Scripture & Catholic Tradition

The Counts of Jesu Christo, Part II

2012-01-09T23:56:00.007-02:00

The Massacre of the Holy Innocents by Fra Angelico
By Michael P. Foley

This article is a companion to an article of the same name in the christmas 2008 issue of the Latin Mass.

It might seem odd to think of anyone else besides the Infant Jesus or the Holy Family during the octave of Our Lord’s Nativity, but the Church in her wisdom does precisely that. Immediately following Christmas Day are the feasts of several holy men and boys known as the comites Christi, “the comrades of Christ.” Comes not only means “companion” but it is also the Latin word for the noble title of count. As this would suggest, the comites Christi are somehow close to their Lord in the way that a royal entourage is close to its king. The Church acknowledges a spiritual intimacy by placing the feasts of certain saints close to that of the birthday of their Sovereign: the Byzantine rite, for example, pays special honor to the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, by celebrating their feast on December 28.

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It might seem odd to think of anyone else besides the Infant Jesus or the Holy Family during the octave of Our Lord’s Nativity, but the Church in her wisdom does precisely that.

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During the same week, the Western Church honors St. Stephen (December 26), the first martyr in both act and desire and hence the first to be honored after Christmas; St. John the Evangelist (December 27), the disciple closest to Christ during the Last Supper; the Holy Innocents (December 28), close to the Infant Jesus by their martyrdom; St. Thomas Becket (December 29), whose death at the hands of a Christian king on this day in 1170 so shocked Christendom that his feast day was given the privilege of remaining within the Christmas octave; and St. Sylvester (December 31), the Pope who lived to see the civic peace that followed the Roman persecutions and whose feast thus aptly gives voice to our prayers for the new civic year.

Three years ago, we looked at the feasts of two such counts, Saints Stephen the Proto-Martyr and John the Apostle.¹ This year we turn our attention to the rest of the Roman rite’s Christmas Camelot: the Holy Infants, St. Thomas Becket, and Pope St. Sylvester.

The Holy Innocents (December 28)

Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: “A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not” (Mt. 2:16-18).

St. Matthew’s chilling description of the massacre of Bethlehem’s baby boys does not indicate how many were killed in Herod’s effort to murder the Infant Jesus. The Byzantine liturgy mentions 14,000, the Syrian churches speak of 64,000, and some medieval authors, inspired by Revelation 14:3, speak of a staggering 144,000. Based on fertility rates and the size of the population of Bethlehem and its environs at the time, however, a more realistic estimate places the number of the slain somewhere between ten and twenty.

Matthew’s account is also silent about the date of the massacre, except for hinting that it happened within two years of the apparition of the Magis’ star. The Armenian feast day honoring the Holy Innocents falls on Monday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost in accordance with a belief that they were killed fifteen weeks after the nativity of our Lord. The Byzantine calendar has the feast on December 29, while the Syrian and Chaldean calendars have it on December 27.

The Church of Rome, from what we can tell, has always kept the feast of “Childermas” (Children’s Mass) on December 28, ever since it first began being celebrated there in the fifth century. In so doing, the Western Church presents an interesting array of Christly counts on December 26, 27, and 28: first St. Stephen, the Proto-Martyr who is martyr by will, love, and blood; then St. John the Evangelist, who is martyr by will and love (John is considered a martyr because of the attempts made on his life even though he died a natural death); and lastly, the Holy Innocents, who are martyrs by blood alone.

But if they are not martyrs by blood alone, how can they be martyrs at all? Isn’t a martyr someone who dies because he consciously professes faith in Christ? The very fact that the Church acknowledges the murder of these little ones as holy martyrdom is itself significant, as it tells us something about the nature of salvation and childhood. A child normally does not attain the use of reason until the age of seven, and even then he is under the care of his parents, who act as a kind of “surrogate reason,” helping him develop his rational faculties. Yet an infant, under the supervision of another surrogate (his godparents), may be baptized long before he has the ability to believe in the creed for the simple reason that just as he did not personally choose the curse of original sin with which he was born, so too need he not choose the cure of baptismal grace in order to be saved.

Similarly, the Holy Innocents did not choose martyrdom or even Christ, but this is not due to any failure on their part but to the undeveloped state of their minds. What matters here, as with baptism, is the action done to them. The fact that they died not only for Christ but instead of Him makes them flores martyrum, the “flowers of the martyrs.” As St. Augustine eloquently puts it: “They are the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution.”² The Breviary Hymn for the feast, Salvete Flores Martyrum, alludes to this botanical epithet, along with a touching portrayal of the Innocents playing with their symbols of martyrdom before the altar of God:

You, tender flock of lambs, we sing,
First victims slain for Christ your King:
Beside the very altar, gay
With palms and crowns, ye seem to play.

The Mass of Childermas

As this bittersweet image attests, even though martyrdom is a glorious event in which the Church rejoices, it is difficult not to be moved by the thought of helpless toddlers being cut down in the streets. The Church, therefore, taking heed of Matthew’s citation of “Rachel weeping for her children” from the prophet Jeremiah, assumed the role of a second Rachel and mourned for these little ones. Except for when the feast fell on a Sunday, violet was the liturgical color, and the Gloria and Alleluia were suppressed. In the early centuries, Roman Christians also abstained from meat on Holy Innocents’ Day. It was on the octave day of the feast (January 4) that the Church turned her thoughts to the young martyrs’ glory, the Mass being celebrated in red with the Gloria and Alleluia. In the 1950s, however, the octave was eliminated, and so currently in the 1962 calendar red is the color of Childermas, and the Gloria and Alleluia are used. The station church of the day, St. Paul Outside the Walls, was chosen because it is believed that it contains the bodies of several of the Holy Innocents.³

Massacred of the Holy Innocents (detail) by Reni Guido
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But if they are not martyrs by blood alone, how can they be martyrs at all? Isn’t a martyr someone who dies because he consciously professes faith in Christ? The very fact that the Church acknowledges the murder of these little ones as holy martyrdom is itself significant.

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Childermas Customs

The twelve days of Christmas are a time of “topsy-turvy” customs, where social ranks and pecking orders are inverted in giddy imitation of the grandest inversion of all, the fact that Almighty God humbled Himself to be born a man in a chilly and foul-smelling stable. Childermas is no exception. In many religious communities, the novices had the privilege of sitting at the head of the table at meals and meetings, while the last person who had taken vows in the monastery or convent got to be superior for a day. Young monks and nuns would received congratulations and have “baby food,” such as hot cereal, served to them for dinner.⁴

A similar flip-flop occurred in the family. Customs like decorating the crib or blessing the baby were standard ways of observing the feast, and the youngest child was allowed special privileges and honors, even becoming master of the household. Not all customs, however, bode well for the young ’uns. In some places, children awoke to a spanking from their parents “to remind them of the sufferings of the Innocents!”⁵ Lover of tradition though I be, I do not recommend resuscitating this particular observance. It does, however, serve as a useful reminder to spoiled children when they complain about not being treated as royally on this day as they would wish.

In the Philippines and Spanish-speaking countries, Childermas is the equivalent of April’s Fools Day, a time of pranks and practical jokes called inocentadas. And, of course, all of Christendom once abstained from servile work on this day—along with the other twelve days of Christmas.

St. Thomas Becket (December 29)

Thomas Becket was born on December 21, the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, in either 1118 or 1120. He became a trusted subordinate of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who appointed him Archdeacon of Canterbury and eventually recommended to King Henry II that he be appointed Chancellor of England. Thomas and Henry became fast friends, sharing a commitment to hard work but also behaving in occasion “like two schoolboys at play.”⁶ Thomas acted vigorously in the interests of his monarch to the full extent of his conscience, but he disdained the licentious ways of his peers, hating “foul conduct or foul speech, lying or unchastity.”⁷ He also mentored the King’s son. The future Henry III later said that Becket showed him more love on the first day at his home than his father had in his entire life.

Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162 on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Some believe that his consecration is what eventually led to the placement of Trinity Sunday on the universal Roman calendar, since Becket procured permission for England to observe this feast as the anniversary of his archbishopric.⁸ The new Archbishop soon began defending the rights of the Church against the encroachment of the royal government. The most galvanizing issue was whether English clergymen were subject to ecclesiastical courts or the King’s. (In those days, as with our current practice of military courts, different segments of society were subject to different laws and magistracies.) Becket refused to budge, and the King eventually had him convicted of charges of malfeasance during his chancellorship. Thomas stormed out of the trial and fled to France, where he was protected by King Louis VII.

Death of Saint Thomas Becket by Meister Frnacke

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Some believe that his consecration is what eventually led to the placement of Trinity Sunday on the universal Roman calendar, since Becket procured permission for England to observe this feast as the anniversary of his archbishopric.

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Through the mediation of papal diplomacy, Becket returned to England in 1170. But the truce was not to last. Becket excommunicated three bishops when at the will of the King they crowned young Henry III at York, usurping a privilege reserved to Canterbury. Henry II, at the end of his wits, is then said to have retorted, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” There are several versions of what exactly he said, but whatever it was, it was interpreted by four of his knights as a command to kill the archbishop. The men left their weapons outside the cathedral, confronted Becket within and, after he refused to absolve the bishops, returned with their weapons.

They met up with Becket as he was approaching the sanctuary for Solemn Vespers and this time drew their swords. Unlike the stylized movie version, the assassination was gruesome. The eyewitness account from his faithful cross-bearer reports that the knights’ blows opened his skull, spilling his brains onto the pavement. The killers then exulted, saying, “Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more.” Thus, as a hymn in his honor puts it, St. Thomas became “both priest and sacrifice in the church of Canterbury for the sake of the laws of justice.”⁹

It did not take long for all of Europe to venerate Becket as a martyr, and within three years he was canonized a saint by the Pope. A year later, the King himself did penance and was scourged at Becket’s tomb. The shrine was the most popular pilgrimage site in the British Isles until Henry VIII’s thugs destroyed it and the saint’s bones in 1538. St. Thomas’ four murderers fled England and eventually sought forgiveness from Pope Alexander in Rome, who had excommunicated them. The Pope made their penance a term of fourteen years of service as crusaders in the Holy Land.

Legends and Customs

There are several colorful legends about St. Thomas Becket, most of which pay homage to his lovable gruffness. Becket purportedly gave tails to the inhabitants of Strood, Kent, after they sided with the King and cut off the tail of the archbishop’s horse as he rode through town.¹⁰ In Otford, Kent, the saint did not like the taste of the drinking water and struck his crosier on the ground to form what is now called “Becket’s Well.” Otford is also said to lack nightingales because one of them made a racket while Becket was trying to pray, prompting him to banish them from the town. But this does not mean that the saint hated the fowls of the air. On one occasion, a little bird that had been taught to speak escaped from its cage and flew into a field. A hawk swooped in for the kill, and as it was about to strike, the panicked bird cried out what it had heard others say in times of distress, “Saint Thomas, help!” The hawk was struck dead, and the bird escaped unharmed.¹¹

There are no universal customs on St. Thomas’ feast day, but it is not difficult to find ways of paying tribute to “England’s most vibrant flower,” as he has been called.¹² English food and ale are a good start, along with the 1964 film Becket starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. Based on a play by Jean Anouilh, the movie takes considerable liberties with the biographical details, starting with the fact that it portrays Becket, who was a descendant of the Normans, as a Saxon underdog. Nor was Becket a carousing and opportunistic nihilist prior to his elevation to the See of Canterbury, although he did become much more ascetical at that point, changing, as he once said, from being “a patron of actors and a follower of hounds to a shepherd of souls.” One sign of his transformation was a hair shirt that he wore under his archbishop’s garments (as was discovered by the monks who prepared his body for burial.) Still, the movie is a dramatic and psychological masterpiece, and it accurately portrays some of the challenges St. Thomas faced in his life.

Pope Saint Sylvester (December 31)

Saint Sylvester was Supreme Pontiff during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who ended the persecution of the Church and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. There are several legends connecting the Pope and the Emperor, though their historical value is dubious. According to one, Constantine was baptized on his death bed by Sylvester; according to another, the baptism took place earlier in his life, when he allegedly contracted leprosy. One memorable version of the legend states that Constantine was told that the only cure for leprosy was to bathe in the blood of 3,000 newborn infants. As the infants were being gathered, Constantine recoiled at this barbarity as incompatible with Roman dignity. That night, Sts. Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to Pope Sylvester, who baptized and thus cured him in the basilica of St. John Lateran.¹³ Today, an inscription at the base of the obelisk outside the basilica records this legend.

Pope Saint Sylvester I photo by Nick Exsillo

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Saint Sylvester was Supreme Pontiff during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who ended the persecution of the Church and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

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What we do know is that during Sylvester’s pontificate Constantine built several of the great churches of Rome, not only the Lateran but Santa Croce, the original St. Peter’s, and a number of cemeterial churches over the graves of martyrs. The Pope no doubt collaborated with this effort, and he also sent legates to the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council in Church history. The first Roman martyrology was compiled during Sylvester’s papacy, and his name is associated with the “Roman school” of chant.

As mentioned above, there is something appropriate about issuing in the new civic year with the first Bishop of Rome to enjoy civic peace, when our hearts are filled with hope for “peace on earth.” But the reason for the feast day is more literal: after twenty one years of service to God as Pope, Sylvester was buried on December 31, 335.

Silvesterabend

Sylvester’s feast is so closely tied to December 31 that in many countries New Year’s Eve is simply known as “Silvester” or “Silvester Night” (silvesterabend or silvesternacht in German). In France and French Canada it was traditional for the father to bless the members of his family and for the children to thank their parents for all of their love and care.¹⁴ In central Europe, a pre-Christian ritual of scaring away demons with loud noises was retained; from this is derived our custom of fireworks and artillery salutes in welcome of the new year. In Austria, December 31 was sometimes called Rauchnacht or “Incense night,” when the paterfamilias of the family went through the house and barn purifying them with incense and holy water.¹⁵

And speaking of luck, Sylvester Night was a favorite occasion for attempts to peer into the upcoming year. The reading of tea leaves was once popular, as was pouring spoonfuls of molten lead into water and interpreting the future from the shapes it took. Young maidens prayed to St. Sylvester in traditional rhymes, asking him for a good husband and hoping through his intercession to catch a glimpse of Mr. Right in their dreams or in the reflection of a mirror.¹⁶

On the more pious side of things were vigil services of various kinds thanking God for the gifts of the year and seeking blessings for the new. To this day, Holy Mother Church grants a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, to a public recitation of the great Latin hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum, on the last day of the year. A partial indulgence, on the other hand, “is granted to those who recite the Te Deum in thanksgiving.”¹⁷

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All of these ancient feasts speak in different ways to the Church today and the contemporary world. On Childermas, for example, some have begun to remember in their prayers the victims of abortion.

* * * * * * *
The Feast of St. Sylvester was also considered a good time to feed the body as well as the soul. In Spain and other Spanish-speaking areas it was considered good luck to eat twelve grapes at the twelve strokes of midnight. In Austria, krapfen, apricot-jam doughnuts, are traditionally eaten when the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve. In Poland, Poncz Sylwestrowy (“Sylvester’s Punch”), a strong rum mixture, was similarly imbibed.¹⁸

Conclusion

December 28, 29, and 31 celebrate a range of saints, from those who died thirty three years before the Crucifixion to those who died over 1,100 years after. Yet all of these ancient feasts speak in different ways to the Church today and the contemporary world. On Childermas, for example, some have begun to remember in their prayers the victims of abortion. Like their Bethlehem counterparts, the unborn now are innocents being slain by cruel Herods, but unlike the Holy Innocents they are bereft of the privilege of dying explicitly for Christ. Interestingly, there were once folk beliefs in German-speaking countries about some unbaptized babies going to Heaven on Childermas Day.¹⁹

Similarly, it would not be inappropriate to pray on St. Thomas’ Day for the return of the Church of England, and indeed of the entire English nation, to the Catholic Faith. Thomas gave his life to protect the Church from subordination to the Crown, as would another Thomas, St. Thomas More, four centuries later. In fact, More drew great consolation from knowing that he was to be executed on July 6, the day before another feast day honoring the brave Archbishop, the Feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Thomas Becket. Let us pray that “Our Lady’s Dowry” re-embrace its ancient Faith and that Pope Benedict XVI’s generous provisions in his 2009 Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus be accepted.

Lastly, when St. Sylvester died he looked out on a world that no longer butchered Christians and was beginning to appropriate Christian morality in its laws and mores. Today we look at the photographic negative of that picture, as persecutions of Christians increase worldwide and Western society increasingly abandons its sacred heritage. As we celebrate in the octave of Christmas the Light that came into the world, let us pray that It dispel the shadows of our age and its global godlessness. St. Sylvester, help!

[Michael P. Foley, an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University, is the author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday? The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites (Eerdmans, 2008).]

Notes

“The Counts of Jesu Christo,” TLM 17:5 (Advent/Christmas 2008), pp. 44-47. [back]

Augustine, Sermon 10 on the Saints. [back]

For more on station days, see my article, “Making the Stations: Stational Churches and the Spiritual Geography of the Roman Patrimony,” TLM 18:1 (Winter 2009), pp. 38-41. [back]

Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1958), 133. [back]

Joanna Bogle, A Book of Feasts and Seasons (Gracewing, 1992), 59. [back]

Herbert Thurston, “St. Thomas Becket,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912), , retrieved October 3, 2011. [back]

Thurston, ibid. [back]

Thurston, ibid. [back]

In templo Cantuariae/ Pro legibus justitiae/ Fit sacerdos et hostia, from the hymn, Pia Mater Plangat Ecclesia. [back]

“Thomas Becket,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket, retrieved October 3, 2011. [back]

From “The Translation of Saint Thomas of Canterbury,” in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend. [back]

Thomas totius Angliae/ Flos vernans, from the hymn, Pia Mater Plangat Ecclesia. [back]

From “The Life of Saint Silvester,” in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend. [back]

Weiser, Religious Customs in the Family (Liturgical Press, 1956), 62. [back]

Katherine Burton and Helmut Ripperger, Feast Day Cookbook (Catholic Authors Press, 1951/2005), 170. [back]

Weiser, Handbook, 139. [back]

Enchiridion of Indulgences, 60. [back]

For the recipes, see Evelyn Vitz, A Continual Feast (Ignatius Press, 1985), 158-59. [back]

See Weiser, Handbook, 133-34. [back]

[Michael P. Foley is associate professor of patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "The Counts of Jesu Christo -- Part 2,” Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 2011), pp. 44-48, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body

2011-11-14T01:07:00.004-02:00

The Ascension by John Singleton Copley
By Michael P. Foley

“Glory be to God for dappled things!” exults the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. And among those dappled things, shaded with their various spots and hues, we must count not just “skies of couple-colour” and “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim,” but the traditional liturgical year, that great annual pageant of all things “counter, original, spare, and strange.”

And one of the strangest things found in the liturgical year and in Christian dogma (strange in that it is a surprise to common sense) is belief in the resurrection of the dead. In an age where victories over sin, ignorance, and doubt seem to be increasingly rare, it is easy for Catholics to forget that their ultimate hope is not simply in avoiding Hell and reaching Heaven but in enjoying God with their souls reunited to their bodies. Spiritual masters such as Saint Augustine have even gone so far as to suggest that until that reunion takes place, the blessed in Heaven experience a restlessness or “patient longing.”¹ The Beatific Vision just won’t be the same without new bodies in a new Heaven and a new earth.

Our Glorified Bodies

Belief in bodily resurrection is no easy matter. The difficulty begins with answering a seemingly simple question, “what is the body?” Shakespeare plays upon this when Prince Hamlet describes how a king may go “through the guts of a beggar.” A king dies, his body is eaten by worms, a beggar goes fishing with one of the worms, and then he eats the fish that ate the worm.² Whose body is whose?

And yet this ambiguity also belies a great potential. If we can’t pin down the nature of the body, then who can naysay what it is capable of becoming? Saint Paul chides doubters who ask, “How do the dead rise again?” by comparing the body to a seed that must die before it truly lives.³ It is a metaphor worth dwelling on. The human body, which is a magnificent creation, is a mere acorn in comparison to the oak tree it is destined to become. Acorns retain their substance when they grow into trees (they don’t become butterflies), yet the difference between an acorn and an oak could not be more profound; the former is virtually nothing in comparison to the latter. If our bodies, impressive as they are, are mere acorns now, imagine what they will be as trees on the Last Day.

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As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even
for a saint in Heaven.

* * * * * * *
To give an example of what may await us, consider the four properties of a glorified body as singled out in Catholic theology: agility, subtlety, impassibility, and clarity. Agility is the perfect responsiveness of the body to the soul, which will allow it to move at the speed of thought. Subtlety is the power of penetrating solid matter, while impassibility is the impossibility of suffering or dying. Lastly, clarity is the total absence of bodily deformity and a “resplendent radiance and beauty.”⁴

The astonishing excellence of a resurrected body was cleverly expressed by a young colonial printer named Benjamin Franklin, who at the age of 22 wrote his own epitaph:

The body of B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ’d) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.⁵

God’s Path to Being All in All

The general resurrection of the body is also a most fitting consummation of Christ’s Paschal victory over death. The Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord open the gates of Heaven to our souls but do not immediately end our vulnerability to the effects of original sin. Those effects include a degradation of the body: every bodily deformity or disease, every violent injury or accident, every misuse or abuse, is a sad reminder that we still live east of Eden. And death remains what it always was, a literal humiliation for one and all, a return of the body to the ground (humus).

As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even for a saint in Heaven. This body of ours, this temple of the Holy Spirit that is mocked and exploited by the world, the flesh, and the devil, is also in need of redemption. How splendid, then, that the Elect are not only promised eternal life in Heaven but a “reform” of “the body of our lowness” into a body like that of our risen Lord,⁶ a body that Saint Paul refers to as “glorified” and even “spiritual.”⁷ The body, which this side of the grave can be a handful to deal with, will become a luminous reflection of the soul’s divinely-given excellence once it is glorified. In Saint Augustine’s words, “what was once [the soul’s] burden will be its glory.”⁸ And how fitting that this glory is part of God’s ongoing transformation of creation until He becomes “all in all.”⁹

* * * * * * *

Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

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Easter Sunday

The extraordinary form of the Roman rite excels in the re-presentation of these eschatological realities, and it does so gradually. Easter, for instance, celebrates not only Christ’s victory over the grave but the first full-fledged instance of a glorified body. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus’ body on that first Easter morning was not a resuscitated corpse like that of Lazarus, for although it was indeed the selfsame body that was born of the Virgin Mary, it had undergone a significant transformation. That is why His closest friends did and did not recognize Him,¹⁰ and it is why the risen Lord was able to pass through locked doors¹¹ as well as appear and disappear.¹² In other words, His body now possessed the properties of glorification. The implication for the rest of us is clear. As Saint Paul explains, our Savior will take “the body of our lowness” and make it like “the body of His glory.”¹³ Consequently, during the Easter Octave we pray that we may be transformed into a “new creature”¹⁴ and pass on to “heavenly glory.”¹⁵

Ascension

As a whole, however, the theme of our bodily glorification remains rather muted during the Easter season. This is true for the Feast of the Ascension as well, since the Church understandably focuses more on Christ’s completion of His earthly ministry and His promise to send the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Collect for the Ascension prays that we learn to “dwell in mind amidst heavenly things,” not in body. Still, there are hints about the future of God’s Elect. To paraphrase Saint Gregory Nazianzus, “What is not assumed is not saved.”¹⁶ Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

In fact, by the end of the first Ascension Day, there may have been three bodies: Our Lord’s, Elijah’s—who was finally allowed into the Empyrean Heaven (see below)—and Enoch, the figure in the Old Testament who was mysteriously “taken” by God after his death but who could not have been allowed to experience the Beatific Vision prior to the resurrection of our Lord.¹⁷ What we do know is that our Lord did not enter into the true Holy of Holies empty-handed: besides His own glorified body and body, he brought the souls He had rescued from limbo on Good Friday, when “He descended into Hell.” The Breviary hymn for the Divine Office speaks of our ascended Lord at the head of a “triumph,” a Roman parade in which a victorious general showcased all of the slaves he had captured in battle.¹⁸ The hymn artfully inverts this image, showing Christ as the liberator of souls from limbo now parading them into Heaven after having completed his earthy campaign, as it were.

Corpus Christi

Shortly after Paschaltide, the Church celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi. Again the main focus is on the meaning of the feast at hand (in this case, the miracle of transubstantiation), but not without reference to our promised glorification. In the Divine Office for Corpus Christi, the Eucharist is called the “pledge of our future glory.”¹⁹ Jesus Himself says as much when He links Holy Communion to the Four Last Things: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day.”²⁰ The Eucharist is not only essential to our earthly pilgrimage as spiritual food and medicine, it is preparing us, by what it is and what it does, for our final transformation into a glorified creature of God. For the Eucharist is not just the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, but His glorified Body and Blood.²¹ When we receive Holy Communion, we are therefore receiving a token of what we, God willing, will one day become.

The Poem of the Soul - Memory of Heaven by Anne Francois Louis Janmot
And it is not just our bodies that are being glorified by the Eucharist. Pope Benedict XVI writes eloquently of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass transforming the entire landscape of being:

The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).²²

The Transfiguration (August 6)

The Pope’s reference to the transfiguration of the world brings us to our next feast. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Transfiguration of our Lord is commemorated in order to arouse the faithfuls’ desire for the glory of Easter; and on August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration to reflect more properly on the significance of this event. Part of that reflection involves meditating on the refulgence and majesty that our own glorified bodies will one day have.²³ The Breviary hymn for the feast speaks of the event in terms similar to the praise of the Eucharist we have just seen, as a “sign of perennial glory.”²⁴ Moreover, the little chapter used during the Divine Office is Philippians 3:20-21, the passage about reforming our body of lowness. Just as the historical Transfiguration prefigured the Resurrection of Our Lord, so too does the liturgical celebration of the Transfiguration prefigure the general resurrection of the body.

* * * * * * *

The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

* * * * * * *
How interesting that both of Jesus’ spiritual companions on Mount Tabor that day had bodies missing in action. Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot, while according to Jude 1:9, Saint Michael the Archangel and the devil fought over Moses’ body after he died. Some have interpreted Saint Jude’s cryptic statement to refer to the struggle between Michael and Satan through their earthly agents in Egypt, Moses being an emissary of God and the angels while Pharaoh and his magicians being minions of the devil. Others interpret the verse in reference to a fight over Moses’ remains, with Satan wanting the body buried in such a way that would seduce the Hebrews into idolatrizing it.²⁵ But Saint Michael prevailed, and to this day the location of Moses’ grave is unknown.

A third interpretation is that both Moses and Elijah represent different states of the afterlife, Moses’ soul having come from limbo to witness the Transfiguration and Elijah’s body and soul (for they were never separated by death) coming from Heaven—albeit not the “Empyrean Heaven,” according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, for that is only accessible to man through Christ’s Paschal mystery.²⁶ The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor thus discloses a fascinating spectrum of human existence: the living “acorn” bodies of Saints Peter, James, and John; the disembodied soul of Moses; the departed yet unglorified body of Elijah, and the transfigured body of Jesus as the foreshadowing of total glorification on the Last Day. In particular, our Lord’s Transfiguration foreshadows the gift of clarity, when “His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.”²⁷

The Assumption (August 15)

If bodily resurrection is promised to every faithful Christian disciple, then it is eminently fitting that Christ’s first and most faithful disciple should receive this gift before anyone else save Christ Himself. The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

The Assumption of the Virgin by Nicolas Poussin
The Mass for the Feast of the Assumption makes this connection explicit. The Collect prays that we “may deserve to be partakers of her glory,” while the Postcommunion beseeches God that through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, “we may be brought to the glory of the resurrection.” This teaching emanates outward from the Mass to various private devotions. A novena to the Blessed Virgin on the occasion of the Assumption prays: “Teach me how small earth becomes when viewed from Heaven. Make me realize that death is the triumphant gate through which I shall pass to your Son, and that someday my body shall rejoin my soul in the unending bliss of Heaven.”

* * * * * * *

By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

* * * * * * *
Even the timing of the proclamation of the dogma on the Assumption seems attuned to highlight God’s regard for our bodily existence, now and in the future. I once heard an outstanding sermon from an FSSP priest who speculated that Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition of the doctrine in 1950 was in part (intentionally or not) a corrective to World War II, the bloodiest war in human history. Specifically, the Third Reich, which the Pope so valiantly resisted, harbored an unprecedented hatred of not simply the Jewish religion but Jewish “embodiment,” the DNA of Abraham and his descendents, which is why they tried to exterminate that DNA entirely in their death camps. By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

Time After Pentecost

These festal reminders of the resurrection from the dead elide nicely with the Time after Pentecost, that portion of the liturgical year which commemorates the pilgrimage of the Church from its birthday to the end of days—in other words, the period in which we are currently living. Because the Time after Pentecost symbolizes the time of the Church on earth, it is also a profoundly eschatological season, a season that looks ahead to the “Eschaton,” the Last Day, just as Christians facing east when they pray or assist at Mass do so as a sign of their anticipation of the Second Coming, when Christ shall come in glory from the East.

The Poem of the Soul - Up the Mountain by Anne Francois Louis Janmot
The eschatological note of the Time after Pentecost becomes noticeable around the Eighteenth Sunday, at which point the readings and prayers grow increasingly apocalyptic in tone. Verses from the prophets become much more common and references to the final manifestation of Christ more insistent. This sense of anticipation grows each week until it crescendos with the last Sunday after Pentecost (the last Sunday of the liturgical year), when the Gospel recalls Christ’s ominous double prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the terrifying end of the world.

* * * * * * *

The Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.

* * * * * * *
But the eschatological theme is present earlier as well, and it includes a meditation on the future of our bodies. On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for example, the Gospel reading is of our Lord’s raising from the dead the only son of the widow of Naim (Luke 7:11-16), while the Postcommunion prays: “In soul and in body, O Lord, may we be ruled by the operation of this heavenly gift; that its effect, and not our own impulses, may ever prevail over us.” And the bodily theme is central on the Twenty Third Sunday, when the Epistle lesson returns to Philippians 3:21 and the Gospel reading proclaims the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, a prominent official of the Capharnaum synagogue (Mt. 9:18-26).

The Temporal and Sanctoral cycles of the Church calendar thus reinforce each other in marvelously conveying to us the meaning of the article in the Creed we pray every Sunday: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Conclusion

Hopkins ends his poem “Pied Beauty,” which began this essay, with the verses, “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.” The Lord God, Hopkins tells us, is past change, and yet the way He brings us to His changeless beauty is through a revolving and dynamic symphony of patchy or “pied” beauty. In a similar way, the Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.+

Notes

City of God 13.20. [back]

Hamlet IV.iii.27-31. [back]

I Cor. 15:35ff. [back]

John A. Hardon, S.J. Pocket Catholic Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 79. [back]

The epitaph was not used when Franklin died at the age of 84. [back]

Phil. 3:21. [back]

See Phil. 3:21; I Cor. 15:44. [back]

Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.35.68 [back]

I Cor. 15:28. [back]

See Lk. 24:13-32; Jn. 20:1-16, 21:1-7. [back]

See Jn. 20:19, 26. [back]

See Lk. 24:36, 24:31. [back]

Phil. 3:21. [back]

Postcommunion for Easter Wednesday. [back]

Secret for Easter Tuesday. [back]

Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter (101) to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius. [back]

See Genesis 5:24. [back]

See the hymn Jeus nostra redemptio: “Breaking through the gates of Hell/ Redeeming Those of yours held captive/ A Victor in a noble triumph/ You now reside at the Father’s right hand.” [back]

Magnificat antiphon for II Vespers. [back]

John 6:55. [back]

In fact, this is one of the reasons that Holy Communion is not act of cannibalism, even though it involves consuming the flesh and drinking the blood of our Lord. No cannibal has ever come close to receiving a living and glorified body. [back]

Sacramentum Caritatis, 11; see also 71. [back]

For more on this topic, see Michael P. Foley, “Divine Do-Overs: The Secret of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar,” The Latin Mass 19:2 (Spring 2010), pp. 46-49. [back]

The hymn is Quicumque Christum quaeritis, and the verse is Signum perennis gloriae. [back]

A divergent theory posits that Satan argued that Moses was unworthy of burial at all since he had murdered an Egyptian as a young man. [back]

See Summa Theologiae III.45.3.ad 2. [back]

Mt. 17:2; see Mk. 9:1; Lk. 9:29. [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). Dr. Foley's article, "Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body,” Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 38-42, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Marini's Conciliarist Manifesto

2011-11-12T15:50:00.003-02:00

[The views expressed in the following article are solely the responsibility of its author and are not necessarily shared by the editor of this site.]

Peter A. Kwasniewski

“Just before sunrise, the wind got up. It was a vile, stubborn wind ...”

—Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea¹

As a historian phenomenon, “conciliarism” refers to the erroneous view that a general council of the Church is superior to the Pope in matters of faith and morals — that a Pope can be trumped, so to speak, by all the bishops assembled. This heresy was dealt a series of blows throughout the second millenium of Christianity, culminating in the double coup de grace of a pair of dogmatic constitutions on the Church: Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus and Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium. As those who have studied the latter document know, section 25 of Lumen Gentium contains the clearest, most extensive teaching ever given concerning the unique, supreme, direct authority of the Pope over the entire Church and all her members, including the bishops who must remain in union with him in order to remain truly Catholic.²

In the past forty years, however, a new form of conciliarism has arisen, one harder to define with precision and far more influential: the view that Vatican II, all by itself, was a Council that redefined the Church and her theology from top to bottom. For historians of the influential “Bologna school,” the Council gave birth to a new Church, ushered in a new age, cleared away ages of debris and decadence, proclaimed at last an ecumenical Gospel that sought out the world and passionately embraced it. While the falsity of such a bald statement may cause a wry smile, it is a sad fact that this peculiar brand of conciliarism has been the main force at work in the wreckage of the sacred liturgy for the past forty years. So much so, indeed, that a new “Great Schism” appeared in the twentieth century: a schism between a self-styled modern Church and the Church of Tradition. This virtual schism, like the doctrinal rupture and rampant liturgical abuses that are the hallmarks of its proponents, is far worse than any internal crisis the Church has ever faced before, outstripping in combined ignorance, error, and contempt even the horrors of the Protestant revolt.

* * * * * * * *
It is a sad fact that this peculiar brand of conciliarism has been the main force at work in the wreckage of the sacred liturgy for the past forty years. So much so, indeed, that a new “Great Schism” appeared in the twentieth century

* * * * * * *
As students of Chuch history know, the Holy Spirit does not long allow the Church to be storm-tossed and in danger of shipwreck. All the hard-won gains of the aging old guard—religious liberalism, laicism, secularism, feminism, soft modernism, horizontalism, relativism, and so forth, a whole litany of -isms that have replaced the Litany of Saints as the standard and measure of Catholic life today—are now being called into question by a new generation of believers and, ironically perhaps, by the elderly Pope who was a major force at the very Council whose spirit is claimed to be embodied in the new order of Mass and the new style of worship it promotes. Those who follow the Catholic media can see it daily: the graying liberals sound outraged, panicked, desperate. The more intelligent among them must surely know that the sun is beginning to go down on their long-reigning agenda.

Standing tall and unrepentant in the ranks of the rupturists is the retired papal M.C. for John Paul II, Archbishop Piero Marini, who was unceremoniously replaced at Pope Benedict XVI’s behest by the infinitely more competent and traditional Monsignor Guido Marini (no relation), a model M.C. if ever there was one. For the remainder of this article, “Marini” will always refer to the bishop plagued with a futuristic agenda and no future.
Back in 2007, Marini published a book that made quite a splash. A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal contains little to surprise those who are already familiar with the standard (“Bologna”) history of the Council and the divinely inspired reforms attributed to it. Anyone who has dared to dip into Bugnini’s disturbing memoirs will find Marini’s book not terribly original. It comes across rather as the last gasp of a dying cause, a kind of “rage against the dying of the light” from an energetic retiree. At a press conference in England, Marini portrayed in livid terms an ongoing battle between “conservation and progress,” and “the center and the periphery.” He wanted his book to sound “an invitation to look to the future, to take up with enthusiasm the path traced by the council.” How’s that for tendentious? We—the Church of the ages—are the periphery? I believe it was Chesterton who said that Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It is the soft modernist faction of the Council that are the periphery, with their loud minority opinion.

Benedict XVI has been the only pope since Blessed John XXIII who seems to have understood with crystalline clarity that Vatican II can have been a legitimate council only if it was intended to be, and is continually received as being, in continuity with the entire Tradition that preceded it. “The path traced by the Council” is, de facto and de iure, the path traced by Tradition—or it is irrelevant, not to say worse. The speech Pope Benedict delivered to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2006 was a beautifully clear indicator of the mind of Holy Mother Church: the Council is to be received within a hermeneutic of continuity, not a hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity.
Journalist John Allen summarizes Marini’s identification of historical factors that paved the way for the Consilium’s triumph. First, “the presence of the council fathers in Rome during the first two years of implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s constitution on liturgy. The bishops themselves, [Marini] said, were ‘the first guarantors of reform.’” How easily the victors rewrite history! Many who were present at and involved in the Council have testified that the bishops had no idea they were about to witness the wholesale dismantling and reconstruction of the Roman Rite. Archimandrite Boniface Luykx (1915–2004) frequently noted that not a single bishop at the Council believed that Latin would be abolished, in practice, from the celebration of the Mass, that the priest would face the people, or that the prayers would be notably altered. In a moment of honesty, could Marini admit that Sacrosanctum Concilium did NOT ASK FOR most of the changes that were implemented?

* * * * * * *
Not a single bishop at the Council believed that Latin would be abolished, in practice, from the celebration of the Mass, that the priest would face the people, or that the prayers would be notably altered.

* * * * * * *
The second factor in the Consilium’s success, according to Marini: “The personal support of Pope Paul VI.” Alas, this is no relevation; it is but one more reason to hold this beleaguered pontiff of modernist sympathies in suspicion. People often rush to Paul VI’s defense by pointing out his heroically countercultural defense of chastity and the natural law in Humanae Vitae. We might be in danger of damning with faint praise. Humanae Vitae may seem bizarrely backwards or startlingly revolutionary to a world of hedonist nitwits, but any Catholic with an instinctive attachment to healthy sexuality, a modicum of religious education, and a morally sound outlook on family life would not for a moment be tempted by something as disgustingly unnatural as artificial contraception, nor would he or she register any surprise about what the Church had always taught and will always teach.

Let us move on to Marini’s third factor: “The rapid emergence of a network of ‘competent scholars,’ led by Lercaro and Bugnini.” Do I sense what the logicians call a petitio principii—a begging of the question? Competent by whose definition? Many of the fashionable scholarly theories of the mid-century have long since been discredited, even ridiculed, by liturgists and scholars whose first job is not grinding axes but understanding the history of Western liturgy. The business about how the Pope historically celebrated versus populum in St. Peter’s basilica was one of the main myths that drove the novelty of the priest’s turning his back to Christ, the symbolic East. We now know, thanks to better studies, that the Pope and the people faced eastwards at the most solemn part of the Mass, so important was their unanimous orientation felt to be.³

As the old guard present at Vatican II passes away year by year, Marini pleads that “it is important for the church to retain and renew the spirit that gave rise to the liturgical movement, and that inspired the council fathers to approve the constitution on the liturgy as the first fruit of that great grace of the 20th century which was the Second Vatican Council.” Hmm. The “spirit” behind the liturgical movement—is that anything like the particolored “spirit of Vatican II”? What about the origins of the liturgical movement among people who deeply and dearly loved the Church’s traditional liturgy and would have been disgusted by the superficial (if not sacrilegious) hootenanny that often replaced it? I can’t help thinking of a funny quotation by British Dominican Herbert McCabe, no traditionalist he, who nonetheless points out with brutal honesty:

There are satisfying experiences that are immediately satisfying, like drinking good Irish whiskey, but there are other satisfactions that occur only over long periods of time, like having a decently-furnished room. . . . If you are deprived of a decent liturgy for a fairly long period of time you discover an important gap in your emotional life. I might as well say at this point that I think there is a mistaken tendency, more especially in the United States but to some extent here [in England], to design the liturgy for too immediate a satisfaction. I have been with the “underground” groups in the American Church who do not really feel they have celebrated a Eucharist unless they get some kind of immediate experience of personal warmth and enhanced sensitivity. I think the liturgies designed by these people are very frequently in bad taste. I agree with those critics who find the Missa Normativa a little dull, except that I do not think it is altogether a criticism. A room furnished in good taste is a little dull compared to one covered in psychedelic posters saying “Love is Love” and “Mary, the ripest tomato of them all.”⁴

At the same press conference, Marini pontificated: “The goal of the liturgy is none other than the goal of the church, and the future of the liturgy is the future of Christianity and Christian life.” Even the devil quotes Scripture, and Balaam’s ass had intelligent counsel to offer. The future of the liturgy, in reality, is nothing other than, and nothing less than, the Mass of the Ages, the traditional Roman Rite that had organically developed for almost 2000 years until its violent deformation at the hands of Bugnini & Company.

The end of Mass at Rocafort by Jose Benlliure Ortiz

Our Lord gave the Mass to the Church for all her people, especially for the simple and the childlike. It is precisely such lowly laity who are not sophisticated enough to judge on the basis of theories and hypotheses, but who judge by what they see and hear—“O taste and see how gracious the Lord is...”

* * * * * * *
Anyone with good sense can see that the sudden virtual suppression of huge parts of Catholic liturgical tradition can only have had a profoundly unsettling, disorienting, and destabilizing effect on the Church as a whole. The apparent “success” of the reform has been belied by the bitter problems of doctrine and morals that have plagued the Church in the past four decades, centering on a loss of priestly identity, a drastic decline in priestly vocations, and an almost universal ignorance of the Faith and of the Sacred. The glamorous meetings of ICELated conspirators conveniently fail to mention the countless Catholics who felt betrayed, alienated, and even scandalized by the drastic changes that occurred as if overnight. I was talking to a neighbor one day—someone I’d gotten to know from seeing him so often around town—and when he found out that I taught for the Catholic College, he volunteered that he was a fallen-away Catholic who stopped going to Mass back in the seventies. “I went one Sunday and it was Hallelujah this and Hallelujah that, and I said to myself: What the hell is all this? It sure isn’t Mass!” Years ago, another friend told me a similar story. He said when the drums and guitars invaded the sanctuary, practically overnight, and routed the quiet low Mass he had grown up with, he felt dismayed, betrayed, assaulted, actually sick to his stomach. He stopped going to Mass for years, and nearly lost his faith entirely. Fortunately, he was one of those who, thanks be to God, returned to the Church after the indult Masses began.

Our Lord gave the Mass to the Church for all her people, especially for the simple and the childlike. It is precisely such lowly laity who are not sophisticated enough to judge on the basis of theories and hypotheses, but who judge by what they see and hear—“O taste and see how gracious the Lord is...” And judging by what they saw and heard, many came to the conclusion that the Church had either gone bonkers or had “come of age” and surrendered to secularism. In either case, it was time to stop going to Church. Rather than rejoicing in a botched reform conducted with all the finesse of bulldozers, one ought to feel righteous indignation about the high and mighty doings of the liturgical elite in the heady days of the late sixties and beyond, as they indulged in their liturgical fantasies while carelessly trampling on the hearts and minds of innumerable ordinary Catholics who loved the beauty and dignity of the Church’s worship as they knew it.

* * * * * * *
Anyone with good sense can see that the sudden virtual suppression of huge parts of Catholic liturgical tradition can only have had a profoundly unsettling, disorienting, and destabilizing effect on the Church as a whole.

* * * * * * *
Marini’s talk in London was full of that peculiar messianism characteristic of Vatican II nostalgics. Here is how it ended: “The Holy Spirit that inspired the liturgical movement and the council fathers still encircles us like a sacred cloud, and guides us like a column of fire,” offering “beauty ever new” as well as “joy and hope.” That’s what they call rhetoric, folks, but not in the most flattering sense of the word. If it was indeed the Holy Spirit and not the Zeitgeist or something more infernal yet, then the entire way we receive and rejoice in the Council and in the liturgical movement will of necessity exemplify the hermeneutic of continuity: the Council is to be interpreted in line with and in light of the great Tradition of Catholic theology and worship. It will not, pace Marini, cleave to the “hermeneutic of rupture,” whereby the Council would signify a decisive change of course that requires systematically deconstructing what came before and terrorizing those who adhere to it.

Let us remind ourselves again and again that Sacrosanctum Concilium expressly says that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (§23). To those who are familiar with the wonderfully durable and ineffably beautiful preconciliar sacramental rites, it would seem obvious that few, if any, changes could have been defensible according to this strict criterion of “genuine good.” It would be like looking into a chest filled with treasures fashioned of precious metals and jewels, and saying: “Let’s get rid of anything in here that’s worthless.” Good luck finding the iron and bronze brooches. But the Consilium came along and—to the horror of orthodox Catholics, the delight of far-seeing modernists, and the surprise of just about everyone—discovered that the rites of the Roman Church were thoroughly defective and in need of a massive overhaul. An overhaul, in fact, that would culminate, decades later, in a pathetic banalization of the very rite of exorcism, as if we could pull the wool over Old Scratch’s intellectual eyes. According to many exorcists, the new rite does not even work very well; it is certainly much less effective than the old. A personal friend of mine, an exorcist for a major diocese, told me that water blessed by the old solemn formula is considerably more effective against demons than water blessed with newer formulas. In a way, if one may compare great things to small, Church leaders made the same mistake as Coca-Cola did, but lacked the marketing brains to realize it and bring back the original recipe. It seems that hierarchical office does not bring with it a charism of factual analysis.

The Consilium found that the Tradition was defective and the People of God were crying out for a new Mass, a new Liturgy of Hours, new blessings, new everything. This sounds like special pleading. Who are we to trust: the Tradition of the Church, which embodies the faith, hope, and love of countless believers and pastors over many centuries, or the Experts whose theories embody (at best) the ephemeral wisdom of academia, here today and gone tomorrow? Why do the Experts think that they know better than the common man—or, for that matter, than the Common Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, who is always on the common man’s side? The whole tenor of the Consilium ascendancy, as of Marini’s book, smacks of the spirit of Protestantism: we, a select few enlightened by the Spirit of God, will choose what is the best way forward in Catholic worship.

In any case, one thing is certain: we will see a lot of this kind of nostalgic resistance from the aging conciliarists; it will be a hallmark of at least the next ten years, and it will become more and more acerbic, accompanied by an increase in clandestine acts of desperation. They accuse the traditionalists of wallowing in nostalgia, but as brilliant a light as Fr. Richard McBrien finds himself caught short trying to explain how young Catholics who never grew up with the Latin Mass are flocking to it, loving it, and passing it on to their children. A “nostalgia” for what one could never have remembered is positively indecent and categorically illogical! (I was born in 1971, after Pope Paul VI had safely earned his place in the ranks of the worst popes of history, so I can add fuel to McBrien’s ire.) In an interview for the National Catholic Reporter, Marini memorably compared the traditional nostalgics with the carnal Jews who, having been liberated from the bondage of Pharaoh and his evil empire, longed for the fleshpots of Egypt:

First of all, it’s important that I spoke about a path [of liturgical reform], one that I believe is irreversible. I often think about the journey of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament. It was a difficult journey, and sometimes the people became nostalgic for the past, for the onions and the melons of Egypt and so on. In other words, sometimes they wanted to go back. But the historical journey of the church is one which, by necessity, has to move forward.

Marini is not quite finished, however, with his penetrating analysis. He is puzzled that so many young people are drawn to the older liturgical forms—how can this be? He shares his reasoning process with us:

I see a certain nostalgia for the past. What concerns me in particular is that this nostalgia seems especially strong among some young priests. How is it possible to be nostalgic for an era they didn’t experience? . . . I’m always surprised to see young people who feel this nostalgia for something they never lived with. “Nostalgia for what?,” I find myself asking.

In reality, now that we are finally beginning to see genuine liturgical renewal thanks to Summorum Pontificum and the “reform of the reform” movement, the nostalgia is all on the side of the wrinkled cheerleaders with their placards of “Man has come of age; so should the Mass.” They are gazing wistfully back to the sixties while younger and wiser Catholics are thanking God that we’ve made tracks away from that benighted time of false hopes and Teilhardian illusions. Or better, the younger Catholics who take their faith seriously are doing just that: taking it seriously. Taking it as given, not as manufactured; as timeless, not as up-to-date. The Mass is not an experiment, a proving ground for academic theories, a do-it-yourself when ordained ministers run dry. It is the one and only Sacrifice of Calvary made present in our midst, in a hallowed form we receive from our forebears, bearing not only its own sanctifying reality, but also the sanctified history of the communion of saints. The reaction of any sane believer is to fall to his knees in adoration, along with generations of his fathers and—may God in His mercy grant it—generations of his children to come.

* * * * * * *
The Mass is not an experiment, a proving ground for academic theories, a do-it-yourself when ordained ministers run dry. It is the one and only Sacrifice of Calvary made present in our midst, in a hallowed form we receive from our forebears, bearing not only its own sanctifying reality, but also the sanctified history of the communion of saints.

* * * * * * *
In my years of teaching undergraduate and graduate theology, I have seen how young people who are serious about their faith flock to the traditional Mass, with little prompting or explanation required, and how they continue to attend it throughout their adult lives, eventually introducing their children to it. I have seen the spectacle of college students who, because they grew up in a parish or chapel run by the Fraternity of St. Peter, have never attended a Novus Ordo Mass, and who therefore need it to be explained to them. I was one of those young people who flocked to the (once-forbidden) “old Mass,” and as the years pass, my love for it only grows deeper and stronger. It has nothing to do with nostalgia. Nostalgia would be impossible for people who existed only in God’s mind, not on earth, when Paul VI made his fateful decision to promulgate the Novus Ordo Missae. It has to do with something much more fundamental than nostalgia: the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. Every soul is created by God to resonate with these transcendentals. We yearn for their presence in a modern world hell-bent on falsity, evil, and ugliness. And the traditional Mass, the crown of all the sacred rites and ceremonies of our Faith, powerfully contains and expresses them. What a gift! And what a privilege is ours to see this gift once more given and received!+

Notes

Trans. Kingsley Hart (n.p.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), 88. [back]

The same section 25 redresses an imbalance from Vatican I: while Pastor Aeternus seemed to focus on infallible ex cathedra pronouncements, i.e., what could be called the extraordinary Magisterium, Lumen Gentium broadened its consideration to include, and to emphasize, the authoritative nature of the Pope’s ordinary Magisterium—a lesson the vast majority of Catholics, both liberal and conservative, have still not accepted. [back]

For more on this, see Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, and Lang, Turning Towards the Lord. [back]

Herbert McCabe, God Matters (New York/London: Continuum, 2005), 215-6. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Marini's conciliarist Manifesto," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 6-10, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.]

Bankrupting the Banquet: Reflections on the Distribution of Holy Communion

2011-10-01T13:44:00.012-02:00

By Michael P. Foley

Seven years ago the Reverend Massimo Salani made international news by accusing fast food of being Protestant. Characterizing the popular form of eating as the complete oblivion of food’s “sacred nature,” the Italian Patristics scholar went on to opine that fast food “reflects the individualistic relation between man and God introduced by Luther” and is thus “the fruit of a Protestant culture.”¹ While Salani’s theory won praise from the Italian Minister for Agricultural Resources, both the German Lutheran community and the McDonalds Corporation were quick to issue letters of rebuttal, almost as if both were equally insulted by association with the other.

Regardless of where one stands on the value of fast food, the topic certainly invites reflection on the relationship between dining and the Catholic sacramental life. Indeed, Fr. Salani could just as easily have asked not whether fast food is Protestant, but whether fast food is now, thanks to the way we currently administer Holy Communion, Catholic.

Specifically, while the rite of communion in the Tridentine Mass (and in all other historic apostolic rites) takes on the form of a high banquet or feast, communion in the typical Novus Ordo Mass celebrated in the U.S. today generally resembles the experience of eating at a fast-food restaurant. I stress “today,” for it would be simplistic and misleading to lay blame on the 1969 Missal per se.² But we can at least suggest the following. Even when the communion rite of the Tridentine Mass is celebrated poorly by a hasty priest, the form of it remains unmistakably that of a grand banquet. On the other hand, the more negotiable form of the Novus Ordo communion rite, together with the implementations of the USCCB and the guidance of many American liturgists, have clearly made possible a number of practices that more often than not sell our banqueting birthright for a bowl of McPottage.

At the Lamb’s High Feast

In a Tridentine Mass, everything about the communion rite betokens participation in a great feast. Only the choicest vessels, made out of silver or gold, are used and only the finest linens. The atmosphere, even when there is only a single priest in somewhat of a hurry, is one of solemn leisure. The communicant stops, kneels, and waits. He is honored by the approach of the priest himself, not a lower minister and certainly not a fellow layman, just as diners at a fine restaurant are particularly honored when the chef comes out and visits their table (I apologize for the profane comparisons here and throughout, but they are necessary for the argument).

When the priest arrives, accompanied by his “waiter,” a formally-dressed acolyte, precious dishware (a gold paten) is placed under the communicant’s chin and he is treated to three things: a beautiful invocation directed specifically to him, “May the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ keep thy soul unto eternal life. Amen”; a mini-Benediction (for the priest makes the sign of the cross with the Host in his hand before distributing it); and the sacred Host itself. The prayer is particularly relevant to our discussion. The chef at a fine restaurant is likely to “pray” that his patrons obtain the intended effects of the fare he has served: hence he says something like, “Enjoy your meal.” The purpose of Holy Communion, on the other hand, is not pleasure for the body but bliss for the soul: hence the priest’s precise yet succinct prayer to each and every communicant.

The communicant then usually lingers for a little while in gratitude. In some parishes, kneelers even wait until everyone on their side of the aisle has received before rising and returning to their pews, both to prolong their adoration but also to show good manners in not rising from the table until everyone has finished.

Of particular importance throughout this ritual feasting is the communion rail. Its opponents depict it not only as a barrier between God and man but as an impediment to the Lord’s supper, for it keeps the congregation segregated from the altar, which in the great tradition has been understood as both the locus of sacrifice and a mensa, a table on which a meal is shared. Yet they overlook how the chancel rail, like the Byzantine iconostasis, is not a partition separating but a seam uniting heaven and earth, sacred and profane; and subsequently, it is more of a window than a wall. Moreover, the communion rail is a table, a banquet setting for the communion of God and His children in the congregation. Underscoring this function was the custom in some parishes of placing a fine white linen communion cloth -- a tablecloth, if you will -- on the chancel rail.

The Happy Meal

The ethos for Holy Communion at the average American Novus Ordo is noticeably different. The communion rail now gone and the striking descent of the priest from the high altar now ameliorated by architectural changes to the sanctuary and by the team of Eucharistic ministers diluting his distributive office, the communicants form a single file line from which they never fully escape. As they hasten forward (in my experience, the line usually moves quickly), they are advised to make some gesture of reverence as they approach the Blessed Sacrament as long as it is not the traditional genuflection -- presumably because it might impede efficiency.³ In the traditional communion rite, the line breaks as individual communicants find a place at the rail and then prepare for Holy Communion. In the most common current dispensation, by contrast, there is no local (and possibly no psychological) transition from reaching the head of the line to receiving the Eucharist.

All of this smacks of a fast-food arrangement, with its focus on speed and efficiency. Customers form single file lines either in the restaurant or in the drive thru, and their food is ready for them before they are seated, sometimes even before they receive their change.

Instead of receiving from a priest, chances are that the communicant will be receiving from a lay Eucharistic minister, often located at various points throughout the church (again to aid efficiency). As has been mentioned already, it is an honor to receive one’s fare from the chef himself (the “high priest,” as it were, of the dinner), but in a decent restaurant one can at least expect to be served by a duly-uniformed waiter. What one would not expect is to have diners from the next table suddenly stand up and serve you your food. Yet this is precisely what happens with Eucharistic ministers. They are not priests, they are not members of a minor order (acolyte), and they are not even laymen performing the function of a minor order (altar boys).⁴ They are fellow diners who have taken a workshop (sometimes) on how to distribute God.

Instead of a precious vessel made out of gold or silver, the priest or Eucharistic minister may be holding in his or her hand cheap earthenware. From it he/she proffers a Host and says, “The Body of Christ.” This brief declarative statement, no longer than “Have a nice day,” has replaced the beautiful prayer addressed to the individual for his eternal salvation as well as the mini-Benediction. Gone too are the gold patens and the communion cloth that add to the festive splendor and that reinforce belief in the Real Presence of every particle of the Host.

Though one is still permitted to receive on the tongue, it is more common for communicants to receive on the hand, a practice that further facilitates a fast-food mentality. Under this arrangement, it is easy to begin the return to one’s pew before the Host is actually in one’s mouth. Such an impatient action, should it occur (and it does), is roughly comparable to the fast-food customer who pops some fries into his mouth as he takes his tray and finds a table. Tellingly, McDonalds refers to the counter area where this happens as the “grab and go” zone.⁵ This essentially describes the action of such a communicant: he grabs and goes, masticating on His Lord as he strolls back to his pew. And should he try to slow things down or receive more reverently, he renders himself vulnerable to sometimes humiliating censure. In April 2006 Bishop Tod Brown of Orange, California, was videotaped yanking a young woman to her feet after she tried to receive Holy Communion kneeling, despite the fact that she begged him not to.

It is not difficult to see, incidentally, which of the two dining paradigms we have described better accords with the Eucharistic passages of the Bible. With the exception of the miracle of the fish and loaves (a picnic setting, so to speak, necessitated by the circumstances), scriptural foreshadowings of the Eucharist tend to involve grand or traditional feasts, such as the Wedding of Cana or the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Moreover, the Last Supper itself took place during no mere meal but the Seder, the highest and most solemn banquet of the Hebrew year, with every its dimension steeped in ritual and ceremony. Finally, the earthly liturgy that Christ instituted in the cenacle is itself a participation in His heavenly wedding feast described in the Book of Revelation. Since every Mass not only synthesizes all of the just sacrifices from Abel on but anticipates this great eschatological banquet in Heaven, it only makes sense to have this hidden reality reflected in signs and gestures that are suitably august.

Reply to Objections

Two objections can be raised against our thesis, the first being that, despite the “grab and go” temptation, Communion in the hand as well as Communion standing up remain closer in form to that of a banquet. Few people at a feast, after all, are either spoon-fed by another or take their food on their knees. Yet this is precisely where the analogy -- as all analogies eventually do -- begins to fail. At an earthly banquet, an adult must indeed be somewhat active in taking food to his mouth. At the heavenly banquet, however, we are more like what St. Paul refers to as “little ones” -- helpless infants seeking sustenance from our Parent. The gesture that a communicant takes in the traditional Roman rite is one of perfect receptivity (which is not to be confused with passivity).⁶ He is like a fledgling chick, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open, pleading for Life.

This image may be mildly insulting to those who think of themselves as all grown up, but it is evocative of the gala logikos, the “rational milk” (or “milk of the Word”) that St. Peter admonishes us to receive as newborn babes (1 Pet. 2:2); and it hearkens to the ancient association of Christus passus with the mythical pelican. According to a Greek legend, a male pelican returned to the nest after a three-day absence to find his young killed by a serpent. To bring them back to life, he tore open his breast and let his blood trickle onto them. Church Fathers like St. Jerome saw in this tale an allegory of the Eucharist, which is why in Eucharistic hymns like St. Thomas Aquinas’ Adoro Te, Devote, Jesus is addressed with the words, Pie Pelicane, and why tabernacle doors sometimes contain the relief of a pelican immolating itself. And if Jesus is the Pelican whose blood is life-giving Logos-milk, then we are certainly His newborn babes, smitten by the old serpent of sin and recumbent before Him.⁷

The pelican’s affinity with Our Lord also puts into perspective the inappropriateness of recent experiments in intinction, where the communicant takes the Host and then dunks it in the Precious Cup. This chips-’n’-dip motion of the layman is far removed from the practice of several Eastern rites, where the communicant receives both species (the Body intincted in the Blood) from the priest in a fledgling manner similar to that of the believer at a Tridentine Mass. And, of course, it gives the rite of communion an additional air of nonchalant informality, at least in cultures affected by the habits of Super Bowl Sunday snacking.

Second, it may be objected that Communion under both kinds is more banquet-like, since obviously banquets involve drink as well as food. As with Communion in the hand, there is an ancient Roman precedent for this practice, though likewise it is debatable that what we are doing today actually restores the tradition. Few proponents of the former, for example, seem to realize that the original practice, in some places at least, required a woman’s hands to be covered by a cloth when she received the Host.

The issue with Communion under both species is not so much that the Precious Blood is shared (which is theologically unproblematic and even in some respects commendable), but how it is shared. The answer to that question today is, again, fast-food-like. The communicant moves to a second station, almost always staffed by a lay Eucharistic minister, as if he were driving up to the second window of a drive thru. There he takes the Chalice in his hands (further undermining his fledgling orientation), imbibes his share, and goes. Having this second station can also undermine respect for the Eucharist, for invariably -- in order not to hold up “traffic” -- other communicants pass by the Chalice without acknowledging the presence of their Eucharistic Lord. And it hardly resembles the ancient practice, where only the deacon (the sous-chef of the Sacrifice, so to speak) took a golden straw called a fistula, lowered it in the Chalice, and put his finger over one end so that it would hold the Precious Blood. Then, moving to the communicant (not vice versa), he would suspend the fistula over the person’s open mouth and release his finger so that the Blood would empty into it, pelican-like.

Conclusion

Entitling this article “Bankrupting the Banquet” is not intended to be sensationalist or to suggest that when Mass is celebrated in a fast-food manner the Sacrament loses any of its efficacy. Both “bankrupt” and “banquet” come from bancus (the Latin for bench), the former in reference to a banker’s counter, the latter to a dining table. Keeping this etymology in mind sets into relief the content of our critique: by removing the communion rail and all the other elements of grand feasting, we have literally bankrupted the Roman rite, ruptured or broken the banquet bench on which the communion between God and man appropriately takes place.

Consequently, nature abhorring the vacuum that it does, an ethos of efficient consumption comparable to that of the American fast-food industry has crept into our solemn worship. The result is an atmosphere and an etiquette at odds not only with the sacrificial, regal, and divine character of the Eucharistic liturgy but with its festive, leisurely nature. Exorcizing the spirit of Burger King from the banquet of the Heavenly King remains an urgent and pastorally pressing task. If, as the 2005 Eucharistic Synod intimates, the Church is serious about restoring a sense of reverence for the Eucharist, she may wish to reconsider how she distributes It.

Notes

From an interview that appeared in Avvenire, November 8, 2000. English translation from 2000 Religion News Service Star Telegram, Ft. Worth, Texas. [back]

Indeed, many of the features of a contemporary American Mass I am about to describe are not at all mandated by the 1969 Missal. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the new Missal and many post-conciliar directives either permit or insufficiently guard against the encroachment of “fast-food” practices in the liturgy. [back]

While the American adaptations to the General Instructions for the Roman Missal discourage kneeling or genuflecting during the reception of Communion (the bishops’ effort to forbid the practice outright, you may recall, was rejected by the Vatican), they do not state why these practices are now so objectionable. One respected liturgical scholar once suggested to me that the motive was purely logistical: kneeling and genuflecting interrupt the flow of the communion line. [back]

Even tonsured clerics were not permitted to distribute Holy Communion: only the major order of priest (for the Body) and the major order of deacon (for the Precious Blood) had such privileges. [back]

It has even been speculated that McDonald’s signature yellow and red are designed to encourage faster customer turnover, since no one is able to stay in a room of such loud colors for too long. Perhaps this also explains the choices made in church design over the past half-century. [back]

The Blessed Virgin Mary, for instance, was utterly receptive to the Angel Gabriel’s announcement, not utterly passive. [back]

The pelican metaphor also underscores the inappropriateness of Eucharistic ministers whose activity alienates the priest -- acting in persona Pelicani, as it were -- from the Divine Pelican’s blood and brood. For the pelican does not ask some other bird to revive his young after his act of self-sacrifice but carries the act through to its completion himself. [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). Dr. Foley's article, "Bankrupting the Banquet: Reflections on the Distribution of Holy Communion,” Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 38-41, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Related:

Leroy Huizenga, "A Modest Proposal" (First Things, On the Square, September 26, 2011).

An Apology for the Confessional State

2011-09-25T23:56:00.005-02:00

Crowning of Charlemagne

by James Tillman

There are perhaps but two views of the state's purpose. In the traditional view, the state helps men to some definite idea of perfection by inculcating virtue in them through good laws; such an ideal has been advanced by Aristotle, Aquinas, and various Popes. In the classical liberal view, the state allows men to pursue whatever they want by protecting their freedom of action; such an idea has been advanced by Locke and various Protestants.

The dispute between the two has nevertheless crept into Catholic circles, despite the church's historical preference for the traditional view of the state's purpose. In the middle of the previous century, for instance, American Catholics saw the conflict between John Courtney Murray, who through the American experiment in religious liberty to be a good thing, and the Roman Catholic Curia, which did not and which therefore silenced him. Later in the century, Frank Meyer, convert from Communism to secular conservatism, argued with Brent Bozell, convert to Catholicism and founder of the militant Catholic magazine Triumph, over whether government's ultimate end is promoting freedom or promoting virtue. Other modern Catholic figures have tried to reconcile the Church's teaching with principles amenable to the American mind. Notwithstanding the accusation that they reconcile only inasmuch as they obscure, such arguments have had a great deal of success.

It is not the purpose of this article to address these arguments.

Rather, it is to question a premise upon which the arguments have been based. For the argument over whether the state should promote some specific morality is founded upon the conviction that the state is able to not promote some specific morality. Agreement over the descriptive, therefore, founds disagreement over the prescriptive. I would like to question this agreement. I will argue that the state, in the course of its actual operation, must ultimately promote some specific idea of morality -- whether a secular ideal, a Protestant ideal, and Islamic ideal, or a Catholic ideal. It is impossible for it not to do so. Thus, debating whether the state ought to move men to a specific end is foolish: the state will do so, whether one wants it to do so or not. The question is only what sort of morality the state will promote.

This thesis may be very counter-intuitive; surely, most Americans will wish to plead, government is able simply to step back from issues of morality, religion, and man's final end? Why must these issues come into the laws in some way? More specifically, why cannot government simply limit itself to the protection of human rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property?

If government does not pass laws to bring man to his good, government must aim laws at something else. In the classical liberal scheme, government passes laws meant to protect man's rights. The idea of secular government is therefore founded on both the existence of such rights and the enforceability of such rights by the government. The former is a very dubious proposition -- indeed, if rights do exist they would certainly seem not to be morally neutral things. In their modern form, rights historically sprang into being from anti-Catholic sources, as in the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man. But for now I will pass over whether rights exist and whether they are morally neutral and examine instead how these rights would be defended by a government that recognizes their existence.

Rights are meant to delimit a sphere of action, within which each individual may do what he wants and the bordrs of which government is supposed to protect. Under such a system, government does not look to whether property is used for good or for ill; it simply protects one's right to have it and use it. Government does not look to whether free speech spreads lies or truth; it simply protects one's ability/right to speak. Deliberation regarding laws centers on how best to protect the various rights, not onl whether laws will help men be better men. Like that of the Wiccans, the classical liberal motto is "If it harm none, do what ye will."

* * * * * * *
Everyone assaults everyone else with cries of intolerance. And everyone is right; everyone is intolerant. There can be no peace between those with different moralities, different ideas of human nature, and different ideas of God; the ideal of government as a neutral umpire has never existed and never can exist.

* * * * * * *
In reality, however, such an idea of rights cannot ultimately be enforced without appealing to a specific standard of morality and thus without enforcing a specific standard of morality. To see why government cannot enforce rights without an appeal to morality, we must examine a few rights in the concrete.

When such rights are examined, we find quickly that they are not absolute. Freedom of speech infamously does not give one the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Neither does it give one the right to put a sign on one's lawn advocating the lynching of African-Americans. The right to freedom of speech is outweighed by the right to life. The majority of cases, however, are not so clear. Does freedom of speech permit me to sell books advocating a subversive and Communist political philosophy? Does it permit me to sell books on how to conduct a coup d'état? Does it permit one to put up billboards quoting the Levitical laws against sodomy? Such cases are not easy to decide and will require significant prudential deliberation regarding the goods to be gained and lost by each course of action. In each case the so-called "right" to freedom of speech is clearly not an absolute right; those who make decisions do not make them based upon clear and unambiguous laws, but upon prudential weighing of the various goods involved.

Similarly, the right to freedom of religion requires prudential decision-making. Some religions involve smoking marijuana; others involve polygamy; others involve the execution of those who decide to leave that religion and the establishment of a world-wide theocracy beneath religious law. Such religions may be offensive to Catholics, just as the Catholic religion is offensive to those who believe that it teaches people to hate homosexuals, that it represses man's natural instincts, that it advocates the subjugation of women, or that it leaves one ultimately loyal to a monarch in the Vatican rather than to the United States. When government decides what sort of religion to allow and to what extent to allow it, then it does not simply take into account the right to religious freedom; one also takes into account a host of other moral evaluations regarding the importance of various goods. Similar instances might be given as regards education, the right to private property, and so on and so forth.

Pope Leo XIII

* * * * * * *
The Popes in the nineteenth and early twentieth century tried to keep men from giving up the fight for Christ's social reign, but their efforts failed. The secular state triumphed, in which a secular, humanistic morality is used as a basis for the laws, in which the Church is marginalized and forced to conform to rules that effectively muzzle and tame it, and in which men's loyalties are but nominally to the church and really for their government or careers.

* * * * * * *
Thus, in all cases the so-called rights to which people appeal are not absolute guidelines for government; they are simply things often considered good, which must be weighed and curbed when they interfere with other good things. Is freedom of speech more important than the harm caused by racism? Is it more important than the offense caused by Christian teaching on homosexuality? Is it more important thatn the injury to the innocence of children caused by indecent advertisements? Such decisions cannot be rationally evaluated unless one appeals to a specific, concrete, moral ideal; and so, the decisions and actions of government cannot be rationally evaluated unless one appeals to a specific, concrete, moral ideal; and so, the decisions and actions of government cannot be morally neutral. Whether those in government think religion to be important, think Catholicism to be true, think the family to be important, or think a thousand other things will alter their decisions as they weigh all the various variables involved in deciding upon a specific course of action. Government's action must therefore always favor one moral scheme above another.

Nor is it simply in controversial, high-profile issues that government must take into account various moral ideals. Consider tax laws. Government often taxes corporations at lower rates than it taxes the family; furthermore, corporations are generally taxed on the profits that they make -- on their sales minus expenses -- rather than simply on gross income. On the other hand, families are taxed on gross income without regard for the expenses the family incurs. Such laws favor the production of stuff rather than the production and raising of children; and while both are necessary to the economy, each is necessary in different ways and to different degrees. One might argue that the government's policy is just or is unjust, but in any event such argument would probably refer to the relative importance of the family and the corporation, the benefits of small-scale versus large-scale production, distributism and capitalism, and other moral issues. Even the blandest of governmental decisions, therefore, involve moral evaluation.

Consider, again, the government and the mandatory education of children. Few would disagree that children ought to be educated. Yet evaluating whether the government should mandate some sort of education and what the content of that mandated education should be; whether the government provide public schools and what the curricula of such schools should be is anything but a morally neutral affair: it involves one's idea of the relation of parents to children, the permanence and role of the family, the relative importance of the family and government, and even the differential treatment of men and women in society. To act on such an issue is to give an opinion on it: to mandate the public education of children unless parents meet certain stringent governmental requirements, for instance, is to rule that children are in some ways more the responsibility of government than of parents -- and thus that government ought to have more control over them. A morally neutral argument can be nothing but a farce under such circumstances.

The impossibility of governmental neutrality contributes to the often shrill accusations of bigotry flung from side to side in the current day. Homosexual activists accuse Christians of trying to impose their morality on others; Christians accuse homosexuals of trying to impose their views on school children; television advertisers accuse Christians of censorship while Christians accuse them of corrupting the youth; everyone assaults everyone else with cries of intolerance. And everyone is right; everyone is intolerant. There can be no peace between those with different moralities, different ideas of human nature, and different ideas of God; the ideal of government as a neutral umpire has never existed and never can exist. The classical liberal ideal of a government indifferent to man's final end seemed possible only because of the mostly Christian consensus found in the first liberal governments; the cracks cause by disagreement were few and far between and easily disguised. Yet centuries of secularity have done their work, and religious pluralism has introduced beliefs yet more and more divergent. The façade can no longer be maintained. The state cannot be neutral: one's own moral system must reign in it, or one will be crushed by that of another.

* * * * * * *
Inasmuch as the Republican -- or even the Democrat -- agenda agrees witht he Catholic, to that extent they can be made temporary allies; but we must never mistake such an alliance for a friendship. There is no agenda for the Catholic but the Catholic agenda ...

* * * * * * *

In light of this fact one must applaud the wisdom of the Church, which condemned the ideas of liberalism from its start. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX condemns the idea that "the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church"; it condemns the idea that "in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship." When one ceases trying to wrench society towards a state in which God and His rule is recognized, society must slide towards a denial of God and His rule. The Popes in the nineteenth and early twentieth century tried to keep men from giving up the fight for Christ's social reign, but their efforts failed. The secular state triumphed, in which a secular, humanistic morality is used as a basis for the laws, in which the Church is marginalized and forced to conform to rules that effectively muzzle and tame it, and in which men's loyalties are but nominally to the church and really for their government or careers.

The current political spectrum distorts this necessary conflict; it causes us to pretend that it can be sidestepped. Members of the Republican Party and members of the current Tea Party cry for government to cease its crawling -- and occasionally sprinting -- socializing of medicine and business, and inasmuch as they do so they are good. But will they admit that education cannot be neutral, and that our current concept of government-run education is flawed? Will they admit that the right to private property includes no right to sell products that help destroy family and society? Will they admit the principle of subsidiarity and admit that local communities need their power increased greatly, just as the federal and state governments must be shrunk? Inasmuch as the Republican -- or even the Democrat -- agenda agrees witht he Catholic, to that extent they can be made temporary allies; but we must never mistake such an alliance for a friendship. There is no agenda for the Catholic but the Catholic agenda, which would require decades of unremitting effort for its realization and which would require men to transcend most of the issues currently dividing political parties. The Catholic agenda requires us to admit what the rest of society yet hypocritically denies -- that between rival moral theories there can be no peace.

Catacombs or Christendom? Society slides and wavers between the two; but there can be no third way.

[James Tillman is a Catholic Journalist and graduate of Christendom College. The present article, "An Apology for the Confessional State," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 60-63, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

The Great School of Spirituality: Learning to Love the Divine Office

2011-07-14T12:35:00.017-02:00

Dominican Vespers photo by Lawrence OP
By Michael P. Foley

During a recent Angelus address, the Holy Father referred to the liturgy as “a great school of spirituality.” By that the Pope meant not simply the Mass but the Divine Office. Together these two sacrifices—one of the altar, the other of praise—school the believer in the divine mysteries, shaping his sensibilities, honing his judgment, and conditioning his heart to a life of holiness. The Divine Office is also a key to unlocking the great secrets of the Catholic liturgical year: its prayers and readings perfectly complement the propers of the Mass.

Today, however, the Divine Office remains relatively unknown or unused by lay Catholics, even by those who otherwise savor every morsel of our grand and sacred tradition. To address this situation, we offer a brief overview of the Divine Office and discuss some available “back-to-school supplies.”

What It Is

The Divine Office consists of the hours of Matins (originally 12:00 a.m.) and Lauds (3 a.m.), Prime (6 a.m.), Terce (9 a.m.), Sext (12:00 p.m.), None (3 p.m.), Vespers (6 p.m.), and Compline (9 p.m.). Most of these predate Christianity by several centuries. Lauds and Vespers, for instance, are heirs to the grand morning and evening liturgies before the Ark of the Covenant ordered by King David, liturgies in which over a hundred Levites would chant the Psalms.¹ Since their institution on Mount Zion, these services have never been discontinued: Solomon’s Temple, the Jewish Diaspora, and now the Church have kept up the daily praise of God in this form.²

The so-called “Little Hours” of Terce, Sext, and None, on the other hand, arose from the Jewish custom of going to the Temple for private prayer at the third (tertia), sixth (sexta), and ninth (nona) hours of the day (Sts. Peter and John were observing this custom when they cured the man lame since birth).³ Finally, Matins, Prime, and Compline were added in the early centuries of Christianity: Matins began as an anticipation of the Second Coming and a commemoration of the Resurrection, while Prime and Compline are the products of early monasticism.

Together, these eight daily sacrifices of praise fulfill Psalm 118:62 and 164 -- “I rose at midnight to give praise to Thee” and “seven times a day I have given praise to Thee.” Moreover, they punctuate the day, helping to keep the soul from becoming overwhelmed by worldly concerns, and they consecrate time itself with the fragrant incense of prayer.

* * * * * * *
Since their institution on Mount Zion, these services have never been discontinued: Solomon’s Temple, the Jewish Diaspora, and now the Church have kept up the daily praise of
God in this form.

* * * * * * *

God’s Prayer Book

The format of each Hour varies, but at their center is the chanting or reciting of the Psalms. As the only book of prayer written by God, the Psalms hold a unique place in the devout life. In the eloquent words of St. Augustine (354-430): “That God may be praised well by man, God Himself has praised Himself; and since He has been pleased to praise Himself, man has found the way to praise Him.”⁴ St. Basil (330-379) called the Psalter the natural voice of the Church,⁵ and St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-274) goes so far as to say that the Psalms contain the whole of theology.⁶ No wonder that St. John Chrysostom (347-407) wrote that the Christians of his time used the Psalms more than any other part of the Old or New Testament.⁷

Special mention must also be made of the Latin hymns in the Breviary (the name of the book that contains the Divine Office). Penned by saints as early as the fourth century, these hymns are, in the words of the great liturgist Fr. Adrian Fortescue, “immeasurably more beautiful than any others ever composed. Other religious bodies take all their best hymns from us. It would be a disgrace if we Catholics were the only people who did not appreciate what is our property.”⁸

Later History

The Divine Office essentially received its current configuration from Pope St. Gregory the Great, though it continued to develop long after and in somewhat diverging directions. The multiplication of saints’ days, for instance, ended up superseding the weekly rotation of the Psalms, with the result that the whole Psalter was no longer being recited within the year, let alone in a week, as intended by St. Gregory.⁹ The Council of Trent (1545-1563) was forced to deal with this problem, and calls for radical reform were legion. As Vilma Little, writing in 1957, notes with eerie relevance to our own times: “As so often happens in times of general abuses calling for redress, the suggested remedies would have been worse than the disease. Ruthless plans of wholesale alterations were put forward by certain French and German theorists.”¹⁰

Fortunately, Little continues, “the saner views of the more level-headed bishops prevailed.”¹¹ Trent outlined a moderate plan for revising the Breviary, which was enacted by Pope St. Pius V. The Sunday and weekday offices were restored while not upsetting the arrangement as a whole.

Not all changes to the Breviary during the Tridentine period, however, were for the better. In 1632 Pope Urban VIII allowed the spirit of Renaissance humanism to affect the hymns of the Breviary, revising almost all of them so that they would conform to the rules of classical prosody. The original verses of St. Ambrose and the like were butchered on the grounds that they were not “good Latin,” yet the new versions were hardly improvements.

Speaking of the four Jesuits commissioned with revising these hymns, Fortescue writes: “They slashed and tinkered, they re-wrote lines and altered words, they changed the sense and finally produced the poor imitations that we still have in place of the hymns our fathers sang for over a thousand years. Indeed their confidence in themselves is amazing.”¹² Fortunately, there is a note in the 1912 Antiphonale stating that the old hymns can be used where they are permissible “by law, custom, or indult.” It is difficult to say what this would mean after Vatican II, but it is my personal opinion that a certain latitude can be applied in good conscience.¹³

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“As so often happens in times of general abuses calling for redress, the suggested remedies would have been worse than the disease. Ruthless plans of wholesale alterations were put forward by certain French and German theorists.”

* * * * * * *
But while the modifications made by Trent were sensible, they were not complete; it was left to Pope St. Pius X to enact further reforms. The Pope redistributed the entire Psalter, again with the goal of ensuring its recital within a single week. Further changes were made in 1956 and again in 1960 which simplified certain aspects of the Hours and accorded greater dignity to the Sunday Office.

Around the same time, some editions of the Breviary began to use the Psalterium Novum or Pius XII Psalter,¹⁴ which was an unfortunate repeat of the same classicist hubris that marred the hymns in 1632 now applied to the Psalms themselves.¹⁵ Fortunately, these Ciceronianized Psalms were made optional but never mandated.

Happily, all of the books considered in this article use only the traditional Vulgate Psalter. The Fraternity of St. Peter has published an impressive, new, two-volume edition of the Breviarium Romanum with the Vulgate and in accord with the rubrics of 1962, and so has Angelus Press. Both of these publications reflect the loving care that went into them: their only drawback, from a typical layman’s perspective, is that they are in Latin only. Baronius Press promises to remedy this with a new, three-volume version in English and Latin based on the popular Collegeville Breviary from 1963, which will be out in August. For bilingual alternatives currently in print, we must turn to the different variations of the Breviary.¹⁶

Variations

The celebration of the Divine Office has always admitted of greater variety than that of the Mass. To begin with, the Office used by the secular clergy and others (the “Roman Breviary”) was different from the Office used by various monastic orders (the “Monastic Breviary”). And even within this division there were further subdivisions. The Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans all had their own versions of the Roman Breviary, to say nothing of different regions and dioceses; and the Benedictines, Carthusians, and Cistercians all had their own versions of the Monastic Breviary.

One of these versions now back in print is St. Michael’s Abbey Press’s The Monastic Diurnal, Or the Day Hours of the Monastic Breviary.¹⁷ A diurnal is an abridged monastic Breviary containing only the “day Hours,” that is, every canonical hour except Matins. Diurnals were originally designed to be a handy single volume for monks and nuns to use when they were away from the cloister during the day, but they can also be used by laymen. This edition, originally compiled by the Benedictine monks of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota and published between 1948 and 1963, has been lovingly reproduced according to the highest standards. Bound in Moroccan leather with gilt edges and six cloth marker ribbons, The Monastic Diurnal is a visual treasure. In addition to all of the Psalms one needs for the week, it contains all of the relevant propers for the entire liturgical year in both Latin and English.

Another variation to the Divine Office were the breviaria parva, or “little Breviaries,” abridged editions tailored to specific uses or devotions. The best known of these is the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was especially popular with the laity and with religious communities with active apostolates and not a great deal of time for communal or private prayer. A beautiful edition of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been reprinted by Baronius Press featuring a blue leather cover, gilt edges, all of the prayers in both Latin and English, and much helpful information. The Little Office is an exquisite prayer to our Lady: its only drawback is that it does not include the calendar’s various saints of the day and some of its seasons.

Another abridged Breviary, which has been specially published by Angelus Press for use by the laity, is Divine Office: Officium Divinum. This handsome, leather-bound volume contains, in both Latin and English, Sunday Lauds, Prime, Sext, Vespers, and Compline, as well as Prime, Sext, and Compline for the entire week. Each Office and Psalm are prefaced by brief and enlightening excerpts from Fr. Pius Parsch’s The Breviary Explained, the first book of its kind when it was published in the early 1950s. The Divine Office also includes musical notation for much of the chant. Like the Little Office and the other breviaria parva, its only drawback is the absence of feast days.

Not Just For Clerics

A common misconception is that the Divine Office is only for the clergy. It is true that clerics are required to say the Divine Office: indeed, priests and seminarians sometimes joke about this requirement by calling the Office the onus Dei (burden of God) instead of its more poetic title, opus Dei (the work of God).

However, this does not mean that the Church wants the clergy to have a monopoly on the Office. St. Augustine tells us that his mother St. Monica went twice a day to church for Lauds and Vespers in addition to daily Mass,¹⁸ and the crusader king St. Louis of France, a man with eleven children and a country to rule, is said to have grieved more about the loss of his Breviary than being taken captive by the Saracens. In addition to hearing Mass twice a day, St. Louis also rose at midnight for Matins and said Prime when he woke in the morning. More recently, the Dominican spiritual master Fr. A.G. Sertillanges recommended Prime to the layman first thing in the morning, for “there are no prayers more beautiful, more efficacious, more inspiring.”¹⁹

Solemn Vespers on the Lord’s Day was once so well known among the faithful that Sunday dinner was known in some parts of Europe as the Vespers meal. St. Alphonsus Liguori assumed Sunday Vespers would be available at most parishes when he wrote: “Although there is no express commandment which makes it a mortal sin to be absent from Vespers, yet every good Catholic will make it his duty to attend when he can, and see that his family are present also. We are commanded to sanctify the Lord’s day, and the other Holy days of obligation; but if a Catholic neglects the public service of the Church on Sunday afternoons, without any reasonable excuse, how can it be expected that he will apply himself to sanctity in other ways?”²⁰

Vespers by Karl Brulloff

* * * * * * *
Making the effort to understand the Psalms is well worth it. With their exultations of joy or their impassioned pleas for mercy, help, and even vengeance, the Psalms speak from the heart.

* * * * * * *

How

The best way to learn any method of prayer is directly from an experienced practitioner. For those who do not have access to such a person, there are several useful resources available. Both Preserving Christian Publications (PCP) and the Fraternity of St. Peter offer reprints of Cardinal Cicognani’s Rubrics of the Roman Breviary and Missal, translated by Leonard Doyle. This booklet contains the English translation of the sections in the Rubricae Generales of the 1962 Missale Romanum and Breviarium Romanum, as well as the motu proprio of Pope John XXIII introducing the changes made to the liturgy in 1960. It explains both the Breviary and Mass in minute detail and contains all of the textual changes of 1960 so that one may use this book in tandem with an older edition of the Missal or Breviary and still stay current. The PCP reprint is more handsome and durable than its FSSP counterpart (which has a comb binding), and subsequently it costs a little more: $15 for the former, $10 for the latter.

PCP has also reprinted Bernard A. Hausman’s Learning the New Breviary, “new” referring to the changes of 1960. Hausman’s little book, which retails for $14, is an excellent introduction to the mechanics of reciting the hours and following the calendar: it is written in clear, accessible prose and follows a “user-friendly” order. In 2008, the Fraternity, on the other hand, came out with its own aptly named Pocket Guide for the Recitation of the Divine Office According to the 1962 Edition of the Breviarium Romanum. This tiny, 21-page booklet is a compendium of all you need to remember about the Breviary once you have already learned it from a more thorough source. It also has a helpful section titled, “Frequently Asked Questions about Reciting the 1962 Breviary.” The Pocket Guide sells for a mere $1.50.

Seeking Understanding

At first, praying the Divine Office can be confusing, but like any other form of prayer, once it becomes familiar, its value becomes apparent. The most valuable part of the Office, however, is also one of its lingering challenges: the Psalms. The Psalms are unquestionably beautiful, but they are often difficult to understand, since we are often ignorant of the context out of which they arose. It is not unusual to recite a Psalm verse and to find oneself asking: “What on earth does that mean?” Yet making the effort to understand the Psalms is well worth it. With their exultations of joy or their impassioned pleas for mercy, help, and even vengeance, the Psalms speak from the heart.

Fortunately, there are several fine aids to assist our efforts. Thomas Merton, before he went a bit screwy in the late 60s, wrote a lovely little book on the Psalms in general entitled Praying the Psalms. A more detailed alternative is St. Robert Bellarmine’s (1542-1621) A Commentary on the Book of Psalms, translated by John O’Sullivan and reprinted by PCP. This well-made, single volume is able to contain Bellarmine’s commentary on every Psalm because it omits some of his more arcane analyses of the Hebrew wording. The result is a readable commentary which, at $56, is an excellent value.

* * * * * * *
The Divine Office essentially received its current configuration from Pope St. Gregory the Great

* * * * * * *
There are also aids to understanding the hymns. Fr. Joseph Connelly’s 1957 Hymns of the Roman Liturgy explains the meaning and history of the 154 hymns of the Roman Breviary, as does Dom Matthew Britt’s 1922 Hymns of the Breviary and Missal. Both are still in print.

For those who pray the Office in Latin, Dom Britt’s A Dictionary of the Psalter is an essential resource. This meticulously researched volume, again reprinted by PCP, provides vital information about the peculiar Latin of the Vulgate not found in typical Latin dictionaries. To give but one example: years ago I used to recite Friday Vespers with my mentor, a priest who had suffered a stroke and was no longer able to read. When we came to Psalm 138:3, funiculum meum investigasti, he would sometimes ask, “What’s a funiculus?” I looked it up in a conventional Latin dictionary and discovered that it meant a thin cord or rope. Hence the verse literally says, “you have investigated my little rope” (the Douay Rheims renders it, “my line thou hast searched out”). That made us even more confused.

Had I only had Britt’s Dictionary, I could have learned that funiculus also signifies a measuring cord, and thus by way of metonymy it refers to one’s estate or inheritance, the portion of land measured out by surveyors’ lines. The verse, then, is stating that God has marked out my inheritance for me; God is not portrayed here not as a glorified string-inspector but a benevolent probate judge. Clearing up that ambiguity alone was worth the price of the book.

As for the Office itself, the text of Parsch’s The Breviary Explained is available online at Breviary.net;²¹ excerpts from it are also used in Baronius Press’s forthcoming Breviary and in Angelus Press’s abridged Divine Office. Votaries of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, on the other hand, have at their disposal Angelus Press’s reprint of Sr. Marianna Gildea’s 1955 Living the Little Office: Reflections on the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.This accessible book guides the reader through the prayers of the Office as it follows their order. Sr. Marianna’s commentary is insightful but not overbearing.

Conclusion

“It is good to give praise to the Lord,” the psalmist sings, “and to sing to Thy name, O most High: to shew forth Thy mercy in the morning, and Thy truth in the night” (Ps. 91:2-3). How true that is, as those who mold their daily lives to the rhythm of the canonical Hours know so well.

Resources

St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of Psalms,trans. John O’Sullivan (Preserving Christian Publications [PCP], 2008), $56
Breviarium Romanum (The Roman Breviary), 2 vols. (FSSP, 2009), $298
Matthew Britt, A Dictionary of the Psalter: Containing the Vocabulary of the Psalms, Hymns, Canticles, and Miscellaneous Prayers of the Breviary Psalter (FSSP, 2007), $30
----------, Hymns of the Breviary and Missal(Church Music Association of America, 2007)
C. Callewaert, De Breviarii Romani Liturgia (Romanitas, 2011), $37.50
Joseph Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy(FSSP, 2007), $27
Diurnale Romanum(PCP, 2008), $75
Divine Office: Officium Divinum (Angelus Press, 1999), $31.95
Marianna Gildea, Living the Little Office: Reflections on the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.(Angelus Press, 2010), $12.95
Bernard A. Hausman, S.J. Learning the New Breviary(PCP, 2007), $14
The Monastic Diurnal, Or the Day Hours of the Monastic Breviary, 6th ed. (Saint Michael’s Abbey Press, 2004), approximately $63
John Newton, ed., The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary,2nd ed. (Baronius Press, 2008), $29.95
Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, Pocket Guide for the Recitation of the Divine Office According to the 1962 Edition of the Breviarium Romanum (FSSP, 2008), $1.50
Roman Breviary, 2 vols. (Angelus Press, 2009), $290
Roman Breviary-Breviarium Romanum, 3 vols. (Baronius Press, forthcoming), price not listed [$350/ £230 provisional price]
Rubrics of the Roman Breviary and Missal,trans. Leonard J. Doyle (PCP, 2007), $15
Rubrics of the Roman Breviary and Missal, trans. Leonard J. Doyle (FSSP, undated), $10

Notes

See 1 Paralip. 15 and 16. [back]
The fact that incense may only be used at Lauds and Vespers hearkens to this Davidic tradition. [back]
Acts 3:1-8. [back]
In Ps. Cxliv, 1. [back]
Homil. In Ps. I, 2. [back]
Postilla super Psalmos, prologue. [back]
Homily 6 on penitence. [back]
Adrian Fortescue, quoted in Michael Davies, The Wisdom of Adrian Fortescue (Roman Catholic Books, 1999), p. 45. [back]
Gregory, in turn, took this arrangement from St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism. [back]
Vilma G. Little, The Sacrifice of Praise: An Introduction to the Meaning and Use of the Divine Office (P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1957), pp. 17-18. [back]
Little, p. 18. [back]
Davies, pp. 30-31. As the old saying has it, Accessit latinitas, recessit pietas: When Latinity came in, piety went out. [back]
It should also be mentioned that the changes of 1632 only affected the Roman Breviary, not the Monastic Breviary. [back]
It is also called the Bea Psalter after its main author, the Jesuit priest Augustin Bea, Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute and confessor of Pius XII who was later made a cardinal by Pope John XXIII. [back]
To be fair, these retranslations were often more accurate renderings of the Hebrew. [back]
Online, however, the impressive divinumofficium.com contains the entire Breviary in both Latin and English. Musicasacra.com has a downloadable book of the Diurnale as well as other resources. [back]
The FSSP and PCP also sell an all-Latin Diurnale Romanum. [back]
Confessions 5.9.17. [back]
A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life, trans. Mary Ryan (CUA Press, 1998), p. 89. [back]
St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Mission Book: A Manual of Instructions and Prayers Adapted to Preserve the Fruits of the Mission, Drawn chiefly from the works of St. Alphonsus Liguori (NY: D & J Sadlier & Co., 1853), p. 67. [back]
http://Breviary.net/comment/comment.htm. Unfortunately, the rest of the website is a sedevacantist mishmash. [back]

_____________________________________
Michael P. Foley is an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University. He is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "The Great School of Spirituality: Learning to Love the Divine Office," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring 2011), is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.

Latin Will Always Be the Ideal Liturgical Language

2011-07-10T00:03:00.009-02:00

Peter Kwasniewski

Many convincing arguments can be and have been given in favor of preserving the Latin language in the rites of the Roman Catholic Church—as even the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) stated that it should be, following close on the heels of John XXIII’s remarkable Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientiae of 1962.¹ As we all know, Pope John XXIII’s and the Council’s reaffirmations of Latin in the liturgy were more or less cancelled out completely by the ill-considered decisions of Pope Paul VI, who once more demonstrated to the world that if the pope enjoys the charism of infallibility when teaching the truths of faith and morals, he enjoys no such gift in regard to particular prudential judgments, including the dispositions of the liturgy in its changeable elements.² In any case, my purpose in this article is not to catalog and review the many arguments in favor of Latin, a task that has already been well explored by traditionalist authors, but merely to speak of some of my own personal experiences of where and when the impressive unity of Latin would have made so much more sense in real life than the Babel of vernacular languages.

My wife and I lived in Austria for seven and a half years. Being in Europe convinced me past all doubt, if I had any doubts, that the switch after the Council to an exclusive use of the vernacular for the Mass was the dumbest change that could have been made. Not to mince words: the switch to vernacular is the utmost example of postconciliar near-sightedness. Instead of making the Mass more deeply accessible, it localizes, particularizes, and relativizes it, shutting off everyone who does not speak the local tongue; traveling or immigrant Catholics are thrust into a foreign environment that alienates them far more than the solemn Latin liturgy ever alienated the simplest peasant. In fact, due to its pervasive aura of sacredness and its perceptible focus on the mystery of the Eucharist, the traditional liturgy, even when the words are not fully understood, shapes the soul better than the new liturgy when cerebrally understood.

The irony can be seen on many levels.

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Latin is universal and is not the daily language of any modern nation or people. There is no cultural imperialism in the use of Latin, but rather a visible sign of the Church of Christ reaching out to all nations, leading them back to unity in one faith, one communion, one worship of God.

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First, Latin is universal and is not the daily language of any modern nation or people. There is no cultural imperialism in the use of Latin, but rather a visible sign of the Church of Christ reaching out to all nations, leading them back to unity in one faith, one communion, one worship of God. If the use of Latin were argued to be a form of cultural imperialism, we would have to go further and say that proclaiming and preaching the Trinity or the Incarnation is a form of theological imperialism destructive of pagan African, Asian, and European cultures and religions, or that the very use of the same Mass, the same missal (in however many vernacular tongues), is a form of liturgical imperialism destructive of the peculiar ways that an Aborigine might choose to worship Christ. There is no escaping this logic: if you deny the fittingness of a universal presence of Latin, a universality insisted on by none other than Blessed John XXIII, you are on the road to denying the universality of Christian doctrine and worship.

Second, modern Europeans in general are strongly multilingual,³ which makes Latin easy enough for them to get used to, as indeed they once were, not many decades ago. There has never been an age where Latin would be more accessible than now, precisely on account of the “globalization” taking place. If men of Switzerland or Denmark can and often must speak several languages, what would be the difficulty of liturgy in Latin? It would be a source of international unity among believers, far more than idiosyncratic local liturgies could ever be. In those years in Europe, I participated in many liturgies that would have gone far more smoothly had they simply been in Latin. On my sole visit to Lourdes, I attended a Mass in which the languages were being shifted constantly to accommodate the international congregation, a kind of elaborate show of linguistic gymnastics that I found highly distracting, almost impossible to pray with. The already overly verbal and self-involved character of the new liturgy was heightened all the more by this preoccupation with proportional coverage of language groups.

Third, and building on the last point, because literacy has spread everywhere, large numbers of people are in a position to follow along with a hand missal or a booklet that reproduces the Ordinary of the Mass. Even the illiterate, who often enjoy (in compensation, as it were) a rich oral culture and a high level of intuitive understanding, will benefit from sermons in their own tongue that explain the Mass, as Romano Guardini explained it to his German congregations. Moreover, as Jacques Maritain says in Peasant of the Garonne, the believer who, by simply kneeling at Mass and letting his mind be drawn to heavenly things, is caught up in silent worship of God, does not need words, missals, long readings and sermons; it is enough for him to be there. As the peasant of Ars put it: “He looks at me and I look at Him.” When the liturgy breaks this immediate spiritual contact in favor of the specious immediacy of verbal didacticism, it does the ultimate disservice to the spiritual lives of believers.

Fourth, the longed-for fraternity of nations and peace on earth — what could serve this aspiration better than a liturgy everywhere the same? An American traveling in France, a German traveling in Spain, an Italian traveling in Denmark, indeed an Asian in Africa or an Indian in Australia, all of them would find themselves “back home” in the local parish church. And given the importance G. K. Chesterton and Gabriel Marcel rightly place on this deep and inexpressibly consoling feeling of “being at home,” should not the Church do everything in her power to make the liturgy the very place where one can always be “at home,” no matter where one is? Not, of course, by making the liturgy chummy and casual, but by ensuring that it remains deeply familiar in its identity, coherence, consistency, and stability.

* * * * * * *
The believer who, by simply kneeling at Mass and letting his mind be drawn to heavenly things, is caught up in silent worship of God, does not need words, missals, long readings and sermons; it is enough for him to be there. As the peasant of Ars put it: “He looks at me and I look at Him.”

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We are living in the age of travel, the age of the “global village.” At least in the Western world, almost everyone travels now at some point or another; there has never been a time in the entire history of the world when so vast a number of people take trips within their country as well as to foreign countries. How foolish it was to break down the universal mode of worship just when it has become more pertinent than ever! The ancient Roman rite emphatically illustrates and admirably furthers the purpose of human brotherhood — and, as Henri de Lubac observes, there is definitive brotherhood only in a common adoration of God. In the realm of the Novus Ordo, however, the liturgical celebrations illustrate a diversity or plurality that is not traced back to unity and universality, as is painfully evident to a traveler who speaks few or no other languages than his own. Once upon a time, parishes and chapels across the entire globe testified to the profound inner unity of the Catholic (that is, universal) Church; now there is only the tired Protestant phenomenon of localization.

This last point deserves a bit of development. The era of the old liturgy in fact left much room for inculturation or local adaptation, whether in the design of churches, in the style of vestments, in the layout and decoration of sanctuaries, or in popular hymns, carols, and processions. Nevertheless, the one constant axis was the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which remained the same from the rising of the sun to its setting, and testified in its very language to an unbroken unity with Rome, the mystical-historical seat of the Church founded by Christ. The incarnational scandal of the particular was never sacrificed in view of temporary and superficial gains; Christ was never declared to be an African or an Asian, a female or a hermaphrodite, in order to win converts from paganism, feminism, gnosticism, etc. The Faith is founded on the rock of Peter, by providence Bishop of Rome, and this utmost particularity will remain until the end of time, as an image of the even greater scandal of the particularity of Christ, a Jewish man born in Nazareth during the heyday of the Roman Empire. The Chinese Catholic, as a man and as Chinese, worships God in communion with Rome. This is what the old liturgy proclaimed, in blissful and holy ignorance of the shallow charge of “cultural imperialism,” which of course the proclamation of truth can never be, even though the Gospel was given to mankind through the most particular of all particular circumstances.

The Baptism of Christ by the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar
Some years ago, I was taken aback when a friend forwarded me a discussion by a conservative Catholic apologist who had come out in full arms and armor to defend the vernacularization of the Mass after the Council. My first impression was that his panoply of arguments, though reasonable-sounding, had already been rehearsed by the promoters of the Consilium’s “reform” back in the 1960s, and had not gained in truth or persuasiveness with the intervening decades. My second impression was that I was looking at a case of old-fashioned dissent. Pope John XXIII in his Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientiae, solemnly signed in St. Peter’s Basilica on the very eve of the Second Vatican Council, declares Latin to be the language of the Church’s worship, explains why it is the superior language for liturgy, and resolutely concludes that no other language could serve as well. This Constitution has been contradicted a million times over since its promulgation, but it has never been rescinded nor its contents abrogated. It may be that a future pope will be able to take it up again with praise when the full effects of Summorum Pontificum have permeated the Church.

In any case, the apologist argued that Latin was the common language of ancient Rome, and so we ought to be using the common language of our day and age. Well, Latin certainly was the common language of many members of the Catholic Church once upon a time, in the declining Roman Empire, but already in the early Middle Ages, with the invasions of barbarian tribes speaking a plethora of languages, Latin became more and more a monastic and academic tongue, and at the popular level morphed into early forms of the Romance languages, such as the Italian dialect in which Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, or the Neapolitan dialect St. Thomas Aquinas used when preaching in his native territory. Thus, we may safely say that for over a thousand years the Catholic Church was worshiping in a language that had become a fixed, formal, sacred language, just as Hindus use Sanskrit, Jews Hebrew, Moslems Arabic, and so on.

* * * * * * *
I was looking at a case of old-fashioned dissent. Pope John XXIII in his Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientiae, solemnly signed in St. Peter’s Basilica on the very eve of the Second Vatican Council, declares Latin to be the language of the Church’s worship, explains why it is the superior language for liturgy, and resolutely concludes that no other language could serve as well. This Constitution has been contradicted a million times over since its promulgation, but it has never been rescinded nor its contents abrogated.

* * * * * * *
It was also plain silly for this apologist to assert that most people in the old days didn’t understand what was going on at Mass. From what I can tell, it seems fair to say that far more people in the old days knew what was going on at Mass — essentially — and why it was important, than people know nowadays, even though the Mass is in their own language! Now, I don’t blame the language for this, I blame the clergy, as well as the mendacious translation that was foisted by the original ICEL on the English-speaking world. Still, the tectonic shift in language signified in the popular mind a shift in the very meaning of what was taking place in church, and hence, over time, a further deviation in the faith of the people regarding the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Will it ever be possible to calculate the damage done to the Church by the banishment of Latin from her public worship? I think not. We have little conception of the true extent of the harm, just as we have trouble imagining the size of the earth, the solar system, or the galaxy we are in. By the sudden cessation and replacement of the solemn sacred language that for nearly 2,000 years had been the tongue, the voice, part of the inmost character, of the Western Church, the false attitude and opinion already circulating at the time of the Council that the past is utterly meaningless to the present and the present must be liberated from the past, must ignore the past, was confirmed and, as it were, forever institutionalized. In the very fact of vernacular worship is embodied the hermeneutic of discontinuity, a feeling of superior enlightenment and superior mission, as though now we finally understand, now we finally know what we are to do in the modern world. “Fools, for they have not far-reaching minds,” as Empedocles once said. What we ought to do in the modern world is nothing other than precisely what we have always been doing in every age. The mistake was made in thinking that we could do better. For our punishment, we have been permitted not only to do much worse, but to burn many of the bridges that lead back to doing better.

* * * * * * *
Will it ever be possible to calculate the damage done to the Church by the banishment of Latin from her public worship? I think not. We have little conception of the true extent of the harm, just as we have trouble imagining the size of the earth, the solar system,
or the galaxy we are in.

* * * * * * *
Although he hated many features of the Catholic liturgy after his break from Rome, Martin Luther retained respect for the Latin tongue that he was compelled to use when addressing intellectuals. Actually, the case is even more embarrassing for today’s Latin-loathing Catholics, inasmuch as Luther had the basic psychological insight to realize that Latin adds something to the liturgy and that it should not simply be thrown out, as can be seen in his preservation of the Latin language in Lutheran worship—a custom that lasted well into the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose more compact settings of the Gloria and Sanctus are not crypto-Catholic oddities but perfectly useful Lutheran church music. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are pockets of conservative Lutherans out there who still sing in Latin, when their Catholic neighbors have long since forgotten even how to pronounce, let alone sing, “Agnus Dei.” Is it not long past the time when the Pope and the appropriate dicasteries at the Vatican should do something about this travesty, this amnesia of our own identity, history, culture, and mother tongue of worship?

Maybe someday historians will be able to look back and see that Summorum Pontificum marked a decisive shift in the “language wars” — a phrase by which I advert not to the more pedestrian, albeit still important, question of whether the ordinary form is well translated, but rather, to the more intriguing and more consequential question of whether a liturgy that has been cut off from its age-old roots in the Latin language and the piety of the Latin rite can survive in the long run. Maybe the motu proprio marks the beginning of a movement that will culminate, decades or centuries later, in the rightful triumph of the Roman liturgy, the Mass of our forefathers, the Mass of the ages. For this quixotic but, with God’s power, manifestly achievable goal, we should certainly not fail to get on our knees to pray: Miserere nobis, Domine.

Notes

Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, states: “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (36.1); “steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them” (54); “In accordance with the centuries-old tradition of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in the divine office” (101.1). Even Annibale Bugnini writes in his memoirs: “The conclusion reached in this debate [between partisans of Latin and partisans of the vernacular] was ultimately set forth in Chapter I of the Constitution on the Liturgy, where the question is answered in a way that reconciles the rights of Latin and the need of the vernaculars in celebrations with the people” (The Reform of the Liturgy [Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990], 25). Would that the rights of Latin had been respected by Paul VI. [back]

Although I sympathize with many arguments given by the “reform of the reform” people, I cannot agree with their contention that Latin has always remained the language of the liturgy. It is, of course, the language of the editio typica on which translations are based, but the Vatican has done next to nothing in the past forty years to ensure that Latin remain the language of the Novus Ordo Mass anywhere. Already when Paul VI introduced the new missal, he lamented the loss of Latin it would bring, and said it was a valid sacrifice because of how greatly the vernacular would serve the contemporary needs of the Church. Whenever John Paul II mentioned Latin, he reserved for it a small place, not the dominant place given it by John XXIII and Vatican II. It is not clear to me that Pope Benedict XVI has made great efforts yet to see that the Ordinary Form be celebrated far and wide using the Latin typical edition; rather, he has encouraged the use of the Extraordinary Form, which, Deo gratias, remains in the Church’s mother tongue. [back]

The time is not far distant when Americans will have to get used to being bilingual, so the points I make in this paragraph will be relevant to our English-Spanish situation. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College. The present article, "Latin Will Always Be the Ideal Liturgical Language," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 6-9, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.]

The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism

2011-06-23T16:10:00.004-02:00

Christopher Oleson reviews Thaddeus Kozinski, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It

To the typical inhabitant of a modern liberal democracy, the title of Thaddeus Kozinski's intriguing new book will probably sound a little puzzling, inasmuch as, within contemporary democractic culture, religious pluralism is not generally understood to be a "political problem." On the contrary, for the democratic soul, religious pluralism seems to be more a positive good, something to be protected and celebrated, rather than "solved" or overcome. One's religious commitments would have to be "extreme" and thus "anti-democratic" to take issue with liberalism's positive affirmation of religious diversity, for it is one of democratic modernity's greatest achievements to have crafted institutional arrangements that allow for the easy co-existence of various religious groups both with one another and with the overarching liberal political order.

* * * * * * *
Secular democratic modernity can only claim not to have a religious pluralism problem because it has already implicitly solved this problem by subtly emasculating traditional religious identity

* * * * * * *
One of the many insights of Thaddeus Kozinski's valuable contribution to the on-going conversation about the relationship between Faith and politics is to articulate with precision how secular democratic modernity can only claim not to have a religious pluralism problem because it has already implicitly solved this problem by subtly emasculating traditional religious identity and establishing, under the false veil of political neutrality, institutional arrangements charged with theological and metaphysical significance.

Thus, only by becoming enculturated to re-interpret religious belief in such a way that it can have no substantive implications for the social and political order, and correspondingly, by becoming miseducated to not notice the tacit establishment of a quite partisan sense of the good, freedom, and selfhood, do the citizens of secular democracies think that they have a neutral social order that need not view religious pluralism as politically problematic. For those whose religious creed is not merely an emotional accoutrement, this situation is obviously deeply troublesome, for the logic of secular liberalism, as Kozinski makes clear, would force the believer to treat his Faith commitments as merely therapeutic preferences of an autonomous self.

Clarifying this situation and working towards articulating a solution to it which is at once both honest about its principles, coherent in working them out, and politically expressive of the truth and ultimate happiness of man is the task that Kozinski sets himself in his book. He does this by successively engaging the thought of three influential and progressively illuminating political philosophers. John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Rawls serves as the quintessential philosophical voice of secular democratic liberalism, Maritain as the exponent of a Catholic hybridization of Thomistic political philosophy and modern democratic ideals, and MacIntyre as the most penetrating philosophical critic of liberal modernity and advocate of a local Thomistic politics of the common good against the bureaucratic nation-state.

Of the three, Kozinski is by far the most sympathetic to MacIntyre. Nevertheless, even his proposal falls short in Kozinski's eyes, for MacIntyre's vision of small communities of virtue does not quite attain to the level of truly political existence, remaining as it does, Kozinski claims, too local in its aspirations. More importantly for Kozinski, MacIntyre's thought problematically remains at the level of mere philosophy. Studiously avoiding the role of theologian, MacIntyre deprives himself of the resources of political theology, and thereby fails to affirm the necessity of a public recognition of divine revelation and Magisterial teaching as the most propitious conditions for a stable and morally healthy political state. As Kozinski's subtitle indicates, philosophy as such can offer little or no light on how to move a community of seriously diverse worldviews to a unified political order of virtue and human happiness. Only the eventual achievement of a confessionally Catholic state, Kozinski concludes, can overcome the limitations of political philosophy in general, and liberal modernity in particular.

Kozinski begins his argument by unpacking the hidden premises of John Rawls' mature work, Political Liberalism. Rawls' primary aim in this book is to articulate how, given the "fact of a reasonable pluralism," citizens with rival "comprehensive views" can equally affirm a unified democratic political order. Paradoxically, Rawls attempts to accomplish this by self-consciously not providing an account of the truth or goodness of his liberal conception of justice. Consequently, he invites each private citizen to affirm and justify it from within their own particular comprehensive view.

One might reasonably ask: what precisely is the "it" that such citizens are being asked to affirm, and where does the recognition of "it" come from? Rawls' answer is the purely political conception of justice implicitly embedded in the public political culture animating contemporary liberal democracies and giving us our sense of what is "free," "equal," and "fair." In other words, there simply is a customary way we democratic liberals politically order our lives that does not, and need not, have any intrinsic theoretical foundation or justification. In this way, Rawls does not defend this conception as "true" and indeed, he does not even think it can be defended as true in some universal, philosophical sense. It is simply the way "we," who inhabit the democracies of the modern west, publicly regard it as good to associate together as a political community. Hence, each citizen can accept and justify "our" liberal sense of justice in whatever way he wants to, so long as he does, in fact, accept it.

This prescinding altogether from the truth of political liberalism is what Kozinski calls Rawls' "postmodern turn." It is a pragmatic attempt to articulate a "politics for the post-enlightened" democratic societies whose political assumptions, Rawls believes, already functionally exist in good working order within the political culture. While these assumptions are not philosophically "true" for Rawls, they are nevertheless "reasonable," at least "for us." Kozinski quotes Richard Rorty's formulation of Rawls' position: "given our history and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine for us."

In this way Rawls claims to be making room for the comprehensive views of the religiously diverse members of a democracy, and thus not to be imposing anything unreasonable on others. However, this self-image of toleration is thoroughly dispelled by Kozinski, who points out that, for Rawls, the "public political culture" exists as an exclusive and unimpeachable authority beyond which there is no appeal. Accordingly, any comprehensive view that does not correspond to the public political culture, or which regards political cultures as subject to dialectical scrutiny or some higher authority, are ipso facto deemed "unreasonable" and thus unacceptable within a liberal order. Not surprisingly, any traditional Christian "comprehensive view" falls under this category.

Even more objectionable, as Kozinski points out, is the fact that the very idea of the public political culture functioning in this totalizing and exclusivist way is not even a real aspect of our actual political culture, and so, as Kozinski points out, it is "a private belief of Rawls' own comprehensive doctrine, and thus inadmissible, according to Rawls' own criteria, as a public political authority." In other words, Rawls' position, if honestly and consistently viewed, is self-refuting. At the end of the day, Kozinski concludes, Rawls' project involves smuggling controversially foundatinalist and theologically charged principles into the political order under the guise of a purely "reasonable" and "non-theological pragmatism."

It is perhaps worth mentioning here another line of criticism which Kozinski later in the book levels against Maritain, but which perhaps applies even more to Rawls. It involves challenging the very idea that we have a coherent and commonly understood "public political culture" at all. Such an idea entails the existence within our culture of one, conceptually unified and commonly accepted set of political ideas. Yet, one of MacIntyre's most consistent and trenchant criticisms of liberal modernity is that no such thing exists. We may all use the words "freedom," "equality," "rights," "dignity," "law," "responsibility," "justice," but when pushed to be clear about the meaning of such terms, our culture has not common meaning for them.

What contemporary secular democracies actually have is an inconsistent and ultimately incommensurable mélange of fragmentary moral and political concepts derived from diverse and incompatible traditions (e.g., Biblical, Lockean, Puritan, Thomistic, Utilitarian, Marxist, Weberian, Feminist). What we do have in common is what MacIntyre calls a "common moral rhetoric," but this only serves to disguise our deep and interminable disagreements and confusions. If this is, in fact, the case, then Rawls cannot invoke the "public political culture" supposedly operative within modern democracies, as though there were actually such a thing providing us with a common understanding of liberal justice. What we really get from Rawls is not a formulation of our common political culture, but Rawls' own tendentious Ivy League brand of secular democratic socialism.

Far superior in Kozinski's eyes, and yet still inadequate to meet the challenges of authentic political order, is Jacques Maritain's call for a New Christendom that is both democratic and pluralistic. It is superior in that, whereas Rawls sought to craft a political philosophy that supposedly remained agnostic about the human good, Maritain maintained that "exact knowledge of the ends of human life" is essential for a sound understanding of the right order of the state. And since man is ordered to a Good which transcends the political, the political common good must recognize and integrate this truth into its actuality. Thus, for Maritain, political philosophy must become "subalternated" (i.e., dependent for some of its principles) to theology.

Nevertheless, this does not entail a return to the sacral order of Medieval Christendom in Maritain's mind. As Kozinski makes clear, this is because " there is a convergence, for Maritain, of the accepted core of values of today's liberal democracies with the temporal prescriptions of the Gospel." In other words, the democratic notions of human rights, equality, and religious freedom are exactly what the Gospel demands, so there can exist a happy co-existence of a Christian social order with constitutionally pluralistic democratic politics. While a Thomistic political philosophy is thus the de facto justification, and indeed the only coherent grounding, for such a political order, citizens of other religious and philosophical perspectives are free to provide their own understanding of its truth and goodness, no matter how false or incoherent, for Maritain's democratic charter does not prescribe the expression of alternative political self-understandings.

Kozinski argues that this hybridization of Thomistic political philosophy and democratic pluralism is ultimately unsuccessful for a number of reasons, not all of which can be discussed here, but all of which are worth listening to. To begin with, Kozinski claims that Maritain simply misjudged and seriously overestimated the lasting Christian content of modern democratic sensibilities. He mistook the emergent moral sobriety and spiritual openness of devastated, post-war Europe for the settled convictions and habits of Western democracies. In this way he underestimated the past and present countervailing, anti-Christian currents operative in modern culture and politics.

As a result, Maritain was far too sanguine about the desacralization of the modern state and far too unwary about the consequent subjugation of the Church to a purely private (and hence irrelevant) sphere once the secular state came to possess a complete monopoly of temporal power. As a result, Maritain's formulation does not have the resources to recognize the gradual subversion and transposition of operative moral and political priniciples that has taken place within Western democracies during the modern period.

* * * * * * *
The consequence of Maritain's vision, Kozinski reasons, is to create a "morally obligatory divorce" between a citizen's religious truth claims and his social and political life

* * * * * * *
More problematically, Kozinski asks, "would not active participation in a political order that a priori precludes the political implementation of religiously particularistic political theologies tend to habituate the citizen into privatizing his politically relevant religious truth claims, at least in his political habits, but even in his private thoughts?" The consequence of Maritain's vision, Kozinski reasons, is to create a "morally obligatory divorce" between a citizen's religious truth claims and his social and political life. The consequence will be the unwitting establishment of a liberal political theology, a "democratic faith," Kozinski argues, that is unreconcilable with a fully Catholic understanding of political life. Kozinski sites William Cavanaugh: "Although Maritain wishes to purge rights language of its basis in liberalism and locate its inspiration in the Gospel, it is the Gospel which ends up being supplanted, precisely because it is banished in effect from explicit insertion into public discourse."

While I am sympathetic to Kozinski's concerns and agree that any democratic order that categorically forbids its citizens from advocating and working toward the realization, within political society, of their moral and religious commitments, will harmfully tend to compartmentalize and privatize those beliefs, I wonder whether this criticism of Maritain might not be stating things a bit too categorically. Perhaps it's not, but I wonder if, at least on this specific issue, Kozinski and Maritain are really more divided in cultural and historical judgment rather than in philosophical and theological principle. For the latter to be the case, it would have to be true that Maritain would not want every citizen to embrace the Gospel and then to publicly reason morally and politically from its principles. I am not entirely persuaded that this is true.

The difference, at least as it seems to me, lies in their contrasting assessment of the practical insurmountability of the modern condition of religious pluralism. Maritain thinks that it is not going to be overcome in any foreseeable future, and so he reasons accordingly. Kozinski, on the other hand, envisions and proposes a path to its eventual transcendence. I could be wrong, but were the latter to actually happen within a political community, I doubt that Maritain would have a problem with such a society giving political recognition to its common Catholic Life, especially because such a political recognition would ipso facto recognize the right and duty of every human being to seek the truth about God free from political coercion. If Kozinski himself regards it as imprudent to force a Catholic establishment upon a predominantly non-Catholic society, then perhaps their ositions on this issue are less starkly opposed than might otherwise appear to be the case. This is not to say that there are not other problems with Maritain's position, and it needs to be said that Kozinski's treatment of all this is much fuller and more nuanced than I can here do credit to. I would only caution that Maritain might apply his political principles differently if his cultural and historical assessment were different.

The final thinker Kozinski analyzes is, as we have mentioned, Alasdair MacIntyre. I will not begin to pretend that I can adequately do justice to Kozinski's wide-ranging and provocative treatment of this eminent philosopher. Suffice it to say that Kozinski provides a nice background to the development of MacIntyre's critique of liberal modernity and lays out the principal reasons why MacIntyre regards it as conceptually bankrupt. Kozinski then explains the nature of MacIntyre's understanding of rationality as "tradition constituted." This conception of rational enquiry sees the human intellect as capable of grasping objective truth, but of always doing so only within a particular community characterized by a particular and developing history. There are many profound issues and pertinent questions to be raised about MacIntyre's tradition-constituted rationality, but they cannot be adequately treated here. Suffice it to say that there is much insight in MacIntyre's formulation of the matter, although there are places in his writings where his formulation appears, at least to me, to be in danger of reducing philosophy to dialectic.

As MacIntyre is at pains to show, the fullest and most perfect expression of tradition-constituted rationality is to be found in the tradition of Aristotelian-Thomism, for not only has it been able to continually confront and overcome the questions and problems that have internally arisen within it, but it is also only in light of the principles and explanatory power of this particular tradition that the problems and failures of the philosophical traditions that have subsequently emerged in Western intellectual life are adequately explained and resolved. In other words, in the internal and external dialectical engagements that have characterized the history of the Thomistic tradition, Thomism has shown itself again and again as singularly successful.

Applying this to politics, MacIntyre uses the resources of this tradition to mount a fierce critique of modern liberalism and from it to lay down the outlines of a healthy political philosophy rooted in an authentic understanding of the common good. Such a politics is, for MacIntyre, localist, virtue-based, and rooted in the natural law. Moreover, it can only be truly lived within a community that shares a common tradition of rational enquiry, which is to say, that accepts a common understanding of what is virtuous and what is according to nature. If such communities are to survive under the conditions of the modern nation state, they will always have to maintain an uneasy and merely pragmatic modus vivendi with the large-scale bureaucracies and powerful financial interests that presently exercise a disintegrating monopoly over contemporary nation-states and the market.

While Kozinski is deeply sympathetic to MacIntyre's critique and to the broad contours of his positive proposal, he nevertheless has some very substantive criticisms of his overall project. I will only mention two. First, MacIntyre has "a defective notion of the state" inasmuch as he unreasonably rejects large-scale instantiations of it as legitimate vehicles of political life. His local, tradition-constituted communities are "insufficiently political" because they are, according to Kozinski, simply too small to embody the "law, authority, and citizenship" necessary for real political life in the face of the liberal state. "if MacIntyre's practical model could be adjusted for a larger-scale application, it could acquire a genuinely political character." As it is, "MacIntyre is left with no possible site for overarching political community compatible with the basic condition of modernity -- he offers Aristotelianism without a polis."

This criticism appears to me to be rooted in an ambiguity. Its cogency, it seems to me, depends upon not recognizing a distinction in MacIntyre's writings, which I have always (although perhaps mistakenly) presumed to be operative in them. This distinction is one Aristotle himself makes between the best constitution simply speaking, and the best constitution for a particular people existing within particular circumstances here and now. Thus, there is a difference between what would be the best form of tradition-constituted political community all other things being equal, and what would be the best form of tradition-constituted political community forced to exist under the omnipresent hegemony of secular, emotivist, bureaucratic nation-states. I take "the communities of moral and intellectual virtue" whose formation MacIntyre regards as necessary in this "new Dark Ages" ruled by managerial barbarians to be the latter variety. Given that there is not immediate, realistic prospect of forming truly independent, tradition-constituted and small-scale political communities on the order of the fifth century Athenian polis or the Republic of Venice as it existed from the seventh to the end of the eighteenth century, it is inevitable that MacIntyre's communities will not be able to embody a fully political existence. But of course, one could make the same criticism of Benedictine monasteries during the first Dark Ages. They too were not fully political inasmuch as they existed under intolerable external conditions which prevented the full actualization of political life around them by those of its members striving to keep civilization alive as best they could under such hostile circumstances.

Nevertheless, even if a MacIntyrean tradition-constituted community could come into existence without having to worry about external factors like the surrounding Nanny State or the threat of being swallowed by China, MacIntyre would still affirm that such a community still needs to be small-scale in order to be authentically political. Here MacIntyre is simply being a true Aristotelian, for in Book VII of the Politics Aristotle asks the question of the proper size of a polis' population and geographical boundaries. He writes, "certainly experience shows that it is difficult and perhaps impossible for a polis with too large a population to be well-governed." This is because real political order requires mutual recognition and common deliberation. When a state gets too large it cannot be inhabited by citizens jointly sharing in political life, but only subjects of a distant and relatively anonymous power. I think this, at least in part, is what MacIntyre is getting at in the text quoted by Kozinski: "The second condition for an acceptable political order is its size, 'a relatively small scale society whose relationships are not deformed by compartmentalization'" (166).

It seems to be that the United States had something like this authentically local politics back in the 1830s when Tocqueville visited our shores. Speaking of New England townships, Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, "In that part of the Union, political life was born in the very heart of the townships; one might almost say that in origin each of them was a little independent nation... In all that concerns themselves alone the townships remain independent bodies, and I do not think one could find a single inhabitant of New England who would recognize the right of the government of the state to control matters of purely municipal interest."

These are truly remarkable words for a twenty-first century American ear. What citizen of New Haven, for example, would now think it preposterous for the state of Connecticut or the federal government to try to regulate his city's internal affairs in significant matters relating to education, public health, standards of public decency, or economic policy? What citizen of Hartford, Concord, or Providence still thinks of their political life and identity as primarily bound up in their township? And who would now regard their town or city as a kind of independent political community whose right to govern its internatl affairs in these matters is both substantive and protected? The answer, of course, is "no one today," and yet Tocqueville could write that, in America, where the instinct for independence was especially pronounced, "every village is a sort of republic accustomed to rule itself."

Further highlighting the political distance separating our modern, centralized nation-state from earlier American political existence is the way in which Tocqueville describes the nature and role of the individual states. Summing up their political status, Tocqueville says succinctly: "In a word, there are twenty0four little sovereign nations who together form the United States." Tocqueville could make this astounding statement because, for our earlier American brothers and sisters, "interest, custom, and feelings are united in concentrating real political life in the state, and not in the Union," for the latter "is in the peculiar position that it only forms one people in relation to certain aims; for all other purposes it is no such thing."It is this kind of political life which I think MacIntyre is calling us to attempt to recover. The fact that we cannot fully do so in any way "compatible with the basic condition of modernity" is not a flaw in MacIntyre's proposal, but a lamentable reality of the unpolitical condition which is modernity. If MacIntyre is offering us "Aristotelianism without a polis," it is not by choice.

The second criticism that I will mention touches on the central thesis of Kozinski's book. It pertains to the inability of philosophy by itself to solve the problem of political order. Kozinski writes, "MacIntyre the philosopher is unable to argue effectively against any anti-Thomistic or anti-Catholic prescription for an ideal political order because such a prescription would inevitably involve theological judgments and commitments... The methodological avoidance of theological judgments and commitments is the primary weakness in MacIntyre's project, for it attenuates the effectiveness of both the vindication of his own theologically based and informed Thomistic tradition, and its dialectical challenge to rival traditions. Any intellectual tradition articulating an ideal political order must necessarily include a judgment as to whether God has communicated His will to man regarding the political order." Accordingly, as MacIntyre himself recognizes, "a purely secular, purely philosophical understanding of the moral life of man is inevitably insufficient." There can be no political wisdom that is not ultimately theological in its scope and political in its aspirations.

Rooted as it is in perennial Catholic teaching on the nature of the political community and its right relation to God, there is a great deal of truth in Kosinzski's conclusion. Surely the most stable, healthy, and politically wise society is one where its people are both publicly and personally united in the true Faith, illumined by Divine Revelation, and able to be sanctified by Sacramental Grace. My only concern here is a potentially misleading sense of philosophy that one might take away from Kozinski's book. As a final reflection, I would only urge a greater caution, or at least more explicit qualification, in how Kozinski formulates the limitations of philosophy. Limitations there certainly are, but a "purely philosophical" understanding of the moral life of man is not a "purely secular" understanding.

It is Saint Thomas' correct understanding that the natural light of the intellect is able to see that the perfection of human nature, and the only thing that can ultimately fulfill human nature's desire for happiness, is to see the essence of God. Accordingly, it is, for Saint Thomas, a prudential dictate of moral philosophy and a precept of the natural law that one should seek to contemplate God as best one can if one is to be as happy as possible and move toward one's end. Indeed, prayer, devotion, and sacrifice are all, for Saint Thomas, dictates of the natural law, for unaided human reason can come to see philosophically that God exists, is the creator and governor of the universe, the giver of all good things, and the ultimate source from whom we derive our being, to whom we owe our obedience, and in whom we find our joy. Because of this, Saint Thomas annexes the virtue of religion under the cardinal virtue of justice. In other words, it is a natural virtue, before it is, like the other virtues, taken up and perfected by grace.

What all of this means is that philosophy, understood properly, is not a secular activity, if "secular" means having no theoretical or practical reference to God as the beginning and end of all things. As Saint Thomas sees it, the deliverances of both the theoretical and practical activity of natural reason, which is to say, the conclusions of metaphysics and moral philosophy, are ultimately theological and religious in nature. Indeed, the very name Aristotle gives to first philosophy is "theology," for the end of the speculative intellect is the contemplation of God. Similarly, the virtue of "religion" is the perfection of reason's moral activity. Saint Thomas argues that religion is the greatest of the moral virtues because it directs all of the other virtues to be done for the sake of adoring, obeying, and giving thanks to God. That these natural activities of the intellect are hindered by our sinful condition and made dramatically easier by the infusion of grace and the light of revelation does not change their being properly philosophical conclusions of the natural intellect. If Saint Thomas is right about all this, and I believe that he is, then I think philosophy might have more to say about the right ordering of a political community than Kozinski's argument seems to allow.

I do not mean to claim that Kozinski is denying philosophy's legitimate role in the dialectical conversation between rival traditions. Indeed, he explicitly criticizes the "Radical Orthodox" theologian, John Milbank, for his fideistic assertion that philosophy can play no role in the adjudication between competing narratives. Kozinski clearly does not think, as Milbank does, that the Christian story can only "out-narrate" the liberal-nihilistic story, as thought it were only a more attractive mythos. Nevertheless, it is sometimes hard to avoid the impression that, for Kozinski, natural reason can accomplish noticeably less than what Saint Thomas, for instance, thought it could. Whether, and in what way, this might be the case remains to be further developed in Kozinski's future contributions to this conversation.

Even with this caveat in mind, Thaddeus Kozinski's book remains a gold mine of rich reflection on the dilemma of articulating a just political order in the condition of secular, pluralistic modernity. As such, it has been a difficult struggle to limit my reactions to this book, for there is so much in it to provoke and challenge one to think more deeply and fruitfully about the issues it treats. There are few thinkers out there astute enough to call into question the regnant assumptions of liberal modernity and open enough to avail themselves of the Church's perennial teaching on these matters. For anyone seeking insight into the deeper philosophical issues of our present political conundrum, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It is a worthy book that deserves a careful reading. +

Christopher Oleson is a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America. He lives with his wife, Rachel, and their six children in Santa Paula, CA. The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism is published by Lexington Books, 2010. Dr. Oleson's review, originally published in Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring 2011), is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.

Septuagesima: The Time that Land Forgot

2011-02-25T11:40:00.014-02:00

By Michael P. Foley

When we go to Mass, be it in the new form or the old, we generally react to what is immediately transpiring before us, be it for the better or for the worse. We respond to the reverence or irreverence, piety or impiety, beauty or ugliness of the words and deeds we see and hear. These reactions are what remain fixed in our memories and go on to inform our liturgical opinions.

Harder to discern is the effect that a calendar has on our souls, since not every feast or Sunday comes with vivid memories in the making. A case in point is the liturgical season of pre-Lent or Septuagesima, an easily overlooked interlude between the Time after Epiphany and Lent. While the liturgies of Septuagesima are fairly low key, the impact that this small season has had on individuals and even on Western civilization is entirely disproportionate to its size. Septuagesima consists of three of some of the most interesting and influential weeks of the liturgical year.

Pre-Lent

Septuagesimatide, or pre-Lent, is the name given to the three consecutive Sundays preceding Ash Wednesday. It is named after the first of these, Septuagesima Sunday, which occurs roughly seventy days before Easter (septuagesima is Latin for “seventieth”). Sexagesima (“sixtieth”) Sunday comes next, followed by Quinquagesima (“fiftieth”) Sunday on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. In order to effect a gradual transition between the joy of Christmastide and the stringency of Lent, the season of Septuagesima takes on some of the sobriety of the latter but without its harshness. In the Roman Breviary, the penitential circuit of psalms is used (“Lauds II”), and at Mass the Gloria in excelsis is suppressed and the Gradual replaced with a Tract. Flowers on the altar are forbidden, and violet is the liturgical color of the vestments.

Each Sunday of Septuagesimatide also focuses on a different Old Testament figure as a way of leading us up to the Paschal mystery of Good Friday and Easter. Septuagesima Sunday—and this is particularly obvious in the Breviary—recalls Adam, Sexagesima Sunday Noah, and Quinquagesima Sunday Abraham. (This pattern is continued into Lent: the Second Sunday of Lent recalls Jacob, the Third Sunday Joseph, and the Fourth Sunday Moses.) The purpose of this instruction is to help the faithful see the reasons for the scandal of the Cross, the culmination of Lent. The Matin readings on Adam give us the doctrine of original sin, the passages on the Flood highlight the wickedness of mankind, and the sacrifices of Abraham and Melchisedech foreshadow the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

The Sundays of Septuagesima were also shaped by a series of calamities besieging the city of Rome in the sixth century. The theme of misery and desolation in the Introit of Septuagesima Sunday, for instance, comes from these troubled times. Such historical influences on the liturgical year are an excellent example of what Pope Benedict XVI meant when he referred to the Extraordinary Form as bearing “the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, [being] much more than the product of human history.”¹ In any event, Septuagesima was a well-established liturgical season in the Roman rite by 541 A.D.

Laying to Rest the Alleluia

Perhaps the most peculiar mark of Septuagesima’s liturgies is the suppression of the word “Alleluia,” which in the Novus Ordo does not occur until Ash Wednesday. Why deprive ourselves of this glorious word for an extra two and a half weeks, especially when it is so powerful? St. Paul of the Cross, for instance, advised members of his order to cry out “Alleluia” when assaulted by the devil, for “the devil is afraid of the Alleluia; it is a word that comes from Paradise.”²

St. Paul’s reasoning about Paradise gives us a clue into the answer we seek. “Alleluia,” which in Hebrew means “Praise be to the Lord,” is traditionally known as the “song of the Lord.” It is what St. John heard in Heaven during his vision of the Apocalypse. It is the joyous cry of those who are truly home.

But Septuagesima and Lent are periods not of homecoming but of pilgrimage and exile. Indeed, just as the forty days of Lent commemorate the forty years of the Hebrews wandering in the wilderness and the forty days of Jesus fasting in the desert, Septuagesima recalls the roughly seventy years of the Babylonian Exile (605-538 BC), that period, second in importance only to the Exodus out of Egypt, when the people of Judah were deported to Babylon.³ As the haunting Psalm 136(137) attests, God’s Chosen People did not deem it fit to sing their joyous songs on foreign soil:

Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Sion.
On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our [musical] instruments.
For there, they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs. And they that carried us away, said: “Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion.”
How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten.
Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee (verses 1-6).

The Jews would not sing their native song of joy during their exile, and neither do Catholics during theirs. As Bishop William Durandus (1237-1296) puts it: “We part from the Alleluia as from a beloved friend, whom we embrace many times and kiss on mouth, head, and hand, before we leave him.”⁴ The jubilant “Alleluia” is thus laid to rest for seventy days in the traditional Roman rite until it rises again in the Easter Vigil, and in so doing Catholics recapitulate for their spiritual benefit a cardinal moment in sacred history.

And when I say “laid to rest,” I mean that literally. Perhaps the most charming para-liturgical custom to come from Septuagesima is the depositio, or setting aside, of the Alleluia. On the Saturday afternoon before Septuagesima Sunday, medieval communities would stage an elaborate procession with a plaque or banner, often in the shape of a coffin, bearing the word “Alleluia.” The coffin would then be solemnly buried somewhere on church grounds. In parts of France, a straw man inscribed with the word “Alleluia” in gold letters was burned in effigy in the churchyard! Thanks to the liturgical movement of the 20th century, several of these customs were revived by some American parishes prior to the Second Vatican Council.

A standard part of these sacred send-offs was the singing of a song entitled Alleluia, Dulce Carmen, which artfully links the suppression of the Alleluia with the Babylonian Exile and Psalm 136. Here is J.M. Neale’s translation of the tenth-century hymn:

Alleluia! song of gladness,
Voice of joy that cannot die;
Alleluia is the anthem
Ever dear to choirs on high;
In the house of God abiding
Thus they sing eternally.

Alleluia thou resoundest,
True Jerusalem and free;
Alleluia joyful mother,
All thy children sing with thee;
But by Babylon’s sad waters
Mourning exiles now are we.

Alleluia cannot always
Be our song while here below;
Alleluia our transgressions
Make us for a while forego;
For the solemn time is coming
When our tears for sin must flow.

Therefore in our hymns we pray Thee,
Grant us blessed Trinity,
At the last to keep Thine Easter
In our home beyond the sky;
There to Thee for ever singing
Alleluia joyfully.

As the lyrics make clear, Septuagesima can teach us many valuable lessons: that Lent should not be begun abruptly or thoughtlessly but preceded by a period of adjustment; that uttering sacred words is a privilege which should not be taken for granted; that sin puts us in exile from our True Home; and that the Old Testament, with its many significant events, is perpetually relevant to the lives of Christians. Lastly, suppressing the Alleluia seventy days before Easter, and singling this fact out in a special way, heightens our joy when Alleluia triumphantly returns to our lips with the Risen Lord on Easter Sunday.

Sexagesima and Quinquagesima

The second Sunday of Septuagesimatide, Sexagesima, continues to sound the exilic note of Babylon, but with a touch of joy. Both the Collect and the Epistle commemorate the apostolate of St. Paul, the feast of whose conversion on January 25 occurs around this time.⁵ Quinquagesima, on the other hand, is preoccupied with the impending Great Fast of Lent. Its Epistle from 1 Corinthians 13 on charity is the perfect preface to a season of mortification and almsgiving, for without charity, these noble acts profit us nothing (1 Cor. 13:3). Indeed, all of Septuagesimatide is an ideal primer on how to approach the purgative period of Lent in the right spirit.

Ciao to Chow

Septuagesima season also marks the time when the faithful begin to fast voluntarily, in anticipation of the mandatory fast of Lent. As early as 465 A.D., St. Maximus, Bishop of Turin, was recommending a fast of devotion before Lent. In the Byzantine rite, the faithful would begin abstaining from meat on the penultimate Sunday before Lent and from dairy products on the Sunday immediately before Lent: hence the Byzantine name for Sexagesima is “Meatfare” Sunday and their name for Quinquagesima “Cheesefare” Sunday.⁶ In the Roman rite, the Sunday to begin abstaining from meat was Quinquagesima, and so it also came to be known as Dominica Carnevala, carnevala coming from the Latin for “removal” (levare) of “meat” (caro/carnis). It is from this name that our word “carnival” originates.

And Septuagesimatide is not just behind the word carnival: it is also behind the activity. Prior to the age of refrigeration, Christians needed to get rid of all the foods they would not be allowed to consume during Lent, which centuries ago was quite a long list; as we mentioned above, not only flesh meat but all dairy products were forbidden. And the closer Lent approached, the more urgently they needed to be consumed. Ironically, the pre-Lenten excesses and glittering pageantry we associate with Mardi Gras in New Orleans or the carnevales in Brazil and Venice, Italy can be traced to the voluntary increase of pious asceticism.

These sybaritic celebrations, in turn, have had a notable impact on Western culture. “Carnival music,” which is a colorful combination of Spanish, Portuguese, Native American, African, and even Chinese musical strains, is generally associated with Trinidad and Barbados, as well as other parts of the Caribbean and Brazil. Though it varies from country to country, Carnival music has a common origin in bidding a fond farewell to fun before the forty-day fast of Lent. And it has gone on to shape other genres of music, such as Latin jazz, the Conga and Conjunto, and the Samba.⁷

Septuagesima Foods

Pre-Lenten observances also led to the invention or promotion of several food dishes. There are many culinary candidates worthy of mention. Where would Cajun cooking be without Mardi Gras, or “Fat Tuesday”? Northern England traditionally observes Collop Monday two days before Ash Wednesday (a collop is made of sliced meat and eggs fried in butter), while the rest of the country enjoys Shrove Tuesday pancakes the day before Ash Wednesday. In the U.S. before Vatican II, pancake breakfasts sponsored by American parishes on Quinquagesima Sunday were not uncommon.

Thanks to its Polish immigrants, America is also able to hear its arteries harden each year with pączki, a rich pastry similar to a jelly donut that is traditionally eaten during Septuagesimatide. Pączki (pronounced paunch-key) is a particularly interesting food because it has a vocal and zealous group of devotees, including its own lobby, the National Pączki Promotional Board.⁸

Regardless of their country of origin, all of these foods are the product of the same basic logic, to make good use of all perishable comestibles in one’s home before the beginning of Lent.

Shrovetide

Not all Christian customs of Septuagesima, however, revel in merriment and feasting. While the Latin countries had Carnival, the countries of northern Europe had Shrovetide. The verb “to shrive” is old English for a priest’s hearing confession; hence, Shrovetide was a time for the faithful to go to confession and be “shriven” in preparation for Lent. While this period originally encompassed the entire week preceding Lent, it is more common to hear reference to Shrove Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, the three days prior to Ash Wednesday. Needless to say, this remains an excellent way to prepare for Lent.

Of course, not even the sternest of northern believers could resist every impulse to blow off a little steam. While “to shrive” might refer to sacramental absolution, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “to shrove” as “to keep Shrove-tide; to make merry.”⁹ Large sporting events were popular during Shrovetide (according to legend, the world’s first soccer match took place on a Shrove Tuesday between the Britons and the Romans), and in Ireland getting married during Shrovetide was considered good luck, perhaps because weddings during Lent were forbidden.

As for the southern countries, not everyone was pleased with the rising tide of carnival celebrations that began in the fourteenth century. In 1747 Pope Benedict XIV issued the aptly named Super Bacchanalibus in which a plenary indulgence was granted to those who participated in the “Forty Hours of Carnival.” This devotion, which was held in those areas prone to indulgence of a different kind, consisted of Exposition and Benediction on Shrove Monday and Tuesday. The purpose of the devotion was to draw the faithful away from “dangerous occasions of sin” and to atone for excesses committed.¹⁰

Modern Times

Septuagesima was dropped from the calendar in 1970, replaced by “Ordinary Time.” According to Fr. Pierre Jounel, a professor of liturgy at the Catholic Institute of Paris and one of the architects of the new calendar, it was excised because “Nobody knew what it meant or where it came from.”¹¹

That’s funny: the literal meaning of septuagesima is as close as the nearest Latin dictionary, and most Catholics, because of the greater cultural impact of Septuagesima we have just described, had a passable idea of what the season meant. There are beautiful explanations of it in the St. Andrew’s Missal and in Fr. Francis X. Weiser’s popular Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, both of which were available ten years before Fr. Jounel’s pronouncement. The Von Trapp family describes Septuagesima as a “most necessary time for the individual as well as for families and communities”:¹² their chapter on the season the meaning of which they weren’t supposed to know is entitled, “A Time to Dance.”

Millions of Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic believers also understand it, as they have a similar season based on the same principles. (Having dropped Septuagesima, we Catholics now have one less thing in common with what Pope John Paul II called the other lung of Christendom.) Even some Anglicans and Lutherans continue to keep Septuagesima. More importantly, with the loss of Septuagesima we have no liturgical preparation for the holy season of Lent, no transition between the glow of Epiphany and the gloom of Ash Wednesday. In the meantime, the cultural observances of Mardi Gras and so forth continue unabated, loosed from their religious moorings.

Conclusion

In his magnificent Confessions, St. Augustine allegorically interprets the creation of the dry land in Genesis 1 as the gathering of the redeemed souls that thirst for God and are plucked from the bitter sea of the infidels.¹³ The “land” that Augustine espied was a Church zealous for the nourishment of grace so “that they might bring forth works of mercy unto You, distributing their earthly goods to the poor to acquire heavenly.”¹⁴ How fitting, then, that the terra firma that is the Church should not only use Lent as a preparation for Easter, but that she should prepare herself for Lent as well, the season in which she increases her corporal works of mercy.¹⁵ Because of the 1970 calendar, Septuagesima is a time that the Land has lamentably forgotten, but let us who keep to the calendar of our ancestors wisely use this season to remember and attune ourselves to the awesome trial that is Lent.

And maybe to shrove it up a bit while we still can.

Notes

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977,trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), p. 20. [back]

Quoted by Gueranger in The Liturgical Year, vol. 8, p. 366. [back]

See Jeremiah 25:9-12; 29:10. Some Biblical historians calculate the Babylonian Exile or Captivity to be exactly seventy years by beginning with the defeat of the Assyrian Empire in 609 BC and ending with the defeat of the Babylonian Empire in 539 BC; others set the dates at 586 and 516, the destruction of Jerusalem and the dedication of the rebuilt Temple, respectively. [back]

Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 6.24.18, translated by Francis X. Weiser. [back]

One of the charms of the traditional calendar is that it allows its Temporal Cycle, its rotation of seasons, to be colored by its Sanctoral Cycle, its saints’ feast days. [back]

Similarly, in Russia and other Slavic countries the week before Lent is called “Butter Week”; in Poland it is called “Fat Days.” [back]

See Michael P. Foley, Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 59. [back]

Bryan Gruley, “Who Put the Paunch In Paczki and Droves In Shrove Tuesday?” Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition, 3/01/2000, vol. 235, issue 43, p. A1. [back]

“Shrove, v.” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989. [back]

Herbert Thurston, “Shrovetide,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (Robert Appleton Company, 1912). [back]

Alfred Friendly, Jr., “200 Catholic Saints Lose Their Feast Days,” NYT, May 10, 1969, p. 10. [back]

Maria Augusta Trapp, Around the Year with the Trapp Family (NY: Pantheon Books, 1955), p. 86. [back]

Confessions 13.17.20. [back]

Confessions 13.34.49, translated by F.J. Sheed. [back]

See the Collect for the First Sunday of Lent: “O God, who by the yearly Lenten observance dost purify Thy Church, grant to Thy household that what they strive to obtain from Thee by abstinence, they may achieve by good works.” [back]

Michael P. Foley, an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University, is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "Septuagesima: The Time that Land Forgot," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 2011), is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.

Of related interest

I highly recommend Dr. Michael P. Foley's annotated edition of the Confessions of Augustine, in the surpassingly elegant translation by Frank J. Sheed (Hackett Publishing Co., 2007). The notes by Dr. Foley shed light on all sorts of delightful details of Augustine's Confessions that quite often pass unnoticed by readers in any translation, and at the price of $6.25 (brand new) with free shipping from Amazon Prime, it's a steal! I use this edition with my students at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, and it is consistently one of their favorite texts in the historical sequence of courses.

Fish on Friday: The One That God Away

2010-12-30T23:12:00.006-02:00

Still Life with Fish by Edouard Manet

By Michael P. Foley

One of the most recognizable markers of Catholic identity used to be the practice of abstaining from meat on Friday. A Protestant colleague of mine speaks admiringly of how in his youth he would hang out, Happy Days style, at a burger joint on Friday night. When the clock struck twelve, the Catholic teens who were there would let loose a cry that echoed through the parking lot: “Ham-burger!”

What those teenagers didn’t know was that they were honoring a discipline probably as old as Christianity itself. Abstaining on Friday from “flesh meat,” the meat of a warm-blooded animal, is potentially older than some books of the New Testament.¹ Be it with fasting (having little or no food) or abstaining (refraining from food of a particular kind), the Church has always observed Friday with some sort of restriction on comestibles.

Broader Impact

Friday abstinence has also had a ripple effect going far beyond its primary aim of personal sanctification. Contrary to wild theories about medieval fishermen lobbying the Church to create Friday abstinence, it was Friday abstinence that helped create the medieval fishing industry.² Professor Brian Fagan claims that the Church’s Friday discipline may have even led to the discovery of the New World, spurring Atlantic fishermen to push further westward in search of better waters and providing navigational precedents for Christopher Columbus.³ By pushing the borders of the known world, Friday abstinence not only put fishing on the map, it helped make the map itself. Friday and Lenten abstinence prompted medieval monasteries to pioneer new techniques in pisciculture, including artificial fish ponds and artificial fertilization.⁴ It was a Catholic nun who wrote the first fishing manual in English and a Catholic priest who invented the first spinning reel.⁵

Nor has only distant history been affected by this ancient custom. Restaurants typically have a Friday seafood special of the day or a soup du jour such as clam chowder because of the power that Catholics once wielded as a united front. Even titans of global uniformity like McDonald’s were forced to take notice. The Filet-o-Fish sandwich was added to its menus in 1962 after Louis Groen, owner of the chain’s Cincinnati franchises, noticed that his restaurants experienced a sharp drop in sales every Friday. Even today, of the 300 million Filets-o-Fish sold annually, 25% of those sales come from the forty days of Lent.

* * * * * * *

So strong was the American association of Catholics with fish on Friday that “mackerel snapper” was once a common
epithet for papists.

* * * * * * *

Everyday language has been affected as well. So strong was the American association of Catholics with fish on Friday that “mackerel snapper” was once a common epithet for papists. “Meager” refers to something that has little flesh, and so the word came to be applied to days of total or partial abstinence in the Church calendar. A soup-maigre or “meager soup” was one that was not made from flesh meat or meat broth and was consequently suitable for “meager days,” while to “make meager” meant eating food appropriate for meager days.⁶

Of course, one of the curious things about all of these effects is that Catholics don’t have to eat fish on Fridays. This is a point impishly brought home in an essay by Fr. Leonard Feeney.⁷ “I am one of those moderately good Catholics,” Feeney writes, “in whom the persuasive power of Canon Law has not developed a taste for fish either on Friday or any other day, and stands no chance of doing so.”⁸ For Feeney, the reputation of Catholics as a queer sort of “Sixth Day Adventists” is a badge of honor to be worn in cheerful defiance of Protestant America.

Another mackerel snapper, renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas, agrees. Douglas sees in the rule of Friday abstinence “allegiance to a humble home in Ireland and to a glorious tradition in Rome.”⁹ These allegiances, she continues, are particularly important for a humiliated class. “At its lowest,” Douglas writes, Friday abstinence for a “bog Irishman” meant “what haggis and the pipes mean to Scots,” and at its most, “it means what abstaining from pork meant to the venerable Eleazar as narrated in 2 Maccabees.”¹⁰ One wonders if the Church in Ireland and America today, which in both countries is being humiliated by the savagery of the press and the corruption of some of its clergy, is not in need of a similar morale-boosting sign of allegiance.

Exceptions Curious and Quaint

Fr. Feeney also remarks: “if we dared tell non-Catholics the number of reasons which will legitimately permit us to eat meat on Friday, they would be scandalized.”¹¹ There were numerous variations of the Friday rule based on local usage and the judgment of “intelligent and conscientious Christians.”¹² Holy days such as Christmas trumped Friday abstinence, and Pope Pius XII, in order to relieve their overburdened refrigerators, allowed U.S. Catholics to eat meat the day after Thanksgiving. Special groups, such as travelers and soldiers, were occasionally exempted, and so were areas that either already had a seafood-rich diet or were smitten by epidemic or famine.

And sometimes whole peoples got a free pass. In 1089 Spanish counts were granted a dispensation from the Friday rule by Pope Urban II for their role in the Crusades; after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Pope St. Pius V extended the dispensation to the entire Spanish dominion, including her colonies in the New World. Mexico, for example, was not instructed by the Holy See to observe Friday abstinence until 1950, and the following year bishops in New Mexico and Texas informed their flock that this applied to them as well.¹³

And then there are the curious local substitutes. During Lent the people of Venezuela can eat capybaras, the world’s largest rodent, a fact that has inspired the following doggerel:

You’ll enjoy capybaras to eat;
Venezuelans proclaim them a treat.
Those of Catholic bent
May consume them for Lent
If a fine rodent burger’s their meat.

Writing about the year 1188, Giraldus Cambrensis remarks that in “Germany and the arctic regions,” beavers’ tails are eaten during times of fast by “great and religious persons” because of their resemblance to fish meat.¹⁴ This practice was carried to parts of the New World, especially Canada. Jesuit missionaries wrote to Rome to verify that the custom was permissible. Rome replied that not only were beavers allowable but so were most amphibious animals and even some species of wild duck.¹⁵

* * * * * * *

... some Michiganders have the dubious privilege of dining on muskrat for their Friday and Lenten observances. ... the bishop added: “Anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest of the saints.”

* * * * * * *
In the United States, some Michiganders have the dubious privilege of dining on muskrat for their Friday and Lenten observances. Several Catholic communities in the Wolverine State have claimed a dispensation to eat the aquatic rodent since the days of the French trappers. In 1987, Bishop Kenneth Povish of Lansing wrote that although such a permission could not be found in the Church’s records, the practice had been around for so long that it could continue as an “immemorial custom.” And there was another reason to allow it, the bishop added: “Anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest of the saints.”¹⁶

The Law No One Knows

After Vatican II Pope Paul VI took up the question of Friday abstinence in his 1966 Apostolic Constitution Paenitimini. The document masterfully reaffirms the traditional theology of penance and abstinence, and it resolves a longstanding inconsistency about which feast days should supersede Friday abstinence.¹⁷ But Paenitimini also announces the Pope’s goal of reorganizing “penitential discipline with practices more suited to our times.”¹⁸ Even so, Friday abstinence was explicitly reaffirmed.¹⁹

In November of the same year, the U.S. bishops responded to the call for reorganization with a “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence.”²⁰ Whereas American Catholics were hereby released from a strict obligation under pain of sin to keep Friday abstinence, the bishops emphasized that Friday was still a mandatory day of penance: indeed, they wrote eloquently of Friday as a mini-Lent in the same way that Sunday is a “weekly Easter.”²¹ And they made it clear: “We give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law.”²² The 1983 Code of Canon Law would later codify this teaching by stating that: Friday is an obligatory day of penance and abstinence is the standard form of Friday penance, although other forms may be done instead.²³

Clam Chowder Bread Bowl

* * * * * * *

Restaurants typically have a Friday seafood special of the day or a soupdu jour such as clam chowder because of the power that Catholics once wielded as a united front.

* * * * * * *
If this is the position of the Magisterium, then why has it failed so miserably, with the majority of the world’s Catholics ignorant of any obligation to do anything special on Friday? Certainly, the media’s mishandling of the 1966 news (which made glib remarks like “you won’t go to hell anymore for eating a hamburger on Friday” instead of reporting all the facts), the minimalist mindset of the faithful who were happy to be free of one less duty, and the failure of the clergy to catechize on the subject all played a part in the overnight disappearance of Friday abstinence.

But there may also be a more fundamental reason. The removal of a symbol, or in this case the removal of a law protecting a symbol, can give the impression that the reality to which the symbol points is likewise being rejected. “To take away one symbol that meant something,” notes Mary Douglas,

is no guarantee that the spirit of charity will flow in its place….We have seen that those who are responsible for ecclesiastical decisions are only too likely to have been made, by the manner of their education, insensitive to non-verbal signals and dull to their meaning. This is central to the difficulties of Christianity today. It is as if the liturgical signal boxes were manned by colour-blind signalmen.²⁴

And there are other complications. Paenitimini and Canon 1253, which allow an episcopal conference to designate other forms of penance such as works of charity for Friday, divorce for the first time in Church history Friday penance from food abstinence. Yet even this latitude is honored more in the breach than in the observance, for few episcopal conferences have made any decision about what form of Friday penance its flock may follow. The signalmen, it appears, have fallen asleep at the switch.

Confusion reigns even in the capitol of Christendom. When my father-in-law, who is a member of a pontifical academy, was invited to dine at the Vatican’s Casina Pio IV on a Friday night several years ago, he and the other guests were served horse meat!

* * * * * * *

Pope Pius XII, in order to relieve their overburdened refrigerators, allowed U.S. Catholics to eat meat the day after Thanksgiving.

* * * * * * *
Abstaining from the Alternatives

Regardless of the available options, there are at least seven reasons to keep the traditional sixth-day penance:

It is corporate. Having everyone do his own form of penance lacks the marvelous unity of almost the entire Catholic world performing the same act on the same day. This is not only spiritually constructive, it is socially edifying, building up solidarity and deepening our awareness of joint membership in the mystical Body of Christ.
It is ancient. A single practice unites all the living, but when it is ancient it also unites them to their forebears. If tradition is, as Chesterton put it, the democracy of the dead, then Friday abstinence is the veritable apple pie of Catholic life. In the words of the American bishops in 1966: We show “out of love for Christ Crucified…our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity to Christ and His Church.”²⁵
It is testimonial. Friday abstinence bears powerful witness to the distinctiveness of the Church. My Protestant friend whom I mentioned earlier knew little about Catholics when he was young, but he knew they stood for something when he watched his papist peers exercise self-discipline even away from the watchful eyes of their parents.
Abstinence is efficacious. Ancient authors taught that abstinence from food and drink was useful in dampening “the ardor of lust.”²⁶ Bodily passions are not bad per se, but left untrained they can become the occasion of sin. Trimming the body’s food intake, as modern studies have confirmed, can lower lustful proclivities.²⁷
Abstinence is appropriate. The Church still teaches that every human being is required to do penance by virtue of divine law (Can. 1249), and Friday abstinence is an especially appropriate way to do this. It was on a Friday in Eden that Adam and Eve transgressed the first law of abstinence.²⁸ And, of course, it was on a Friday that our Lord was crucified in order to undo the effects of that transgression. It is therefore appropriate to make abstinence our Friday penance, in sober memory of the Fall and “in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.”²⁹
Abstinence from meat is particularly appropriate. Catholicism ingeniously teaches both through presence and through absence. Usually, the Church employs physical signs to convey invisible realities; but sometimes, she temporarily withdraws something as a way of arresting our attention and heightening our awareness of what is missing.

Hence, the suppression of the Alleluia during Septuagesima and Lent effectively demonstrates that we are in exile from our true Home, where the angels sing Alleluia without ceasing. Veiling sacred images in church during Passiontide — when we would most expect to gaze upon a crucifix — paradoxically heightens our awe of Christ’s Passion. And prohibiting the sacrifice of the altar on Good Friday draws us in an inverted way to the sacrifice of the cross made that day.

Similarly, when we “make meager,” we withdraw from our table the flesh of an animal whose blood was shed for us on the day in which the Blood of the God-man was shed for us.³⁰ The absence of the former paradoxically reminds us of the latter; not having a bloody victual backhandedly alerts us to the Bloody Victim.
It is Christ-like. Jesus Christ consumed nothing on Good Friday except the gall He tasted shortly before His death. With fasting or abstinence on the day of the Crucifixion, Catholics in some small way “suffer with Christ that they may one day be glorified with Him. This is the heart of the tradition of abstinence from meat on Friday.”³¹

Conclusion

How the Church can best recover its former Friday integrity remains an open question.³² In the meantime, there is ample reason to fulfill Paul VI’s and the American bishops’ 1966 wish that what was once done in obedience be now done by free choice. The weekly abstinence from flesh meat is rich in history and meaning, bringing us closer to God and to each other. Living the Catholic tradition, even on days of deprivation, is anything but a meager existence.

Postscript: Since Ireland has been a leitmotif in this article, it is fitting to add that in response to the horrific abuse scandals decimating the Catholic Church in that country, Pope Benedict XVI has asked its faithful to offer their Friday penance from now until Good Friday 2011 for God’s mercy.³³ Those of us who owe our blood or our faith to the sons and daughters of St. Patrick might wish to do the same.

Notes

The custom of fasting on Friday is mentioned in Didache 9, a book believed to have been written around A.D. 75. [back]

Brian Fagan, Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World (Basic Books, 2007), pp. 25ff. [back]

Ibid. [back]

Michael P. Foley, Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 111. [back]

See Foley, pp. 46, 69, and 109, resp. [back]

Meagre/Meager, adj. and n.," Oxford English Dictionary, A.3. and B.2. [back]

Leonard Feeney, S.J. "Fish on Friday," in Fish on Friday and Other Sketches (Sheed & Ward, 1934), pp. 3-16. [back]

Ibid., p. 3. [back]

Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (Routledge, 1996), p. 37. [back]

Ibid., pp. 37-38. [back]

Feeney, p. 6. [back]

J.D. O'Neill, "Abstinence," Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907. [back]

See "Friday Abstinence," in the Religion section of Time Magazine, June 18, 1951. [back]

The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, 2.3. [back]

Daniel Wilson, "Early Notices of the Beaver in Europe and North America," in the Canadian Journal of Industry, Science, and Art (1849-1914), Vol. 4, p. 386. The scoter, for example, was consumed on Friday in parts of France (see Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucian Bonaparte, American Ornithology, Vol. 3 [Constable and Col, 1831], pp. 212-13). [back]

Kristin Lukowski, "Muskrat love: A Lenten Friday delight for some Michiganders," CNS News, March 8, 2007. [back]

Prior to Vatican II, only holy days of obligation suspended abstinence from flesh meat on Friday. The problem with this arrangement was that different nations had different days of obligation. The difficulty was resolved by giving all [first class] solemnities in the universal calendar priority over Friday penance. [back]

III.C. [back]

Chapter 3, II.2. [back]

National Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence," November 18, 1966. This is an outstanding document. [back]

Ibid., 23. [back]

Ibid., 24. [back]

See Canons 1251-1253. [back]

Douglas, p. 42. [back]

"Pastoral Statement," 24a. [back]

See Saint Jerome, Against Jovinian 2.6; Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II.147.1. [back]

Flesh meat, for instance, is high in zinc, which raises testosterone levels. For a summary of modern dietary research, see Theresa M. Shaw, Burden of the Flesh (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1998), pp. 126-27. [back]

Adam and Eve sinned on the same day they were created when they ate the fruit from which they were commanded to abstain. Dante gives the First Couple about six hours in Paradise before they were expelled. [back]

"Pastoral Statement," 23. [back]

Cold-blooded animals such as fish and amphibians also "shed their blood for us" when we use them as food, but because of the similarity of our physiology to that of other warm-blooded animals, our symbolic association with the latter is greater. [back]

"Pastoral Statement," 18. [back]

For an interesting discussion on this, see Father John Zuhlsdorf's blog for April 23, 2009, at http://wdtprs.com/blog/2009/04/kicking-it-up-a-notch-our-catholic-identity-fr-z-rants/. [back]

Pope Benedict XVI, "Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland," no. 14, March 19, 2010. [back]

Michael P. Foley, an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University, is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "Fish on Friday: The One That Got Away," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer/Fall 2010), pp. 42-46, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.

Von Hildebrand criticizes West's cult of the body

2010-07-26T00:04:00.007-02:00

Alice von Hildebrand, "Dietrich von Hildebrand, Catholic Philosopher, and Christopher West, Modern Enthusiast: Two Very Different Approaches to Love, Marriage and Sex" (CNA, July 21, 2010):

Introduction

It is a joy to praise a great book or author; it is a grief and duty to criticize a bad one. But it is especially difficult to criticize someone who has many talents, whose work has positive sides, but which also suffers from certain faults, calling for correction. Such is the case with Christopher West, with his popular presentation of John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

As gifted as he is—and as much as I appreciate all the good he has done for the Church—West’s work continues to fall short in many respects. He has sometimes misunderstood the authentic Catholic tradition; overlooked or disregarded essential aspects of it; and promoted a new form of religious “enthusiasm” which can best be described as wayward. Monsignor Ronald Knox, who critiqued this attitude so well in his book Enthusiasm, was a prophet, recognizing such outbursts as recurring phenomena in the history of the Church, characteristic of easily misguided movements for which we should always be on the watch.

Key to my concerns is West’s hyper-sexualized approach to the Theology of the Body. The French have a wonderful word to capture the veiling of one’s intimate feelings, out of a proper sense of shame — pudeur, a “holy bashfulness,” so to speak. Seized as he is by what he regards as his calling to evangelize a new generation with this theology in “modern” ways they can supposedly better understand, West practically ignores the importance of pudeur, and, by his imprudence, winds up undermining his own message.

In light of the controversy surrounding West’s work, which has affected millions via his books, DVDs, videos and conferences, I would like to contrast his views with those of my late husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose work regarding Catholic teaching on human sexuality avoids the hazards and traps too often found in West’s work. My goal is to alert parents and educators alike to common philosophical errors that have gravely negative consequences in Christopher West’s lectures and publications.

Part 1: The Nature of the Intimate Sphere

1. Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Intimate Sphere

In 1927, thirteen years after his conversion to Catholicism, Dietrich von Hildebrand published a book of key importance, Reinheit und Jungfraulichkeit (In Defense of Purity). Through unmerited graces—coming, as he did, from a non-religious background—on a purely natural level, Dietrich had always "felt" that the intimate sphere was essentially linked to love, and so to approach it as "fun" was a desecration. But the moment he entered the Blessed Ark, the Holy Catholic Church, his approach to this sphere was "baptized:" He now viewed sex through the eyes of a believer, perceiving its profound relationship with God.

Prior to his conversion, Dietrich did not "see" that artificial birth control was a matter of serious moral gravity. But once he became a Catholic, he gratefully perceived what he had always "felt"—namely, that sex within marriage had to be completed and perfected according to Heaven’s design, which meant being open to the creation of human life at all times. Dietrich, as a Catholic, now understood that in the marital embrace, when the husband gives his wife the precious semen that God has placed in his body, he starts a causal chain that can lead to pregnancy: the spouses are collaborating with their Creator, in order to bring a new life into existence. This is a privilege not even granted to the angels; the importance and beauty of which needed to be recognized. Between "procreation" and “copulation,” Dietrich saw an abyss separating persons incarnated into a body, and animals. The human body, as the utterly unique creation of God, was—and still is—called upon to have the “Heavenly seal” of personhood in every single bodily activity. This is why St. Paul writes, “whether you eat or drink, glorify God” (1 Corinthians 10: 31-32).

The insights Dietrich garnered, prior to his conversion, were now elevated to a supernatural level, opening his eyes to the Church’s teachings on chastity --marital and non-marital-- and the beauty of virginity.

2. The Intimate Sphere and Original Sin

Because the intimate sphere differs radically from other bodily instincts, it was bound to be deeply affected by Original Sin. Corruptio optimi, pessima. The ugly harvest of sins committed in this sphere is large. We need not go into details, but no one can deny that it is a domain in which the Devil (the master of ceremonies) has had a field day since the onset of Original Sin, and still does. Dorothy Day, who admired my husband’s work, wrote about her own reaction to the work of Havelock Ellis, a popular “sexologist” of the day:
One might also say that an ugly tide rose in me, a poisonous tide, a blackness of evil, at reading there so many things that certainly do not need to be known by other than doctor or priest, by those who are schooled to bear it and trained to help in relation to it. Dr. von Hildebrand writes about the poisonous fascination of sex, its deadly allure in the abstract. I felt it then in its most hideous form, and there was no beauty in it, no love, but it was like the uncoiling of a dank and ugly serpent in my breast. These may be extreme ways of expressing myself, but I am sure that at times there has been this consciousness of evil in us all. Evil as a negation, as an absence of God, as a blackness, a glimpse of Hell ‘where everlasting horror dwelleth, and no order is.’
Day, a great convert, goes on to favorably quote a young mother who laments how so many “are easily betrayed by that ‘poisonous fascination’ of which Dr. von Hildebrand speaks. They begin the descent to the Dark Angel, through the mysticism of Evil, only half knowing what they are doing” (Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, Eerdman’s, 1999, pp. 129-134).

When Christ through the Apostles and His holy Bride, the Church, slowly conquered the Western world, one crucial task was to make Christians aware of the unique character of this sphere: its dignity and its dangers. Plato had already warned us that pleasure is an enemy that is not easy to conquer: one of the main aims of education, he wrote, is to teach a child to achieve victory over pleasure.

Pleasure in itself is not evil; it is the Creator himself who has linked pleasure to certain bodily activities. But the great task of a truly Christian education is to baptize pleasure, to receive it gratefully as a gift, and not to claim it as a right. There are legitimate pleasures, calling for gratitude, but also illegitimate ones: gluttony and drunkenness, and alas, inherently perverse ones.

The Church, as a loving Mother, has the mission of reminding Her children, wounded by Original Sin, that the intimate sphere has to be approached with reverence. Dietrich von Hildebrand’s In Defense of Purity makes the point that God, and not a boundless search for “pleasure,” should always be king of the bedroom.

As Day noted, Dietrich stressed that this private sphere, though blessed by God when properly entered, is fraught with dangers. It can be inebriating, befuddling, and totally anesthetize man's spiritual and moral faculties. Man easily becomes prey to his feelings. The Bible is rich in such examples. Clearly, King David—a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14)—totally lost control of himself when he saw Bathsheba who was very beautiful. He was defeated by her attraction, and committed adultery, followed by murder. Because of an unchecked desire for “pleasure,” one of the greatest sons of Israel committed an abominable crime. Thanks to Nathan, however, he repented.

King David’s sins underscore how sexual desire can degenerate into what Dietrich calls "diabolical" temptations. Some of the most atrocious perversions occur when the Devil takes over completely. And one should never downplay, or minimize, the gravity of these evils. It is plainly false to claim that such abuses are "tragic,” rather than “filthy.”

3. The Intimate Sphere and Reverence

These are certain truths of which Dietrich von Hildebrand never lost sight of. Throughout all his Catholic writings, he insists upon humility and reverence: humility because nobody, except the Blessed One among women, Mary, is safe; and reverence because of the depth and mystery of this sacred domain—a domain Dietrich always believed called for veiling.

Fed on great Catholic literature from the time of his conversion, he also knew that this sphere should be baptized. This is why the Catholic Church (with the Orthodox) makes marriage one of the seven sacraments.

While distortions can be found in the history of Catholic understanding of sexuality, they should be recognized as just that—distortions, which are not representative of the core. It is simply false to claim that the Church has, until recently, been blind to the deep meaning and beauty of sex as God intended it: we need only turn to St. Francis de Sales to see how profoundly he understood the meaning that God gave to this sphere. He writes: “It is honorable to all, in all, and in everything, that is, in all its parts" (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, Chapter 38). It is simply not true to claim that, until recently, the beauty and meaning of this sphere had been totally obscured by Puritanism and Manichaeism. Many from my generation can testify—against those who misrepresent it today—that the education we received did not, on the whole (there are always exceptions) present sex as "dirty".

What was communicated, with delicacy, was a sense of "mystery" for something great, that had to be approached with deep reverence, and which, when abused, led to very serious offenses against God.

My general criticism of Christopher West is that he does not seem to grasp the delicacy, reverence, privacy, and sacredness of the sexual sphere. He also underestimates the effects of Original Sin on the human condition.

4. Tua Culpa, or Mea Culpa?

One of the many dangers threatening us today is the widespread tendency to put the blame on others. Christopher West resorts to this strategy in his book, Good News About Sex and Marriage, when he writes:
I myself am frustrated by the fact that I didn’t learn about the richness and sensibleness of the Church’s teaching when I was growing up, despite twelve years of Catholic education. For the most part, the message was simply, ‘Don’t do it.’ So what did I do? The exact opposite, of course.

“Had I been taught how wonderful and beautiful the Catholic vision of sex and marriage actually is, perhaps I would have thought it something worth holding out for. Perhaps I would have been spared the pain I inflicted on myself and others.” (Good News About Sex and Marriage, revised edition, p. 69)
Here, West falls into a contemporary trap. The tua culpa [you are at fault] has replaced the mea culpa [I am at fault]. To assume that those who fall into sexual sin necessarily would have led a pure life, had one's parents or teachers been more “open” in their approach to the intimate sphere, is pure illusion.

Another mistake West makes is to assume that pornography is an understandable—if sinful and misguided — effort to quench the sexual impulse: “God gave us that desire,” he told an interviewer. “When we go to pornography to satisfy that desire, its like eating junk food. It’s not going to satisfy the legitimate hunger and need of the human heart.” (Legatus Magazine, March 2010). But here, West ignores an obvious fact, all too prevalent throughout human history: many people like “junk food” — in this case, pornography and illicit sex (this is why brothels will never go out of business) — and often prefer it, even when a healthy alternative — in this case, authentic Catholic teaching — is presented to them. That is because Catholic orthodoxy - as enriching as it is, and even within the context of a loving, sacramental marriage — entails sacrifice and self-control, rather than the “hunger” of self-indulgence.

The Old Testament has a great deal to teach us about this: the Israelites were constantly given gifts from Heaven — most famously, the “Manna,” for which they did not have to work, God having generously removed the burden of their sins (“thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow”). This divine gift enabled them to survive the Exodus—and yet, even though that Manna was more than enough to sustain them, it didn’t cater to their selfish “hunger”; so many abandoned God’s law and went back to the ”junk food” of their time—the flesh pots of Egypt. Thus, the Scripture teaches: God shows us the way, and offers us proper food, and yet people willfully reject the Lord’s gifts and laws, using the excuse that they are “hungry” for more. “Had I had the proper food, I would not have fed myself on junk food,” says the individual looking to avoid personal responsibility. Alas, junk food can be very attractive because it “flatters” our palate. But, in fact, pornography is not just unhealthy food. It is veritable poison, for it corrupts the mind and heart.

5. “Happy Talk” and Asceticism

It must be recognized: “happy talk” about sex and sexuality, even if it is wrapped in religious language, cannot communicate the full truth about God’s plan for human sexuality unless it includes the difficulties of living out an elevated moral life.

Sex enthusiasts in the Church like West often speak about the “raging hormones” many feel growing up, but the solution they propose to cure it — stimulate people even more, with a hyper-sexualized presentation of Catholic teaching — can easily aggravate the situation. Moreover, they consistently ignore the one successful remedy the Church has always called upon to address this malady: asceticism, the spirit of renunciation and sacrifice. It is crucial to a healthy moral and spiritual life; it is a way of collaborating with God’s grace, to “achieve victory over pleasure,” as the pre-Christian Plato wisely said.

Why does St. Paul teach us, “And they that are Christ’s, have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts” (Galatians 5: 24)? Why did St. Benedict throw himself into a thorny bush? Why did St. Francis engage in self-mortification? Because, following Scripture, they believed that disciplining their bodily desires, was indispensable to overcoming temptation.

If such measures are considered unnecessary and too “extreme” today, other forms of asceticism — an intense prayer life, frequent confession, modesty in dress and language, and avoiding all possible occasions of sin - should not be considered so. One does not have to be a puritan or kill-joy to know that Christopher West’s infatuation with pop culture and rock and roll is a long way from the austere spirit of the New Testament. Grace is what is needed to be pure; the saints teach us the way.

Asceticism, under proper guidance, which respects the integrity of the body, should never be dismissed as “masochistic,” psychologically damaging, or treated as a form of Freudian “repression” - least of all by Catholics. For it is Catholics who are called to a higher state of life; and it is sheer illusion to believe that moral perfection can be pursued without this purifying discipline.

Part 2: Speaking of the Intimate Sphere

That the intimate sphere should be treated with reverence necessarily affects the way we speak about it, and this concerns educators, in a particular way, since they must adapt their speech to the needs of their hearers. How is one to address individuals who have been so influenced by the vulgarity of our age? How can one teach them to view love and sexuality in an exalted and reverent way?

1. The Risk of Vulgarizing the Holy

We live in a thoroughly secularized and de-Christianized culture (what my husband would have described as an “anti-culture”). For this reason, "spiritual sensitivity" is deficient in most of us. A few examples come to mind:

When a parish priest refers to God from the pulpit as "the nice guy upstairs,” many people consider this to be a fun way of referring to God: it is chummy; it makes them feel comfortable; it is a "democratic approach.” St. Teresa of Jesus would shed tears. She always refers to God as Su Majesdad, for indeed He is King.

When another parish priest, preparing grammar school children for their first confession, referred to this awesome sacrament as a "fun experience,” I felt like crying. This awesome moment, when the soul turns to God for forgiveness, is stripped of its supernatural character and presented as "amusing". It is a modern desecration. Yet, many people in the pews, who have no perception of these profound spiritual evils, would feel awed if they had the secular "honor" of being invited to the White House by President Obama.

This is the reason, I believe, the sacredness of sex is so often addressed by using a vocabulary which makes it impossible to have the reverence called for. This is why people feel perfectly comfortable discussing personal and intimate matters in public-- matters, which, by their very nature, call for tremendous discretion.

An analogy comes to mind: Because of my deep love for classical music, I have been in contact with great musicians. What I discovered is that they have such an exquisite sensitivity to sounds that they perceive the slightest "disharmony" which escapes most of us. Am I wrong in fearing that "modern man," deafened by sounds, poisoned by evil images and pictures, can no longer register cacophonic sounds which harm the sensitive enamel of their souls? This is why I often hear people say: “I do not see why this is shocking. I do not see why this is wrong. I do not see why others call this coarse.”

As a veteran in the classroom, these are remarks that I heard ad nauseam. That a person does not “see” an object referred to does not mean that there is nothing to be seen. There are cases of hallucinations. But much more frequently people are morally and spiritually near-sighted and this explains why they can say "honestly" that they do not see.

Years ago, Dietrich von Hildebrand gave a beautiful talk on the words of the blind man of Jericho saying to Christ: That I may see. The saints perceive. Most of us do not see, for we are more or less blind and desperately need correcting glasses. These glasses are provided by humility — an awareness that we need help.

“Holy Sex”?

Christopher West’s presentations consistently use language that lacks sensitivity, thereby obscuring the good inherent in marriage and the marital embrace

A particular example of this vulgarization, and its relationship to the work of Christopher West, is West’s glowing review of Gregory Popcak's book Holy Sex (a tempting title).

I have read hundreds of book reviews in my life, and cannot ever recall having come across a recommendation quite like this one, with such overabundant, unrestrained praise. “Every engaged and married couple on the planet should have a copy,” writes West about Holy Sex. He continues:
Popcak goes right between the sheets, shall we say, providing a very frank, honest, and practical discussion of the sexual joys and challenges of the marital bed. I must admit, even I, on occasion, found myself taken aback by Popcak’s forthrightness. ... Even if his boldness is occasionally jarring, that’s precisely what’s so refreshing about this book. It tells it like it is and, by doing so, gives couples permission to face and discuss delicate issues. More importantly, Holy Sex gives couples tools to overcome the many difficulties they inevitably face on the road to a truly holy sex life. (From, West’s column, “Dr. Ruth Meets Thomas Aquinas,” posted on his website, ChristopherWest.com).
Readers are left to wonder that they should feel sorry for married people who, because of their age, had no access to such a treasure when they were young. The question comes up: What about the holy and very happy marriages that have been among the blessings of the Catholic Church through the ages? What about the very happy marriage of St. Elizabeth of Hungary? How did all these Catholic couples experience such love, and achieve such content, deprived as they were of such modern “classics” as Popcak’s book on sex?

I have no doubt what my husband would say about all this: he would not have “joined the party,” but rather, reserved glowing praise for genuine Catholic classics, like St. Augustine’s Confessions and St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life.

Having acquainted myself (reluctantly) with Popcak’s Holy Sex, I do not believe it merits the extravagant praise West grants it. I do know that my husband would never write such a review. For one thing, he would have strongly objected to the book’s graphic, explicit nature, which West mistakenly sees as “boldness” rather than vulgarity. For another, Dietrich would have vigorously opposed Popcak's so-called ”one rule” - that married couples “may do whatever they wish,” as long as they don’t use contraception, “both feel loved and respected,” and the marital act culminates within the woman. (p. 193). As another reviewer commented , this reduces marital love to a lowest common denominator, where “everything else can be left to the judgment of each couple. A variety of sexual positions, oral sex, sexual toys, and role playing are all judged permissible as long as couples follow the ‘one rule.’” (Catholicbookreviews.org, 2008)

These ideas would have struck Dietrich von Hildebrand as abhorrent. It is precisely because the marital bed is sacred that one should approach acts within it with enormous reverence. Degrading and perverse sexual behavior - even it is it done by a married couple, who do not practice contraception - should be condemned, as an assault on human dignity. The “pornification” of marriage should be resisted as vigorously as the pornification of our culture.

I cannot describe what Dietrich thought of pornography: the very word triggered an expression of horror on his noble face. The same thing is true of sodomy. He had such a sense for the dignity of human persons that any posture, which sins against this dignity, was repulsive to him. It is in this context, that we should judge Popcak’s shocking suggestion (p. 248) that “as Christopher West has noted in his book, Good News About Sex and Marriage, there is nothing technically forbidding a couple from engaging” in sodomy (provided the husband culminates the normal sex act within his wife); and that, while he discourages the practice of marital sodomy, “nevertheless, following Augustine’s dictum and in the absence of greater clarification from the Church, couples are free to exercise prudential judgment” in this regard.

That a Catholic author would cite “Augustine’s dictum” (presumably the much-misinterpreted “Love, and do what you will”) as a justification for sodomy would have broken my husband’s heart. Furthermore, the fact that an act is not formally condemned does not entitle us to believe that it is right or good. When Cain murdered his brother, he was not disobeying a formal order from God, but he knew he was committing a grave moral evil--against the Natural Law--already written on mankind’s heart. Similarly, petri dish "conception” is an abomination in and by itself, even though it is not in the Ten Commandments. It is against the dignity of a person to be "made" in a laboratory. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Mathew 11: 15)

In this context, it is important for couples to avoid what Canon Jacques Leclerc calls “any corruption of love” in the marital bed. He writes: “There are many who believe that once they are married, they may do whatever they like.” But “they do not understand,” he continues, that “the search for every means of increasing pleasure can be a perversion.” He cautions: “Now, there are even among the most Christian young people many who know nothing of the moral aspect of the problem and have only the rudimentary idea that everything is forbidden outside marriage, but that within marriage everything is allowed. It is thus a good thing to remember that the morality of conjugal relations does not allow that pleasure should be sought by every means, but calls for a sexual life that is at the same time healthy, simple and normal.” (Marriage: A Great Sacrament, 1951, p. 88). These are sentiments which my husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand, would have thoroughly approved.

The Use of Analogy

This discussion of the vulgarization of the intimate sphere, by means of language, leads me to a topic of great importance, which I can only sketch briefly: analogy. Human language seeks ways of expressing those higher realities that are beyond the grasp of our senses. God has left signs of His unseen greatness in the earthly realities that we see, and this is a blessing. But there is also the danger of confusing the beauty of creatures with higher Heavenly realities. The other insight to remember is that analogy, in the AGE OF FAITH, was understood in a way that is completely different from our age of secularism, relativism, subjectivism and eroticism. Hence, a beautiful, sacred book like “the Song of Songs,” which draws parallels between God’s love and romantic love-, is bound to be misinterpreted by the modern, sex-obsessed mind.

One of the many great contributions of Plato is to have perceived that the lower reality is a faint (and therefore imperfect) copy of the higher reality. The higher gives us a key to an understanding of the lower: absolute justice sheds light on the imperfect justice found in the world.

This tradition was highlighted by St. Augustine, and developed by St. Bonaventure, Cardinal Newman, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, to mention some of Augustine's disciples.

Modern Reversal

But our "modern" world, having cut its roots from the past, is constantly tempted to reverse this order, assuming it is the material reality which has the key to so-called spiritual things. This is why Moleschott writes that there is a perfect parallel between the kidneys producing the urine, and the brain producing thought. This is why Freud conquered many thinkers by telling him that sex is the key to what is called love. Unfortunately, West follows the Freudian thought, looking for understanding in the lower rather than the higher. Love is the form of sex, not vice versa.

This false mentality of analogy was strongly opposed by Dietrich von Hildebrand, even though it was (and still is) countenanced by many contemporary writers. Chesterton, on the other hand, took my husband’s side. One day, Chesterton writes, he was taking a walk in the woods with a man whose " . . . pointed beard gave him something of the look of Pan.” At one point this companion said to him: "’Do you know why the spire of that church goes up like that?’ I expressed a respectable agnosticism, and he answered in an off-hand way, ‘Oh, the same as the obelisks; the Phallic Worship of antiquity’. Then I looked across at him suddenly as he lay there leering above his goat-like beard; and for the moment I thought he was not Pan but the Devil. No mortal words can express the immense, the insane incongruity and unnatural perversion of thought involved in saying such a thing . . ." (Everlasting Man, p. 152).

These words are a striking and prophetic rebuke to Christopher West’s efforts to employ “phallic symbolism to describe the Easter candle,” as Dr. David Schindler pointed out in his critique of West. Hugo Rahner has pointed out where these aberrant ideas about “phallic symbolism” came from: pagan mythology, not authentic Christianity. (See his book, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, 1963)

Chesterton’s passage should be read by anyone who believes that whatever is sexual gives us a spiritual message, when in fact the exact opposite is the case.

Analogy and the Virgin Birth

This defective attitude might explain why Christopher West also believes that after the Holy Virgin gave birth to our Savior, she ejected a bleeding placenta, just as his wife had done after delivering their son (“Born of a Woman,” syndicated column, December 8, 2006, ChristopherWest.com). He assumes that these details magnify the mystery of Bethlehem.

Dietrich von Hildebrand would have absolutely opposed such ideas. I recall attending my husband’s talks in his apartment on Central Park West. He meditated on the Holy Mass, and on numerous passages of the New Testament. When talking about the Annunciation or the Nativity, he made his hearers realize that we were entering a "holy zone”, which called for silent adoration. The Archangel Gabriel's visit to Mary is clothed in mystery. But in a way, Bethlehem is still more mysterious: St. Luke tells us absolutely nothing concrete: we know that Mary gave birth to a son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes.

The moment calls for silent adoration. Angels are not mentioned . St. Joseph is not mentioned. We do know, however, and this is a dogma of our faith, that she was a Virgin, prius ac posterius. The conception was miraculous; the delivery was miraculous. Any intrusion into this mystery would have been a source of grief to Dietrich von Hildebrand who, because he recited Vespers and Compline every day, knew Psalm 130 well: "I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me".

For Christopher West to offer graphic, speculative details about the Virgin Birth—like the ejected bleeding placenta—underscores my point. The analogy of the Virgin Birth with the birth of West’s own son is mistaken. The latter, though obviously a great blessing, was not conceived, through God, by a Virgin; and it was not the product of a miraculous delivery. Further, to "tear the veil" away from Bethlehem, and to believe an imaginary, explicit description of it is a more powerful way of referring to the mystery of mysteries, is something that Dietrich von Hildebrand would, as I say, have fiercely contested. Between a normal birth, and the mystery of Bethlehem, lies an abyss which man - out of trembling reverence — should not traverse.

Silent adoration is the only valid response to such a mystery.

2. Other Issues of Language

Love and Pleasure

The prevalence that certain words have in a text give us a key to the author's approach to his topic. Those acquainted with Dietrich von Hildebrand's books on purity, marriage, sex etc. will immediately notice that the key word he utilizes is "love". He tells us, explicitly and repeatedly, that it is love which gives meaning to the intimate sphere, and that the beauty of the union between the spouses is proportionate to the tenderness of their love. It is love that "baptizes" pleasure, and brings it to a much higher level; for pleasure can be experienced by animals, but the sweetness of human pleasure, fortified by love, is altogether different: the word "pleasure" is then no longer adequate. We need a richer vocabulary to refer to it; there is joy, there is gratitude, there is happiness. Isolated pleasure (which by its very nature, does not last, and cannot last) is totally incapable of giving a faint idea of what this "baptized" pleasure is; and is something, of course, denied to animals.

It is, alas, possible to experience intense pleasure, even while the heart is cold. This sheds light on the attraction of brothels: a dark den in which love is banished, and self-centered pleasure is sought for its own sake . . . and paid for. Since Original Sin, this possibility has always existed.

Limitations of English

One of the challenges of speaking about sex from a truly Catholic perspective has to do with something often overlooked: the limitations of the English language. English is a great language, perhaps the richest language on earth. (Relata refero.) But it is, philosophically, relatively poor; and this emerges in any discussions involving the human body. German, in contrast, distinguishes between the word Leib (the body of a person) and Koerper — the body of animals. It makes it clear that a human body should be personified, and that every single bodily activity of Man should be elevated to a degree of nobility not given to animals. This is a powerful incentive to oppose the "cult of the body" so prevalent in our decadent culture.

Another difficulty: English does not distinguish between shame in the negative sense (response to what is ugly, disgusting, repulsive, filthy) and shame that is positive (in the sense of personal, private, intimate, mysterious). This lack of distinction certainly explains certain "simplifications" and “misunderstandings” about human sexuality which punctuate the work of Christopher West.

After our first parents discovered they were naked, they were ashamed. This shame had a positive, instructive purpose, because it made them aware that they had stripped themselves of the beautiful “veil of innocence” God had given them, before they sinned. These profound truths should be embraced and highlighted by Christopher West, not minimized or ignored.

Part 3: Particular Problems Related the Treatment of the Intimate Sphere

1. Dictatorial Relativism and Pornography

Dietrich von Hildebrand and Post-Christian Society

One of the gifts God gave to Dietrich von Hildebrand was to perceive the call of the hour. This gift opened his eyes to the poison of Nazism in the early 1920s, as well as the 1943 treason of Yalta, when both Roosevelt and Churchill practically "delivered" half of Europe to another political demon, Stalin (with the tragic consequences that we know). This gift enabled Dietrich to perceive, in the wake of Vatican II, that something had seriously derailed in our beloved Church. For this reason, he interrupted composing his lifelong work on love to write The Trojan Horse, and other publications (including many articles) to warn people of the danger.

If Dietrich von Hildebrand were alive today, I have no doubt he would be waging war on the most insidious evils of our time: abortion, above all, but also the philosophical assumptions that underlie it, which produce other evils. He would devote all his talents to make people realize that dictatorial relativism, to quote Pope Benedict, and all its wicked offshoots – especially abortion and pornography-- are manifestations of Satan's attacks on our post-Christian society. They form a kind of trinity of evil, in fierce opposition to the Holy Trinity of Christianity.

Puritanism, Yesterday and Today

Dietrich would also have recognized the red herring of “modern puritanism.” Born and raised in the house of a great sculptor, puritanism was unknown to him. Granted that in Victorian society, to take one example, it was a deplorable tendency, characterized by the fact that the intimate sphere was dubbed "shocking." But today, in our sex-saturated society, to concentrate all of one's efforts on this deplorable deformation, is to beat a dead horse. Anyone who reads Christopher West’s books, or listens to his talks, cannot help but notice one thing: he is obsessed by puritanism. Indeed, one might believe, listening to him, that it is the one great danger of our time.

But West is exaggerating, if not “crying wolf.” Puritanism was never the universal problem he imagines (in the Church or outside it); and today it is barely a speck on our cultural landscape. It would be interesting, for those who love statistics, to find out how many people today put coal in their bath water to "cover" the shame of their intimate organs (to refer to a comment of my friend, Professor Michael Waldstein). I grant that it has been done in the past, for grotesque ideas about the human body have always existed... and always will. God has set limits on man’s intelligence, none on his stupidity. It shows the wisdom of Spanish proverb: bicho malo, nunca muere (a nasty beast never dies). But puritanism, to the extent it was a problem in the past, no longer is; and it is farcical to rally an army to fight a tiny battalion, which is no longer a threat.

In the sexual sphere, pornography, not puritanism, is the cancer destroying our society. It is so widespread that it is practically impossible to protect one's children from its venom; it is on the internet, on television, at malls, in department stores, in book stores, at the A&P. Serial rapists often confess that they have been fed on Playboy since they were teenagers. This is where our main concern should be focused. This is why Christopher West’s praise of Hugh Hefner on ABC’s Nightline, linking him with John Paul II, was deplorable: “I actually see very profound historical connections between Hugh Hefner and John Paul II,” he said. (ABC News, May 7, 2009). West’s subsequent attempts to “clarify” his remarks, which he insisted were taken out of context, only underscored the imprudence of making them in the first place.

Not only is any rapprochement between a successor of Peter (now called Venerable) and the founder of Playboy, to be condemned, but a distinction should be made between Hugh Hefner as a child of God, made to His image and likeness, and deserving our love of neighbor, and Hefner as the father of modern-day pornography (a multibillion-dollar business). West downplays, to the point of meaninglessness, these fundamental distinctions.

To poison souls with pornography, especially the young, is a sin that cries out to Heaven. Let us not forget the fearful words of the Gospel about anyone who scandalizes "the little ones": a stone should be put about his neck and he cast into the sea. These are words we should take very seriously.

Hugh Hefner, Tarnished Gold?

At a lecture on June 3, 2009, sponsored by the Personalist Project, Christopher West announced, “For those with the eyes to see, we can look at a person like Hugh Hefner and see gold” — a comment that defies description. Then, catching himself, he qualified it to “tarnished gold.” Granted, we are indeed "tarnished gold," if by that we mean we are created in the image of God, but wounded by Original Sin (except the Blessed One among women); it is equally true, according to Catholic teaching, that there is a huge hierarchy of moral evils: starting with small imperfections, and venial sins, that we can find even among the saints, to quite serious offenses, mortal sins, which separate us from God. Left unrepented, those mortal sins would condemn souls to Hell at the moment of death. Once again, as developed in Dante's Inferno, there is a huge scale. All sins can be forgiven, if confessed, and yet there are sins, which will not be forgiven either in this world or in the next: the sins against the Holy Spirit.

In speaking about human beings flawed by Original Sin as being "tarnished gold," it would have been desirable to make this elementary distinction. But there is another facet of the question, which should have been mentioned.

A man who is the founder of Playboy definitely commits a mortal sin (if there is also full knowledge and full consent), but apart from the personal sin, comes the fearful responsibility of inducing millions of others to engage in the same sin. A thief can, in principle, restore the money stolen; but a murderer cannot bring his victim back to life. Let us suppose that at the moment of death, Hugh Hefner deeply repents his sinful life. God, the God of Mercy will forgive him. But Hefner cannot save the millions of souls, including children, that his activity as a pornographer has victimized.

This is why West’s comments about Hugh Hefner were dangerous and misleading. Never, absolutely never, would Dietrich von Hildebrand have made such an error, even as he would have prayed for Hefner’s conversion.

2. Dualism Properly Defined

One of the strange things happening today is that any hint that the intimate sphere should be marked by a caveat, tempts some people to accuse West’s critics of playing Cassandra, and of "being a dualist". The problem is that “dualism” can have a number of meanings, and not all of them are contrary to Catholic belief.

Today, many thinkers use the word as a condemnation to hurl at people who deny the essential union of man's body with man's soul. This is indeed a grievous metaphysical error: for it is clearly indicated in Genesis that man is made up of a physical body and an immaterial soul. To be made up of two essential parts that are metaphysically so different is the reason why I dub man "a divine invention" (the title of my latest book, from Sapientia Press). To quote Pascal, man is the most mysterious object in nature.

From the very beginning, the Church — the "pillar of truth” has rejected Gnosticism and any form of Manichaeism. Nothing, however, is easier for man than to fall in his reason.

The human mind, wounded by sin, has the uncanny tendency to go from one error to its (apparent) contradiction, while in fact errors are usually first cousins. A case in point is Nestorius, who claimed that there are two persons in Christ: the divine one, and the purely human one. Mary, therefore, is not “Theotokos” (Mother of God); she is only the mother of Christ, the man. This heresy, condemned by the Church, was soon followed by another one by Eutyches, who claimed that Christ had only one nature: the divine one - the consequence being that Christ’s human nature had been totally absorbed by the divine one, and that it is only the latter that has suffered for the salvation of the world. “Anathema sit” was the prompt response of the Church.

Today, the condemned "dualism” just referred to, has become for some a kind of philosophical obsession. They detect "dualism" in the writings of thinkers who totally agree with them in rejecting a false dualism, but, in obsessing about this point, miss a larger one, and the necessary distinctions. Man is indeed made up of body and soul, but the mystery is that the body is physical, material, occupying space, visible, divisible . . . and mortal. None of these characteristics apply to the soul, which is spiritual, does not occupy space, has no sensible characteristics such as color, and is immortal. The union of body and soul in man is such a mystery that many thinkers would dub it the most complex of philosophical problems.

Body and Soul

It is tempting, like the materialists, to claim that man is just a body and that what is called soul, mind, and spirit are only epiphenomena of the body. It is also tempting to angelize him, and discard the body. It is easy to go from one extreme to the next, in this case, materialism to radical idealism. Hegel, guilty of the latter, claimed that “being and thought are identical” — triggering Kierkegaard’s witty retort about Hegel and marriage: “as impersonal as his thought.” In other words, if being and thought are identical, to get married is to marry a thought (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 268).

Rather than face a difficult question, many thinkers choose an easy solution. This was the point made by Chesterton: the materialists keep the easy part (the body), deny the difficult part (the soul), and go home to their tea. Once again, we must marvel at the facility with which people go from one error, that of radical idealism, which says everything is mind (Hegel), to another, that of radical materialism, which says everything is matter (Marx).

The philosophical difficulties involved here should never lead us to lose focus, much less faith. Following Cardinal Newman, we can say that ten thousand difficulties do not justify a single doubt.

We cannot doubt that we have both a body and a soul. The words of Our Lord — “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul” (Mathew 10: 28) — are abundantly clear. Some claim that the union of body and soul is for the benefit of the soul: without sense organs, man's mind would be condemned to blindness. It should, however, also be said that the union of body and soul is very much to the benefit of the body: for the soul “personifies” the body, that is, it clearly separates us from animals.

The organs of many animals are much sharper and better than ours: eagles have amazingly sharp eyesight; a dog's sharpness of hearing is very many times better than ours; bears have a sense of smell that informs them that food is to be found miles and miles away. But eagles do not perceive the beauty of a sunset; dogs cannot appreciate the sublimity of a Beethoven quartet. It is thanks to our unique nature, and the union of body and soul, that God exalts the body of the human person, above other creatures. This has great importance for our topic.

In truth, both the soul and body have full reality, and they are essentially united, though nevertheless distinct. This is why the soul can survive the death of the body, even though it suffers from "widowhood" and longs for the moment when it will be reunited to its own body. The admirable dogma of the resurrection of the body is another divine invention.

But in order to survive the death of the body, the soul clearly must possess a substantial reality of its own; if it were just an "aspect" of the body or an "accident " of the body, it could not be immortal. When the body dies, the soul is a "widowed person".

To accuse of "dualism" (which, to the accusers, means Gnosticism) those who, like St. Augustine, endorse this position, under the pretext that they are denying the essential union of man's body with man's soul, is simply to make a serious philosophical confusion between two very different meanings of dualism. One is to be rejected; the second is deeply incorporated in Christian thought.

Cartesian Dualism and Theology of the Body

Some interpret the key message of Theology of the Body as a healing of the dreadful dualism for which Descartes is the great culprit. Whether Descartes deserves this radical condemnation is not our concern. All we wish in this context is to clarify that the word "dualism'" is ambiguous, and can refer to an un-healthy anti-Christian view, or one that is deeply Christian — and fully orthodox.

Generative vs. Unitive

Christopher West is convinced that prior to Theology of the Body — which he terms a “revolution” — Catholic teaching had presented "sex" as essentially dirty, betraying the true Christian understanding of sex. This is a thought Dietrich von Hildebrand would have strongly rejected. Accidental errors should never be identified with the Church’s essential teaching. Every epoch has its dangers, which need to be addressed, but always in a way which remains faithful to Catholic tradition.

Dietrich understood this principle well, when he challenged certain excesses (not fundamental truths) of Catholic teaching regarding marriage. Early in his days as a Catholic, he noticed a weakness: the whole emphasis was on procreation; the unitive dimension of marriage was either not mentioned, or not properly highlighted. Procreation was often given too much prominence because, in paganism, sensual pleasure had absolute and complete priority. Dietrich’s work on marriage helped redress the balance, by acknowledging (and fully supporting) the traditional teaching on procreation, while rediscovering the importance of love between spouses. This is an example of what we might call the “pedagogical” mission of the Church. She must constantly “sense” what Catholic truth needs to be highlighted, at a given time, and adjust the emphasis on Her holy teaching accordingly, but never fall prey to the fashions of the times, and remain faithful to the sacred deposit of faith.

4. Contemplating the Body

Fixated, as he is, on the supposed plague of “Puritanism,” West promotes defective ideas to fight it. He recommends, for example, that we should stand naked in front of a mirror until we truly liberate ourselves from any feelings of “shame.” This is a piece of advice at which Dietrich von Hildebrand would have recoiled. Let me mention some reasons.

The Meaning of Shame

First, is the contemplation of one's body ever the "theme", that God calls upon us to pursue at a particular moment? Because of the philosophical poverty of the English language, mentioned before, Christopher West confuses "shame" in a negative sense (ugly, disgusting, repulsive, morally repugnant) with pudeur — the aforementioned French word which refers to the reverence we should have toward what is personal, mysterious, private, or sacred. West is wrong in assuming that prior to Theology of the Body, Catholics were taught to be ashamed of their bodies. Belonging to the older generation, I am in a position to disclaim this. We were taught reverence in front of something "mysterious" — counsel which, if not followed, could lead to serious sin. We knew that, when God completed the creation of the world, He saw "that is was good". But we were also reminded that since Original Sin, we should always be "alert" and awake to the dangers of this world. Reverence and humility were always regarded as keys to maintaining our purity. The idea of trying to be “naked without shame” was never contemplated, and for good reasons.

Destructive Vanity

Any psychologist will tell you that anyone contemplating his own body exposes himself to certain dangers: one being narcissism. If our bodies are artistically perfect, inevitably we will experience vanity. If, on the contrary-- and this is mostly the case-- we discover flaws, we shall be tempted to "remedy" the situation by cosmetic surgery. This explains why, according to Dr. Phil, 300,000 thousand American girls, between the age of 15 and l8, have undergone surgery to change the size of their breasts.

Christopher West should know that we live in a society, which is radically materialistic, characterized by a cult of the body. Do we need encouragements to idolize what St Francis called "Brother Ass"? Christopher West puts too much emphasis on the body in a culture in which everything is body-centered.

The Two Bishops

And this brings me to Christopher West's oft-told story of the “two bishops." He writes:
The following story illustrates what mature Christian purity looks like. Two bishops walked out of a Cathedral just as a scantily clad prostitute passed by. One bishop immediately turned away. The other bishop looked at her intently. The bishop who turned away exclaimed, ‘Brother bishop, what are you doing? Turn your eyes!’ When the bishop turned around, he lamented with tears streaming down his face, ‘How tragic that such beauty is being sold to the lusts of men.’ Which one of those bishops was vivified with the ethos of redemption? Which one had passed over from merely meeting the demands of the law to a superabounding fulfillment of the law? (From West’s Theology of the Body Explained, revised edition, p. 215).
Apart from the fact that nobody, except God is in a position to judge, for He alone knows the motivation of the two men — and that West completely retools the historic account of Bishop St. Nonnus to suit his purposes — important remarks are called for. In In Defense of Purity, Dietrich von Hildebrand remarks that some men are "insensitive" to sex. Whether it is a temperamental disposition, or whether it is caused by hormonal problems, it is obvious that, if someone who happens to have this condition looks peacefully at a prostitute, without experiencing any sexual attraction, he is certainly not a pure one. He is not impure; he is not pure.

Avoiding the Occasion of Sin

On the other hand, a humble awareness of our fallen nature creates a strict moral obligation to fly from temptations. Never, absolutely never would a saint say, "I am beyond and above temptations of the flesh". Never would a saint declare that, were he to see a naked woman, his acquaintance with the Theology of the Body would guarantee that he wouldn’t be subject to temptation. As Monsignor Knox points out, to believe a Christian, however faithful, can place himself in spiritual danger and never fall prey to it, is a common error among religious enthusiasts. The Beghards come to mind: Thus these enthusiasts “looked upon decency and modesty as marks of inward corruption, as the characters of a soul that was still under the dominion of the sensual, animal, and lascivious spirit, and that was not really united to the divine nature. This was the account they themselves gave of their promiscuous lodging, and the nudism practiced in their assemblies.” (Enthusiasm, 1950, p. 125) Such people, writes Msgr. Knox, believed that once “they yield their bodies to the Holy Ghost,” they ”would never sin again.” (p. 567) In the presence of a living woman, he continues, the enthusiast, is “ trained to feel as though he were standing by a wall of stone. His eye must be rendered cold, his pulse must be kept calm.” (p. 573). But this is to commit the sin of presumption.

It must be remarked, however, that there are situations in which a priest can find himself in dangerous situation "without being endangered": for example when a slightly clad prostitute is struck by a car, and calls for help. It is the duty of a priest to respond to this call: God will give him the grace to concentrate exclusively on his mission, bringing the dying person to God. Professional grace is also given to doctors: otherwise, no doctor should accept operating on a very beautiful female body because, instead of operating on a sick patient, he would be preoccupied with sexual fantasies.

Asceticism

Why is asceticism so stressed in religious orders and in authentic Catholic tradition, be it hair shirts, abstinence, the discipline, or the limiting of one's sleep to a minimum? Is that ever mentioned by Christopher West? Does he not know that John Paul II himself engaged in acts of self-mortification? And yet, that fact might be of great importance to teach us how to love, and it is love, which is the key to sex.

In one of his columns about a pornographic play by radical feminist Eve Ensler, often performed at college campuses (whose very name is too graphic to mention), West wrote that he saw it as “tragic,” not filthy. Does not West realize that “Satan revels in filth” and this is how he seduces unsuspecting people? Once again, the very serious difference of approach between him and Dietrich von Hildebrand comes to the fore. Let us recall that in In Defense of Purity, my husband reminds us that this sphere can be the kingdom of the evil one. It can be diabolical. Filthy is then the proper word to refer to the perversions in which men and women are so inventive.

Moreover, the body is meant to be a gift to one's spouse in the sacrament of marriage. One should never make the "gift" the object of self-contemplation.

Part 4: The Work of Christopher West and Its Relation to that of Dietrich von Hildebrand

Since Vatican II, the Church has undergone a severe, manifold crisis: a crisis of faith, a crisis of authority, an intellectual crisis (confusion is widespread), a moral crisis. We should be grateful for any "soldier" who enters the arena and is offering his services to the King. We should be grateful for any written or oral testimony that help people who find their way back to the fold. As St. Paul writes, we have different gifts, different talents, and use them for God's glory (Romans 12:6-8).

1. “Revolution” or Development of Doctrine?

However, no “soldier” in the service of the Church is ever called to be a “revolutionary”. As previously mentioned, Dietrich von Hildebrand was conscious that he had shed light on one very important truth that had often been obscured, not in Catholic doctrine, but in Catholic practice. He would call it — referring to his revered Cardinal Newman — a possible development of doctrine, but never a “revolution.” There is no revolution in the Catholic Church. Divine revelation ended with the death of the Apostles. The mission of the Church is to spread the Divine Message, and to clarify and re-clarify it over the years.

Christopher West is fond of quoting George Weigel’s provocative statement that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is a “theological time bomb.” But what does that mean? Does it mean that “Christians must complete what the sexual revolution began,” as West told Nightline? Even the highly influential Weigel himself, to his credit, wrote in a foreword to one of Christopher West’s books: “A sex-saturated culture imagines that the sexual revolution has been liberating. The opposite is the truth.” (Theology of the Body Explained, 2003, p. XVI).

Words such as "revolution” and similar bombastic expressions are appealing—but irresponsible. Inflated words and phrases are like a psychological massage—used throughout the ages by people who know the power of words. Most people live in such a state of spiritual and intellectual somnolence that such expressions might be useful to shake them out of their lethargy. But they are misleading. As stated, there is no revolution in the Church: the one great tsunami was the Incarnation.

2. The Calamity of Discipleship

The purpose of this paper was to compare Dietrich von Hildebrand's approach to the "intimate sphere", and that of Christopher West. Let me be clear and state that West — to my knowledge - has never explicitly claimed to be a disciple of Dietrich von Hildebrand; nevertheless, I know from his personal testimony that West has a deep appreciation for the work of my husband, and I know he has publicly praised it. The question is whether West can therefore, in any real sense, at least by implication, be considered my husband’s disciple. For the many reasons outlined in this essay, I don’t believe he can.

Let us leave aside the incontestable fact that Christopher West has great oratorical talent, and does much good. I am sure that he wants to work for God’s glory.

God can use any "tool" that He pleases to bring souls back to him. The point I would like to emphasize is that Dietrich von Hildebrand's approach is widely different from the one of Christopher West, and that therefore it would be misleading to call West a disciple of my husband. To be a disciple is not an easy task: a superficial knowledge of the history of philosophy teaches us that innumerable thinkers consider themselves to be disciples of Aristotle, but whether "the master of those who know" (to quote Dante) would give the prize to any of them (that is, whether Averroes, Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas or Siger of Brabant deserve this honor) is something we shall find out in another world, when the question will have lost all interest.

Kant repudiated Fichte who claimed to be his disciple. The latter in turn refused to recognize Schelling as a valid interpreter of his message. Kierkegaard wrote "to have a disciple is the worst of calamities". It does happen that people call themselves (or act as if they are) “disciples” of a great thinker when in fact they can, on some issues, seriously deviate from their mentor’s views. Whether Christopher West, however well-intentioned, is a true disciple of John Paul II is at least questionable - as are many aspects of his presentations. The question must be asked: Why is it that John Paul II’s presentation of the Theology of the Body was never seriously challenged, whereas Christopher West’s interpretation of it has unleashed enormous controversy? Could it be that West has misrepresented it in fundamental respects, and worse, employed his own offensive language and “pop culture” ideas to vulgarize it?

Noli Me Tangere

Here, I would like to reflect on an incident in the life of the Little Flower, St Therese of Lisieux. When a student grabbed her as she was stepping out of the train, she responded as a proper female should. She recommended herself to the Holy Virgin, and looked at him so severely that he immediately let her loose (Deposition of her sister Genevieve). Would West ridicule this great saint for being a “prude”? If he did, he would be wrong, for St. Therese’s response was thoroughly Catholic, and the only right one: she was responding with noli me tangere [Don’t touch me]. This attitude has nothing to do with an unhealthy fear of the body, or bodily contact, but a very healthy modesty and self-respect.

This "noli me tangere" is a key expression regarding the mystery of the supernatural. This is why, Dietrich von Hildebrand, who came from a privileged cultural and artistic background, and had been acquainted with holy paintings since his earliest youth, would never have made remarks about the size of the Holy Virgin’s bosom, as West has, repeating with praise an exhortation for Catholics to “rediscover” Mary’s “abundant breasts” (Crisis magazine, March , 2002) To Dietrich’s mind, this would be an act of irreverence. Her breasts were sacred and the response to the sacred is awe and not a critical approach to the size of "the blessed breasts that sucked thee". True religious art has always understood this.

Blessed by an exceptional artistic background, Dietrich was, from his earliest youth, trained to appreciate works of art according to their artistic perfection. One of the requirements of sacred art is that the artist succeeds in creating, through visible means, an atmosphere of sacredness. When Mary is represented, the crucial element is that the image inspires in the viewer a feeling of reverence; whether she is painted with “abundant breasts” is totally irrelevant — otherwise, most other icons would have to be discarded. It suffices for the faithful believer to be inspired by a work of art; he or she should never be titillated by it.

2. Differences of Christopher West From Dietrich von Hildebrand

As Dietrich von Hildebrand's wife, I can state the following, as a matter of summary, regarding the differences between my husband and Christopher West:

1. My husband would not refer to the Theology of the Body as “a revolution”: Dietrich knew that revolutions aim at destroying the past, and starting anew. An authentic development of doctrine, however, is something completely different: it takes from our sacred deposit of faith, and helps it blossom into a flower, but it does not invent, or contradict it. When the Theology of the Body is presented as a radical revolution, and twisted into something John Paul II never intended, Catholics should immediately stop, and pull back, and ask themselves: “What am I being fed?” One cannot be too cautious about protecting one’s soul. But, to the extent the Theology of the Body might be "a development of doctrine,” Dietrich would have welcomed it — provided such a claim remained faithful to John Paul’s original intent, and was made in a reverent and orthodox way. Each age in the Church sheds particular light on some facets of the divine message, and the Theology of the Body, properly interpreted, and consistent with historic Catholic teaching, can be seen as an example of that. But Dietrich would never have regarded it as a radical “innovation.”

2. In contrast to the loose language used by Christopher West, Dietrich von Hildebrand carefully chose the words he used when referring to the mysteries of our faith, or to things that are intimate and sacred. Words such as "crap" and "crapola" would jar his spiritual hearing. He knew, as did Kierkegaard, that “vulgarity is always popular,” but nonetheless never resorted to it, for, as St. Francis de Sales wrote: “Our words are a faithful index to the state of our souls.” (Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, chapter 26).

When referring to mysteries (such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Eucharist) Dietrich’s choice of words invited his listeners to a trembling reverence and adoration. Christopher West's aforementioned remarks, in contrast - however well intended-- about the "bloodied membrane" that the Holy Virgin ejected after Christ's birth would strike Dietrich as close to blasphemy. Were he with us today, Dietrich would have surely quoted the Holy Office’s warning to West: “Theological works are being published in which the delicate question of Mary’s virginity ‘in partu’ is treated with a deplorable crudeness of expression and, what is more serious, in flagrant contradiction to the doctrinal tradition of the Church and to the sense of respect the faithful have.” (From the Holy Office monitum, July , 1960, reprinted in A Short Treatise on the Virgin Mary by Rene Laurentin, AMI Press, 1991, pp. 318-329)

In closing, let me repeat that I do not wish to take away any good Christopher West has accomplished, only caution him and his followers about errors I believe he has committed, and which my husband, whom Pope Pius XII called a “twentieth century Doctor of the Church,” would, I am certain, have been the first to point out. With his many talents, Christopher West has much to offer the Church; but I believe he will only fulfill his potential if he presents the Theology of the Body according to the traditions of our Church - reverently, with humility — and liberate himself from the wayward “enthusiasms” of our time.

Postscript: Earlier this year, and after this paper was begun, Christopher West announced that he would be taking a six-month sabbatical from his usual work. It is my sincere and prayerful hope that he will use this valuable time, of “personal and professional renewal,” to consider the many concerns that have been raised about his work-- and thereby “renew” his approach as well.

I submit this reflection on the philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand in the hopes that it redirects Christopher West’s thinking. I further remind the reader that the West website continues to offer West’s programs, including courses for youth in public settings. My husband has written extensively on sex education in the schools, standing firmly behind the great encyclical, Christian Education for Youth, by Pope Pius XI, 1929. There, His Holiness roundly condemns sex education classes. Dietrich von Hildebrand’s booklet, Sex Education: The Basic Issues, can be read and ordered at the Veil of Innocence website, www.veilofinnocence.org.

Acknowledgements:

This article (for which mistakes, inaccuracies and imperfections I carry full responsibility for) is in fact a work of collaboration with several thinkers I admire and respect. Let me mention, among others, Father Brian Mullady, OP; Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger, F.I., Fr. Anthony Mastroeni and James Likoudis. They have read the manuscript. Their comments and criticisms have been highly appreciated and most helpful.

Dawn Eden also deserves notable mention: her in-depth knowledge of the work of Christopher West has been crucial to me. Through her scholarship, I made the acquaintance of several texts I had not read. I owe her a special thanks.

Last, but not least, this article was truly done in collaboration with my friend, William Doino. His knowledge of history , his intelligence, and endless patience with the changes I kept introducing, was of such value to me, that I do not hesitate to say that without him, this manuscript never would have been published. Thank you to all these dear friends. May it all be ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Alice von Hildebrand.

[Hat tip to D.]

What Is a Church Supposed to Look Like?

2010-07-07T23:58:00.003-02:00

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

What is a Catholic church supposed to look like? It can never hurt to start with the obvious: it’s called a church. That means it’s supposed to represent to us and remind us of the Church (with a capital C). Now, what do we say in our Profession of Faith about the Church? We identify her four “notes” or essential characteristics when we say that she is “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.” Almost in the same breath, we then link the Church to her life-giving Sacraments and the ultimate goal to which our membership in her carries us: “we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” An entire understanding of church architecture is sketched out in these few words of the Creed.

The Four Notes of Church Architecture

“One.” We are talking about one and the same Church across all the ages. No matter how different the times, nations, races, languages, customs, and cultures, there is still one and only one Church of Christ, which has its concrete, singular, historical existence in the Catholic Church founded on the rock of Saint Peter.¹ So the church building and its furnishings ought to convey a sense of something one, visibly and tangibly one, that is greater than all of our differences. We concretely express this mystery by an architecture that remains in continuity with ecclesiastical Tradition. In spite of all differences of architectural style—Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical—there have always been what you might call “artistic constants.”² These constants have been largely lost in the past forty years, so it is particularly urgent to recover them if we are going to feel that we belong to a Church truly one across time and space. A good building is good catechesis on the identity and unicity of the Church.

“Apostolic.” I jump ahead to this note of the Church because it clarifies that the unity or oneness just spoken of consists in belonging to the Church founded by Christ on the Apostles, especially on Peter, the Rock. Our Lord Jesus gave to the Apostles the Deposit of Faith, what we call Apostolic Tradition. This is the fundamental content of the Faith, passed down from Bishop to Bishop across all centuries in their public ministry of preaching and teaching. This is why we are, or ought to be, especially attentive to the teaching and example of the Pope, the Successor of Saint Peter and the Head of the Apostolic College. The church building, for its part, passes down that same Tradition in artistic form, in a kind of silent visual preaching.

“Holy.” This characteristic is arguably the most important of all when it comes to architecture. A church should represent and reflect and remind us of the holiness of God, the holiness to which we have been called and in which we share. Hence, verticality—the upward thrust of architectural and decorative elements—is crucial in a sanctuary. When we enter a well-designed church, our mind, our feelings, are immediately drawn upwards to God, the Holy One of Israel; to the Divine, the Transcendent, the Infinite. We are helped to leave behind for a short time the mundane and profane world in which we sometimes feel trapped; we are reminded that our Christian vocation stretches beyond the workaday world, beyond even the great good of loving our neighbor through spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Our home, our abiding city, our goal as rational creatures and members of Christ’s Mystical Body, is finally God alone, joined to His beatitude, resting in His eternal joy. The church building and especially the sanctuary serve as witnesses of that eternal promise, hope, joy, and calling. We should always feel as if we are crossing into another world when we enter a Catholic church: “the life of the world to come, Amen.”

The Creed connects the four notes of the Church with the profession of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” as if to say: the very purpose of the Church militant is to go out and sanctify men, bringing them into the Kingdom of God by baptism and keeping them healthy in that kingdom through the seven Sacraments: “holy things for the holy,” as the Byzantine liturgy says of the Eucharist. If we lapse from holiness, the Church our Mother has the merciful remedy of the sacrament of Penance to restore us to communion with God. Baptism and the Eucharist, the gateway of the Sacraments and their summit, proclaim to us the essential “business” for which a church building is consecrated, set apart from all other buildings: it is where holy rites and mysteries are performed. Accordingly, a church should be, in its overall appearance and in its details, a fitting home to such rites and mysteries. It itself should be “sacramental”—a visible, unambiguous, powerful sign of the rich mercies of God, poured out for us in the seven Sacraments of the New Law. It should be as much as possible a glorious place, a place resplendent with an aura of sacredness, dignity, solemnity, majesty. That is why, from the earliest records of church architecture and furnishings, we find such a prominent place allotted to gold and silver, precious stones, mosaics, and elegant woodwork, joined later on by statuary, tapestries, and stained glass.

“Catholic.” This term means “universal,” that is, all over the world, all ages, all peoples. Taken in that sense we are brought back to our earlier points about “one” and “apostolic.” But there is more. Catholic means not idiosyncratic, privatized, closed off, content with one’s own local mediocrity. Being Catholic drives us to excellence in communion with all the great Saints, Priests, Bishops, Popes, and laity of all ages prior to ours and in all ages to come; indeed it goes beyond history into the Church suffering in Purgatory and the Church triumphant in Heaven. Reflecting as well as it can that vast Communion of Saints to which we belong by the privilege of our baptism, church architecture should therefore never be characterized primarily, much less exclusively, by what is local, regional, or temporary in taste, but should partake of a universality and nobility that all Catholics would be able to recognize and rejoice in as their own. We are beckoned to think beyond ourselves and our limitations, aspiring to the best that our Tradition has to offer us. This doesn’t mean that optimally every church ought to replicate Saint Peter’s Basilica, much less that any single historical style can be identified with the Faith. It does mean, however, that phenomena like shoddy workmanship, ho-hum blandness, low-key primitivism, or chilly modernism can never have a legitimate place in the art forms employed by the Church to express her catholicity.

Resurrection and Eternal Life

“We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Through His Church, Jesus Christ preaches ineffable mysteries that transcend the grasp of reason. We should feel overwhelmed by the mystery of our Faith; it’s not a warm cozy little pet on a leash but an awesome “weight of glory” (cf. 2 Cor 4:17) that summons our whole being into a new reality: the reality of the Divine, of Eternity, of Infinity. The church building should pull its weight, so to speak, in proclaiming the awesomeness, the profundity, the beyondness of the mysteries of Faith, so that we may be continually challenged by the sovereign reality of God confronting our narrow, horizontal, worldly thoughts. A good church is a wordless preacher, a patient teacher, an imposing yet gentle guide. According to our artistic heritage, are there definite ways in which this proclamation is to be achieved? Absolutely yes.

The first principle of good church design is verticality. This will apply above all to that Holy of Holies within the church, the sanctuary. When you enter a church, your bodily eye should be captured by the vertical elements in the sanctuary and drawn upwards by them, which in turn stirs the heart to thoughts of the divine. The verticality which is such an emphatic aspect of all traditional Western church architecture bespeaks the holiness and transcendence of God as well as the sacredness of what goes on in the sanctuary. Belonging to this verticality are also elements that cast into relief, almost like italics or boldface type on a page of text, special parts of the church, for example a baldachin or tester over the high altar and an elevated tabernacle with a veil. Such features act as magnets to draw the attention to where it belongs: the altar of sacrifice; the crucifix that puts before us the price of our redemption; the Most Holy Eucharist in which the Redeemer Himself is made present to us. As pilgrims in this world, our very thoughts and desires should be on pilgrimage eastwards to the eternal fatherland where the sun of justice never sets, and so we must be shaped and molded by all those mysteries that both bring this kingdom into our midst and also beckon us beyond ourselves and our world into that kingdom, which is “not of this world,” as Our Lord says to Pontius Pilate (Jn 18:36).
Recognizably sacred imagery and elements—for example, a prominent crucifix of the pierced Savior, statues of Saints, many real candles, a dominant and dazzling tabernacle—stress continuity with the apostolic Faith, in this way guarding the unity of the Church and offering an ongoing catechesis of the Faithful. Moreover, there ought to be among Catholics a willingness, even an eagerness, to reintroduce traditional elements that have sometimes been neglected, such as a proper ambo for the proclamation of the Word of God. In ancient and medieval churches, the ambo was often a massive, elevated, highly decorated structure; how readily one could believe that the lector was chanting the very words of God, when his perch was so lofty and sublime! A dignified ambo proclaims the unique dignity of Sacred Scripture even before any word has been uttered: as the saying goes, the ambo speaks for itself, disposing the listeners to reverence the Word proclaimed from it.

More generally, any church should be suffused with, and transmit into the souls of those who abide in it, the three principles of the beautiful: proportion, integrity, clarity.³ Designs should be balanced in their elements and colors, whole in their conception and execution rather than partial or piecemeal, and conveying a clear, unmuffled message—e.g., “we are Roman Catholics: we believe in the saving death of Jesus made present to us in the Sacrifice of the Mass, we believe in the intercession of the Saints”—instead of the vaguely Christian atmosphere of a Protestant church, the neutral emptiness of a civic meeting hall, or the businesslike right angles and beige tones of corporate rooms.

A last guideline might be mentioned: loving attentiveness to detail. Within the limits of the possible, one should not overlook details such as carved or stenciled designs for statuary niches or on the backdrop of a wall-mounted crucifix, patches of appropriate color on or around statuary, Persian-style carpets, handsomely carved chairs and benches. All these things are ways of saying, again without the need for words: “This building is unique; its content is priceless; what goes on here is awe-inspiring and sublime; we are in the court of the Great King.” Our world suffers from a glut of information and, in parallel lines, the culture of the contemporary Church often suffers from an excess of heavy-handed didacticism. What is needed far more is the symbolic language woven of visual beauty, ritual solemnity, silence and traditional music. This language has and will always have a far deeper effect on the souls of worshipers than any amount of explaining could ever do.

Vatican II Strongly Agrees

Judging from what the neo-modernists, aided and abetted by their hierarchical and artistic allies, have managed to do to churches in the name of “implementing the Council,” a traditional Catholic might be forgiven for thinking that the Council was to blame for the invasion of sterility and ugliness into the domain of sacred art. Pope Benedict, in contrast, has been patiently urging us to study the actual teaching of the Council and not to give the benefit of the doubt to “anarchic utopianists” with their tendentious, at times deliberately fallacious interpretations.⁴ The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) has something extremely relevant and important to tell us about sacred art and what it should be like:

Very rightly the fine arts are considered to number among the noblest activities of man’s talent, especially religious art and the culmination of the same, namely sacred art. These arts, by their very nature, look toward the infinite Divine Beauty which in some way they express by human works; and they achieve their purpose of redounding to God’s praise and glory in proportion as these works have no other aim than turning men’s minds most devoutly to God.

Holy Mother Church has therefore always been the friend of the fine arts and has continually sought their noble service, with the special aim that all things set apart for use in divine worship should be truly worthy, becoming, and beautiful, signs and symbols of supernatural things, and has trained artists [to the same end]. In fact, the Church has, with good reason, always reserved to herself the right to pass judgment upon the arts, deciding which of the works of artists are congruous with faith, piety, and laws religiously handed down, and thereby fitted for sacred use.

The Church has been particularly sedulous to see that sacred furnishings should worthily and beautifully serve the dignity of worship, [from that vantage] admitting changes in material, form, or ornamentation brought in by the progress of technical arts with the passage of time.⁵

More surprising still, given the unrelenting war that has been waged against the foregoing principles, we read in the third edition of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, from 2001, that “sacred buildings and requisites for divine worship should . . . be truly worthy and beautiful and be signs and symbols of heavenly realities” (n. 288).⁶ For this reason, “the character and beauty of the place and all its furnishings should foster devotion and show forth the holiness of the mysteries celebrated there” (n. 294). This extends to the materials used: “In selecting elements for church appointments, there should be a concern for the genuineness of things [rerum veritas] and a striving for that which will be for the instruction of the Faithful and the dignity of the entire sacred place” (n. 292). It is all about the very purpose of a church: the worship of Almighty God, and the representation to us of the divine realities, revealed truths, transcendent mysteries that this worship is about, or, better said, is totally enmeshed in.

And the Holy Father Strongly Agrees

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist Sacramentum Caritatis (2007), emphatically underlines the connection between beauty and liturgical celebrations in all their aspects, including the architectural space that surrounds them:

The manner of celebrating [the liturgy] should foster a sense of the sacred and the use of outward signs which help to cultivate this sense, such as, for example, the harmony of the rite, the liturgical vestments, the furnishings and the sacred space. … The profound connection between beauty and the liturgy should make us attentive to every work of art placed at the service of the celebration. Certainly an important element of sacred art is church architecture, which should highlight the unity of the furnishings of the sanctuary, such as the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle, the ambo, and the celebrant’s chair. Here it is important to remember that the purpose of sacred architecture is to offer the Church a fitting space for the celebration of the mysteries of Faith, especially the Eucharist. … Everything related to the Eucharist should be marked by beauty. Special respect and care must also be given to the vestments, the furnishings, and the sacred vessels, so that by their harmonious and orderly arrangement they will foster awe for the mystery of God, manifest the unity of the Faith, and strengthen devotion.⁷

Holy Mother Church goes so far as to say that the liturgy should be like Heaven on earth. Roman Catholics familiar with the Byzantine Rite, or Eastern Catholics who cherish and practice it as their very own, are blessed with the experience of a liturgical tradition that exhibits with peculiar poignancy, fervor, and artistic beauty this connection between earthly shadows and heavenly realities. Would that most Latin rite Catholics today could have in their own churches, with the Roman Rite, any kind of experience parallel to this! For a sizeable minority the Eastern Divine Liturgy has become a true haven, an escape from now-universal ritual abuses and the banality of unremitting horizontalism. Pope Benedict, as we know from his courageous actions no less than from his lucid words, is a relentless foe of such abuse and banality; he is a constant promoter of that ever-youthful spirit found in all authentic worship, Byzantine or Latin. Consider what he says in the same Apostolic Exhortation:

The beauty of the liturgy is part of this mystery; it is a sublime expression of God’s glory and, in a certain sense, a glimpse of heaven on earth. The memorial of Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice contains something of that beauty which Peter, James, and John beheld when the Master, making his way to Jerusalem, was transfigured before their eyes (cf. Mk 9:2). Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.⁸

In the same vein the Holy Father remarked in a General Audience last autumn:

What is beauty—which writers, poets, musicians, and artists contemplate and translate into their language—if not the reflection of the splendor of the Eternal Word made flesh? Dear brothers and sisters, may the Lord help us to rediscover the way of beauty as one of the ways, perhaps the most attractive and fascinating, to be able to find and love God.⁹

Entering a church, we should think immediately of our Lord Jesus Christ, of God and of eternity, and of the destiny of our soul. A church must be different from all other spaces: “The Faithful, crossing the threshold of the sacred building, entered a time and space that were different from those of ordinary life,” Pope Benedict says of Europe’s medieval cathedrals. Speaking of a Romanesque monastery church in particular, he observed:

Truly it would not be presumptuous to say that, in a liturgy completely centred on God, we can see, in its rituals and chant, an image of eternity. Otherwise, how could our forefathers, hundreds of years ago, have built a sacred edifice as solemn as this? Here the architecture itself draws all our senses upwards, towards “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined: what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). In all our efforts on behalf of the liturgy, the determining factor must always be our looking to God.¹⁰

The Way of Beauty

In 2006 the Pontifical Council for Culture issued a document entitled The Way of Beauty, Privileged Pathway for Evangelization and Dialogue. As I read the document, I found myself increasingly impressed by its strong, even eloquent statements about the irreplaceable role of beauty in the sacred liturgy and in everything pertaining to it. Having urged that the liturgy must be returned to its true splendor (implying that it has fallen away from it in the less than splendid post-conciliar years), the Pontifical Council goes on to say:

No less important is the promotion of sacred art to accompany aptly the celebration of the mysteries of the Faith, to restore beauty to ecclesiastical buildings and liturgical objects. In this way they will be welcoming, and above all they will be able to convey the authentic meaning of Christian liturgy and encourage the full participation of the Faithful in the divine mysteries.¹¹

It seems charming to me that in this passage the full participation of the Faithful, a notion that in recent decades has been used with all the subtlety of a flagellating whip to enforce all manner of change, is here linked with having spaces and things that are actually worth being around because they are beautiful, because they are suited to mysterious realities, and because they communicate the meaning of what is taking place. Benighted me, I had been led to believe that my heartfelt participation would achieve new heights if only I could be standing in an empty whitewashed church with a block of stone for an altar and some wooden vessels. No distractions from what is essential! Fortunately the Pontifical Council’s document handily shreds this kind of antiseptic minimalism—it even calls for change in line with Catholic Tradition: “The churches must be aesthetically beautiful and well decorated, the liturgies accompanied by beautiful chants and good music, the celebrations dignified and preaching well prepared.” And why? Because these things are “conditions that facilitate the action of the grace of God.”¹² Granting that all this is welcome advice based on sound judgment, I do find myself wishing at times that we would begin to see emanating from Rome some legislative measures with teeth, capable of preventing or at least minimizing further “renovations” of traditional churches and the construction of new modernist eyesores.¹³

A Common Objection^[14]

But, someone might say, isn’t all this expenditure of money on the sacred arts wasteful, self-indulgent, irresponsible? Couldn’t we save all this money and disburse it to the poor instead? Or, if such work has already occurred, couldn’t we sell the ornate chairs, the detailed statuary, the gold vessels and silk vestments, the marble, the tapestry or cloth hangings, the candlesticks and crucifix, the pipe organ, and so forth—couldn’t we sell all this and, again, give the proceeds to the poor? Curiously, this objection was first raised not by a parish committee but by an apostate Apostle named Judas Iscariot, and that was probably the initial reason it could never be taken very seriously by the Church.¹⁵ But a little reflection would carry us further into the heart of the matter. As Pope John Paul II’s last encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, teaches us:

Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no “extravagance,” devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the first disciples charged with preparing the “large upper room,” she has felt the need, down the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery.¹⁶

It is all a matter of recognizing—and then, what is more difficult, letting our entire worldview, our deepest thoughts and innermost feelings, be totally shaped by—the incomparable importance and immeasurable dignity of what happens in a Catholic church, whether at the baptismal font, or in the confessional, or upon the altar of sacrifice. Once we are possessed of a vivid awareness of what is actually happening there, we know that nothing more wondrous, more life-changing, or more worthy of our greatest love, sacrifice, and attention to detail, could ever happen anywhere else in the world. The church ought to look special because it is special; it ought to look different because it is different, radically different from every other building on this earth. For Catholics who know in faith that Jesus Christ is really, truly, substantially present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the church is truly, in a way, God’s home on this earth until the end of time. Hence Ecclesia de Eucharistia continues:

With this heightened sense of mystery, we understand how the Faith of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist has found historical expression not only in the demand for an interior disposition of devotion, but also in outward forms meant to evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event being celebrated.

These outward forms include a “rich artistic heritage” of “architecture, sculpture, painting, and music.”¹⁷

In a circular letter Excellence in Art of April 11, 1971, Pope Paul VI said quite simply: “In commissioning artists and choosing works of art that are to become part of a church, the highest artistic standard is to be set in order that art may aid faith and devotion and be true to the reality it is to symbolize and the purpose it is to serve.” The goal, the overall intention, has to be to give to God, the Greatest and Best, the greatest and best we can possibly give. Obviously one must plan well, with prudence and good sense, in order to achieve this goal correctly, but honoring God with excellence and feeding His people with beauty remains the polestar of the journey. Paul VI even suggested that our modern world, which prides itself on technical prowess, streamlined efficiency, a “scientific” approach to life, has an acute need for the beautiful, for that which is precisely not the latest invention, subject to the strictures of productivity or the analysis of calculation.

This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the heart of man; it is that precious fruit which resists the wear and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share [the same] things in admiration.¹⁸

Echoing these noble sentiments of Paul VI, The Way of Beauty explains:

To offer the men and women of today the true beauty [viz., Christ], to make the Church attentive to always announce, in good times and in bad, the beauty that saves and that is felt in those places where eternity has planted its tent over time, is to offer reasons to live and hope to those who are without it or risk losing it. The Church, witness to the final meaning of life, seed of confidence at the heart of human history, appears already as the people of the beauty that saves, for it anticipates in these last times something of the beauty promised by this God who will bring all things to completion in Him at the end of time. Hope, the militant anticipation of the coming into the saved world promised in the crucified and resurrected Son, is a proclamation of beauty. Of this, the world has a particular need.

Is that not the Gospel truth? In its escalating revolt against order, proportion, harmony, integrity, even nature, the modern world has created for itself an increasingly urgent need, one might well say an emergency need, for Divine Beauty, for everything and anything that can recall it to mind and represent it before our eyes. We need more than ever to be surrounded and penetrated by the beautiful, a healing balm that draws the mind to rest in sinu Patris, in the heart of the Father, the simple source of all beings and of their manifold perfections. Because grace builds on nature, we cannot dismiss the natural, sensible foundations of our interior life. Let our ecclesiastical buildings and all they contain bear eloquent witness to the luminous Truth, merciful Goodness, and ravishing Beauty of our Lord and God, Maker of Heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.+

Image credits:

St. Albertus Catholic Church, Detroit, Michigan; first Polish church in Detroit. Photo by parishioner, courtesy of A.B.
Sweetest Heart of Mary Catholic Church, Detroit, Michigan; second Polish church in Detroit with a colorful history and magnificent interior. Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71288712@N00/364667558

Notes

See Lumen Gentium n. 8. [back]

For the artistic and philosophical underpinnings of much of my argument, see Steven J. Schloeder, Architecture in Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998); Denis McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2009). [back]

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas: see Summa theologiae I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; q. 39, a. 8, corp. [back]

From Pope Benedict XVI’s General Audience of March 10, 2010: “We know, in fact, how after the Second Vatican Council, some were convinced that everything should be new, that there should be another Church, that the pre-conciliar Church was finished and that we would have another, totally ‘other’ Church. An anarchic utopianism!” [back]

Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 122. A widely available translation, corrected in light of the original Latin. [back]

This document pertains, of course, to the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, but it indicates a hermeneutic of continuity rather than one of rupture and discontinuity. [back]

Sacramentum Caritatis, nn. 40–41. [back]

Sacramentum Caritatis, n. 35. [back]

General Audience, November 18, 2009. [back]

Address at Heiligenkreuz, Austria, September 9, 2007. [back]

Unfortunately the document as published on the Vatican website contains no paragraph or section numbers, so more exact citation is not possible. [back]

In context the document seems to qualify this statement by calling them “merely conditions,” but the point is a theological one, and true: “the Faithful need to be educated to pay attention not merely to the aesthetic dimension of the liturgy, however beautiful it may be, but also to understand that the liturgy is a divine act that is not determined by an ambiance, a climate, or even by rubrics, for it is the mystery of faith celebrated in church.” That is, aestheticism would be a vice because what is primary is always faith in the divine action. However, our Faith itself is sustained, nourished, elicited, and instructed by beauty, as the same document describes at length, so there is really no tension here. [back]

Such intervention was called for in an “Appeal to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the Return to an Authentically Catholic Sacred Art” (available at http://www.appelloalpapa.blogspot.com/), but so far, nothing has come of it. Perhaps something shall; let us pray for that intention. Meanwhile, all over the world, beautiful sanctuaries continue to be wrecked in the name of Vatican II, and new space-alien laboratories continue to be erected, presumably in anticipation of Vatican III’s successful contact with extraterrestrial life. Thanks be to God, such expensive departures from sanity are becoming fewer than they once were, yet one wonders why Rome in all these decades has never lifted a finger to stop the atrocities. To our shame, we are indebted instead to atheistic Ministries of Culture that forbade, in the name of history and artistic patrimony, the jackhammer and the bulldozer. [back]

[Note: this note was excluded in the final "editor's cut," and is retained as a place holder only to avoid breaking the blog automatic footnote sequence.--P.B.] [back]

In John’s Gospel the objection is specifically Judas’s (Jn 12:4–6); in Matthew’s, all the disciples make the complaint (Mt 26:8–9); and in Mark, “some” unspecified persons (Mk 14:4-5). It is also noteworthy that, according to the Synoptics, Judas went out to betray Jesus right after this episode in which Jesus praised the woman for doing an extravagant deed for Him. [back]

Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 48. [back]

Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 49. [back]

Message to Artists, December 8, 1965. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "What Is a Church Supposed to Look Like," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 6-11, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.]

Divine Do-Overs: The Secret of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar

2010-07-03T12:02:00.002-02:00

By Michael P. Foley

Followers of the 1962 liturgical calendar may have noticed an odd pattern. There is a reading, theme, event, or saint that appears on a particular day. Then, later in the year, the same reading, theme, event, or saint reemerges, only not quite in the same manner. This can happen with both occasions in the same cycle, either the “Temporal Cycle” (comprising seasons such as Advent, Lent, etc.) or the “Sanctoral Cycle” (the rotation of saints’ feasts). Or, each event can occur in a different cycle.

For example: Palm Sunday, especially with the blessing and procession of palms, celebrates Christ’s Kingship, but there is also a Feast of Christ the King. Holy Thursday celebrates the gift of the Eucharist, but there is also a Feast of Corpus Christi. Good Friday commemorates the blood our Lord shed for us on the Cross as well as His pierced heart, but there is also a Feast of the Precious Blood, a Feast of the Holy Cross,¹ and a Feast of the Sacred Heart. September 27 is the Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damien, but we also pray to these saints on Thursday of the Third Week of Lent.² The Ember Wednesday of Advent focuses on the Annunciation, but there is also a feast for it on March 25.

One would think that since the traditional Missal has an annual cycle of readings (as opposed to the three-year cycle of the new lectionary), there would be a minimum of repetition in order to expose the faithful to as much variety as possible. But instead, we find a startlingly different strategy. What on earth is it?

Recapitulation

The answer to that question is the subject of this essay. What we see in the traditional calendar is an ingenious strategy of recapitulation. The concept of recapitulation has been a part of sacred tradition almost from the beginning: St. Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 130) speaks of it,³ and so does St. Augustine, who uses it to describe the patterns in the Bible where certain things are said in such a way that it looks as if they are proceeding in chronological order or in the order of events, whereas the narrative is [really] secretly recalling prior things which had been overlooked.⁴

Augustine gives as an example the fact that Genesis first mentions the Lord God planting a garden of paradise and then states that He formed out of the ground “all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of” (2:8-9). The second statement, that God grew trees, “recapitulates” the first by making explicit something that is not in the first statement, namely, the precise manner in which God planted the garden.

A similar dynamic is at play in the Church year. Every event in the life of Christ or in sacred history, as well as every mystery of the Christian faith, is too profound to be comprehended in a single sitting. There are too many facets, too many layers, to be taken in at once by our feeble intellects. Hence the Church often returns to the same thing she had celebrated earlier in the year but from a different perspective. She wishes to experience the mystery in a way in which she might not have been able to before. When the Church meditates on the Annunciation during Ember Wednesday of Advent, her thoughts are dominated by the impending celebration of the Nativity. But when she meditates on the Annunciation during Lady Day (March 25), she is freer to consider other dimensions of this great event: the mystery of the Incarnation, the role of the Holy Spirit, and most importantly, the fiat of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Since several of these recapitulations occur during the summer, let us look at three of them now: Corpus Christi, the Precious Blood, and the Transfiguration.

Corpus Christi

Holy Thursday is essentially the original Feast of Corpus Christi (“Body of Christ”), the celebration of the institution of the Eucharist. Yet as a part of the sacred Triduum, Maundy Thursday is mixed with other considerations: the institution of the priesthood, the call to service dramatized by the washing of the feet, Judas’ betrayal of our Lord, the agony in the garden, etc.

Fittingly, the first person to see the need for an additional feast to honor the Blessed Sacrament is our Lord Himself. In the thirteenth century, a humble sixteen-year-old girl began having dreams of a bright moon marred by a small black spot. After years of seeing this perplexing vision, Jesus Christ appeared to her and revealed its meaning. The moon, He told her, represented the Church calendar, and the black spot the absence of a feast in honor of His Blessed Sacrament. That nun was St. Juliana, Prioress of Mont Cornillon (d. 1258) [pictured above], and the feast she was commissioned by our Lord to promote was that of Corpus Christi.

Even before its universal promotion in 1314, Corpus Christi was one of the grandest feasts of the Roman rite. By request of Pope Urban IV, the hymns, Mass propers, and Divine Office were composed or selected by St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), whose teaching on the Real Presence was so profound that the figure of Jesus Christ once descended from a crucifix and declared to him, “Thou hast written well of me, Thomas.” The mastery with which Aquinas weaves together the scriptural, poetic, and theological texts of this feast amply corroborates this judgment.

One of the most conspicuous features of Corpus Christi is the procession after Mass, for which Holy Church grants a plenary indulgence (under the usual conditions) to all those who take part in it. This public profession of the Catholic teaching on the Real Presence, which was solemnly encouraged by the Council of Trent, was traditionally accompanied by ornate pageantry and much celebration. The streets would be elaborately decorated with garlands and images, and the procession would wind through the whole town.

While it is true that the Eucharist is both the Body and Blood of our Lord, and while the Collect for the feast states that we “venerate the sacred mysteries of [both Christ’s] Body and Blood,” the focus of Corpus Christi is predominantly on His Eucharistic Body. The reason for this has not so much to do with the sacrament per se, but the principle of recapitulation. When we consider the Host and the Precious Cup together, we think of the miracle of Transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the great appropriateness of bread and wine as the matter of the sacrament, of how crushed grains and crushed grapes die to sustain us and rise again as a new creation.

But when we consider the Host rather than the Precious Cup, our minds are drawn to a different set of themes. We think of food for our souls, the Panis angelicus, the great spiritual nourishment prefigured by the manna from heaven and by the multiplication of the loaves. We also think incarnationally: Emmanuel, “God is with us,” was once among us veiled in a body and is now among veiled in the appearances of bread and wine. Finally, we think eschatologically, of how the Host, which makes present the Risen Christ, is a foreshadowing of the glorified bodies the elect will enjoy at the end of time. Hence, the Magnificat antiphon for Vespers on Corpus Christi speaks of the Body of Christ as the “pledge of our future glory.”

Precious Blood

On the other hand, when the Church thinks of the Precious Blood, she does not think primarily in terms of food or drink. For although we consume the Blood of our Lord at Holy Communion (even if we are receiving under the species of bread alone), the mention of His blood by itself invites us to meditate on four other topics.

The first is ablution and aspersion, washing and sprinkling. The flesh of the sacrificial lamb may have been eaten during the feast of Passover, but its blood was sprinkled on the doorposts, thereby averting the Angel of death. Similarly, St. Peter speaks of being sanctified for “the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:2), while the Book of Revelation describes the Blood of the Lamb of God as washing the white robes of the saints (7:14; cf. 1:5).

Second, the red Blood that washes white also redeems, buying us back from the slave block of the devil. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read that “neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by His own blood [Christ] entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).⁵ One of the earliest epithets for the Savior’s Blood in Church parlance is pretium redemptionis nostrae, the “price of our redemption.”

Third, we remember the Atonement, with its teaching on sin and propitiation. The Blood forcibly reminds us of our shared responsibility in spilling it and God’s mercy in accepting it as our reconciliation with Him. In the Book of Genesis, the blood of Abel “speaks” from the ground (4:10). What does it say? That Cain is guilty. Similarly, the Epistle to the Hebrews states that the Blood of Christ “speaks better” than Abel’s (12:24). What does it say? That we are guilty, but that we are also reconciled. Christ was wounded for our iniquities (Is. 53:5), but it is by these stripes that we are healed (I Pet. 2:24). Hence, God proposes His Son as “a propitiation, through faith in His blood…for the remission of former sins” (Rom. 3:25).

These awesome themes and more are explored on the Feast of the Most Precious Blood (July 1). The feast began in Spain in the sixteenth century and was promoted by St. Gaspar del Bufalo (d. 1837), founder of the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood. When Pope Pius IX was exiled from Rome, one of his companions, Don Giovanni Merlini, third superior general of the Missionaries, suggested that he vow to extend the feast to the entire Church if he regained possession of the Papal States. But the Pope decided instead to extend the feast immediately to all Christendom on June 30, 1849. That same day, the French drove out the Italian nationalists who had captured Rome. Since June 30 was a Saturday before the first Sunday of July, Pius IX decreed on August 10 of that year that every first Sunday of July would be dedicated to the Most Precious Blood (this was later changed to July 1).⁶

In 1934, to commemorate the nineteenth centenary of our Lord’s death, Pope Pius XI raised the feast to the rank of a double of the first class (according to the pre-1960 system). The feast was also extolled shortly before Vatican II by Pope John XXIII in an excellent apostolic letter entitled, “On Promoting Devotion to the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”⁷ While purists laboring under the error of what Pope Pius XII called archeologism (the presumption that older means better) might sniff at this “recent” feast, John XXIII saw in it traces of God’s ongoing love for His Church. “The Church’s wonderful advances in liturgical piety match the progress of faith itself in penetrating divine truth,” he writes. “Within this development it is most heart-warming to observe how often in recent centuries this Holy See has openly approved and furthered” this devotion.⁸

Of course, our Lord’s Blood was considered earlier on Good Friday, but our hearts on that day were filled with such sorrow that it was difficult for us to appreciate Its magnificence. It is therefore appropriate that we recapitulate the theme, under a more triumphant banner. After noting that the Church has already celebrated Good Friday and Corpus Christi, Dom Guéranger asks, “How is it…that holy Church is now inviting all Christians to hail, in a particular manner, the stream of life ever gushing from the sacred fount?” His answer: “What else can this mean, but that the preceding solemnities have by no means exhausted the mystery?”⁹

The Transfiguration

Another feast that it is fitting to celebrate after the Triduum and Corpus Christi is that of the Transfiguration on August 6. As Pope Benedict XVI notes in his encyclical Sacramentum Caritatis, the Transubstantiation of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood is not only a profound miracle in its own right, but it “introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of ‘nuclear fission’” that sets off a chain reaction which will ultimately culminate in the “transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all.”¹⁰ And one of the first hints of this cosmic transfiguration at the end of time is the personal transfiguration of our Lord, when His face shone as the sun and His garments became white as snow (cf. Matt. 17:2).

The Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Lent is also of the Transfiguration. According to tradition, our Lord deigned to be transfigured before three Apostles — Peter, James, and John — in order to fortify them for the brutal and demoralizing spectacle of His forthcoming crucifixion¹¹ (note that it is these same three Apostles that He wanted with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane). The Transfiguration was meant to give the Apostles a foretaste of the Resurrection in order to help them overcome the trauma of the Crucifixion. By the same logic, the Church wisely anticipates the glory of Easter during the penitential season of Lent by calling to mind the Transfiguration, as if to give the faithful a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

But Lent is not the time to savor the glory of Easter, and there is so much more to glean from the Transfiguration than a means of steeling one’s courage. How appropriate, then, that the Church recapitulates the event during the more jubilant Time after Pentecost. It is there that she can ruminate on at least three other aspects of this mystery:

First, as with Corpus Christ, she can consider our future glory. One of the Breviary hymns for the feast speaks of the event as a “sign of perennial glory.”¹² As Peter the Venerable teaches, the Resurrection is already prefigured in the Transfiguration; and the Resurrection, needless to say, is a “sneak peek” at the amazing, luminous, space-and-time-defying bodies the elect will acquire on the Last Day.¹³

Second, she can reflect on the relationship between the two Testaments. When Jesus is transfigured, Moses and Elijah, representatives of the two main branches of the Old Testament (the Law and Prophets), accompany Him. The triptych of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus therefore represents the sum of biblical history. But eventually, Moses and Elijah disappear and only Jesus remains. The High Priest of the new Covenant is in continuity with the Old but is also greater than it.

Third, she can speculate on the “social” dimension of the transfiguration. What does it mean to say with the Pope that the world will be “transfigured”? What does it mean to have human living transfigured by the Catholic call to action,¹⁴ under the social kingship of our transfigured Lord? How should our lives, our social interactions, and our politics be transfigured in light of the “nuclear fission” of Christ’s Eucharistic Body? Interestingly, the date of the feast was chosen for a socio-political reason, to commemorate the Christian victory over the Turks at the Battle of Belgrade in July 1456, news of which reached the Pope’s ears on August 6.¹⁵

Why It Matters

Recapitulation in the calendar is valuable for at least two reasons. First, it “gets” us. That is, recapitulation ideally suits the way we grow in wisdom and love. It knows that physiologically we are monogastric, but mentally we are ruminants: we are creatures who, to borrow a colorful image from St. Augustine, need to call things up from the stomach of our mind in order to chew on them more. Recapitulation presupposes that because we see now through a glass darkly and know only in part, we need to circle around the same object several times, like a spy plane gathering intelligence. Returning to the same thing but in a new light deepens our experience and knowledge of that thing.

Second, it “gets” mystery. Recapitulation is not just a concession to the littleness of our minds, it is an acknowledgement of the greatness of the sacred. Realities such as those narrated in Scripture or defined by Catholic dogma or even instantiated in the life of a saint are too august to be captured by a single snapshot. They need to be revisited again and again from different camera angles. This is why there are different accounts of the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament and why there are four different Gospels rather than one “definitive” biography of our Lord. And it is why the traditional calendar recapitulates seemingly “redundant” elements.

Conclusion

There are instances of recapitulation in the 1970 calendar as well, but not as many. The Feast of Corpus Christi was changed to the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ; and John XXIII’s beloved Feast of the Precious Blood was suppressed, leaving no day on which Christ’s Blood is exclusively adored. The three-year cycle of Biblical readings eliminates, two-thirds of the time, several of the pairings necessary for recapitulation, as does the fact that the new lectionary is not influenced by the station days, over 50% of which were cut from the new calendar.

Such a situation should increase our gratitude for the plentiful “divine do-overs” that we enjoy in the usus antiquior. The concept of recapitulation hearkens to the charming poetics of sacred Scripture and the classical theology of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. But more than that, recapitulation affords us the opportunity to delve more deeply into the mysteries of our Faith, mysteries which we, God willing, shall one day behold with utter clarity. In this sense, the recapitulations of the year can help bring us just that much closer to the beatific vision.

Image credits

The Vision of Saint Juliana of Mont Cornillon, by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674), courtesy of http://www.barber.org.uk/.
The Transfiguration, by Pietro Perugino, courtesy of http://www.thinkingfaith.org/.

Notes

And in the calendar before 1962, there were two feasts for the Cross: one on May 3 (dropped in 1960) and one on September 14. [back]

We do so because the stational church for that day is Santi Cosma e Damiano. [back]

Irenaeus uses it for Christ's summing up and redeeming all human experience (cf. Apostolic Preaching, 6). [back]

On Christian Doctrine 3.36.52, translation mine. [back]

See Ulrich F. Mueller, "Feast of the Most Precious Blood," in Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12 (NY: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913), p. 373. [back]

June 30, 1960. [back]

"On Promoting Devotion to the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." [back]

"On Promoting Devotion to the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." [back]

Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 12, trans. Dom Laurence Shepherd (Great Falls, Montana: Bonaventure Publications, 2000), p. 386. [back]

Sacramentum Caritatis, 11. [back]

See Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.45.1. [back]

The hymn is Quicumque Christum quaeritis, and the verse is Signum perennis gloriae. [back]

Those bodies will possess the four gifts of impassibility, agility, subtlety, and clarity. [back]

See Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. Insight (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), PP. 742-43. [back]

As Pope Calixtus III later wrote: "if this fortress [at Belgrade] had been lost, the very existence of the entire Christian republic would have been in danger" (Letter to a Burgundian Bishop, http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/bluedot/belgrade.html). [back]

Michael P. Foley, an associate professor of Patristics at Baylor University, is author of Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?: The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings, and Interfaith Services(Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Foley's article, "Divine Do-Overs: The Secred of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar," Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 46-49, is reproduced here by kind permission of Latin Mass, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.

Loss of Graces: Private Masses vs. Concelebration

2010-03-26T16:33:00.020-02:00

Peter A. Kwasniewski

Sitting at my desk one evening about ten years ago, I wrote excitedly in my journal about an overwhelming experience that morning.

“August 12th. The feast of Saint Clare. Thanks be to God, the greatest and best. This morning, by His unspeakable mercy, I was given the chance to attend a private old-rite Mass and receive the Lord: a gift worth more than all gifts. But without my having the slightest idea it would happen, He also granted me the privilege of serving this Mass, which was offered by the holy Abbot of Fontgombault. There is some sort of Benedictine retreat going on here at the Kartause for a week, with oblates from all over Europe in attendance, and three French abbots and many monks too, and there will be bishops visiting, etc. It’s all rather splendid. Yesterday I’d heard that a monk was going to say the old rite at 6:00, so I got up and came down for it, heading into the sacristy. I found out that the Abbot himself, taking precedence, was going to offer the day’s first Mass before other monks did, and, as I knew how to serve, he asked me if I would serve it. Laus Deo! It was the most peaceful Mass I have ever attended. The Abbot lingered over every phrase, and I honestly thought he was in an ecstasy during the Canon. I felt there were hundreds of souls and spirits in the chapel with us. I am speechless. Glory be to God.”

That is the kind of thing you really can’t forget, but even better, it’s the kind of thing you really can’t plan, either. The lack of planning is part of the gift. It comes like a thief in the night. You know you don’t deserve it, and it comes to you anyway, because the Lord is so good to us sinners.

The daily offering

The reason I’m recounting this story isn’t to focus on the experience itself, but rather on what it helped me to see about one important facet of our Catholic tradition, in a lesson that mingled pain with joy. This monk’s offering of the holy sacrifice for his own sins and for the sins of the world embodied in its very prayerfulness, by its God-focused intensity, an irrefutable justification for the long-standing custom of private Masses¹ offered by individual monks prior to their conventual Mass, or, for that matter, by any priest who has the possibility of celebrating a daily Mass. I envisioned in my mind’s eye all of these monks quietly beseeching the divine mercy all over the world: a small army of Abraham’s “just men,” placating divine wrath and winning grace for sinners.

As most readers of this journal will know, up until the liturgical rupture it was customary for each priest who lived in a monastery or other religious community both to celebrate his own private Mass each morning and to assist at a communal or conventual Mass. The rationale was obvious: the Mass is the foremost act of religion, devotion, prayer, adoration, thanksgiving, and praise that any ministerial priest can offer, since it is none other than the immolation of the High Priest Himself. As Venerable Pope Pius XII explained: “It cannot be overemphasized that the Eucharistic sacrifice of its very nature is the unbloody immolation of the divine Victim, which is made manifest in a mystical manner by the separation of the sacred species and by their oblation to the eternal Father.”² Each and every Mass pours forth the fruits of the sacrifice of Calvary into the Church, for the inestimable benefit of all the faithful—for the release of souls in purgatory, for the honor of the saints in heaven, and for the perseverance of souls on earth—and ultimately for the salvation of the entire world.³ Therefore, objectively speaking, the more Masses celebrated, the better off the world is.

In the maelstrom of postconciliar changes, the private Mass fell under a shadow of suspicion, even contempt. With rare exceptions, individual monks no longer celebrate private Masses. If there are several priests living in one place with one publicly scheduled Mass, they will generally concelebrate it. Surely there is something amiss here. The profound sacramental theology we inherit from the Middle Ages and the Council of Trent teaches us that each Mass—or to be more specific, each enactment of the mystical oblation on the altar—is a renewal and application of the saving event of the Cross, and as such, wins further pardon and actual graces for the human race. How, then, can this shift towards the communal be justified? Would not a denial that each priest should celebrate his own Mass each day imply at some level a repudiation of this theology, and with it, a downplaying of the Mass as a true propitiatory sacrifice? I am not speaking of a formal repudiation, such as Luther’s or Calvin’s, whereby the Mass is denied to be a sacramental representation of the sacrifice of Calvary. I mean a repudiation of the truth that each and every Mass advances the salvation of the world. If the practice of individual Masses is abandoned, it appears that personnel in the Church have made a decision that affects, nay retards, the salvation of sinners. A monastery in which twelve monks daily offered hoc sacrificium laudis is responsible for pouring out the grace of Calvary twelve times upon this timebound and ever-needy world of ours. The one all-sufficient sacrifice with its intrinsically infinite merit was applied concretely to us, to the world of sinners, a dozen times.⁴

Colossal difference

Priest extending arms after the consecration (Carmelite Rite)
Let’s examine a scenario more closely, to see if mystical theology and common sense can shake hands. Say you have eleven of these monks celebrating Mass at separate side altars each morning, followed later by the conventual Mass that the twelfth monk offers. You have twelve re-presentations of the Sacrifice of Calvary taking place. It is as if the veil separating earth from heaven was pierced twelve times to let the dew of grace fall through, that it might soak into the soil of our souls. Since the Eucharist as a sacrifice is propitiatory, it accomplishes what it represents: each time the Mass is offered, the fruits of the redemption are extended to souls throughout the world. As Pope Leo XIII stated: “Christ has willed that the whole power of His death, alike for expiation and impetration, should abide in the Eucharist, which is no mere empty commemoration thereof, but a true and wonderful though bloodless and mystical renewal of it.”⁵
Now, let’s say those twelve monks decide to stop celebrating their individual Masses and come together around the altar for one Mass — a single Mass, a single sacramental sacrifice. Certainly there may be several Mass intentions; each priest can bring his own intention and even accept a stipend for it. Nevertheless, when it comes to the immolation of the holy Victim, this Victim is made really present only once, and so the salvific offering of that Victim is made present only once. Extrapolate over the course of the year. At a more traditional monastery of twelve ordained monks, if we count not only the private Missae recitatae (recited or low Masses) but also the community Missae cantatae (chanted or high Masses), what do we find? The living symbols of the Lord’s Passion, the full dynamism of that mystery, will have been made present upon the altar about 4,800 times each year within the walls of their most fortunate church. At a monastery where the twelve scrapped their personal Masses for concelebrated ones, the number drops drastically, to, let’s say, 400 Masses a year. We are looking at a colossal difference in sacramental mediation, priestly intercession, the irruption into the world of the Precious Blood that washes away our sins. I don’t know about you, but it strikes me that several thousand applications of the saving Passion of Christ to a world drowning in sin and suffocating with guilt is a much better prospect for the salvation of men and societies than a few hundred. But that’s just the beginning; I limited myself to one small community of monks. Imagine the difference if we multiplied these figures for all Catholic priests across the face of the earth! By the singular privilege of their ordination and its sacred character, each of them is able to offer every day the one saving Sacrifice of Calvary, but so many, in the past forty years, have chosen instead to limit themselves to a single Mass celebrated en masse.⁶

The problem with concelebration

If one denies that the number has any significance, is he not on the way to denying the truth of secondary causality, the truth of the historicity or temporality of grace, the truth of the ministerial priesthood, the truth that God cares for creatures—He cares so much for them that it makes a difference to him whether there are still one or two or five just men in a city of criminals? In the Catholic theology of the Mass, each priest, as alter Christus acting in persona Christi, renews the one sacrifice of Calvary, in such a way that both sides of the mystery are safeguarded: (1) there is no other and no further sacrifice than that of Christ, which in itself and with nothing else supposed suffices for the salvation of the whole of creation; and (2) there are ordained priests conformed to and participating in the unique office of the High Priest, such that there are temporally distinct makings-present or presencings of Calvary, pouring the grace and merit of the High Priest into the hearts of men here and now. If you get rid of (2), you are a classical Protestant; if you get rid of (1), you are a liberal Protestant. If you retain both and see them as mutually reinforcing, you are a Catholic. To separate one from the other destroys the sacramental economy and the truth of the Incarnation no less than if one were to separate the natures and persons in Christ, as Nestorius did.⁷

The abandonment of private Masses in favor of conventual Masses, the sidelining of one-priest celebration in favor of many-priest concelebration, implicitly undermines the latter truth, namely, that there are temporally distinct presencings of Calvary which are in themselves really and truly channels of grace for the world. This confirms from yet another angle that the direction of the liturgical reform, as Michael Davies and others have long maintained, has an essentially classical Protestant trajectory.

Saint Thomas Aquinas was not unaware of the custom of concelebration used on rare occasions. An article of the Summa asks “Whether many priests can consecrate one and the same host?”⁸ As an argument in the affirmative he brings forward a fact: “according to the custom of certain [local] churches, priests, when they are newly ordained, concelebrate with the bishop who ordained them.”⁹ The body of the article mentions the same custom, comparing it to the Apostles supping together with Christ at the Last Supper, and notes that when there are many priests, all direct their several intentions to one and the same instant of consecration, so that they share but one intention. Replying to an objection, Saint Thomas goes so far as to say: “Since a priest consecrates only in the person of Christ, and the many are one in Christ, for this reason it makes no difference whether this sacrament is consecrated by one or by many, except that it is necessary to observe the rite of the Church.”¹⁰ In other words, concelebration involves many priests acting as one because they have a single intention to consecrate the Eucharist. There is, then, only one sacrifice taking place when many speak the words of consecration. But precisely for this reason, the Angelic Doctor sustains the common sense view mentioned above, for as he writes elsewhere in the Summa: “In many Masses, the offering of the sacrifice is multiplied, and therefore the effect of the sacrifice and of the sacrament is also multiplied.”¹¹ So the next time someone says “There’s nothing the matter with concelebration,” you might counter: “Sure, it’s not morally wrong, but it robs the Church and the world of so many other Masses that could have been celebrated individually by those priests, and so it deprives us of many effects that might have been obtained.”

The Popes weigh in

Is this a view sustained by the papal Magisterium? Although understandably Pope Paul VI is no hero among lovers of liturgical tradition, we should not be especially surprised to find him upholding the custom of private Masses:

We should also mention “the public and social nature of every Mass,” a conclusion which clearly follows from the doctrine we have been discussing. For even though a priest should offer Mass in private, that Mass is not something private; it is an act of Christ and of the Church. In offering this Sacrifice, the Church learns to offer herself as a sacrifice for all. Moreover, for the salvation of the entire world she applies the single, boundless, redemptive power of the Sacrifice of the Cross. For every Mass is offered not for the salvation of ourselves alone, but also for that of the whole world. Hence, although the very nature of the action renders most appropriate the active participation of many of the faithful in the celebration of the Mass, nevertheless, that Mass is to be fully approved which, in conformity with the prescriptions and lawful traditions of the Church, a priest for a sufficient reason offers in private, that is, in the presence of no one except his server. From such a Mass an abundant treasure of special salutary graces enriches the celebrant, the faithful, the whole Church, and the entire world—graces which are not imparted in the same abundance by the mere reception of Holy Communion.¹²

This passage is from Paul VI’s encyclical Mysterium Fidei, promulgated in 1965, after the promulgation of the star-crossed Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium.¹³ In it we see reproduced with utter fidelity the doctrine of Pope Pius XII, who treated of the subject at some length in his majestic encyclical Mediator Dei of 1947. Two paragraphs in particular come to mind:

Some in fact disapprove altogether of those Masses which are offered privately and without any congregation, on the ground that they are a departure from the ancient way of offering the sacrifice; moreover, there are some who assert that priests cannot offer Mass at different altars at the same time, because, by doing so, they separate the community of the faithful and imperil its unity; while some go so far as to hold that the people must confirm and ratify the sacrifice if it is to have its proper force and value.

They are mistaken in appealing in this matter to the social character of the Eucharistic sacrifice, for as often as a priest repeats what the divine Redeemer did at the Last Supper, the sacrifice is really completed. Moreover, this sacrifice, necessarily and of its very nature, has always and everywhere the character of a public and social act, inasmuch as he who offers it acts in the name of Christ and of the faithful, whose Head is the divine Redeemer, and he offers it to God for the holy Catholic Church, and for the living and the dead. This is undoubtedly so, whether the faithful are present—as we desire and commend them to be in great numbers and with devotion—or are not present, since it is in no wise required that the people ratify what the sacred minister has done.¹⁴

It would be comparatively easy to assemble reams of testimonies from Tradition and tight theological argumentation in defense of what the Popes are teaching here. That being said, there is something more that we must not forget. When it comes to mysteries beyond the reach of reason, the truth is as much a matter of that mysterious center of the person we call the “heart” as it is of the mind—a matter of whether our spiritual instincts are right, our intuitions sound, and our inmost feelings harmonious with reality. Modernism, though it claims to be from and for our feelings, exudes the lifeless chill of rationalism and freezes whatever it touches. In contrast, the dogmas and practices of traditional Catholicism, though they have at their disposal armies of ironclad scholastic proofs, breathe and sing and sigh like the living presence they mediate to us in flesh and blood.

A stream of sacrifice poured up

With this in mind, let me return, in the end, to the beginning. In one of Robert Hugh Benson’s finest novels, The King’s Achievement (1904), there is a passage that deeply resonated with me when I first read it a few years ago, as it called back to mind the short but precious time I spent with the monks of Le Barroux as well as that early morning Mass with the Abbot of Fontgombault.¹⁵ At this point in Benson’s tale, the character Christopher Torridon, a young monk at Lewes Priory, is reflecting on the daily monastic routine’s all-encompassing goal: “the uttering of praises to Him who had made and was sustaining and would receive again all things to Himself.”

They [the monks] rose at midnight for the night-office, that the sleeping world might not be wholly dumb to God; went to rest again; rose once more with the world, and set about a yet sublimer worship. A stream of sacrifice poured up to the Throne through the mellow summer morning, or the cold winter darkness and gloom, from altar after altar in the great church. Christopher remembered pleasantly a morning soon after the beginning of his novitiate when he had been in the church as a set of priests came in and began Mass simultaneously. The mystical fancy suggested itself as the hum of voices began that he was in a garden, warm and bright with grace, and that bees about him were making honey—that fragrant sweetness of which it had been said long ago that God should eat—and as the tinkle of the Elevation sounded out here and there, it seemed to him as a signal that the mysterious confection was done, and that every altar sprang into perfume from those silver vessels set with jewel and crystal.¹⁶

Now, I know there are lots of scholarly studies and popular pamphlets (especially from the 1960s and 1970s) questioning or rejecting private Masses and defending concelebration. Earlier still, Karl Rahner had sown seeds of doubt with his characteristically dense and subtle speculations. The shelves of seminary libraries groan with such materials. After slogging through page after page of effete archaeologism and voodoo sociology, however, what I always want to know is this: Why is it so hard for these people to see what Christopher Torridon (that is, Robert Hugh Benson), and generations of simple believers over the centuries have seen? It consoles me to know that every day, every year that passes, slowly but surely, the Eternal High Priest is drawing the hearts of His ministers back to the altar of God, for the service of which they were ordained; that He is calling them to “worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. As our Holy Father said in his homily for Midnight Mass this past Christmas: “The Liturgy is the first priority. Everything else comes later.”+

Notes

Editor's Note: Given the confusion surrounding this topic, it is important to define the term "private Mass." Joseph Jungmann's seminal work on the liturgy has this to say about the subject: "From these Masses said in private homes, or on an estate or at a graveside where at least a group of people, however small, attends the sservice, we must carefully distinguish the private Mass strictly so called. This we understand as a Mass celebrated for its own sake, with no thought of anyone participating, a Mass where only the prescribed server is in attendance, or even where no one is present, as was once the case in the so-called Missa solitaria. These are Masses -- contrasted to the conventual Mass and the parochial Mass -- which are most generally referred to in medieval documents as missae privatae or speciales or peculiares (J. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite [Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986], I:215). [back]

Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), n. 115; cf. nn. 68-70. [back]

Ibid., nn. 71-75. [back]

Note that if there are twelve Priests in the community, one of them would not celebrate a private Mass that day in order to be the Priest who offers the conventual Mass in the midst of his brethren. No Priest celebrates twice a day (bination) unless pastoral need requires it, which would not be the case in such a community. [back]

Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis (1902), n. 18. [back]

Some have objected that this kind of language "quantifies" grace. It does not. Rather, we must guard against "transcendentalizing" grace so that it ceases to be connected to space and time. [back]

Nestorianism is "one of the great heresies of the fifth century, which broke the personal unity of Christ by positing in him two subjects [i.e., persons], one Divine and one human" (Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology [Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951], 199). In reality there is only one Person in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who assumed human nature when "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." [back]

Summa theologiae III, q. 82, a. 2. [back]

Ibid., sed contra. [back]

Ibid., ad. 2. [back]

Summa theologiae III, q. 79, ad 3: "In pluribus vero Missis multiplicatur sacrificii oblatio, et ideo multiplicatur effectus sacrificii et sacramenti." In this context St. Thomas is explaining why receiving many hosts at the same Mass does not increase the effect of the sacrament, whereas many Masses does redound to greater good. [back]

Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965), n. 17. [back]

In fact, the Pope is quoting from that constitution in the first sentence of the excerpt, which echoes a similar phrase from Pius XII. [back]

Mediator Dei, nn. 95-96. [back]

My experience with the monks at Le Barroux is recounted in my article "Contemplation of Unchanging Truth," The Latin Mass vol. 17, n. 5 (Advent/Christmas 2008). [back]

Robert Hugh Benson, The King's Achievement, ed. with a foreword by Francis X. Connolly (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1957), 86. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Loss of Graces: Private Masses vs. Concelebration," was originally published in The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 2010), pp. 6-9, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060, and the author.]