in Western Ukraine who did not want to be named, said:” We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

“They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying.”

[Hat tip to A.D.]

The Three Natural Laws of Catholic Church Architecture

2009-11-17T22:56:00.006-05:00

By Michael S. Rose
One basic tenet that architects have accepted for millennia is that the built environment has the capacity to affect the human person deeply -- the way he acts, the way he feels, and the way he is. Church architects of past and present understood that the atmosphere created by the church building affects not only how we worship, but also what we believe. Ultimately, what we believe affects how we live our lives. It's difficult to separate theology and ecclesiology from the environment for worship, whether it's a traditional church or a modern church. If a Catholic church building doesn't reflect Catholic theology and ecclesiology, if the building undermines or dismisses the natural laws of church architecture, the worshiper risks accepting a faith that is foreign to Catholicism.

Architecture isn't inconsequential.

That's why the Code of Canon Law explicitly defines the church building as "a sacred building destined for divine worship" (canon 214). The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates this point and goes further by stating that "visible churches are not simply gathering places but signify and make visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men reconciled and united in Christ" (#1180).

This is a tall order, to be sure, and the architect today naturally wonders how a mere building can accomplish so much. Fortunately, he doesn't stand alone in a perilous vacuum but has at his command more than fifteen hundred years of his craft on which to reflect.

When he turns to the Church's great architectural heritage, he discovers that from the early Christian basilicas in Rome to the Gothic Revival churches of early 20th-century America, the natural laws of church architecture are adhered to faithfully in the design of successful Catholic churches, buildings that serve both God and man as transcendental structures, transmitting eternal truths for generations to come.

Consider, for example, Notre Dame de Paris, the crowning jewel of Paris, arguably the most famous of Christendom's great cathedral churches. Countless chronicles, poems, novels, and artistic treatments have been devoted to this architectural masterpiece. Yet, considering it's neither the tallest, the biggest, nor even the most beautiful of cathedrals, Notre Dame's universal appeal isn't easily explicable on the natural order.

There's something more.

Even the familiarity acquired from a distance through travel guides, textbooks, magazine articles, movies, and even cartoons doesn't detract from the overwhelming sense of goodness, beauty, and truth that the pilgrim feels on first experiencing the church in person. Its flying buttresses, its stained glass, its great rose window with its delicate bar traceries that resemble the petals of the flower, its richly carved portals, the soaring heights of its columns that flower into barrel vaults, its many shrines and reliquaries, its altars, and the presence of Jesus in the great tabernacle all work together to raise the pilgrim's mind to heavenly things.

In this cathedral, faith is incarnational, just as Catholicism is an incarnational faith -- "the Word became flesh." The kingdom of God is manifest to us, century after century, through the medium of this church building, stone laid upon stone, sculpture after sculpture hewn from rock, built and carved of human hands -- a gospel in stone brought to life.

Notre Dame is easily recognized as art in the noblest sense, architecture of the highest order, a building established as a "sacred place" -- a sacred place that is first of all, a house of God, a place of His earthly habitation, wrought in the fashion of heavenly things.

But what makes it so?

First, Notre Dame is massive and durable, meant to withstand the violence of man and the brutality of nature. It has served as a silent witness to the tumultuous history of France over the past eight hundred years in the heart of its grand capital. It has stood as a survivor of many epochs, witnessing to the permanence of the Gospel and Christian society, despite the secularization of almost everything around the great cathedral. The edifice has transcended both time and culture -- not an easy feat. It is a permanent structure.

Second, the heavenly and eternal are evoked through the soaring heights of the cathedral's interior spaces, made possible by the many elements of the Gothic structural system (pointed arches, flying buttresses, and vaulted ceilings, for instance). Thus, it is a vertical structure.

Third, the grand cathedral is "brought to life" as a gospel in stone through its many works of sacred art, those beautifully crafted representations, both figural and symbolic, that point well beyond themselves to religious truths. In other words, Notre Dame presents an iconographic architecture. The pilgrim can almost hear the patriarch Jacob, after his dream of angels ascending to and descending from Heaven, announcing, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven" (Gen. 28:17).

The Three Natural Laws of Church Architecture

Churches of every century -- grand and small, in large cities, small towns, and rural settings -- have achieved what Notre Dame has achieved through faithful adherence to these natural laws.

Yes, the results are manifested in individual styles, products of a particular time and place, each of which the Church has gladly admitted into her treasury of sacred architecture. Yet each also serves as a house of God that looks to the past, serves the present, and informs the future.

How do they achieve this?

In every case, these successful church buildings firmly establish a sacred place to be used for worship of the triune God, both in private devotion and in public liturgy, and they make Christ's presence firmly known in their surroundings.

In every case, they conform to the three natural laws of verticality, permanence, and iconography, as exemplified in Notre Dame Cathedral. These natural laws are perhaps taken for granted by many, yet, for those who seek to understand how Catholic churches ought -- and ought not -- to be built, they're the most obvious starting points, primarily because these qualities create the proper atmosphere for worshiping God.

Without the qualities of verticality, permanence, and iconography, Notre Dame wouldn't have established itself as a sacred place; we wouldn't know it today. If it didn't adhere to the natural laws of church architecture, Notre Dame wouldn't exist today in any meaningful way. Lacking verticality, the cathedral wouldn't have inspired us toward the otherworldly; it wouldn't have effectively served as the soul of medieval Paris, let alone the present metropolis; nor would it have effectively made Christ and His Church present and active in the French capital. Without permanence, the building would have been destroyed by barbarians or revolutionaries centuries ago. Devoid of iconography, Notre Dame would never have attracted pilgrims to this gospel in stone.

Therefore, let's consider more closely each of these three natural laws, which are indispensable to successful Catholic church architecture.

A Catholic Church Must Have Permanence

The church building, representing Christ's presence in a particular place, is also necessarily a permanent structure -- "Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb. 13:8) -- conceived in theory and practice "with a firm foundation." So, too, is the Catholic Church enduring and permanent, transcending space and time.

The medieval canonist Bishop Gulielmus Durandus (A.D. 1220-1296) reminds us that the Church is built with all strength, "upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Her foundations are in the holy mountains" (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, #27). The permanence of our church structures reflects these qualities of the universal Church. And just as verticality points to the heavenly and the eternal, so too does the requisite principle of permanence. It's another way in which architects create an atmosphere of transcendence.

Nineteenth-century architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc writes of Notre Dame that "everyone who understands construction will be amazed when he sees what numberless precautions are resorted to in the execution -- how the prudence of the practical builder is combined with the daring of the artist full of power and inventive imagination" (Dictionary of French Architecture, 1854). Viollet-le-Duc refers to the permanence of what has become known to us as the Gothic structural system, an ingenious method of building that lends itself both to verticality -- soaring heights enabled by the unique system of buttressing -- and permanence.

The Gothic churches constructed in Europe throughout the medieval centuries can't be accused of being cheap, tawdry structures doomed to decay. Structures such as Notre Dame were conceived as solid and enduring temples, perpetual reminders of Christ's presence active in the world. The same can be said of most churches built in the early Christian, Romanesque, Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical styles.

There are several ways a church can assert its permanence. First, and most obvious, is by its durability. The church, a building that will serve generation after generation, transcending time and culture, must be constructed of durable materials. Typically, one or another type of masonry construction is used, employing the finest materials available.

Related to durability is massing: The church must be of significant mass, built with solid foundations, thick walls, and allowing for generous interior spaces. This massing is another aspect of the architectural language of churches. It's integral to both verticality (the massing of volumes upward creates verticality) and iconography (the massing of the church helps it convey its iconic meaning).

Third is continuity. Churches whose design grows organically out of the past two millennia of churches identify themselves with the life of the Church throughout those two millennia and, by their continuity with the history and tradition of Catholic church architecture, manifest in another way the permanence of the faith.

In other words, to convey that aspect of permanence rooted in continuity, the architectural language of churches must develop organically throughout time, such as when the language of the Renaissance churches permutated into the Baroque language, or when the Gothic forms emerged from the language of the Romanesque. In both cases, the growth of the language was organic. The style may have changed, as when the semicircular arch gave way to the pointed arch. But there was no sudden break with tradition, no disregard for the churches of past centuries (arches were as much a part of the Gothic language as the Romanesque). Architects built on what they knew from the past, refining certain aspects of the language and developing others.

Architects of future generations need to comprehend the language of church architecture in order to build permanent sacred edifices for their own times and future centuries. No successful church architect must be -- or even pretend to be -- ignorant of the Church's historical patrimony. Continuity demands that a successful church design can't spring from the whims of man or the fashion of the day. An authentic Catholic church building is a work of art that acknowledges the previous greatness of the Church's architectural patrimony: It refers to the past, serves the present, and informs the future.

A Catholic Church Must Have Verticality

In contrast to most other buildings, the successful church is so constructed that the vertical element dominates the horizontal. The soaring heights of its spaces speak to us of reaching toward Heaven, of transcendence -- bringing the heavenly Jerusalem down to us through the medium of the church building. It's no coincidence that the liturgical text for the dedication of a church is taken from John's vision of the celestial Jerusalem: "And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold the dwelling of God with men'" (Rev. 21:2-3).

According to John's words, the interior spaces of the church ought to be characterized by a dramatic sense of height -- in a word, verticality. It's a fact of human experience that verticality, the massing of volumes upward, most readily creates an atmosphere of transcendence and in turn enables man to create a building that expresses a sense of the spiritual and the heavenly. It's this transcendence that makes sacred architecture possible.

The building's architectural elements -- such as windows, columns, buttresses, and sacred art -- should reinforce this heavenward aspiration. Likewise, the articulation of the ceiling should further create a sense of reaching toward the heavenly Jerusalem through the use of mosaics, murals, and coffering, as well as by incorporating the mysterious play of natural light into the body of the church.

Consider also that the early Christians, prior to the Constantinian era, solemnized the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in inconspicuous places -- most likely in homes and sometimes in the catacombs -- that had no recourse to an emphasized verticality. Yet once Constantine legalized public Christian worship, the Christians quickly adopted the basilica form, in which spaces were emphatically vertical and conspicuous. Not only did the soaring spaces of such structures lend themselves to symbolizing the reaching toward God and toward things heavenly, it also represented a kingly nobility, for the basilica was the Roman "House of the King," fittingly adapted as the House of the King of Kings.

It is difficult to visualize the kind of spaces that would be created if the ceilings in such grand churches as Notre Dame, St. Peter's Basilica, or Constantinople's Hagia Sophia were lowered to, say, twelve feet -- or even thirty feet. Despite the exemplary iconography and permanence of these structures, they would fall drastically short -- literally -- as sacred places, as houses of God, if their building's proportions were reduced to reflect an emphasis on the horizontal rather than on the vertical.

This need to emphasize the reaching toward the heavens was primarily what inspired Gothic builders to develop a structural system that allowed for even greater soaring spaces. The Gothic architect knew that without an emphasized verticality, the church is emasculated, its raison d'être subverted.

A Catholic Church Must Have Iconography

The third requisite principle is that of iconography, which speaks specifically to the "sign" value of the building.

First, the structure itself ought to be an icon. This is accomplished primarily through its form and its relation to the surrounding environment, whether urban or rural. For example, the church building shouldn't be hidden but integrated into the neighborhood and landscape so that its location reminds us of the building's importance and purpose.

Second, the worthy church building presents an iconography that points beyond itself. Thomas Aquinas realized that man's mind is raised to contemplation through material objects. St. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises (1548), likewise stressed the importance of visualizing the subjects of meditation: Painting, sculpture, and architecture are meant to work together to produce a unified effect.

Thus, it is here that these works of art, the material objects that are effective to this end, with their reliance on the breadth of religious symbolism, come into play. Architectural beauty should reflect God's creation -- particularly man, who is created in the image and likeness of God. It should beget an environment that lifts man's soul from secular things and brings it into harmony with the heavenly.

Architect Ralph Adams Cram wrote over one hundred years ago in his book Church Building, "Art has been, is, and will be forever, the greatest agency for spiritual impression that the Church may claim." It is for this reason, he adds, that art is in its highest manifestation the expression of religious truths. It is through art that Christians have developed the ingenious symbolism that raises our faculties of soul to God.

The tradition of iconography and symbolism in Catholic culture is broad and rich. Meaning is conveyed through formal elements, from basic geometric shapes to figural imagery to literal representation of people or scenes, as in sculpture or paintings. The meanings conveyed through a church's iconographic programs are most typically that of religious truths or historical events of religious significance. They are always expressions of the Catholic faith.

For instance, the masters of the Catholic counter-reformation -- inspired by churchmen such as St. Ignatius and St. Charles Borromeo -- expressed the Catholic faith in the very birth of their art by means of elaborate high altars and tabernacles, special niche and aisle shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to the saints, prominent pulpits for preaching, and an abundance of art in glass, sculpture, mosaic, and painting devised to teach the truths necessary for salvation. The atmosphere created on this model is one of religious mystery wherein we can experience a little of the unearthly joy of the New Jerusalem, where we can encounter Christ in a unique way.

These iconographic churches, these icons, tell the story of Christ and His Church. They teach, catechize, and illustrate the lives of the Church's saintly souls. They manifest eternal and transcendental truths.

Again, if we look to Notre Dame, we understand easily how a pilgrim can spend days -- even weeks -- meditating on the mysteries that are "enfleshed" in the architecture of the cathedral's sculptural programs. A student of the Church may spend months and years reflecting on the ingenuity and beauty of the Catholic truths revealed in the art and architecture of this gospel in stone. Ordinary laymen too are drawn into the church, into the house of God, attracted by the iconography of this medieval edifice, which still speaks clearly to us today, more than eight hundred years after its construction.

This is possible only because architecture has the capacity to carry meaning. A church building is a "vessel of meaning" with the greatest of symbolic responsibilities: It must bear the significance of eternal truths that are transmitted through its material form, its adorning architectural elements, and its sacred works of art. These elements -- indeed the whole of the church edifice -- must create an otherworldly feel that inspires man to worship God, to humble himself before his Creator, to partake in the sacred mysteries, and to focus himself on the eternal. Iconography is yet another way -- perhaps the most direct and efficacious way -- to achieve a transcendent architecture.

These three natural laws of church architecture -- verticality, permanence, and iconography -- transcend the different epochs of Christianity; they are qualities present in all the truly great churches of Christendom. They are the foundation, as it were, on which good church architects build churches that succeed in becoming for their own time and for all generations gates of Heaven and worthy houses of God.

Michael S. Rose, Associate Editor of the NOR, is the author of six books, including Ugly as Sin,which was recently released in paperback by Sophia Institute Press (1-800-888-9344; www.sophiainstitute.com), and from which this article is excerpted.

The foregoing article by Michael S. Rose, "The Three Natural Laws of Catholic Church Architecture," was originally published in New Oxford Review (September 2009), pp. 28-34, and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

How low can you go ... what a brother don't know

2009-11-15T19:07:00.012-05:00

John Steele Gordon, "The President Who Grovels" (Commentary, November 14, 2009), writes:

Could someone in the Chief of Protocol’s Office at the State Department please tell Barack Obama that heads of state do not bow to other heads of state? And for the head of state of the country founded on the idea that “all men are created equal,” that goes double.

When Obama bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the White House denied it: “It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said one aide. As a commentator on CNN said, “Ray Charles could see that he bowed.” (h/t PowerLine)

Now he has bowed, extravagantly, to Emperor Akihito of Japan. The Los Angeles Times called it a “wow bow” in its headline and asked “How low will he go?”

President Obama goes abroad apologizing for the supposed sins of a country that defended and extended freedom around the world at a staggering cost in lives and treasure and then grovels before the man whose country has yet to apologize for the Rape of Nanking.

As my mother used to say, “Pardon me while I throw up.”

Some Western journalists are speculating that those who have trouble with Mr. Obama's gesture are limited to foam-at-the-mouth American right wingers, and that it may be warmly received in Japan where such gestures of humility, it is thought, have been long respected. I spent my first twenty years in Japan. I should know.

There is indeed a popular saying among the older generation in Japan, which suggests that a person is respected being humble -- because his "atama ga hikui" (literally: because he "has a low head"). Yet you can't simply extract this gesture from its Confucian cultural context and tradition and expect to properly apply it in the abstract.

If you watch people bow to one another in Japan, it is a delicate ritual. If people have exchanged name cards the process is assisted by the fact that each knows the relative rank of the other and how deeply it would be appropriate or inappropriate to bow. Rank is a deeply complicated affair involving gender, relative age, profession, and a host of other relationships cataloged by Confucius. If one doesn't know the rank of the other, the undertaking is a bit dicier, and each party carefully eyes the other while making his best intuitive judgment of how deep a bow is appropriate, each party typically repeating the bows until they come to some sort of unstated mutual consensus.

Thus the idea that an American president should baldly waltz up to the Emperor of Japan and greet him with a profoundly deep bow, bending almost double, exhibits nothing so much as silliness. However well-intentioned it may be, it shows utter lack of judgment. Why? Because there is no proper inter-cultural, international context for such a bow. Mr. Obama is neither Emperor Akihito's subject nor a Confucian, and I do not think he believes him divine -- a title that was abrogated after the Second World War. This is simply not the way a contemporary head of state greets another, even if he is royalty. A shake of the hand with a slight bow of the head would have been ample and appropriate. But within a Japanese context, Mr. Obama's gesture comes closer to the manner in which a vastly inferior Japanese subject would bow to his Emperor, or perhaps someone out of the Emperor's good graces seeking his mercy or pardon. Hence, it was an altogether inept and inordinate gesture for a head of state.

Mr. Obama was probably merely trying to show courtesy and respect for a venerated national Japanese figurehead. I am sure the Emperor was graciously indulgent -- just as the Queen of England was with Michelle Obama's pats on her back; yet I am no less certain that the gesture felt awkward to them. Here comes running another stupid gaijin (foreigner) who simply does not know his manners. Well, at least he's bowing and not high-fiving the Emperor, so I am quite certain they were happy to smile at the poor spoiled and abysmally untutored and inexperienced boy president. Let's hope he didn't try to give the Emperor some sort of electronic gadget. That would have been a fatal coffin nail.

I must say it strikes me odd how "into" these sorts of international gestures Mr. Obama is, when I consider how little he is "into" such gestures as laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknowns the other day at the Arlington National Cemetery, a fact amply clear from his awkwardly stiff and impatient body language.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

"Don't be a buzzkill, Jesus"

2009-11-15T10:02:00.008-05:00

Our HBCU correspondent we keep on retainer just wired in this item about the Sara Evans album, "I'll Be Home for Christmas," as a pre-holiday heads-up. He writes:

"Somehow, on an Xmas Ep with 4 songs, one of which feature words sung as if spoken by Jesus himself, methinks this jacket photo epitomizes how religion in the U.S. has been hijacked by Oprah-ism, self-referentialism and the Faith Hill-ified 'If You Got It, Flaunt It' philosophy. Hey, Merry Christmas. It's All Good... Sheesh, chill out there, Jesus. Grab an eggnog or something, but don't be a buzzkill..."

[Hat tip to J.M.]

The Extraordinary Form of Confirmation

2009-11-15T08:54:00.009-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 15, 2009):

In two weeks, on Sunday, November 29, Archbishop Allen Vigneron will administer the Sacrament of Confirmation according to the Extraordinary Form at St. Josaphat Church following the 9:30 AM Mass. This will be the first time in approximately 40 years that Confirmation will be administered in this manner in metropolitan Detroit and Windsor.

In preparation for this historic event, today we are running an updated edition of a previously-run column describing the Tridentine Form of Confirmation.

A bishop is the ordinary minister of the Sacrament of Confirmation. The Holy See has issued regulations permitting a priest to administer Confirmation under certain circumstances, such as if a person is at the point of death. For the purposes of this discussion, we will only address the typical situation of a bishop conferring Confirmation, as it is safe to assume that most of those devoted to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass would have a strong preference for a bishop performing this function.

The Sacrament of Confirmation imparts an indelible seal on the soul. It imparts the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. The candidate must have been baptized and should be in the state of grace. The place of the ceremony, inside or outside of Mass, is not specified, and thus is left to local custom.

The bishop traditionally enters the church accompanied by the antiphon Ecce Sacérdos Magnus (Behold a great priest). When one is available – which will not be the case this time – the bishop may wear the cappa magna, a long cape somewhat akin to a bridal train, during the procession. Upon arrival at the altar, the bishop traditionally intones the Veni Creátor, invoking the Holy Ghost. He then delivers the Catechetical Instruction to the candidates.

The candidates kneel while the bishop begins, “May the Holy Ghost come down upon you, and may the power of the Most High keep you from sin.” With his hands extended over the candidates, he says a prayer invoking the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. Each pair of sponsor and candidate comes forth; the candidate kneels before the bishop, and the sponsor places his or her right hand on the candidate’s right shoulder.

Dipping his thumb into the Holy Chrism and tracing the Sign of the Cross onto the forehead of the candidate, the bishop recites the essential form of the Sacrament: “N., signo te signo Cru+cis et confírmo te Chrísmate salútis. In nómine Pa+tris, et Fí+lii, et Spíritus + Sancti.” (N., I seal you with the sign of the Cross and I confirm you with the Chrism of salvation. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.) The confirmed responds: “Amen.” The bishop lightly strikes the confirmed upon the cheek, saying: “Pax tecum” (Peace be with you). No response is made.

The bishop wipes the forehead of the confirmed with cotton after the anointing. This cotton is later burned and the ashes disposed of in the sacrárium of the church, or into the soil outside.

The bishop then washes his hands as the antiphon Confírma hoc, Deus is sung: “Confirm, O God, what Thou hast wrought in us, from Thy holy temple which is in Jerusalem.”

While the confirmed all kneel, the bishop recites a prayer asking that the Holy Ghost may come “down upon those whose foreheads we have annointed with the holy Chrism, and signed with the sign of the holy Cross, [and] by His gracious indwelling make them a temple of His glory.” He says a concluding prayer, followed by a special blessing.

The bishop sits down, puts on his mitre, and addresses the sponsors on their duties. The confirmed recite aloud the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. The bishop then gives the Pontifical Blessing, after which the Te Deum or Psalm 112 (Laudáte Púeri) is customarily sung as a recessional.

The Ordinary Form of Confirmation, in comparison, begins with a reading from the Acts of the Apostles. A brief homily is given, followed by the Renewal of Baptismal Promises. The Laying on of Hands and the Anointing are similar, although no posture is specified for the candidates. In practical matters, this usually means that the candidates stand before the bishop. Some General Intercession-like prayers follow, then the confirmed recite the Our Father, and the bishop imparts a blessing.

The content of the Sacrament of Confirmation is rather similar between the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms. Perhaps this is why one sees less debate about the wording of the Novus Ordo Form. [Accompanying photo of Raleigh Bishop Michael Burbidge administering Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form in April, 2009, by Nick Aul]

Rehearsal Next Sunday

All candidates and sponsors for the Sacrament of Confirmation are requested to assemble in the front pews of St. Josaphat Church immediately following the 9:30 AM Tridentine Mass next Sunday, November 22. A brief rehearsal of the ceremony will be conducted.

"Tolle Lege" this! Catholic Bible Scholarship since V-II

2009-11-09T19:30:00.009-05:00

"Let's be blunt. Catholic Biblical scholarship since Vatican II hasn't been just bad. It's been a disaster."

So begins Joe Martin's rapid-fire review of The Church And The Bible: Official Documents of the Catholic Church,edited by Dennis J. Murphy, MSC (St. Pauls; Alba House; 2nd rev. enl. ed., 2007) and Aidan Nichols' Lovely, Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church(Ignatius Press, 2007).

Joe Martin, "A Good Commentary is (not) Hard to Find: On Bible Scholars + Scholarship, Lovely and Otherwise" [click on "Download" to call up the PDF file], continues:

Most of what is written encourages skepticism, despite avowals of allegiance to “the analogy of faith.” And for all the bowing at the altar of “the indispensable results of Higher Criticism,” does anyone honestly believe guys like Raymond E. Brown have helped versus hurt belief in the essential veracity of Scripture? Does anyone really think that The New Jerome Commentary, when it tries to tear Biblical books into umpteen scraps of parchment by umpteen anonymous authors, would make its namesake happy?

Instead, what unfortunately comes to mind when surveying the Catholic landscape is this indictment from an old Protestant evangelist: “When Satan gets into the pulpit, or the theological chair, and pretends to teach Christianity, when in reality he is corrupting it… pretends to be teaching Biblical Introduction, when, in reality he is making the Bible out to be a book that is not worthy of being introduced -- then look out for him; he is at his most dangerous work” (R.A. Torrey, What the Bible Teaches, 517).

Off-putting Fundamentalist hyperbole? Before you summarily dismiss such characterizations, consider how most Catholic schools can demolish students’ faith after only one semester in Biblical studies. Or better yet, suppress your ‘RadTrad’ prejudices for a few more minutes and read the vilified Fr. Brian Harrison over at Christian Order. Or, taste the offerings of a Catholic publisher as compared to the academically challenging but still faith-affirming offerings from Inter-Varsity Press. Even San Francisco’s normally topflight Ignatius Press for a while marketed an Old Testament Introduction -- A Consuming Fire -- that seemed to consign traditional authorship theories to the furnace as often as not (no surprise that it quickly fell out of print). Things are so bad that when the Pope himself writes a book that simply confirms his belief in the basic New Testament narrative, the first response from the faithful is what? A collective sigh of relief!

But on the horizon there are intermittent flashes of light. For starters, Ignatius Press is now readying the New Testament installment of Scott Hahn’s Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.Hahn is nothing short of a phenomenon, a sort of one man counter-assault on the faux Biblical studies hoisted upon us by a liberal zeitgeist in the ugly fallout from Vatican II. This guy also honestly believes in Inerrancy. The kind confirmed by "Providentissimus Deus" … Yes, way! Hahn is so congenially and over-the-top orthodox -- and so beyond what many have hoped or prayed for -- that his sales prove readers ready to forgive even his unending stream of painful puns.

Then there is The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture,a new series from Baker Academic (Baker being one of the Big Three of Grand Rapids' formidable Calvinistic publishing triumverate, but any port in a storm, right?). The two launch volumes are marked by unimaginative jackets and the crass pull-quote and graphic-heavy page layouts that pop culture demands. But with an A-list of proposed authors, the project also promises to consistently take the Bible’s writers at their word - so we’ll take it.

The Navarre Bibleis an imposing series originating in Spain under the auspices of Opus Dei. With that Dan Brown-like intriguing association, you'd think the English versions would be hot property in American bookstores post TDC--and you'd be wrong. In fact, you won't spot them in mainstream venues. Which is too bad, given the commentaries' attractive design, generous quotations from saints (especially Escriva), *and* parallel English/Latin Scripture columns... Or maybe it's the presence of that little-loved Latin that explains their scarcity? Anyway, the books can be as friendly as the current Pontifical Biblical Commission when it comes to dated source theories, but they are also thoroughly Catholic, fare well enough in translation, and have a nice devotional bent. Verdict? Supernumerary approved.

And from genteel Charlottesville, Robert Louis Wilken is shepherding, at snail’s pace, The Church's Bible. The three volumes to date in this series promise a patristic resourcement project that would do Henri de Lubac proud. If, that is, it could only gather more steam. In the meantime, Catholics who hold their noses can avail themselves instead of Inter Varsity’s Ancient Christian Commentaryseries, a project animated by a similar intent (if also marked by predictable Evangelical blinders, as Robin Darling Young -- apparently having a bad day -- pointed out [eliciting lively discussion at First Things]).

Some of the most striking signs of life come from two recent volumes that never seem to have quite registered on the radar. The Church And The Bible: Official Documents of the Catholic Church,edited by Dennis J. Murphy, MSC, originated in India, an apostolate that appears healthier for its distance from the florid vocabulary of disbelief often floated in American seminaries. It’s a fat doorstop of a book claiming to collect all the official documents on Scripture, up to and including recent addresses by John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Everything’s been freshly translated, but otherwise there’s nothing very new there. What is arrestingly new to anyone familiar with the climate of scholarship over the past forty years is the attitude reflected in two of the editor’s lengthy essays:

"Exegetes or theologians carried away by an earlier enthusiasm may find it difficult to be open to a new one or to the re-emergence, even in modified forms, of ideas that they had earlier rejected,” warns Murphy. But “current, widely accepted opinions in theology and exegesis also need to be wary of various subtle and not so subtle forms of authoritarianism.” Can we get an A-men?

“If we can put aside our prejudices and return to [older encyclicals and pronouncements of the Pontifical Biblical Commission] and their history, they may help us avoid two extremes: an enclosed mutual-admiration-society of either the right or the left; and a consequence of that -- failure to respect the academic right of other points of view to exist.” Even more, “The hopes and fears that earlier generations… had about the study of the Bible in general and the historical-critical method in particular” may have had more merit than today’s academic guild cares to admit. “It is only by looking into the past as well as into the present that we can see whether those fears were true or baseless, exaggerated or clear-sighted; and above all whether we have furthered the hopes that Pope Gregory expressed… ‘Seek, I beg you, to meditate every day on the words of your Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God.’’’

A helpful guide toward that end would be a second recent book, Lovely, Like Jerusalem,a literate and concise introduction to the Old Testament. Aidan Nichols, OP, meets Pope Gregory’s clarion call with a modest trumpet blast of his own, calling Bible-believing Catholics back to sanity as Frank Sheed would have defined it, to read the text with an eye for what is really there. It’s hard to recall any priest since Hubert Von Zeller [see bibliography below] whose writing on the Old Testament text seems so matter-of-factly helpful and at the same time so spiritually clear-sighted.

When online Ignatius Insight’s Carl Olsen asked Nichols about his heavy reliance on non-Catholic theologians, Nichols was candid. “By the end of the twentieth century Catholic exegesis [had] became indistinguishable from [liberal] Protestant,” he claimed. “Until this situation has changed… the best course of action is to select biblical commentators of whatever denomination whose work seems to accord best with the Catholic understanding of Scripture as found in Tradition.” Considering Nichols heavy usage of Anglican and Evangelical commentators, the appropriate response from Catholic readers here might reasonably be “Ouch!” Nichols essentially disinvites to the party those inappropriately dressed, which in this case means most of the post-sixities Catholic academy. In the past when skeptics expressed bewilderment at Evangelicals’ simplistic Biblical devotion, an oft-heard quip in replay was “Well, that’s what you get for reading someone else’s mail.” Confessional labels notwithstanding, that pretty much seems to reflect something of the sentiment at work here: here is a priest writing for fellow family members in the faith, those who share a real bloodline of belief, and not merely a tenure review board. He recognizes those experts who are striving to see through the eyes of faith, but spends little time amongst those who cannot help but encounter Scripture as a sealed book.

Touching down lightly on the postmodern angst over Genesis, creation, and Mosaic authorship, Nichols says that the “historical minimalism in fashion today in many departments of Old Testament studies is not an adequate basis on which to read Genesis as Scripture….” He continues: “Of course no book of Scripture is history in the sense of a Ph.D. thesis on an historical subject in a modern University. That does not mean it cannot give a reliable account of past events, especially when those events were religiously crucial to the minds of the people whose lives they affected.” With scholarly feet thus firmly planted, he takes readers through the Torah, the Wisdom literature, and the Prophets, stopping as well for a quick scan of the Apocryphal books. His especially strong section on the Psalms as a semitic prayer book should revivify the Mass readings for more than a few readers who subsequently sit through Sunday services.

Because his first reflex is to take Scripture at its word, Nichols’ entire tone comes off in marked contrast to so much critical output, reminding us from just where we have drifted. The Jesuit John Courtney Murray may now have his naysayers for contributions to Vatican II on religious authority and pluralism, but in the old America magazine he also weighed in giving unqualified endorsement to the highly traditional commentaries of Rev. John Steinmueller as “scientific.” Back then, such was the mainstream. Even a bit more recently in 1954 Romano Guardini would give deference to details in Scripture by alluding to “the dignity lent them by the Word of God.” In Lovely Like Jerusalem that attitude is admirably and intelligently reclaimed. A first portent of the sanity comes in the chapter on the Pentateuch, where Nichols appears to recommend Gordon J. Wenham’s fisking of the JEPD hypothesis. But the real shocker is on page 46, where he manages to bring the cocktail chatter at the Catholic Theological Society to an uncomfortable halt by lending an Oxford don’s credibility to the unaskable question: “But was there a Second Isaiah?” Come again? What’s more, in answer he suggests an unblinking negative.

The predictable rejoinder from the zeitgest is typified in one amazon.com reviewer’s lament: “Where is the honest inquiry here?” (Perhaps Jospeh Fitzmyer could enlist that online poster as a peritus for the oft-imagined Council of Vatican III.) A better assessment is that offered by Matthew Levering on the back jacket: “Other than Pope Benedict XVI, no theologian writing today has mastered so well the approach to Scripture set forth by such giants as Jean Danielou, Louis Bouyer, and Henri de Lubac.” High praise indeed. And warranted.

All of this is provided to pique interest in Nichol’s spiritual introduction to the Old Testament as a precursor to the New. Lovely lives up to its title’s chosen adjective, managing to be interesting, academic, and orthodox all at the same time, Nichols fleshes out why familiarity with the Old Covenant provides the necessary defining backdrop for the New: without such a perspective, the Church itself will remain “opaque” to the believer, and the Mass at the cognitive level more a veiled ritual than a mediating sacrament. What the Bible presents is two testaments, two contents -- but one reality. With Scripture, the Fathers, and an ecumenical consensus as markers, that is the proposition staked out here, one that is both pre- and post-conciliar.

Hans von Balthasar wrote that that “There is no greater unity in the world, according to God’s plan, than that between the Old and the New Covenant, except the unity of Jesus Christ himself who embraces the unity of the covenants in his own unity." And there, concurs Nichols, lies “the tragedy of Israel in a Christian perspective. [She is] doubly isolated. Thanks to her election, she is cut off by her uniqueness from those interrelations of nations and ethnicities that be ‘wholly expressed in philosophical and universal terms.’ But at the same time, by a failure of response to electing grace, she is cut off from her ‘sister people,’ Christians. She is separated from them by her ‘refusal to allow the prophetic principle its transcendent culmination in a fulfillment given by God alone’ … This isolation adversely affects the Church. It is the ‘first and fundamental schism.’"

With Lovely Like Jerusalem, there is -- at least for Catholic readers -- no longer any reason for such a cleavage to exist. Or for a larger audience to miss the salvation pictures foreshadowed in high definition in the O.T. A couple of decades ago Evangelical Edith Schaeffer wrote Christianity Is Jewish. Exercising noble negligence, Nichols here more than substantiates that rather brash-sounding claim. It’s hard to think of a better recent book to suggest for your Want List, especially as Advent approaches. To attempt some improvisational Gen Y Latinization, Tolle Lege this!

For further reading

For the more traditionally-hardwired, the stalwarts at Roman Catholic Books keep a fistful of worthy Old Testament contenders in the ring. These include A.E. Breen’s hefty A General And Critical Introduction To The Study Of Holy Scripture,(1897; rpt. Kessinger Publishing, 2007), Edward Kissane’s The Book of Job,(New York: Sheed and Ward,1946), Hubert Von Zeller’s Isaias,(London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1938), and Mary Ryan’s Key to the Psalms(Liturgical Press, 1957). Also older but on point is John Laux’s Introduction to the Bible(New York: Benziger Brothers, 1938; rpt., Tan Books & Publishers, June 1992)

Back to newer fare, Peter Kreeft’s You Can Understand The Bible(Ignatius Press, 2005) is in many aspects as good as anything he’s ever done, which is saying a lot. Lastly, it would be remiss not to again reference Scott Hahn. He may periodically get pummeled by friendly forces over at New Oxford Review and assorted com boxes, but the bruises have not left him so bereft or bedridden that he has not still been able to grace us all with Doubleday’s Catholic Bible Dictionary(Doubleday, 2009, pictured right). Fifteen plus years earlier Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, poking fun at the smothering number of experts and exactitudes swarming from the pages of Doubleday’s self-consciously definitive definitive Anchor Bible Dictionary,mused that “it may be the case in biblical studies that more and more are saying less and less to fewer and fewer.” Hahn happily has worked at reversing such murky tides, and it’s hard to miss the irony in Doubelday again being the publishing agent. This Dictionary is meaning and message-minded, anchored in orthodox relevance versus pained scholarly skepticism, and sports a classy yet easy to read, large print layout to match its reader-friendly style. Bibliographical references of an extended sort would meet a real need, if also likely fatten it up to a two-volume affair, perhaps explaining their absence. And the actual number of contributors is unclear. So for now we will simply ask Dr. Hahn to pass along thanks for all responsible for such a marvelous gift.

[Joe Martin is Professor of Graphic Design & Communication at Hampton University, where he keeps a watchful eye on students' leading and kerning. He is also completing a dissertation on "A Tale of Two Francises,” a comparative study of the rhetorical apologetics of Francis Schaeffer and Frank Sheed]

Report: EF Mass training for seminarians

2009-11-09T19:04:00.004-05:00

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, "News about TLM training for seminarians" (WDTPRS, November 9, 2009):

Summorum Pontificum has been in force for over two years.

That is more than enough time to figure out how to integrate training of seminarians into programs of formation.

In another entry, I had asked seminarians to send reports about training and availability for the TLM in their seminary formation.

There follows a series of reports from various seminaries throughout the country. Fr. Zuhlsdorf writes: "This entry may be updated from time to time. Please check back often."

[Hat tip to A.B.]

Accurate Translation of the Propers of Holy Mass

2009-11-08T16:00:00.005-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 8, 2009):

Much press has been given in recent months to the forthcoming new translation of the Ordinary Form Missal. Even though the Vatican has made clear its intention that a new English translation be created which is more faithful to the original Latin, certain prelates continue to object, maintaining that the average North American resident will not comprehend some of the wording used.

As someone who does not follow sports, this writer counters: Don’t underestimate people’s intelligence. Anyone who can understand the rules of hockey or football, or memorize vital statistics of baseball players, can certainly handle the challenge of learning the meaning of a few new words.

Perhaps you have read the following comparison, often used as an example of the inaccuracy of our current translation of the Mass:

Original Latin from the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer #1): “accípiens et hunc præclárum cálicem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas”

Literal translation as found in many Extraordinary Form hand missals: “taking also this excellent Chalice into His holy and venerable hands”

Present Ordinary Form translation: “He took the cup”

Yes, we know this is an extreme example, worthy of a rim-shot sound effect, but it is also a reason for some concern: The majority of English-speaking Catholics likely never have taken the time to learn the original Latin meaning. Fortunately, the new translation is a vast improvement: “he took this precious chalice into his holy and venerable hands”. The remainder of the translation of the Ordinary is, by and large, comparably improved.

Not much has yet been said about the translations of the Propers of the Mass, those orations (Opening Prayer, Prayer Over the Gifts, and Prayer After Communion), antiphons (Introit and Communion), and readings which change from day to day over the liturgical year. The bulk of the Roman Missal is, after all, the Propers; the translation of them represents a far more monumental work than the translation of the Ordinary, or unchanging part, of the Mass.

Readers may be surprised to learn that many of the Latin orations and antiphons have not changed all that much between the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms. For instance, the Secret oration for the Second Sunday of Advent in the Extraordinary Form is:

Placáre, quaésumus, Dómine, humilitátis nostræ précibus et hóstiis: et ubi nulla súppetunt suffrágia meritórum, tuis nobis succúrre præsídiis. Per Dóminum nostrum…

In the Ordinary Form, the only change in the corresponding Prayer Over the Gifts is the substitution of the abbreviated conclusion “Per Christum Dóminum nostrum,” a common change throughout the Missal. The actual Latin prayer itself is the same.

However, the English versions differ significantly. A typical, literal, Douay-Rheims-style English translation as found in many Extraordinary Form hand missals is:

Be appeased, we beseech Thee, O Lord, by the prayers and sacrifices of our humility: and where we lack pleading merits of our own, do Thou, by Thine aid, assist us. Through our Lord…

In contrast, the current Ordinary Form English translation reads:

Lord, we are nothing without you. As you sustain us with your mercy, receive our prayers and offerings. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

The latter is almost devoid of hierarchical character. First, “you” is a rather informal pronoun to use when addressing a member of the Holy Trinity. Second, the latter lacks the supplicative character of the former, which expresses more clearly our position as creatures of the One to Whom we address our prayer. Third, many of the orations in the current translation seem almost undistinguishable from one another because they are rather generically translated and use similar wording. Prayer should have meaning; the Propers of the Mass should indeed be “proper” and substantially different for each feast.

The Holy Trinity should not be addressed with dumbed-down banalities. God deserves better than that. Even if one supports the use of more modern English, it is hard to justify adapting the essential meaning of the prayers. Excessively casual wording of prayers is a slippery slope that arguably leads to inappropriate liturgical art and music, simplistic vestments and architecture, and an overall lax attitude towards our Catholic faith. After all, lex orándi, lex credéndi: The law of prayer is law of belief.

The new English translation of the Ordinary Form Ordinary of the Mass has been posted at: www.usccb.org/romanmissal. However, little has been revealed thus far about the phrasing of the newly translated Propers. Translation of the Propers is such an enormous project that translators could get burned out, especially as pressure builds to get it done. A rush to the finish line could result in sloppy work. Let us pray that the members of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy will remain diligent in returning to a more faithful rendering of the prayers, to the very end of the effort.

If accurate expression of the prayers of Holy Mother Church concerns you, the solution is, of course, at hand: Attend the Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass, where the English translations provided in most every handout and hand missal are literal and employ hierarchical language. The orations are quite distinct week-to-week. The high standard to which the Sacred Liturgy is held spills over into high standards for all that surrounds it, in art, architecture, and music. Corners are not cut, our Holy Catholic Faith is transmitted clearly, and culture and society cannot help but benefit.

De Profundis

2009-11-07T23:32:00.006-05:00

Here is a website (www.windsorlatinmass.org/latin/music.htm) where you can hear Antonio Salieri's magnificent De Profúndis sung by the choir that St. Josaphat Church in Detroit shares with Assumption Church in Windsor (simply scroll down and click on De Profúndis).

The recordings are made during Mass and so there is unfortunately some background noise; but it will give you a sense of what power sacred music can have with a schola cantorum that is truly master of its craft.

Salieri's De Profúndis was sung by this choir at the High Mass for All Souls' Day last Monday evening. It is hard to put into words the compelling power of this musical setting of this lament, Penitential Psalm 130. Out of the depths, the psalmist cries out to God, beseeching His mercy. In Catholic Tradition, this lament becomes part of the liturgical prayers for the faithful departed.

As our liturgical Master of Ceremonies describes it, the composition expresses compellingly the obligation that we on earth have to pray for the departed souls in Purgatory. In Salieri's setting, the piece progressively builds until it swells to a moving crescendo. The interplay of the organ and the singers is gripping.

Psalm 130

¹Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.
²Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
³If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
⁴But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
⁵I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
⁶My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
⁷Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
⁸And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Post-Americanism

2009-11-07T09:47:00.003-05:00

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas delivered this revealing comment when previewing the president's speech on the anniversary of D-Day Last June:

Reagan was all about America .... Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something -- I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world. He's sort of God.

[John Bolton, "President Obama's Foreign Policy: An Assessment," Imprimis (October 2009), p. 2.]

Progress report

2009-11-06T22:12:00.002-05:00

"Una Voce's report upon the second anniversary of Summorum Pontificum" (Rorate Caeli, November 5, 2009):

The Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce recently issued a progress report on the second anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The full report extends to 95 pages. FIUV's executive president Leo Darroch personally presented a copy of the report to the Holy Father during a meeting in Rome on Wednesday, Oct. 28. (See FIUV's website for a report on and photographs from the meeting.)

Rorate Caeli provides excerpts from a 14-page abridgment of the report prepared by FIUV's executive president Leo Darroch.

Amidst reports that international interest in the Federation is growing, particularly in Latin America (with new associations being admitted from Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Columbia, and requests for help from Cuba and Honduras), one is not surprised to find that the good news is accompanied by challenges:

What is clear from these new reports is that there has been a mixed reception of Summorum Pontificum which includes a serious level of episcopal disapproval in many countries. The good will displayed by many bishops has been offset by concerted and continual attempts by many other bishops to thwart the will of the Holy Father....

Perhaps the greatest reason for the current crisis in the Church is that too many people in the Church, particularly in senior positions, no longer accept the authority of the Pope. Where there is dissent, and where personality and self-interest are uppermost, there is decay and lapsation. Where Christ and obedience are to the fore the traditional life of the Church is allowed to flourish unhindered and the spiritual life of the Church flourishes, parish life flourishes, priestly and religious vocations flourish, and the vitality of the faith flourishes....

Since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum the signs, increasingly, are encouraging ....

The iron grip of Modernism is finally being loosened. It is a movement that has no past and no future. It is of the present, selfish and self-centred, with a blinkered vision that does not extend beyond the minds of its adherents. On the other hand, tradition has a secure foundation, a history, a present, and a future; a continuity....

In promulgating the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum the Holy Father has done a great service to the Church in the search for truth. In this respect the new publication, Vatican Council II: An Open Discussion, by Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, is a timely contribution to the debate. Monsignor Gherardini concludes his book by asking that the Supreme Pontiff,
“clarify definitively every aspect and contents of the last Council. Such omnia reparare [reparation of everything] could be accomplished through a great papal document, which would go down in history as a sign and witness of the vigilant and responsible exercise of His ministry as the Successor of Peter.”

95 pages. That's a lot more.

Members of the Archdiocesan Chorus from Detroit’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral To Sing at St. Albertus Tridentine Mass on November 15

2009-11-01T13:43:00.002-05:00

Tridentine Community News (November 1, 2009):

In yet another encouraging sign of the liturgical times, some relatively high-profile musicians from our area will participate in their first Extraordinary Form Mass: Members of the Archdiocesan Chorus from Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit will sing at the next quarterly Tridentine Mass at St. Albertus Church at noon on Sunday, November 15.

The Archdiocesan Chorus is a group of professional and high-caliber amateur singers. Members must audition before being considered for admission. Distinct from the Cathedral Chorale that sings for regular Sunday Masses, the Archdiocesan Chorus sings for major diocesan events, such as Pontifical Masses (Masses celebrated by the Archbishop of Detroit) and ordinations.

The typical Cathedral Mass repertoire skews toward the contemporary genre. Nevertheless, the Archdiocesan Chorus is no stranger to sacred polyphony. Since 1974, the Cathedral Concert Series has hosted the Chorus performing several grand-scale works as performance pieces, including Verdi’s Requiem, Bach’s B Minor Mass and Vierne’s Messe Solennelle. The Chorus released a superb CD recording of the latter in the mid-1980s. In 2003, the Chorus traveled to Rome to sing at an Ordinary Form Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. To our knowledge, however, the Chorus has not sung a polyphonic Mass within the setting of the sacred liturgy in Detroit in many years.

While the choir that will be singing at St. Albertus is not officially the Archdiocesan Chorus, it is impressive that several members of that Chorus are interested in gaining experience in the Extraordinary Form. The choir will sing the Mass in Honor of the Apostles Peter & Paul by René Louis Becker, the first Director of Music at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, serving from 1930-1943. He was also co-founder of the Palestrina Institute, a venture of Sacred Heart Seminary that taught Gregorian Chant. This will be the first performance of the Ss. Peter & Paul Mass since Vatican II, and Becker’s family will be in attendance.

It is worth pointing out that an increasing number of cathedral choirs in North America are moving towards a repertoire more focused on the classics. Some that come to mind include Portland, Maine; Toronto; New York; Washington, DC; and Providence, Rhode Island. In so doing, they follow the model of many of the great European cathedral choirs, such as London and Vienna. This is only fitting, considering that our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2007 letter Sacraméntum Caritátis, recommended that Latin be used for large-scale Masses, exactly the kind of event that cathedral choirs are called upon to serve.

The organist for many of the Pontifical events at the cathedral is Dr. Steven Ball, known to many of our readers as the principal substitute organist for the Extraordinary Form Masses at Assumption-Windsor and St. Josaphat. Steven is the catalyst for bringing this special music program together, and we thank him for taking this initiative.

St. Albertus Bell Progress Report

Steven Ball is also the person who has been refurbishing the tower bell mechanism at St. Albertus. Unlike most tower bell systems, which are controlled by a timer box, automatic ringing of the bells at St. Albertus is controlled by the tower clock, in this case an historic mechanism by longtime clock maker Seth Thomas.

Steven and some volunteers are in the process of cleaning the long-dormant bells from dirt and bird droppings that have accumulated over the years. The first objective is to make the bells ringable the old-fashioned way, by pulling on ropes. Later, Steven hopes to reactivate the electric motor system and perhaps the tower clock as well. At press time, we do not know if the bells will be ready by November 15, but that is certainly the intention.

The Blessing Of All Things

The Extraordinary Form Rituále Románum, the Church’s book of rites and blessings, contains numerous blessing prayers for various kinds of items. Some are specific, such as the Blessing of the Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel, or the Blessing of a Rosary. In the absence of a specifically designated prayer, the Roman Ritual provides “The Blessing Of All Things”:

℣. Adjutórum nostri in nómini Dómini.
℟. Qui fecit cælum et terram.
℣. Dóminus vobíscum.
℟. Et cum spíritu tuo.

Orémus.

Deus, cujus verbo sanctificántur ómnia, bene†dictiónem tuam effúnde super creatúram istam (creatúras istas): et præsta, ut, quisquis ea (eis) secúndum legem et voluntátem tuam cum gratiárum actióne usus fúerit, per invocatiónem sanctíssimi nóminis tui, córporis sanitátem et ánimæ tutélam, te auctóre, percípiat. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.

℟. Amen.

℣. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
℟. Who made heaven and earth.
℣. The Lord be with you.
℟. And with your spirit.

Let us pray.

O God, whose word suffices to make all things holy, pour out Thy blessing † on this object (these objects); and grant that anyone who uses it (them) with grateful heart and in keeping with Thy law and will, may receive from Thee, its (their) Maker, health in body and protection of soul by calling on Thy holy name; through Christ our Lord.

℟. Amen.

[It (they) is (are) sprinkled with holy water.]

Do you have object(s) that you would like blessed? Let the priest or one of the altar servers know, or bring the items to the sacristy after Mass.

Moyra Doorly and Aidan Nichols on the Novus Ordo

2009-10-30T23:22:00.005-04:00

Following an earlier exchange in July, author Moyra Doorly and Aidan Nichols discuss the merits of post-Vatican II liturgical reform in "Is the SSPX right about the liturgy?" (The Catholic Herald, October 30, 2009):

Dear Fr Aidan,

In your kind reply to my first letter you made the point that I was drawing "unnecessarily sharp" contrasts between a theology of "propitiation and supplication" on one hand, and teachings on the "fruits of Communion" on the other. But what I was trying to demonstrate is that the pre-Conciliar sources give ample teaching on both, whereas the documents of Vatican II ignore the theology of propitiation and supplication.

Now, to me this represents a doctrinal discontinuity of the first order, and may explain my long-held suspicion that the Church since Vatican II seems intent on bypassing Golgotha and heading straight for Pentecost. And yet we are told repeatedly that no such discontinuity exists. What's more, even the suggestion that it might will be met from many quarters with threats of exile in the gulag along with the Society of St Pius X which holds the view, as expressed in the November 2006 newsletter of their Holy Cross Seminary, Australia, that "the New Mass is a grave danger to the Catholic Faith... it lacks the integral profession of Faith that is essential to the Sacred Liturgy".

It may be possible to explain the contrast between the appearances of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms - how they look, sound, and are experienced - by pointing to the Council's desire for the active participation of the laity as announced by the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (CSL) (para 14): "In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else." But then another discontinuity becomes apparent, since according to Pope Pius XII's 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei (paras 23, 24): "The Worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior... But the chief element of divine worship must be interior."

Alternatively, the finger may be pointed at over-enthusiastic modernisers who have taken the liturgy in directions previously undreamed of. But according to the CSL (para 37): "Even in the liturgy the Church does not wish to impose a rigid conformity in matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community." And (para 40): "In some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed."

What puzzles me is that, despite the extent of the current crisis in the Church, no one seems prepared to question Vatican II itself. Instead, the insistence is upon liturgical changes not mandated by the Council and less than adequate catechetics. Although defined as pastoral and not dogmatic, Vatican II is considered to be beyond criticism.

Except by the SSPX, whose founder Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976 (Angelus Press): "The sacrifice of the Mass is the heart, the soul, and the mystical wellspring of the Church... Do not the ills of the Church, the weakening of faith, the dwindling number of vocations, the destruction of religious communities... spring from the doing away with altars and their replacement by the tables of the Eucharistic meal?"

Could it possibly be that the Council sidelined certain teachings in order to achieve the aim, professed in the CSL (para 4), that the liturgy be revised "to meet present-day circumstances and needs"? Is this why we never hear the traditional teaching that while Christ redeemed the human race, salvation requires the sacrifice of the altar for the remission of the sins we daily commit and the individual's cooperation with grace? And why the impression now given is that Christ's death on the Cross was a once and for all sacrifice by which all are saved, and that the Eucharist is spiritual food for those guaranteed a place in heaven through faith? Is this easier, softer way intended to be more in tune with the modern age which exalts man and rejects sacrifice?

Could it be that the reforms inspired by the documents of Vatican II have resulted in a liturgy which is inherently incapable of expressing the true sacrificial character of the Mass? If I am hammering a point previously made, here is Archbishop Lefebvre again: "There is no longer a Catholic Church if there is no longer a sacrifice of the Mass. There is no longer a Catholic Church if there is no longer a priest endowed with a character for the offering of the holy sacrifice."

At any rate, if the holy sacrifice of the Mass has become a memorial meal, a fraternal banquet, a community gathering, then many features of the reformed liturgy are explained. It is natural at a memorial meal for the priest to face the people who "gather round" an altar which has become a table. It makes sense that the people take an active part in simplified rites celebrated in the vernacular.

Although not actually mandating Mass facing the people, the CSL (para 128) opened the door for it by announcing the abolition of laws governing the design of churches, the shape and construction of altars and the placing of the tabernacle "which seem less suited to the reformed liturgy". Similarly, while permitting the vernacular with the proviso that "care must be taken to ensure that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them", the CSL (para 54) also anticipated situations in which "a more extended use of the vernacular in the Mass seems desirable".

In this context, the scope given for liturgical variations and innovations also seems natural, although this too represents a discontinuity according to the series "SiSi NoNo" published in the SSPX's Angelus magazine, March 2003, which claims that "Vatican II promoted the adaptation of worship to secular culture, to the different traditions and temperaments of people, to their language, music, and art, through creativity and liturgical experimentation and through simplification of the rite itself. This was against the constant teaching of the Magisterium according to which it was the peoples' cultures that must adapt to the exigencies of the Catholic rite, with nothing ever having been conceded to creativity or experimentation or to any idea of men's temperaments in any given time in history."

A proposal currently gaining ground is that the Ordinary Form be re-sacralised, implying that the liturgical tendencies of the past 40 years are a matter of appearances only. But is the Ordinary Form a true sacrificial rite? Not according to the SSPX study The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, which claims that the reforms have diminished the traditional link between the Mass and the Cross in favour of the Last Supper.

To this end, the traditional Prayers at the Foot of the Altar have been replaced with simple Introductory Rites. The traditional Offertory with its unstinting emphasis on propitiatory sacrifice has become the Presentation of the Gifts which emphasises the peoples' offering of bread and wine which will become "the bread of life" and "our spiritual drink". The Last Gospel has been dropped, as have the traditional anthems to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Furthermore, the presence of Christ in Scripture is made equivalent to His True Presence on the altar. For example the CSL (para 48) states that the people, "should be instructed by God's word, and be nourished at the table of the Lord's Body". And that the people (para 106), "should listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist". So marked is the emphasis on Scripture in the Ordinary Form, that the Liturgy of the Eucharist can sometimes seem like an adjunct to the main proceedings, with every prayer spoken out loud contributing to the relentless din of amplified voices.

The study also claims that the gestures showing the respect intrinsic to a truly sacrificial rite have also been reduced in number or suppressed. For example, "of the 14 genuflections in the traditional missal, three alone have been kept". And, "of the 26 signs of the cross over the oblations in the canon of the traditional missal, one alone remains in each of the Eucharistic prayers". And so on.

Is it enough, then, to re-sacralise the Ordinary Form, to adjust its appearance without addressing its underlying form and structure as a memorial meal? Should it not, instead, be re-sacrificialised? Or in the words of Archbishop Lefebvre: "Perhaps there has been too much talk of the Eucharist, Communion, and not enough of the sacrifice of the Mass. I believe we should go back to the fundamental ideas, to that fundamental idea which has been that of the whole tradition of the Church, the Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the heart of the Church. Communion is but the fruit, the fruit of the sacrifice."

Kindest regards,

Moyra

Dear Moyra,

Thank you for your recent letter, in which you ask for further clarification about the sacrificial nature of the Mass and add some pointed remarks about certain weaknesses in the Rite of Paul VI, the Eucharistic Liturgy most of us in the West experience weekly or even daily - with a familiarity which justifies that rather banal expression the "Ordinary Form". (Not that, to normal users of English, "Extraordinary" sounds any better!) You are not a disloyal Catholic by dint of holding that a number of the measures the Council Fathers called for by way of liturgical revision offended against prudence. Naturally, a judgment of that kind is easier to make with the benefit of hindsight, but warning lights should surely have flashed when a blank cheque was offered to national episcopal conferences and the Roman dicasteries to make radical changes in the name of cultural adaptation in Sacrosanctum Concilium 40 - though the word "radical", I hasten to add, appears only in English translation, the Latin having "deeper and more difficult". Prudential judgments about what practical steps to take so as best to realise goals indicated by the teaching of the Church about faith and morals are not covered, unfortunately, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

Again, you are not a "dissenter" simply by criticising incomplete or unbalanced formulations in the language of the Conciliar texts. That is wholly different from the claim that the Council fathers formally committed the Church to doctrinal error.

And that brings me to the substance of your remarks. Reading through the sections of the Liturgy Constitution that concern the Mass, I am inclined to agree with you that an opportunity was missed to spell out the "ends" - the purposes - of the Mass considered as Sacrifice. Not that Sacrosanctum Concilium fails to make plain the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. In language which would be anathema to the Protestant Reformers it declares flatly that "our Saviour instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood ... in order to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again" (para 47), and adds a few sentences later that "offering the Immaculate Victim... [Christ's faithful] should learn to offer themselves too" (para 48). I can hardly underline too strongly how distasteful these expressions are to well-informed and committed Lutherans, Calvinists, and Evangelicals generally. Nevertheless, more could have been said along the lines that you (and the Society of St Pius X) desiderate.

For some centuries it has been the common teaching of theologians, widely publicised in catechisms, that the Mass, viewed as Sacrifice, has a quartet of purposes. It is a Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, propitiation and supplication. The grounds for making this claim are that these are the very aims of our Lord's own giving of himself at the first Easter. His death was an offering whereby he glorified the Father (thanksgiving and praise) in such a way as to secure pardon (propitiation) and help (supplication) for humankind. Precisely because the Mass-Sacrifice is, as Vatican II maintains, the perpetuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, it can have no other ends than had the act performed on the Tree.

Appreciating that fact should discourage us from racing over what we might consider the "soft" and Protestantism-compatible theme of praise and thanksgiving in order to get as quickly as possible to the 'tough' and more distinctively Tridentine-sounding motifs of propitiation and supplication. Our doctrine is not that the Holy Eucharist is a "sacrifice of praise" in some vague sense equally applicable to any other worshipping activity and so perfectly acceptable to Reformation Christians. The Mass is a "sacrifice of praise" first and foremost in the sense in which Calvary was and because Calvary was.

A good theology will seek to inter-relate the four ends of the Mass, as likewise the ends of the Atonement, in an integrated doctrine, and I doubt if a better one can be found than that for which the Sacrifice of the Lord is a "latreutic" Sacrifice, a Sacrifice of adoration in which the Son, invested with our nature, glorifies the Father in the Holy Spirit. It is through being its own unique offering of praise and thanksgiving, in the unmeasured donation of his dying, that the Son's Oblation as man wins for the human race super-abundant pardon and help. The proof that a theology of glorification provides the best way to inter-relate the ends of the Mass lies in the nature of the pardon and help we are to receive through the offering of this Sacrifice. We are to become not just reconciled sinners, in receipt of spiritual (and sometimes temporal) assistance. More than that, we are to become those who, in the words of the Vulgate translation of the Letter to the Ephesians (1:12) live for "the praise of his glory".

I would judge, Moyra, that the subject of the Mass as a propitiatory Sacrifice is your principal concern. Even for "post-Conciliar" Catholics, the Mass as a Sacrifice of supplication is not so difficult an idea. Among those assisting at the rite of Paul VI, not many worshippers can be unaware that in the Holy Eucharist petition is made, in our Redeemer's name, for the bestowal of spiritual and temporal good - though, I would emphasise, such "supplication" should always be understood in a Calvary-oriented way, as mercies flowing from the Throne of grace established on the Cross.

Propitiation, however, is a different kettle of fish. Your anxiety is that, in the reformed rite, insufficient attention is paid to our need for remission of sins - sins that, rightly, have offended God's burning justice - through, precisely, the offering of this Sacrifice.

As a well-instructed Catholic, you'll know that the chief sacramental means provided for the forgiveness of sins are the Sacrament of Baptism for original sin as well as the personal sins of adults approaching Christian initiation, and, for post-baptismal sin, the Sacrament of Penance.

Extra-sacramentally, sin can only be given through perfect contrition - sorrow for sin for the sake of the sheer loveability of God. When we say the Mass is a Sacrifice of propitiation we are not saying that the offering of the Mass forgives mortal (grave) sin directly, though we may hold that a good Communion covers minor slackenings (venial sins) in the Christian life. We are saying that the Holy Sacrifice wins for us - and for all for whom it is offered, including, most especially indeed, the souls in Purgatory - those graces which render repentance, contrition, full conversion, not only possible but even easy. It would take a detailed analysis of the Proper prayers of the Missal of Paul VI to justify the claim, but my estimate is you would find that expectation represented there, though by no means as insistently as in the earlier history of the rites.

That said, I would agree with you that we need to "re-sacrificialise", in your invented but useful word, our common or garden usage of the rite of Paul VI - if not, in some respects, the rite itself. But to my mind the single greatest contribution we can make to that end is to press - judiciously and with respect - for the celebration of the Mass versus orientem, the Liturgy "turned towards the Lord". The celebrant stands ministerially in the place of Christ the High Priest. Appropriately, since our Great High Priest is Mediator between God and men, the Church's priest, during the Liturgy of the Sacrifice - after, that is, the litany-like moment of the Bidding Prayers - turns at key moments to the body of the faithful, engaging their response ("active" participation means engaged participation, not jumping up and down) to the sacred action of which he is protagonist. Essentially, however, in the celebration of the Sacrifice the ministerial priest is turned - always in spiritual attitude if, in our current practice, seldom in empirical fact - not to face the people but, with the beloved Son, to face the Father, to whom the Oblation of praise and thanksgiving, propitiation and supplication is addressed. Your desire for a clearer indication of the change in level as we move from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Sacrifice would be well met by the change of direction whereby the priest at that shift in gear turns from facing the people to facing the Father. A strengthening of the Offertory rite would appropriately accompany that change.

Your other complaints I find rather a mixed bag. The suppression of the multiple signs of the Cross is a loss for the personal piety of the celebrant rather than the people to whom - with an oriented Liturgy - they would not be so apparent. I personally regret the suppression of the Last Gospel because I don't think people can hear often enough the Johannine Prologue which is almost always the form that Gospel takes (though you became a Catholic too late to witness the disedifying scurrying out of church by half the parish congregation as it was read). I don't think there has been any significant reduction in Marian references from one Missal to the other, for the simple reason that the Roman Liturgy, unlike the Byzantine, has always been sparing of reference to the Mother of God except on her feasts and commemorations.

Not that, dear Moyra, I wish to make light of your plea. All is not well in our worship, and you are right to be concerned. Concerned - but not alarmist. This or that version of the Church's official worship may have, compared with some other, ritual deficiencies which should be rectified as soon as the competent authority is convinced of the case. Meanwhile, we can rest assured that where the Holy Spirit does guide the Church is in ensuring that in her approach to the mystery of Christ she can never nullify the stream of grace not only continually but continuously poured from his opened Heart.

Yours very sincerely

in Him,

Aidan Nichols

[Hat tip to P.B.]

Rome puts smackdown on foofoo Anglicanism

2009-10-30T09:18:00.004-04:00

"Roundup: Canadian paper lashes out at Vatican; Father Rutler sees ‘slap-down of liberal Anglicanism’" (CatholicCulture.org, October 21, 2009):

The editors of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s second most popular newspaper, have lashed out at the Vatican’s decision to permit Anglican communities to join the Catholic Church as communities.

“The Vatican's welcome of some Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church is a Trojan horse,” the editors write. “In the face of an inflexible hierarchy, liberal Catholic voices have had little effect; the grudging loyalty of those who remain is in jeopardy. The Vatican announcement will make the Catholic Church more conservative and the Anglican church more liberal. Is that what ecumenism is meant to accomplish?”

Similar criticisms were made by one New York Times commentator, who charged the Pope with fostering “cafeteria Catholicism.” Other writers, however-- such as John Allen and Collen Carrroll Campbell in The New York Times, and Father Raymond J. de Souza in the National Post,-- offered commentary that was more balanced and less shrill.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
Editorial: An embrace that divides (Globe and Mail)
Why the Vatican Wants Anglicans (New York Times)
Ruth Gledhill: Desperate bishops invited Rome to park its tanks on Archbishop’s lawn (The Times)
Amen to a good offer (National Post)
Fr. Dwight Longenecker: 'A Bridge Across the Tiber' (Catholic Online)
Fr. Rutler discusses Vatican's Anglican provision (CNA)
Pontiff to permit Anglican communities to join Catholic Church (CWN, 10/20)

[Hat tip to J.M.]

The Case Against Liturgical Antiquarianism

2009-10-28T22:26:00.003-04:00

by Harold B. McKale

Virtually every Catholic has been at Mass and heard the phrase, "In the early Church...." Often this phrase is followed by some deviance from the norms of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. To wit: A seminarian once told me how his pastor decided to say Mass like they did in the early Church — at least his version of it. He came out of the sacristy in blue jeans and a T-shirt; what followed was an abomination. The thinking is that what the Church prescribes in the present is somehow deficient and the individual must heed the call to return to some former practice that either was abolished or fell into disuse.

This kind of liturgical antiquarianism, which seeks to reinstitute practices of old without proper Church authority, is explicitly condemned by Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei. Pope Pius did not prohibit alterations of the Mass; indeed, he himself modified the rites of Holy Week. Nonetheless, Pius asserted definitively that the Church has jurisdiction over her liturgical rites.

Mediator Dei begins with praise for those who study the past forms of the liturgy and sacraments of the Church, and with an immediate assertion that these rites belong to the Church: "This Apostolic See has always made careful provision for the schooling of the people committed to its charge in the correct spirit and practice of the liturgy;...it has been no less careful to insist that the sacred rites should be performed with due external dignity" (#6).

In many parishes, some older Catholics still pray the rosary during Mass or engage in some other personal devotion closely related to the Holy Sacrifice. Mediator Dei specifically states that interior participation remains more important than external participation:

When devotional exercises, and pious practices in general, not strictly connected with the sacred liturgy, confine themselves to merely human acts, with the express purpose of directing these latter to the Father in heaven, of rousing people to repentance and holy fear of God, of weaning them from the seductions of the world and its vice, and leading them back to the difficult path of perfection, then certainly such practices are not only highly praiseworthy but absolutely indispensable, because they expose the dangers threatening the spiritual life; because they promote the acquisition of virtue.... (#32)

Prayerful meditation, the rosary, and other devotional exercises that assist a person in drawing nearer to God during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass should not be prohibited. All the liturgies of the Church, and those things that surround them, need to be focused on the Almighty.

Emphasizing the hierarchical nature of the Church, Pius reminds the faithful that liturgical rites fall under the purview of Church authority: "Since, therefore, it is the priest chiefly who performs the sacred liturgy in the name of the Church, its organization, regulation and details cannot but be subject to Church authority" (#43). The immemorial saying lex orandi, lex credendi reflects this reality as the Church enshrines and emphasizes her teachings through her liturgical rites while at the same time giving God worship. For example, as the reality of Jesus' presence in His body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament has been denied throughout history, the rites of Holy Mass emphasize this reality with genuflections, elevations, incense, and bells. Even the restriction of the chalice to the priest resulted from a denial of our Lord's presence under both species. This is not found in the liturgical rites of the East because this reality was never denied.

Historical circumstances can have a profound effect on the nature of liturgical rites. Persecution during the first three centuries of Christianity forced Christians to worship in the catacombs and in private homes, yet no one would think of re-instituting that because it would be an antiquarian practice with little or no benefit to the faithful. This is why in the liturgical rite of the western Church we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran: Not only is it the cathedral of Rome, home to the papal throne, but it was the first public building used for offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass following the end of the Roman persecutions.

As Pius XII points out, the gradual addition of the practices and pieties of various groups throughout history are human elements that may be changed — and have been changed — throughout the 2,000-year history of the Church, which flows out of Jewish worship in the synagogue and temple. The development of the synagogue grew out of the inability of Jews to go to the temple during the Babylonian exile. This organic development of Jewish worship remained even after the exile ended because it deepened the Jews' understanding of the Word of God and was a clear benefit to the Jewish faithful. The institution of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was a development of the Passover meal. No evidence exists that suggests that early Christians celebrated Mass the exact way Jesus did in the upper room, nor would the Church attempt such a feat.

Where does that leave us today? Nathan D. Mitchell, writing in the November 2007 issue of Worship, suggests that Popes Pius V and Paul VI both acted in accordance with tradition "by excluding previous missals and mandating new ones." Pius V's apostolic constitution Quo Primum, authorizing his 1570 missal, "shows that an apparent rupture (that is, a significant change) in ritual practice does not cancel continuity but, on the contrary, makes it possible." But what are we to make of Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio that allowed for a wider availability of the extraordinary form of the Roman rite?

Mitchell points out that before Summorum Pontificum the laity had never had the power to petition a priest for a particular form of the Mass, and that this reflects a fundamental split in the Church over community and transcendence. Overtly recruiting people to the extraordinary form (the Tridentine Latin Mass) and referring to it as "more sacral" than the ordinary form (the Novus Ordo Mass), he says, is in fact discontinuous with tradition and encourages a type of consumerism with regard to worship.

The answer to Mitchell's objections can be found in the highest law of the Church, which Pius XII cites in Mediator Dei: The Church has the authority to regulate liturgical rites for the good of souls. In his letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum, Benedict cites the "deformations of [the ordinary form of] the liturgy which were hard to bear" as one of the reasons for his permitting a wider use of the extraordinary form of the Mass. Doctrinal purity and obedience to the spirit and regulations of the liturgy were concerns of both Pius XII and Benedict XVI.

Ormond Rush, an Australian theologian, claims that the Church cannot have a macro-rupture but can and does have micro-ruptures. A macro-rupture would concern matters of dogma; micro-ruptures concern such matters as liturgical practice, relations with the Jews, and the explanation of religious freedom. If one considers a micro-rupture as a change in the praxis of the Church, then it can be seen as harmonious with a guiding principle of Mediator Dei:

As circumstances and the needs of Christians warrant, public worship is organized, developed and enriched by new rites, ceremonies, and regulations, always with a single end in view, "that we may use these external signs to keep us alert, learn from them what distance we have come along the road, and by them be heartened to go on further with more eager step...". (#22)

It stands to reason that a particular practice that no longer has meaning to the faithful or has led to a misunderstanding of Jesus Christ may be discontinued for a time. Should circumstances change in the future, a discontinued practice may be favorably restored by ecclesiastical authority. Another practical example of a change in practice is the Church's more liberal approval of burial rites for Catholics who commit suicide, based on a deeper understanding of human psychology. [For a discussion of this topic, see canon lawyer Edward Peters's guest column, "State-Sanctioned Suicide & Ecclesiastical Funeral Rites," June — Ed.]

With regard to the Divine Office, Pius XII mentions that it was the norm for both Jews and Christians to pray at various hours throughout the day, as testified to in the Acts of the Apostles. This ancient practice continues in the present, albeit in slightly different form: "Thanks to the work of the monks and those who practice asceticism, these various prayers in the course of time became ever more perfected and by the authority of the Church are gradually incorporated into the sacred liturgy" (#141). The Breviary and all its predecessors grew from the Jewish patterns of prayer and organically developed into what is now referred to as the Divine Office. To give in to antiquarians and limit the Church to the Psalms or other prayers would be to the Church's detriment, for she would lose the beautiful offices of the saints, such as Thomas Aquinas's Adoro Te Devote or the Dies Irae from the Office of the Dead. What a tragedy to poetry, musical tradition, and the spiritual good of souls.

In Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict likewise emphasizes continuity. As Fr. Richard John Neuhaus observed in the October 2007 issue of First Things, Benedict's motu proprio is "of a piece with...[his] long-standing campaign against the idea that there is a ‘pre-Vatican II church' and a ‘post-Vatican II church.'" Benedict has strengthened "the continuity of Catholic tradition in matters pertaining to lex orandi, as John Paul II's hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council strengthened that continuity in matters pertaining to lex credendi." In his letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum, Benedict pointed out that "there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition." He calls for charity, the highest of the virtues, in dealing with those who request the extraordinary form, which remains an important part of the West's liturgical heritage. The Pope also recognizes the organic development of the liturgy throughout the Church's history: "In the history of the liturgy, there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful." In essence, Benedict's assertion that the extraordinary form of the Roman rite be widely permitted is rooted in the Church's solicitude for the salvation of souls who, for whatever reason, find great attachment to this earlier form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. For those who worry over a bifurcation of the Roman rite, Fr. Adrian Fortescue pointed out that "uniformity in liturgy throughout the Church has never been a Catholic ideal" (The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy, 1930).

Benedict's Summorum Pontificum goes hand in hand with Pius's Mediator Dei. The latter states, "Obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by the disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation" (#63). Thus, the reintroduction of the extraordinary form is not an exercise in antiquarianism but is an attempt to meet the change in circumstances in which the Church finds herself without diminishing in any way the legitimate reforms of Vatican II. Comparing Mediator Dei (MD) with Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), the Council's "Constitution on Sacred Liturgy," Fr. Aidan Nichols posits:

The renaissance to which we look forward will include, I venture to suggest, the recovery of liturgical objectivity married with devotionalism of MD but also SC's looking beyond the Church here and now to the final Church arrayed in the glorious garments of the redeemed when Christ comes with all his saints. (A Pope and a Council on the Sacred Liturgy, 2002)

Pope Benedict has deftly charted a course respecting the norms of Mediator Dei and Vatican II, a Council that theologians continue to dissect and analyze. The priesthood of Jesus Christ is a "living and continuous reality through all ages until the end of time" (MD, #22), and this priesthood is exercised in and through the mediation of Holy Mother Church. We should therefore expect liturgical rites wherein that priestly office is most clearly expressed as a living and continuous reality and not a static object in a museum display.

[Harold B. McKale, ordained a transitional deacon for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on May 9, 2009, is currently assigned to Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Secane, Pennsylvania. The foregoing article by Harold B. McKale, "The Case Against Liturgical Antiquarianism," was originally published in New Oxford Review (October 2009), pp. 22-26, and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.]

TLM and Womenpriests

2009-10-27T21:10:00.012-04:00

We were in Windsor for Mass last Sunday at the historic Our Lady of the Assumption Church, where the Tridentine Mass was transportingly sublime, as always -- when a question occurred to me. As I watched the drama of Redemption unfold in this weekly extraordinary form of the traditional Roman Rite, I found myself trying to distance myself from my own active participation momentarily to grasp something.

What I was looking at was the priest and servers at that early point in the Mass called the Confiteor. Facing ad orientem, and with deep bows, they made their acts of confession, striking their breast: "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ..." Their attention was clearly not on who was in the pews at that moment. That thought probably did not even cross their minds. Their attention, their outward demeanor, the direction they were facing (toward God) -- everything, in other words -- was focused on a sort of "dialogue" being carried on between themselves and God.

And the thought came to me: I wonder whether any activist members of Catholic Womenpriests or the Women's Ordination Conference seeking ordination for themselves have ever desired to become priests serving in this classical form of the liturgy. It's hard to imagine.

The following video clip, features the Confiteor from a Tridentine Missa Contata at Assumption Church in Windsor celebrated on Feb 9, 2008 for the cause of Vn. John Henry Cardinal Newman. The priest, the team of servers, and the choir were virtually identical to those I witnessed last Sunday. I know these guys. The chief male voice you hear singing the propers is the great cantor, Wassim Sarweh. But my point is this: would those dissident women seeking ordination want to be priests if this is what was expected of them? Take a look:

You don't see the priest's face hardly at all; and when you do, he doesn't make eye contact with the congregation, at least if he knows his rubrics. He's not there to have a conversation with you. He's not there to share his personality with you. He's not there, like Leisure Suit Larry, to do a one man comic act: "Hey there, where y'all from? What's your name?" He's there to do his job, to perform the Sacrifice. Evelyn Waugh's observation, shortly after his conversion around 1930, comes to mind:

Of the extraneous attractions of the Church which most drew me was the spectacle of the priest and his server at a low Mass, stumping up to the altar without a glance to discover how many or how few he had in his congregation; a craftsman and his apprentice; a man with a job which he alone was qualified to do.

Indeed, Waugh loathed all that came to replace such standards of liturgical craftsmanship -- the dumbing down of the liturgy and a false bonhomie that characterized even the revisions of the 1960s that preceded the new Mass (Waugh, who died in 1966, did not live to see the Novus Ordo, which was promulgated in 1969). Concerning the pre-Vatican II revisions and innovations, Waugh was already saying things like: "The Mass is no longer the Holy Sacrifice but the Meal at which the priest is the waiter. The bishop, I suppose, is the head waiter."

Not one word here is said out of irreverence or disrespect for the Mass as it is meant to be celebrated. Indeed, it is precisely a devotion and deep respect and adoration for the surpassing holiness of those Sacred Mysteries that animated Waugh's concern as well as our own here.

What can go wrong is perhaps easiest to see, as Plato would say, where things are "writ large" -- where things have gone awry in extreme and aberrant ways. An example of such, in a French Mass gone terribly wrong, was called to our attention by a reader in a recent comment box discussion. The concelebrating priests at a Mass following the pilgrimage of young Catholics (ages 14-17) from Strasbourg to the church of Notre Dame du Chêne, in Plobsheim (France) doubtless thought they were assisting their youthful 'audience' in their 'active participation' in their liturgy. The effect, however, is obviously the opposite. ["The horror ... the horror ..."]

The immediate effect of this embarrassing spectacle is to throw up an obstacle precisely against the authentic active participation of the faithful in the Mass, which -- as Popes from Pius X to Benedict XVI have maintained -- is not a matter of outward enthusiasm or clericalizing the role of the laity by bringing them up into the sanctuary, but an inward spiritual disposition of the worshiping heart. The result of this spectacle, by contrast, is the creation of a diversion from the proper focus of any liturgy: the self-oblation of our Savior as Sacrificial Victim on our behalf. Instead we are served up the ghastly sight of clerically-vested middle-aged men making a miserable run at trying to look hip. Is our mind drawn to God amidst this disaster? If so, it can only be in a bowel-wrenching prayer for deliverance.

This does not mean that our worship cannot be suffused with profound joy, but it must be a joy that takes seriously what the Mass is. Our Savior is not the Buddy Christ, but the Pierced One, the Crucified One.

So, I wonder, do any Womenpriest activists exist who want to be ordained so that they can serve in the traditional Tridentine form of the Roman Rite? It would be interesting to know.

[Hat tip to S.V.]

Providence in the battlefield of prayer

2009-10-26T18:04:00.013-04:00

When I requested your prayers on July 3rd, little did I know what the outcome would be of what I then called a matter "of serious personal consequence." Many of you responded to that petition, and still many others did so, I believe, in heaven and on earth whose intercession I solicited. While discretion prevents the sharing of details concerning the matter itself, the following are some of my thoughts during what has been for me one of the most formidable and harrowing challenges of my life.

It is humbling to realize that such ordeals may not be at all unique or rare, but common; that families and individuals with whom one rubs shoulders every day may carry unspoken burdens in silence, behind taciturn or even cheerful demeanors. Those who bear such burdens may seem to many on the 'outside' to be at a distinct disadvantage when they quietly and prayerfully resign themselves to God's will, inasmuch as the options of dulling the pain through alcohol or self-indulgent escapism are not available to them, and they are compelled to face their grief or horror head-on, with heightened spiritual sensitivity to what is at stake and, therefore, a lower threshold of sensitivity and a greater likelihood of suffering. By the same token, from the 'inside' they are at a distinct advantage in that they have recourse, if they are properly informed, to a treasury of resources, consolations and graces buried deep within the heart of Catholic tradition, concerning which those inclined to fly from pain by anesthetizing themselves are likely to have little if any first-hand acquaintance.

This, then, is an ad hoc tapestry of some of those resources, consolations, and graces that blessed my way through the valley as it led through some very dark weeks and months.

The first, and surprising, discovery is that suffering -- whether it is sorrow, grief, or a sickening, gnawing fear of the worst that could still happen when you're in the midst of some ordeal with no end in sight -- can assume the form of an unexpected grace and blessing, when it brings one to his knees and draws him deeper into the Sacred Heart. And that is what it definitely tends to do when one is thrown back on his last resorts (which ought to have been his first), echoing the pleas of the Psalmist (Ps 73:25), "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none on earth that I desire besides Thee" -- no one else to seek or trust in, none to protect him from the unseen Enemy, but God alone.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear," wrote C.S. Lewiswhen his wife lay dying of cancer, in an ordeal that looked at times like it might cost him his faith (at one point, in a crie de coeur at the end of his tether, he calls God "a cosmic sadist"). For me it was the opposite: no one told me that fear could feel so like grief, heavy with gnawing with suffocating stress. Nor did I anticipate how God's deliverance could come -- and it did come -- so unexpectedly and quietly, not with a bang or flare of trumpets, but like soft kitten feet, in the still small turns of conversation over an appetizer in a pub, an unanticipated shift in a phone conversation, a signature on a page made with a ballpoint pen.

How long will it take to learn to relax again, to sleep soundly, to face each day without seemingly endless convulsive sighs? I do not know. What I do know is how utterly unprepared I was for this trial. The road to hell is paved, they say, with good intentions. That is true in more ways than I ever realized; as good and sincere intentions provide no protection against naïveté, which can lead to a kind of living hell even for the person who undertakes to live a life of fidelity to Christ, His Church, and all that he loves and holds dear.

"My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation [n. or 'trials']. Set your heart right and be steadfast ... Cleave to [God] and do not depart, that you may be honored at the end of your life. Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in Him, and He will help you: make your ways straight, and hope in Him." -- Sirach 2:1-6

One of my most difficult challenges, and one to which I never felt equal, was the simple act of trusting God to provide the outcome for which I prayed, and for which it was my duty and privilege to pray. Intellectual assent to the truths of our Faith are one thing. Yes, I believed in God's providence, His faithfulness, His love, His mercy, etc. When faced with a challenge that could turn my life upside down along with the life of my whole family, however, could I trust God to deliver?

It's funny what you remember from childhood. A verse from the Bible came to mind that I remember reading in the story of Robinson Crusoe in one of those Classic comic books I had as a kid. Crusoe was reading from Ps 50:15 -- "... and call upon me in the day of trouble; and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." Nice thought. But was it true? Why did I keep remembering examples of desperate prayers by friends and acquaintances that seemed to go unanswered -- at least as perceived from the limitations of our human horizon? The Devil, doubtless, was in the details. I must admit to having been weak and frequently entertained doubts. I felt like St. Peter must have when he stepped out of his boat to walk to Jesus on the water, and immediately cried for help when he saw the waves, his nerve failed, and he began to sink. Yet again, I felt like the doubting father of the possessed child in Mark 9:24, who, after being told that all things are possible to him who believes, cried out to Jesus: "I believe; help Thou my unbelief!"

Yet even the Agnostic's Prayer is one that may be answered: "Oh God ... if there is a God, have mercy on my soul ... if I have a soul." And as Thomas Merton once wrote, even if I do not know where I am going, and do not see the road ahead, the fact that I desire to please God must itself be pleasing to Him; so that if I have this desire, I may trust that He will lead me by the right road even if I know nothing about it, and though I seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I may trust that He will never leave me to face my perils alone. Yet again, the words of my own patron also come to mind: "Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom, lead thou me on! ... Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me."

What were some of the resources that I found helpful? First were all the obvious Bible texts that would come to mind for many of us; and these surprised me by their undiminished power to communicate God's steadfast love and providence, even after years of familiarity. If anything, they were driven home through repeated readings and recitation with a renewed sense of God communicating His mercy and grace in the present moment. Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd ...") became my constant companion, along with several other passages. This Psalm juxtaposes walking through a dark "valley of the shadow of death" with the comfort of God's protective presence. Why does the Psalmist say "I shall fear no evil"? Because "Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, the comfort me," and "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over." Thus even in the midst of one's darkest valley, the Lord assures us that "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwellin the house of the Lord forever." Not a bad hope, that.

So, too, with Ps 121 ("I lift my eyes unto the hills ..."). The Psalmist asks: "From whence does my help come?" And he answers: "My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth ... He will not let thy foot be moved, he who keeps thee shall not slumber.... The Lord will keep thee from all evil; he will keep thy life...."

So, too with text from Ps 50:15 ("... and call upon me in the day of trouble"), that I mentioned having remembered from the Robinson Crusoe comic book I read as a child ("... and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me"), and also the text from Sirach 2:1-6 ("My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.... For gold is tested in the fire .... Trust in Him, and He will help you ... hope in Him").

Then there was Ps 68 (Exsurgat Deus) -- a Psalm about the God of Hosts (Armies) rising to our defense against our mortal Foe and his legions ("God arises, His enemeis are scattered ..."; the first part of which is incorporated into the magnificent Leonine Exorcism).

Then, again, there was the gunpowder language of that Leonine Exorcism itself, which, I must say, made good bedtime reading: "Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat. + The Most High God commands you. + He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal .... Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions ... stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation ... Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation. Give place to Christ ... give place to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church acquired by Christ at the price of His blood. Stoop beneath the all-powerful Hand of God; tremble and flee when we invoke the Holy and terrible Name of Jesus, this Name which causes hell to tremble, this Name to which the Virtues, Powers and Dominations of heaven are humbly submissive, this Name which the Cherubim and Seraphim praise unceasingly repeating: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, the God of Armies ...." Napalm in the morning, Napalm in the evening.

In a particularly dark and desolate frame of mind, I came across a wrinkled prayer card with the following Prayer to St. Anthony on the back, whose words were just what I needed:

O Holy St. Anthony, reach down from
heaven and take hold of my hand.

Assure me that I am not alone.
You are known to possess miraculous
powers and to be ever ready to speak
for those in trouble.

Loving and Gentle St. Anthony, reach
down from heaven I implore you and
assist me in my hour of need. Obtain
for me (mention your request here).

Dearest St. Anthony, reach down
from heaven and guide me with
thy strength. Plead for me in my
needs. And teach me to be humbly
thankful as you were for all the
bountiful blessings I am to receive.

Amen.

Another saint about whom I knew little, became especially meaningful to me, initially through a prayer card, and later through a wonderful Italian film of her life, which I happily recommend. The print on this prayer card was so small, I couldn't read it each morning without my glasses on, but the Prayer to Saint Rita,Saint of the Impossible, goes like this:

O HOLY PATRONESS of those in need, St. Rita, whose pleadings before thy Divine Lord are almost irresistible, who for thy lavishness in granting favors hast been called the Advocate of the Hopeless and even of the Impossible; St. Rita, so humble, so pure, so mortified, so patient and of such compassionate love for thy Crucified Jesus that thou couldst obtain from Him whatsoever thou askest, on account of which all confidently have recourse to thee, expecting, if not always relief, at least comfort; be propitious to our petition, showing thy power with God on behalf of thy suppliant; be lavish to us, as thou has been i so many wonderful cases, for the greater glory of God, for the spreading of thine own devotion, and for the consolation of those who trust in thee. We promise, if our petition is granted, to glorify thee by making known thy favor, to bless and sing thy praises forever. Relying then upon thy merits and power before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we pray
(here mention your request).
Obtain for us our request
By the singular merits of thy childhood,
By thy perfect union with the Divine Will,
By thy heroic sufferings during thy married life,
By the consolation thou didst experience at the conversion of thy husband,
By the sacrifice of thy children rather than see them grievously offend God,
By thy miraculous entrance into the convent,
By thy severe penances and thrice daily bloody scourgings,
By the suffering caused by the wound thou didst receive from the thorn of thy Crucified Saviour,
By the divine love which consumed thy heart,
By that remarkable devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, on which alone thou didst exist for four years,
By the happiness with which thou didst part from thy trials to join thy Devine Spouse,
By the perfect example thou gavest to people of every state of life.
Pray for us, O holy St. Rita, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Amen.

A nun in California who has corresponded with me and kept me in her prayers for the past sixteen years sent me a holy card with a picture of Jesus with St. Joseph in his carpenter's shop with the following inscription on the back, in her handwriting:

"When the treasures of God were unsheltered on earth,
Safe-keeping was found for them both in thy worth!
There's no saint in heaven
St. Joseph like thee!
Sweet spouse of our Lady
We lean safe on thee!"

(from the old St. Gregory Hymnal) [emphasis hers]

Then we come to Our Lady herself, and to two devotions that have been close to my heart for some years, The Morning Offering to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and The Seven Dolors of Our Blessed Mother. Some of these card are not always produced with the closest attention to grammar or form (such as spelling "altars" as "alters," or omitting commas or misplacing them), although there is a certain charm even in the sheer humanness of such errors, to which I myself am prone.

The Morning Offering:

O my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (here kiss your Scapular as a sign of your consecration; partial indulgence also), I offer the precious Blood of Jesus from all the altars throughout the world, joining it with the offering of my every thought, word and action of this day. O my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can and I offer them, altogether with myself, to Mary Immaculate, that She may best apply them in the interests of Thy Most Sacred Heart. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us!

Typically, when reciting the prayers of The Seven Dolors of Our Blessed Mother, since there are seven promises as well as Dolors, I like to state them together as couplets. I have no idea whether this is part of the tradition. It's simply what I have always done. Thus, after stating the first Dolor, The Prophecy of Simeon, I state the first promise: "I will grant peace to their families," followed by the Hail Mary; and so forth. On the particular prayer card sent to me by the Californian nun during the past summer, however, was an image of Our Lady of Quito with the following version of The Seven Sorrows of Mary:

The prophecy of Simeon
The flight into Egypt
The three-day loss of Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem
The meeting with her Son on the way to Calvary
Mary standing at the foot of the Cross
The burial of her Divine Son

O Desolate Mother, who can know the tender affection of thy broken heart that was laid in the sepulchre with the body of thy Divine Son? He was thy all, He still is thy all, for dejection has no claim upon thee. Teach me, Mother of Sorrows, to place my hope in Him, that the false security of the world may never seduce me. Amen.

Our Father, Hail Mary,
O Mary Conceived, etc.

My greatest discovery, however, was a prayer card bearing the image of The Infant of Prague on its face and a "Powerful Novena of Childlike Confidence" on the back. When we were in Prague several years ago, we purchased a small porcelain statue of the Infant of Prague, the original of which is housed in Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, which previously used to be a Lutheran church (a rare reversal of what one finds in places like the UK where all the beautiful old churches built by the previous Catholic civilization are now 'occupied' by Protestant state churches).

While I cannot say I know very much about the original story of the Infant of Prague, what totally captivated me was the synthesis of Biblical texts (Mt 21:22; Jn 14:13; Mt 24:35) that comprise the novena. The texts I was familiar with from my childhood, and I remember being intrigued by the straightforward bluntness of Christ's promises when I first became familiar with them as a child. At first I didn't know the novena was to be prayed at the same time every hour for nine consecutive hours -- just one day, so I was reciting the prayer once every day. But when I discovered my oversight, I found that this prayer quickly became my bread and butter as I made the novena repeatedly each day for a number of very intense weeks. Here it is -- the Novena to the Infant of Prague -- with corrected punctuation:

O Jesus, Who hast said, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you, through the intercession of Mary, Thy Most Holy Mother, I knock, I seek, I ask that my prayer be granted.
(Make your request)

O Jesus, Who hast said, all that you ask of the Father in My Name, He will grant you, through the intercession of Mary, Thy Most Holy Mother, I humbly and urgently ask Thy Father in Thy Name that my prayer be granted.
(Make your request)

O Jesus, Who has said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass," through the intercession of Mary, Thy Most Holy Mother, I feel confident that my prayer will be granted.
(Make your request)

I recently discovered that the Holy Father also has an appreciation of the Infant of Prague, when I when I read his address during his visit to the Infant of Prague at Our Lady of Victory on September 6, 2009.

I offer these Scripture texts and prayers, in part, as my thank offering to the Lord, His angels and His saints on whose intercession I leaned heavily throughout my ordeal, and in partial fulfillment for my duty to make known the grace of petitions answered. In the words of the prayer to St. Rita: "We promise, if our petition is granted, to glorify thee by making known thy favor, to bless and sing thy praises forever." My prayers have been abundantly answered indeed, much to my own shameful surprise; and I am grateful to all in heaven and on earth -- those named here and unnamed -- whose intercessions at the throne of God have borne this fruit of grace for His unworthy and doubting servant.

CDF -- SSPX talks begin

2009-10-25T22:15:00.009-04:00

Tomorrow morning, October 26 -- today for some -- representatives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will begin theological talks on the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) with representatives of the Society of St. Pius X. These talks will center on issues at the heart of controversies concerning the Vatican II that have polarized progressive and traditional Catholics for nearly half-a-century.

For anyone who does not know how to pray for these deliberations, I suggest that you pray for the intentions of the Holy Father. If you don't understand the importance of praying for these deliberations, then I suggest you consult Pope Benedict's declarations on the matter over the course of the past few years, particularly since his July 2007 motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum and his accompanying letter to bishops and revisit the controversy centering on his lifting of the excommunications on Feb. 4, 2009, of the four bishops illicitly consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre -- and especially his letter to Catholic bishops of March 12, 2009, responding to the hail of criticism that descended upon him over the denial by one of these bishops of the generally-accepted facts concerning the Nazi Holocaust.

Pray we must.

St. Josaphat Side Altar Tabernacle Restoration Continues

2009-10-25T10:13:00.002-04:00

Tridentine Community News (October 25, 2009):

Readers may recall that in 2008, a locksmith was called in to pick the locks of and re-key the long-unused tabernacles on the side altars of St. Josaphat Church. One of those tabernacles was in good condition and was found to contain a beautiful reliquary. The other three, however, were in various stages of disrepair. Two were filled with soot and unusable.

In the second phase of the tabernacle restoration, an intrepid volunteer has recently cleaned out, caulked, primed, and painted the interiors of the three tabernacles still in need of refurbishment. You may have noticed the tabernacle doors open over the past few weeks to permit the primer and paint to dry. Cloth-covered foam-board bases have been constructed as appropriate resting spots for the ciboria that may be placed there. This work has been done in preparation for a liturgical event, explained below.

All Souls Day Masses

As was done last year, this All Souls Day, Monday, November 2, will be a special day of prayer for the Souls of the Faithful Departed at St. Josaphat Church.

Starting at 6:00 PM, Tridentine Low Masses will be celebrated at the side altars of the church. In 2008 two side altars were in use. This year, Frs. Mark Borkowski, Peter Hrytsyk, John Johnson, and Louis Madey will be present to celebrate Masses at all four of the side altars. This may very well be the first time in decades that all of the side altars of one of our local historic Catholic churches are being used for Holy Mass simultaneously.

Following the Low Masses, at 7:00 PM a Solemn High Mass will be celebrated at the high altar. The Dies Irae will be sung. At the end of that Mass, the ceremony of Absolution will be conducted at the catafalque, the wooden platform which represents a casket for the departed souls.

The Church provides three separate sets of Mass Propers for All Souls Day, as there has been a longstanding tradition of priests celebrating multiple Masses on this day. The Church wishes to stress the need for prayer for the Souls in Purgatory, as once is in Purgatory, it can no longer pray for itself. That soul depends on the prayers and Masses offered by those still on Earth for its relief and ultimate release from Purgatory.

The accompanying photos show St. Josaphat’s four side altars: From top down are the altars which are clockwise from the left if you are standing in the church: The St. Anthony of Padua Altar, our Blessed Mother’s altar, the St. Joseph Altar, and the St. Francis of Assisi Altar.

NLM Covers Assumption’s Anniversary Mass

Last week’s Solemn High Mass at Assumption Church for the 18th Anniversary of the Windsor Tridentine Mass Community attracted the attention of the widely-read New Liturgical Movement blog. A story and photos, published on Monday, October 19, discussed how first-time Extraordinary Form celebrant Fr. John Johnson prepared for the Mass, and how the lessons he learned affect how he now approaches celebration of the Ordinary Form of the Mass. Faithful from across the region turned out; it was the best attended Tridentine Mass in the Windsor Community’s history. Read the whole story at www.newliturgicalmovement.org.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for October 25, 2009. Hat tip to A.B.]

Related: Look to Exsultate Iusti in Domino for beautiful online photographs of these and other events at St. Josaphat.

All Hallows' Eve (October 31)

2009-10-22T21:18:00.005-04:00

"One may not think of the month of daylight savings time, breast cancer awareness, and Oktoberfest as particularly controversial, but beneath the surface of several Catholic holidays in October are truths and memories that bring a maelstrom of protest from the modern world," writes Michael P. Foley in "The Controversial Holidays of October" (Latin Mass magazine, Summer 2009).

The first of those we reviewed in "The Controversial Founding of Columbus Day" (Musings, October 11, 2009). Here we resume the rest of Foley's article on the holiday popularly known as "Halloween."

Controversy also surrounds another well-known American holiday, with various voices denouncing or defending it as darkly pagan, harmlessly secular, liturgically Catholic, or historically anti-Catholic. In a sense, they are all right, for Halloween is a fascinating combination of all of the above.

Halloween began as the Celtic festival of Samhain,the Lord of the dead in Celtic mythology. It was believed that on the night before the feast, the gates of the underworld were opened and that ghosts, demons, and witches were allowed to roam freely. In response to this otherworldly menace, the Celts followed the principle "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and disguised themselves as various kinds of ghouls to escape harm. (From this practice comes our custom of Halloween masquerading.) And in addition to blending in with the infernal, the Celts also tried to appease evil spirits by offering them food and wine.

The Catholic Takeover

After the Catholic Faith came to Celtic lands, the old Druidic festival came to be associated with the night before All Saints' Day and was thus called All Hallows' Eve (a name that gives us the modern appellation of Halloween), even though the institution of All Saints' Day on November 1st was a complete coincidence. Church officials were gradually able to wean the Celts from their sacrifices, replacing the food offerings to the gods with "soul cakes" that would be made on Halloween and offered to the poor in memory of the faithful departed. This was centuries before the Western Church instituted November 2nd as All Souls' Day, the day commemorating the souls suffering in Purgatory.

The original intention of distributing soul cakes was doubly charitable, ensuring that the poor would be fed on this day, in exchange for which they would pray for the doner's dead. But eventually, "souling," as it was called, became more frolicsome as groups of young men and boys began going from house to house and demanding food, money, or ale instead of cakes. The Church, incidentally, also transformed the nature of masquerading during this time from the evasion of evil spirits to the emulation of Christian saints. Large processions in honor of all the saints were held in England and Ireland on the Vigil of the Feast, with participants either carrying relics or dressing up as angels and saints.

The Irish put an additional spin on the feast with their story about a deceased scamp named Jack. Jack had been kicked out of heaven because he was not good enough and out of hell because he kept playing tricks on the devil. It was thus arranged that Jack would roam the earth with only a lantern to guide him until the Last Judgment, when God would finally decide what to do with him. Hence the ubiquitous Halloween jack-o'-lantern, which in Ireland is made out of the potato and in America out of the more commodious pumpkin.

Modern Changes

The Reformation all but eliminated Halloween, since most Protestant ecclesial communities removed the Feast of All Saints from their calendar. In England, however, many of the old Catholic customs were transferred to Guy Fawkes Day six days later. Guy Fawkes Day commemorates a failed plot by several English Catholics to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605. After the plot was foiled, the British government declared November 5 "a holiday for ever in ... detestation of the Papists.¹ In the United States, the anniversary was known as Pope's Day, and despite George Washington's admonitions, it continued to be celebrated in some parts of the country well into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Of the customs that were transferred, the principal one concerns door-to-door begging. Instead of souling, boys in England and later America would solicit lumps of coal on the night before the holiday in order to burn effigies of Guy Fawkes or the pope. After the Irish emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century, bringing with them their old Halloween customs, the coal-begging of Guy Fawkes Day gradually elided back into the souling of October 31. It is from this combination of Irish Catholic and British anti-Catholic observances that our modern custom of trick-or-treating has emerged.²

What to Do

Halloween today can be celebrated in any number of ways, from innocent costumes and customs (such as bobbing for apples) to teenage vandalism to truly satanic cultic practices. It is because of this checkered past and present that many traditional Catholics prefer to host more explicitly religious events in addition to Halloween or not to observe the standard American Halloween at all. Adapting the old tradition of All Saints' masquerading, they host costume parties in which children dress as saints and in which games and contests are held and prizes rewarded.

Others infuse the old Christian meaning back into the holiday. Since it precedes the first class solemnity of All Saints' Day, October 31 was once a day of fasting and abstinence. One family we know teaches their children to think of trick-or-treating as a kind of harvest gathering for the real holiday of All Saints' and indeed for the entire first week of November. This not only keeps them from gorging themselves on their sweet plunder in a single night, it yokes their harmless fun to a deeper spiritual meaning. In former ages, All Saints' Day was celebrated for eight days, and though this octave was removed from the calendar by the time of the 1962 Missal, paraliturgical traditions continue to thrive in connection with All Souls' Day on November 2. Plenary indulgences, for example, are still offered from November 1 through 8 for visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead; and several Catholic cultures have long had special funereal foods and customs for this week. American Catholics of Western European descent have never had a robust "week of the dead" unlike, say, the Mexican people; and so saving Halloween candy for the saints and the poor souls in purgatory could be a way to fill this void and correct the abuses of Halloween to boot. One thing is certain: if the Church can snatch Halloween away from the Druids, she can certainly take it back from secular America.

Notes

George William Douglas, The American Book Of Days,revised by Helen Douglas Compton (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1948), p. 584. [back]

Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History(Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 2-4, 9-11, 15-16, 142-143. [back]

[Michael P. Foley is associate professor of patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008) and Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Our present post was excerpted from Dr. Foley's article, "The Controversial Holidays of October," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 36-39, and is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Amazing

2009-10-19T23:15:00.002-04:00

Fr. Zuhlsdorf, "Archbp. Burke, TLM, Vatican Basilica" (WDTPRS, October 18, 2009)
Fr. Zuhlsdorf, "CNS slant on Sunday’s Pontifical Mass in the Vatican Basilica" (WDTPRS, October 19, 2009)

Call To Holiness Conference Report

2009-10-19T22:56:00.004-04:00

Tridentine Community News (October 18, 2009):

The Call To Holiness conference held last Saturday, October 10 at the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak turned out somewhat different than expected. Several of the speakers gave significant emphasis to the appeal of the Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass. This focus was not evident in the marketing materials used to promote the conference.

Dr. Michael Foley delivered a thought-provoking opening talk entitled “How the Mass Shaped the Western World.” After pointing out that many aspects of modern society were inspired by the Mass (e.g.: The layout of a courtroom resembles that of a church. Once someone has “passed the bar” [Communion Rail analogy] and may practice law, he is permitted to enter the front “sanctuary” of the courtroom, where only “ordained” attorneys may go.). Dr. Foley further proposed that it was the Extraordinary Form’s structure that caused the Mass to have such influence, and questioned whether the Ordinary Form would have been compelling enough to affect society so pervasively.

Fr. Eduard Perrone presented PowerPoint slides comparing the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Mass side by side (just as this column did in January, 2008). He pointed out the value of veiling the sacred (just as this column did in February, 2006) via the Communion Rail, chalice veils, and the like. Various “hmmms” and “aaahs” of realization were heard from some of those present who may not have pondered these matters before.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, a member of the same Canons Regular of the Holy Cross to which our own Fr. Wolfgang Seitz belongs, spoke about the importance of realizing what, and Who, the Holy Eucharist is. Following the theme of his recently published book, “Dóminus Est – It is the Lord!: Reflections of a Bishop of Central Asia on Holy Communion”, he logically developed that argument that if we believe that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of our Lord, then we should not be so casual in permitting the Eucharist to be handled by laypeople or received in the hand, which can lead to all sorts of desecrations, both inadvertent and intentional.

Priest blogger extraordinaire Fr. John Zuhlsdorf of What Does the Prayer Really Say (www.wdtprs.com) spoke about the necessity and benefits of reverent worship in today’s society.

Sacred Heart Seminary Director of Music Dr. Ronald Prowse led a time-constrained seminar on Gregorian Chant. He provided an introduction to reading chant notation, and showed how English propers can be set to chant tones. A schola comprised of seminarians was present to sing the 4:30 PM Mass.

The corridor leading up to the Shrine church was filled with vendors offering a variety of religious materials for sale, as was the school gymnasium across the street where lunch was served.

Call To Holiness has always featured orthodox speakers, however this was the first time that the Traditional Latin Mass was a primary theme. It would not be unreasonable to speculate that at least half of the people in attendance are not presently regular Tridentine Mass attendees. However, most were likely conservative Catholics, and among them surely were some who simply had never had the Traditional Mass explained to them.

The morning and afternoon Masses at Shrine were of the typical suburban parish variety. These were parish Masses and not conference Masses per se, so this was understandable, yet it also brought home the fact that we have a long way to go to re-educate most Catholics about proper structure and form in the liturgy.

The rise of EWTN and Catholic radio; a spate of new, orthodox Catholic publications and web sites; and the Internet’s role in spreading news quickly has made people aware of the appeal of traditional worship. Yet liturgy by-the-books is a topic that is virtually never brought up at most Catholic parishes. Likewise, the metro Detroit and Windsor Catholic media seems so heavily focused on pro-life and Marian topics that the sacred liturgy is rarely addressed. This is not to disparage those topics, as they are vital indeed, but to discuss them to the virtual exclusion of the liturgy results in Catholics’ general unawareness of a significant part of their faith. Indeed, how can one even credibly argue against the Latin Mass if one is unfamiliar with it?

Nevertheless, this Call To Holiness conference demonstrated yet further proof that the pendulum is swinging back towards recovering our liturgical heritage. Who could have ever imagined in the late 1990s, or even five years ago, that Call To Holiness would focus on the Tridentine Mass?

Appropriate Attire in the Sanctuary

At virtually every Tridentine Mass location, everyone in the sanctuary wears liturgical attire during Mass. The celebrant, of course, is fully vested. Altar servers, as well as clergy and choir members who may be present, traditionally wear cassock and surplice. This creates an atmosphere of decorum fitting for the sacred actions taking place. Conversely, inappropriate or excessively informal attire in the sanctuary can be a source of distraction and can make a statement that what goes on at Mass is not really that special at all. In essence, it can have the opposite effect of a Communion Rail; it can “unveil” the sacred.

It may not be realistic for lay lectors and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist to be vested. By the same token, however, by virtue of the gravity of their responsibilities in handling the Holy Eucharist, it seems out of place for Extraordinary Ministers to be dressed in, for example, jeans and sweatshirts. As Bishop Schneider argued, we Catholics either believe or we do not in the Real Presence. If we do believe, should Extraordinary Ministers not give our Lord at least the same respect via their attire that they would give a fine restaurant?

The Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass avoids these potential dichotomies by excluding the possibility of lay lectors and by restricting the distribution of Holy Communion to priests and deacons, both of whom must be vested while performing their duties.

The Rite of Exorcism

2009-10-18T16:48:00.017-04:00

"As a layperson, the first thing that surprised me about exorcism was that not many priests knew anything about it, especially not American priests."

-- Matt Baglio, Journalist

In the fall of 2005, Matt Baglio, the author of The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist(New York: Doubleday, 2009), was a journalist associated with the Rome bureau of the Associated Press living in Italy when he heard that a Vatican-affiliated university was offering a course entitled "Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation." He thought it might be a PR stunt. "Did the Church still believe in exorcism?" he asked himself. Not knowing what to expect, he decided to go to the class, viewing it as a rare opportunity: "I thought there was at least an article in it." Little did he know that the envisioned article would turn into a book.

The first day of the course, changed all of his preconceptions about exorcism, largely formed by sensationalist Hollywood depictions. "Not only was the ultramodern classroom an odd setting to see priests, Franciscan friars, and nuns of various orders listening to lectures on the powers of Satan, but, to my surprise, I found the students themselves to be anything but the 'superstitious' or puritanical priests portrayed in popular culture." (p. 235)

One of the most unexpected things about exorcisms as described here is that they aren't typically a one-time deal. More often than not, they resemble a periodic scheduled visit to one's therapist, with the exorcist scheduling their next visit in his appointment book at the conclusion of a session. The vast majority of exorcisms might strike an observer as monotonous affairs. This isn't to say that there aren't occasionally the unexpectedly violent and convulsive confrontations one might expect, but that these are not typically conclusive. A well-known case in Rome reportedly took over 40 years.

Another surprising thing is the disparity in the number of exorcists and workload profiles between various countries. As of the writing of this book, Germany reportedly has no exorcists, the United States 14, and Italy somewhere upwards of 400. "According to the Association of Italian Catholic Psychiatrists and Psychologists, in Italy alone, more than 500,000 people see an exorcist annually." (p. 6)

The author writes:

As a layperson, the first thing that surprised me about exorcism was that not many priests knew anything about it, especially not American priests....

My first behind-the-scenes look at exorcism occurred when I began to interview the various exorcists on their "home turf." Here and there I would catch a glimpse of what existed on the other side -- a group of people hounding Father Tommaso outside the sacristy of the Scala Santa; Father Bamonte wiping a puddle of holy water off a chair so that I could sit down for an interview; sitting in Father Carmine's waiting room while a woman screamed and banged around in his office. Perhaps most surprising was that far from being carried out in some hilltop monastery, many of the exorcisms were performed in churches located right in the heart of Rome. In fact, it was common to be talking to an exorcist while groups of tourists paraded around taking photos of religious iconography. One bizarre aspect of researching this book was this juxtaposition of two worlds -- talking to a victim of demonic possession or hearing an exorcism and then emerging into the bright sunshine and chaotic streets of Rome.

Each exorcist I interviewed was compelling in his own right.... I also found their candor to be refreshing. Many of the books I'd read had ordered everything into neat little boxes, yet here were exorcists with years of experience telling me that there were still things that couldn't be known.

Then there were the victims. Like Father Gary, not only did I find their apparent normalcy surprising, but I also found them credible, even likable people These were not people who struck me a trying to pull a fast one; they were sincere, heartfelt individuals who were struggling with something even they seemed at a loss to understand. Later, when I participated in exorcisms, this impression was only reinforced.

Many people assume that an exorcist is out to prove that people are possessed; however, with each of the Italian exorcists I talked to, I found the opposite to be true. It is also wrong, I think, to assume that the Church is on one side promoting the belief in spirits while the secular world is on the other, trying to debunk such notions. Stroll down to the local New Age bookshop to see the tremendous popularity of angels, "channeling," and "astral travel," not to mention thenumber of "ghost whisperers" and therapists who practice "spirit releasement." (pp. 236-238)

The Italian exorcists interviewed in Baglio's book are at pains to rule out psychological disorders before proceeding with exorcisms. Following suit, Fr. Gary Thomas, the American priest from San Francisco whose training in Rome is the principal subject of Baglio's book, promotes the importance of erring on the side of caution by assembling teams of medical doctors and psychologists or psychiatrists who could fully vet potential "patients" before proceeding to exorcism, and recommends making this a matter of standard national policy once the USCCB can be made to take the issue seriously enough to address it. (pp. 211ff.)

[Hat tip to N.B.]

Related

"The 1999 Rite of Exorcism"
"The 1952 Rite of Exorcism"
"The Reform of the Rite of Exorcism" [30 Days interview with the Vatican exorcist, Father Amorth]
"The New Rite of Exorcism," Latin Mass (Summer 2002).
Curt Jester, "The New Rite of Exorcism" [Only half-joking, blogger Jeff Miller offers this "new rite of exorcism" for the "Spirit of Vatican II"].
Paul Ciarcia, "The Healing Power of Exorcism: An Interview with Father Gary Thomas" (Headline Bistro, October 30, 2009)

Fr. Bouyer recalls exchange with Paul VI on liturgical reform

2009-10-15T22:15:00.009-04:00

The following is from an article posted yesterday by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, who was just here in Metro Detroit on October 10th to address the 12th Call to Holiness Conference on "The Treasures of the Mass."

In his post, "Fr. Bouyer and an anecdote about how the liturgical reform was imposed" (WDTPRS, October 14, 2009), Fr. Z cites his proximate source as a global email from the editor of Inside the Vatican, Robert Moynighan, and observes: "It concerns the behind the scenes story of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform. The characters involved are the famous liturgist Fr. Louis Bouyer and Paul VI. This is a bit removed, but it is perhaps useful." Here is Moynihan's email:

Letter from a Reader about the Liturgy

I just received this letter from a reader:

Dear Dr. Moynihan,

These newsflashes are really informative and important for many of us to help us understand what is going on in Roma.

Given some of the past (and somewhat unfinished) newsflashes, I was wondering if you had seen this, from Fr. Anthony Chadwick (TAC priest in France) on his Civitas Dei web site http://pagesperso-orange.fr/civitas.dei/reflections10.09.htm, translating from a French traditionalist email group:

(Note: here follows the text from the web site; the incident occurred in about 1974.)

=============================

October 3rd—Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus (Roman calendar and a local Saint here in Normandy)...

Father Louis Bouyer (photo): I wrote to the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, to tender my resignation as member of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform. The Holy Father sent for me at once (and the following conversation ensued):

Paul VI: Father, you are an unquestionable and unquestioned authority by your deep knowledge of the Church’s liturgy and Tradition, and a specialist in this field. I do not understand why you have sent me your resignation, whilst your presence, is more than precious, it is indispensable!

Father Bouyer: Most Holy Father, if I am a specialist in this field, I tell you very simply that I resign because I do not agree with the reforms you are imposing! Why do you take no notice of the remarks we send you, and why do you do the opposite?

Paul VI: But I don’t understand: I’m not imposing anything. I have never imposed anything in this field. I have complete trust in your competence and your propositions. It is you who are sending me proposals. When Fr. Bugnini comes to see me, he says: "Here is what the experts are asking for." And as you are an expert in this matter, I accept your judgement.

Father Bouyer: And meanwhile, when we have studied a question, and have chosen what we can propose to you, in conscience, Father Bugnini took our text, and, then said to us that, having consulted you: "The Holy Father wants you to introduce these changes into the liturgy." And since I don’t agree with your propositions, because they break with the Tradition of the Church, then I tender my resignation.

Paul VI: But not at all, Father, believe me, Father Bugnini tells me exactly the contrary: I have never refused a single one of your proposals. Father Bugnini came to find me and said: "The experts of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform asked for this and that". And since I am not a liturgical specialist, I tell you again, I have always accepted your judgement. I never said that to Monsignor Bugnini. I was deceived. Father Bugnini deceived me and deceived you.

Father Bouyer: That is, my dear friends, how the liturgical reform was done!

==============================

(The letter to me then continues):

Of course, this plays into the I think unfinished story you were recounting about Cardinal Gagnon’s investigation, and the aftermath. I must add that I saw on another traditionalist list group a few years back the comment from Prof. Luc Perrin (Strasbourg) that he himself had a typescript copy of Fr. Bouyer’s memoirs, which could not then be published due to family opposition or something of the sort, but that they contained bombshells ...

Fr. Z concludes: "You have to know that Paul VI was perhaps overly trusting."

[Hat tip to J.M.]