Deliver Thy Church, O Lord, from a flawed liturgy
Today (November 20) on the traditional Roman calendar is the feast of St. Felix of Valois (†1212). Who is this obscure saint, you might ask, and why is he cluttering our calendar? Would it not be fitting to cancel him out? And so, indeed, it was done in the 1969 Novus Ordo calendar: Felix evaporated into thin air, or rather, retreated to his page in the Martyrology where few souls remember him.
But I would like to suggest that, as always, Holy Mother Church proceeded with a wisdom beyond her years, and that the removal of this saint and so many others is yet another instance of ecclesiastical Alzheimer’s.
St. Felix is said to have been a member of the royal court in France. He is known, in any case, to have renounced all his worldly possessions to live as a hermit. He was sought out by St. John of Matha, who had heard of the reputation of his holiness, and together they founded the Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, usually known as the Trinitarians. The members of this order would travel to the Holy Land and exchange themselves for the release of Christian captives held by the Moslems. A similar order was founded in 1218 by St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymund of Peñafort, and King James of Aragon, the Order of Our Lady of Ransom.
What lessons can St. Felix teach us? Unlike so many of today’s prelates in the Church, who cling to their power, prestige, and pleasures, and who refuse to reform themselves or the institutions over which they stand in charge, Felix was willing to abandon everything for the “pearl of great price†that is Jesus Christ. He gave up his opportunities of advancement, position, and influence, in order to do that which was inherently worthwhile for his immortal soul and for the health of the Church. In this respect, Felix is the antithesis to the worldly bishop or priest, whom we may call the “anti-Felixâ€: unhappy in his own sins, be they of commission or omission, and the cause of an unhappy flock.
What did the order co-founded by St. Felix do? It redeemed Christians from the hand of their heathen oppressors. Today, nothing, nothing is more necessary than that the Catholic Church rediscover her radical opposition to the world, the flesh, and the devil, three enemies over which she has spiritual authority, and from whose heavy yoke she can rescue the faithful. This she does by preaching sound doctrine and feeding a holy life with the sacraments and the liturgy reverently enacted. Again, St. Felix was truly felicitous in his uncompromising battle with the forces of darkness—the darkness of Islam in particular. Would that Europe’s bishops, clergy, faithful, would recover even a fraction of the courage and conviction of these saints of the Crusades!
One last point to make. Several times each year, the Church in the sanctoral cycle of her traditional liturgy begs the Lord to deliver us from bondage or captivity. Let me offer four examples. The Collect for today’s feast of St. Felix reads:
O God, who didst vouchsafe by a voice from heaven to call blessed Felix Thy confessor to the work of the ransoming of captives: grant, we beseech Thee, that his holy prayers may free us from the bondage of sin, and may safely lead us to our heavenly fatherland. Through our Lord…
On February 8, we pray to St. Felix’s companion:
O God, who didst vouchsafe to institute by heavenly direction, through St. John [of Matha], the order of the Holy Trinity for redeeming captives from the power of the Saracens, grant, we beseech Thee, that by the suffrage of his merits, we may be delivered by Thy grace from captivity of soul and body. Through our Lord.
On September 24:
O God, who by means of the most glorious Mother of Thy Son wast pleased to give new children to Thy Church for the deliverance of Christ’s faithful from the power of the heathen; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who love and honor her as the foundress of so great a work, may by her merits and intercession be ourselves delivered from all sin and from the bondage of the evil one. Through the same our Lord…
On August 1:
O God, who didst loose the blessed apostle Peter from his bonds and didst send him forth unharmed: loose, we pray Thee, the chains of our sins, and in Thy great mercy keep us from all evil. Through our Lord.
These are prayers that we desperately need to make—for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the Church wherever she is hemmed in by the heathens, suffocated by the Saracens. The liturgy knows our needs, knows them intimately, and places these words on the lips of her priests and in the hearts of her children.
Where are these prayers in the Novus Ordo?
They are all gone. All of them. Along with the prayers that talk about “despising the things of earth and clinging to those of heaven.â€
Bondage, captivity, chains? Too negative. Too difficult. Too medieval. Too otherworldly. The pathological optimists who staffed the Consilium took out their modern scissors and cut away whatever no longer conformed to the times, even if it meant discarding material that had sustained Catholic souls for centuries.* In doing so, they showed themselves to be ungrateful, self-absorbed, and short-sighted.
This is one among a thousand reasons why we must, patiently, say to our Novus Ordo friends, again and again: the problem is not “how the new liturgy is celebrated,†as if dressing it up like the fanciest Infant of Prague is all that needs to be done to make things better. No, for the problem goes much deeper: it goes to the very core of the texts and rubrics of the new liturgy, which are deformed, skewed, bowdlerized, inadequate, misleading, and corrosive of Catholicism. What is needed is not any “reform of the reform,†or any lavishment of smells and bells, fiddlebacks and candlesticks, as appropriate as these things certainly are. What is needed, ultimately, is the restoration of the true Roman liturgy in its plenitude, fully matured over centuries of faith and worship, and unambiguously Catholic in every gesture, word, and chant.
May the Lord deliver His Church from the bondage of a new liturgy simplified, abbreviated, redacted for political correctness, and give all her children access to the uninhibited rites of our salvation—which includes our deliverance from the evils that oppress us.
St. Felix of Valois, pray for us!
* St. Felix’s feast began to be celebrated in his own diocese in 1215, and was extended to the whole Church in 1679.
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