Philadelphia Chapter

I enjoyed your post on “The Logic of Incarnation and the Temptation of Disincarnation.” I am so weary of the snide remarks and condescending attitudes characteristic of those who dismiss the Traditional Latin Mass and traditional Roman devotions as a nostalgic preoccupation with externals. As if these things existed in a vacuum or were alien to the heritage of the universal Church! As if they were not the bread and butter of countless saints, still as powerful today in their meaning and impact as they ever were!

I would propose a scriptural sign that God Himself prizes “the externals.” If we re-read the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, etc., we discover a stunning amount of exacting detail that the Lord Himself insisted upon, concerning the specifications of the construction and adornment of His own ark and even the details of vesture and behavior of His priests. The best woods, precious metals, precious stones, and finest fabrics were specified by name. Burlap, ceramic, clay, and sand, incidentally, were not. Those books of the Old Testament are full of accounts of God specifying clearly who was to do which job and exactly how — down to which fingers to use for blessings (I think we could safely call that an early instance of rubrics). God was specific about how, in the externals, He wished to be worshipped, not because He’s an arch-snob but because He knew (as the architect of the human species) that fragrant cedars and jewels and gold filigree would inspire the human heart to higher thoughts of the Fountain of Pure Love than would bare wood and asymmetrical cement.

While there is room for some organic evolution in the minutiae of liturgy as the millennia progress, and while Christianity brings with it a certain artistic freedom as it moves through cultures, how could we ever be justified in the too-frequent modern enshrinement of ugliness and banality in construction, vesture, ritual, music, self-styled liturgical amendments (to “make” the liturgy “more relevant”), and general approach to God, simply because a few measly thousand years have passed? Has the immutable God evolved or devolved? Or rather, have we lost our way?

Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI reminded us that the first Mass, which Our Lord offered on the eve of His Passion, was replete with ritual and formality, stemming from the detailed worship of the Jews. The Mass of the Last Supper would have lasted several hours. Jesus did not despise or scorn such ritual; why should we? Nor was He in any hurry, despite the immense weight of sorrow resting on His sacred shoulders, and His divine knowledge that the gears of His own demise were cranking away. Why should we be in a hurry and consider it too much to kneel for a long while in God’s presence, or to pray in silence, or to sing the chants and listen to them?

I see (and lament) the fruit of the shallow theology that spawns a casual or perfunctory worship in many of the Catholic churches I have visited. It is revealed in the amount of respect shown the Real Presence by the congregants therein — both during Mass and outside of it. Does the cursory head bob truly equal a genuflection? Would any modern day human sovereign recognize one as equivalent to the other? Which, if they could choose, would they prefer for themselves as a sign of allegiance and fidelity?

Does the fact that many lay folk go right up to the Tabernacle and help themselves to its august Occupant bespeak a proper respect for Him? When they dare to handle the Body of Our Lord at Communion time, does it show deep respect for the Lord’s establishment of the priesthood itself and His sacrament of Holy Orders, in which the priests’ hands have been consecrated and anointed unto the specific purpose of handling the precious Body and Blood of the Creator of the world? Have we no humility to accept our status as fledglings that need to be fed by hand in the mouth? Have we forgotten that God struck down dead one Uzzah in the Old Testament (2 Sam. 6:6-7) when he presumed with seemingly good intention to lay his hand upon the exterior of the ark of the covenant to steady it (let alone its contents!)? Is this not the same God? While we know that Jesus taught us to pray to God as our Father, “Abba,” and while we find our salvation in communion with His flesh and blood, Jesus did not nullify all the previously known (Old Testament) attributes of His Father. “I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. . . .”

I heard a story recently that sent a chill down my spine. Apparently a Moslem had been inside a Catholic church (I’m not sure why), and afterwards, he was talking with someone about what he had experienced. When this person said to him that Catholics believe that the Eucharist is really the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, he replied: “No, they certainly don’t believe that, because they would behave in a totally different way if they actually believed it. They would get down on their faces in homage to the Almighty. But they acted as if nothing special were there.”

I think what is missing from the current age is the HOLY FEAR and its concomitant respectful behavior that are born of the realization of just WHO is enthroned — albeit in humble estate — in that little box in the center of the church that was once known and revered as the Holy of Holies. It bespeaks a pitiable blindness to the invisible realities, the angelic spirits, who are nevertheless present and attendant upon the King of Kings. Once upon a time, the Church was convinced that the Lord should be given royal treatment and worship. Thankfully these practices are still retained in the Church’s treasury of the Traditional Latin Mass.

The earliest reference to this specific feast is a sequence which was well-known and widely used in the Middle Ages, written by one Godeschalk, a monk of Limburg abbey in western Germany, who died in 1098. It is written in the earlier and freer style of sequences like the Victimae Paschali, with less rhyme and structure than later ones such as St Thomas’ Lauda Sion or the Stabat Mater. It makes frequent use of the Patristic interpretation of the first words of Psalm 18, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God”, according to which the “heavens” are understood to be the Apostles, as St Gregory says in the Breviary. (Common lesson of the 2nd nocturn of the Apostles.)

The Sequence “Caeli enarrant gloriam” in the Mass of the Division of the Apostles, starting towards the top of the second column here. (Click to enlarge.) From the Missal according to the Use of Augsburg, Germany, ca. 1510.

Thus the prayer which concludes it, (as is typical of the genre,) reads, “These are the heavens, in whom Thou dwellest, the Angel of great counsel, whom Thou didst call no longer servants, but friends, to whom Thou makest known all things which Thou hast heard from the Father. / Keep undivided, and in the bond of peace, the flock that was gathered by their division, that we may be one in Thee, as thou are one in the Father. / Have mercy on us, Thou that dwellest in the heavens.”

The Gospel of the feast is that of the Ascension, (Mark 16, 14-20) but with the first verse left off, “Jesus appeared to the eleven as they were at table: and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again.” This omission is entirely appropriate for the common use of the feast among missionary congregations, since it celebrates the mission of the Apostles and their fulfillment of the commandment which Christ gives them in the verse which now opens the Gospel, “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

There is a tradition known from the 4th century that the baptismal creed now called the Apostles’ Creed was composed as a rule of the Faith by the Twelve before this dispersal, with each one of them contributing an article. This is often represented in art, as here in the border of this page of the famous Hours of Catherine of Cleves, ca. 1440. (In the center is depicted the legend of the Ten Thousand Martyrs, represented symbolically by ten figures.)

It is also seen here in a Carthusian Breviary ca. 1490, (starting near the top of the right column), in which the name of an Apostle is printed in red before each article of the Creed.

Like many of the traditions held dear by the medievals, it was called into question by some of the scholars of the Renaissance, particularly at the time of the Council of Florence in 1438. As the Council wrestled with the question of reunion between the Eastern and Western churches, the issue of the Creeds, and especially the Latin addition of “Filioque” to that of Nicea, was of course one of the most important topics of discussion. The Latins, who recognized three Creeds used in the liturgy, the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, were unpleasantly surprised to learn that the Greek delegates had never heard of the first of these.

Fr Nicholas Ayo, C.S.C., in a book on St Thomas’ Sermons on the Apostles’ Creed, beautifully summarizes why we may still refer to it by this name. “With the Apostles’ Creed we have the teaching of the Apostles as passed on by authentic apostolic succession. … The Creed summarizes the Scriptures, which in turn summarize the teaching of the early Church by the Apostles, who in turn were taught of Jesus, who was taught of God.” (Sermon-Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, p. 175)

The same period has brought to light ambiguities and tensions in the Motu Proprio that future generations will have to resolve. For example, how exactly can one have two forms of the very same rite, when historically, and logically, there ought to be only one? If the shift to a reformed liturgy did not create a break within the Roman tradition, how then could it have been possible later on to establish, on equal canonical footing, two versions of the same rite? They are said to be two “uses” of the same rite, and yet there is far less difference between the Dominican, Carmelite, and old Roman uses (to take a few examples), than there is between the old Roman and the new Roman. The Motu Proprio did not attempt to solve these difficulties, but took a pragmatic approach, content to abide with perplexity. Thus for its modesty.

We must return, again and again, to certainties. Summorum Pontificum requires all Catholics to do the following:

1. Acknowledge that the usus recentior or Ordinary Form is valid and licit;
2. Acknowledge that the usus antiquior or Extraordinary Form is valid and licit;
3. Accept that Catholics should be free to worship the Lord by participating either in an OF Mass or in an EF Mass. Neither the OF nor the EF needs to be present in each parish or chapel, and it may not be possible immediately to bring in the EF wherever there is a demand for it, but such availability ought to be a goal towards which pastors earnestly work so that the faithful are well provided for within the confines of a given geographical area.

This is the bottom line of Summorum Pontificum as a practical document. If there are many OF Masses but no EF Mass within a reasonably conceived geographical sphere, then one or more clergy are failing to meet the spiritual needs and rights of the faithful in their care. They may not necessarily want to meet those needs and rights, but meet them they must, if they are to be good stewards of the mysteries, loyal sons of the Church, and true shepherds of the flock. The account they must give of their lives before the Eternal Judge will include an accounting on this point, too.

Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the Novus Ordo Missae as “ordinary expression of the lex orandi” (Art. 1) and says, in the letter to the bishops, that “the new Missal will certainly remain the ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, not only on account of the juridical norms, but also because of the actual situation of the communities of the faithful.” Curiously, some people take Pope Benedict XVI’s language to be prescriptive when it is obviously descriptive. He is describing a state of affairs, not prescribing how things ought to be.[1] How they ought to be is up to the Holy Spirit and the Catholic faithful; it is not the stroke of a papal pen that will determine whether or not Catholics make the usus antiquior their liturgical norm. The Motu Proprio unquestionably smoothed the path by which an increasing number of Catholics are, in fact, taking the usus antiquior as their normative liturgy, but it neither established nor disestablished anything. It noted that Catholics would, in the majority of cases, be attending the Novus Ordo, but it also pointed out that the old rite had never been abrogated and should be available to all who seek it. This established the necessary foundation for a potentially limitless expansion of the usus antiquior, to the point that it could become once again the norm that it had been for four centuries (and, in essence, for a millennium longer than that).

By its own internal logic, the Motu Proprio could not have been saying that the Novus Ordo must remain the norm; rather, it is currently the norm, and yet there is no inherent reason why it must remain so for any particular parish, diocese, religious community, or even the universal Church. This is why we are seeing more and more dedicated parishes created for it, more religious communities adopting it and flourishing under its beneficent influence. At a time when religious practice in the West is precipitously declining, we see the springing up of oases of zealous faith (including abundant family life) wherever the traditional liturgy is securely in place.

In the prudential order, Benedict XVI needed to reassure the faithful that no one will be forced to switch over from the Ordinary Form to the Extraordinary Form. But he made it likewise clear that if the clergy or the faithful wish to embrace the usus antiquior, then by all means they are free to do so, without molestation. They have to accept that the Missal of Paul VI is valid. They do not have to take it as normative for their own public worship (otherwise the exclusively EF parishes and religious communities would not be allowed to exist). They do not have to attend it any particular number of times per year. They do not have to believe it is the better or best form of the Roman Rite. They are perfectly free to prefer the older form of the Mass, or of the Divine Office, sacramental rites, and blessings. They may use the older form exclusively (provided they are fulfilling their Mass attendance obligations as Catholics); they are free to think it a superior liturgical rite, as far as the qualities proper to liturgy are concerned; they may believe that churchmen, even at the top tiers, made a tremendous mistake in pushing it aside. Such is the radical freedom for tradition that Pope Benedict XVI injected into the life of the Church.

There is nothing in the law of the Church, whether Canon Law or Summorum Pontificum, that asks anything more than the three points required of all Catholics, as stated above. Hence, if anyone starts to demand more of a Catholic, or concedes him less, they are acting in their own person, and not on behalf of the Church; they are speaking of themselves and not of God (cf. John 8:44); they are acting as vigilantes who have given themselves the job of policing and protecting the mainstream Church from the “dangers” and “errors” and “bad attitudes” of tradition-loving Catholics. It is hard to see how such threatening behavior can possibly be reconciled with fraternal charity, respect for ecclesiastical tradition, observance of canon law, or respect for the basic rights of the faithful.

Whatever its ambiguities or limitations may be, Summorum Pontificum remains the ultimate challenge to the modernist and progressivist tendency to treat traditionally-minded Catholics as if they were so much rubbish waiting to be picked up, carried off, and buried in the landfill, along with their missals, chasubles, copes, birettas, maniples, aspergiliums, and other Romish paraphernalia. Traditional Catholics do not deserve the ostracism, the contempt, or the double standard to which they are so frequently subjected. Liberal and conservative Catholics who do not recognize and repent of this spiritual problem in their own lives will have sins to answer for, even as traditional Catholics may sin by reacting to provocations and persecutions with disproportionate anger, excessive sadness, or despair.

Pope Benedict XVI desired to be a peacemaker and to encourage precisely those behaviors of generosity that would eventually heal the rifts, even as they paved the way to the restoration of liturgical tradition. It remains a scandal that so many professed “good Catholics” (clergy included) continue to ignore the legal demands of Summorum Pontificum and the real spiritual needs of many faithful children of the Church in every land. Those of us who are on the receiving end of bad treatment need to redouble our prayers, penances, and forgiveness, while we continue seeking to actualize the enormous promise of the Motu Proprio in our midst.

NOTES

[1] See my article “On the Use and Abuse of the Terms ‘Ordinary’ and ‘Extraordinary’ in Summorum Pontificum.”

For some other NLM reflections on the Motu Proprio, see:
“Seven Years of Summorum Pontificum“
“Taking Summorum Pontificum Out of the Trenches”
“Formed in the Spirit and Power of the Traditional Mass”