Philadelphia Chapter

by blancatherese

Joshua Hernandez is a former Protestant who credits the traditional Latin Mass for his conversion to Catholicism.
Raised to be anti-Catholic, Hernandez began to look for a Christian denomination with historical relevance and formal liturgical practice. Though he thought Catholicism seemed too ritualistic, his first stop in his search for a church was attending a Mass to “get it out of the way.”

“It all clicked,” he said, when he saw the Latin Mass “in all its glory.”

Now he is a regular attendee at the Extraordinary Form Latin Mass celebrated each Sunday at 9 a.m. at Sts. Francis and Clare Mission in Edgewater.

Likewise, his girlfriend, Vida Tavakoli, knew she had found her home in the Catholic Church when she first attended Latin Mass in England.

Formerly an atheist, her aversion toward religion changed at the end of her college career, when she became a Protestant. During her post-collegiate travels she became resolute in converting to Catholicism after attending a Missa Cantata, or sung Mass, in the parish of her favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic who penned the “Lord of the Rings” series.

Though the homilies, the first reading and a translation of the Gospel are said in the vernacular, the prayers at the Extraordinary Form of the Mass are chanted in Latin, in the Church’s traditional Gregorian form.

When she heard Latin hymns coming from the choir loft, Tavakoli said, it felt like “hearing angels on high.”

She was mesmerized.

“It truly is extraordinary,” she said. “There is something beautiful and sacred about this form of the Mass.”

Many of those in attendance each Sunday at Sts. Francis and Clare are, in fact, young adults like Hernandez and Tavakoli, younger Catholics who did not grow up attending Mass in Latin. Their attendance is part of a national trend, as the number of Masses offered in the Extraordinary Form in the U.S. rose from approximately 60 in 1991 to just over 400 in 2010.

Miami’s traditional Latin Mass community has been served by Father Joseph Fishwick for 600 consecutive Sundays over the past 17 years. Father Fishwick, who grew up in South Florida and attended the University of Miami, remembers attending Mass as a child when the Tridentine Rite was the norm.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Mass was translated into the vernacular and seminarians were no longer required to learn the older form. Father Fishwick began to learn how to officiate the Latin Mass by reading books and watching videotapes, long before the advent of YouTube and the Internet. He has been saying the traditional Latin Mass for 28 years.

Today, priests interested in celebrating the Latin Mass often learn the Extraordinary Form on their own. Though most seminaries focus on teaching the novus ordo, many are beginning to host workshops for those interested in the Extraordinary Form.

Last year, Archbishop Thomas Wenski invited the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), whose charism focuses on preserving and imparting the spiritual heritage of the traditional liturgy, to teach archdiocesan priests about the Mass of Blessed John XXIII.

After 38 years of priesthood, Father Fishwick is retiring this August, and will be succeeded as the community’s chaplain by Msgr. Oscar F. Castañeda, spiritual director at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami. He will be assisted by Father Rafael Capó, director of the Southeast Pastoral Institute (SEPI) in Miami. The schola, or choir, at Sts. Francis and Clare is directed by Jennifer Donelson, a young adult and assistant professor at Nova Southeastern University, where she directs the Nova Bossa Chorale and teaches various subjects in music.

Donelson, who has led the schola since 2008, describes the dedication of those involved as heroic, because all come from different parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

The schola has significantly flourished since Donnelson, together with a colleague, began the annual Musica Sacra Gregorian Chant Conference, which is now in its sixth year.

The schola “enjoys the privilege of glorifying God and sanctifying the faithful through our dedication to singing the Mass in truly sacred music, music from the heart of the Church,” Donelson said. “Gregorian chant ‘grew up’ with the Roman rite, and it is an integral part of the structure and mystagogy of the Mass.”

Paulina Pecic, a student at the University of Miami who attends St. Augustine parish in Coral Gables, recently attended her first Latin Mass while visiting Ave Maria University on Florida’s southwest coast. “It was beautiful,” she said, hoping for another “chance to embrace the extra beauty that the chanting might offer.”

Fellow UM student and Archbishop Coleman Carroll High alumnus Ryan Stacey, who attended Latin Mass for this first time this summer, noted that it was unique experience, especially since he did not learn or attend Latin Mass while in high school. Like Stacey, most Catholic school students in the Archdiocese are not taught about the Extraordinary Form in their religion classes.

For that reason, the young adults of the forthcoming Juventutem Miami chapter seek to propagate their love and enthusiasm for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, so that others can come to know and appreciate it.

Pecic said she appreciated the “reverential aspect that can sometimes be watered down, or, in a worst-case scenario, completely disregarded by the congregation during the Ordinary Form.”

“I especially enjoyed Communion (at traditional Latin Mass), where instead of going up to the priest, the priest comes to you at the kneeler,” she said. “It was a visible reminder for me that receiving Christ in the Eucharist is a gift given out of love and not a right to claim for granted.”

As to which form of the Mass she likes better, she said, “It’s like comparing apples and oranges. I think both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary are beautiful in their own ways. The Ordinary Form makes the Mass accessible to every person in the Body of Christ by means of comprehensive, yet still profound language, whereas the more mysterious Extraordinary Form inspires awe by drawing us into contemplation of the very mysteries of the Word Himself.”

by Peter Kwasniewski

There was once a time when you could clock the appearance of interesting scholarly and popular treatments of flaws in the Pauline liturgical reform in terms of weeks or months, and generally you found them in obscure places. These days, however, it seems as if almost every day brings something noteworthy and worthwhile, and in the mainstream. All this is surely a sign of vitality, of the spread of Pope Benedict’s profound liturgical theology and no-nonsense criticisms of the hack-job of the 1960s, and of a growing awareness in the younger generations that something has gone seriously amiss.

Indeed, as the world darkens, as governments become more openly and oppressively anti-Catholic, and as too many leaders of the Church continue to bury their heads in the sand (rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is how I’ve heard it expressed), there is an ever-intensifying realization that our number one responsibility, absolutely the first and greatest, is getting our own temple in order. In the famous slogan of a well-known blogger: “Save the Liturgy, Save the World.” That is a task to which every one of us can make a contribution, here and now, in smaller or bigger ways, as the Lord gives us opportunity. And the new liturgical movement will succeed only if we patiently and persistently move forward, step by step, with a determination never to give up until the short-term and long-term goals have been achieved.

But to the point: this past week I’ve been amazed at the number of blogs taking up the same question from different angles — the question, namely, of the botched reform of the Novus Ordo calendar, which is agreed to be one of the worst casualties of the 1970 MR. Here are some choice quotes and links, all appearing on the web in recent days.

From the blog of Joseph Shaw (President, LMS in England & Wales):

The dates of the Church’s major feast days are in no way random. They have deep historical and cultural roots, and immense theological significance. The Church uses the calendar to teach us things, and the means she employs include the intervals between feast days.
Thus, most obviously, the Ascension is 40 days after Easter. 40 is the time of waiting we find in the Old and New Testament. Moving the feast of the Ascension not only obscures this, but mucks up the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost: nine days, a novena of preparation for the Holy Spirit to descend.
Corpus Christi is on a Thursday after Easter because it recalls the mystery of Maundy Thursday. The symbolism is destroyed if it is moved to Sunday.
Epiphany is the Twelfth Day of Christmas: it can’t be moved without damage to all the cultural associations this has. It is the primary feast of Christmas for many Oriental Churches. It was celebrated on 6th of January by the Emperor Julian in the year 360. This is pretty well as far as detailed records go back for many aspects of the liturgy. To move it is surely an act of barbarism. [Read more…]

From Rorate’s Fr. Richard Cipolla:

One of the saddest and most deleterious effects of the changes in the structure and content of the Liturgical Calendar in the post-Conciliar reform is the lack of understanding of the sanctification of time by the feasts and fasts of the Church. The introduction, at least in English, of the term, “ordinary time”, contradicts the fact that after the Incarnation there is no “ordinary” time. There is only the extraordinary time that has been brought into being by the insertion of the dagger of the Incarnation into ordinary time. Now we know that the term “ordinary time” is a poor translation of the Latin term for “in course”. But even this does not take away from the fact of the impoverishment of the Liturgical Calendar that has been effected by taking away the Sundays after the Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost. The traditional way of naming these Sundays understood that these two feasts, Epiphany and Pentecost, are the climaxes of the Christmas and Easter seasons, the seasons that celebrate the event and meaning of, respectively, the Birth, and the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and therefore these feasts become the touchstone, the source of reality of the Sundays of the Church Year. …
Surely we can now see the foolishness of the possibility of celebrating the Epiphany as early as on January 2, four full days before the actual feast that is celebrated in those parts of the Western Church still on January 6 and celebrated on that day by our Orthodox brethren throughout the world with the solemnity it deserves. It is foolish as well to celebrate this feast after January 6, as if it is irrelevant to the sanctification of time when any feast is celebrated, for the guiding principle in this reform is the convenience of the people: it is more convenient for the people to celebrate the Epiphany on Sunday rather than the interruption of having to go to Mass on a weekday. But it is precisely the interruption that is the point. The ir-ruption of the Incarnation demands such an inter-ruption, demands such an “inconvenience”, for it is a reminder of the sanctification of time itself to those of us who forget that time and space and the world and our lives and our future have been radically changed by the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. [Read more…]

From Kate Edwards, sovereign explicator of the Benedictine Monastic Office:

The removal of most of the octaves from the liturgical calendar was perhaps an understandable decision.
But it was, I think, one of those reforms that went more than a few steps too far, most obviously in the abolition of the octave of Pentecost in the Ordinary Form calendar.
Another case in point, in my opinion, is the abolition of the octave of the Epiphany, which is, I think, one of those decisions which it would be nice to reverse as a means of giving some genuine impetus to the ‘New Evangelisation’.
The calendar reforms of the twentieth century saw a progress reduction in the importance of Epiphany, starting with the abolition of the octave of the feast, and culminating in the outright abolition, in the Novus Ordo calendar, of the traditional season of time after Epiphany.
Yet Epiphany is, above all, the great feast of the revelation of God to the gentiles, represented by the three wise men. So how could reducing the importance of this feast possibly be thought consistent with the objective of making the Church more missionary oriented? [Read more…; she’s written several posts in recent days along these lines]

From Fr. Cassian Folsom’s Brompton Oratory talk, just posted online:

The Ordo Missae of the 1970 Missal was radically changed: in fact, we call it the Novus Ordo. Concerning the calendar, and especially the superabundant growth of the sanctoral cycle, there has always been need of periodic pruning. But in the 1970 Missal, the pruning was so radical that the original plant is sometimes unrecognizable. The protective fence of the rubrics, carefully developed over centuries in order to guard the Holy of Holies, was taken down, leading to unauthorized “creativity” and liturgical abuse. [Read more…]

It’s hard to say whether or to what extent all of this activity and discussion will yield results at official levels. After all, we could all spend a lot of time pointing out how ridiculous it is to celebrate “Ascension Sunday” or “Epiphany Sunday,” and yet these things could remain fixed, like prehistoric flies in amber. Still, there can be no change for the better, i.e., no restoration of Catholic tradition, until there is a massive change of mentality, a dying off of the old guard and a genuine renewal from the grassroots. And for this to take place, for it to have even a chance of taking place, the activity and discussion must continue, must rise and grow into a mighty wave of unanimous and irresistible testimony: “Give us back our tradition, give us back the fullness of the Catholic Faith.” This will become the second greatest instance in history (the first was the Arian controversy) when the sensus fidelium shall have carried the truth of the Gospel in a time when even hierarchs compromised, denied, or disappeared. Onward, Christian soldiers!

First Friday, January 3, A.D. 2014, Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be offered by Fr. Gerald Patrick Carey of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church, at the Rectory Chapel of St. Albert The Great Parish, 212 Welsh Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006, (T) 215-947-3500, at 7 p.m. preceded by Confessions at 6:30 p.m. Fr. Carey will be offering a Votive Mass of The Sacred Heart in Reparation to The Sacred Heart of Jesus.

First Saturday, December 4, A.D. 2014, TLM will be offered by Fr. Richard K. Mc Fadden of St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church, also at the Rectory Chapel of St. Albert The Great Parish, at 9:30 a.m. preceded by Confessions at 9:00 a.m. (Please note the CHANGE IN TIME for this FIRST SATURDAY TLM). Fr. Mc Fadden will be offering a Votive Mass of Our Lady in Reparation to The Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Rectory, also known as the Parish Center, is behind the Church, which fronts on Welsh Road.

Thank you for publicizing these Traditional Latin Masses.

Mark Matthews

From Regina Magazine
by Father Richard G. Cipolla

‘I went into St. Peter’s and stood under the dome and read those words: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram. And I looked to the confessio where lie the bones of St. Peter, and I looked again at the words in the dome, and I understood, and from that understanding I have never turned back.’

Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. Those words resonate with me in so many ways, so many times, places.

One of my students came into my office last week, having just seen an impressive film in his European history class about Martin Luther. He is intelligent, moral, and takes Latin (the latter nearly equal to being moral!). He proceeded, on the basis of the film, which had its biases, to rip apart the Catholic Church, corruption, bad popes who had children, priests living in sin, failure to preach the Gospel, and much more. We have all heard this view of history, which despite the biases, has some basis in reality.

In response, I tried to explain the significance of the Tu es Petrus saying in the Gospel of Matthew; but he would have none of it, because to him it was obvious—that is, someone had told him—that Jesus was not referring to Peter but to the rock which is the Church in some idealistic sense. So all I could do was to tell him how and when I understood this passage. I was in Rome for the first time in my life in the summer after my first year at the Yale Divinity School. I shall not tell you, for it has nothing to do with a Christian sermon, about my discovery on that occasion of my Italian heritage. Nor shall I tell you about the beginning of my love affair with the baroque in the church of St. Andrea al Quirinale. But I shall tell you what I told this young man, for it has to do with my discovery of the Catholic faith. I went into St. Peter’s and stood under the dome and read those words: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram. And I looked to the confessio where lie the bones of St. Peter, and I looked again at the words in the dome, and I understood, and from that understanding I have never turned back.

And neither did Gregory the Great. If I were to be elected Pope, I have no doubt as to what name I would choose: Gregory. For two of my greatest heroes of the Church both bear the name Gregory: Gregory the Great and
‘A true reformer…recalls forma, recalls beauty, recalls the forma Ecclesiae– back to who she is — the bride of Christ, the locus of salvation, the meeting of heaven and earth.’

Gregory the VII. And they are my heroes because they both understood what the words Tu es Petrus mean in the most existential yet in the most objective way.

Let us not quibble about understandings about jurisdiction, decretals, or Gregorian chant. Both of these men knew who they were and what they must do. They both knew the terribly earthen vessels they were, and yet pressed on with their reforms, for they were both reformers in the truest sense, not puritans or reactionaries but true reformers. What is a true reformer? And its attendant question: what is a true reformation? We all think we know what reformer and reformation mean, but if we look deep into the roots of these words we see something that surprises us. What is a true reformer: he is the one who recalls forma, he is the one who recalls beauty, he is the one who recalls the forma Ecclesiae, who recalls the Ecclesia Formosa—whose beauty is a reflection of the beauty of God in Jesus Christ—back to who she is, the bride of Christ, the locus of salvation, the meeting of heaven and earth. For the Christian, beauty finds its source in the beauty of God, whose love is the source of beauty. It is the Christian who looks upon the crucifix and sees sheer and utter beauty. And it is in this sense that Dostoyevsky’s Idiot is absolutely right: beauty will save the world.

‘It is the Mass that is the recollection of beauty — of the beauty of God.’

And it is the Mass that is the recollection of beauty, of the beauty of God. Recollection is a strange English word. To gather together again, to bring together in the mind, to remember. And yet much more than this. But to not remember, to refuse to remember: this is sin in the deepest sense. Forgive my classical allusions today, but I know many of you share my love of the classics. I teach both Catullus and Cicero. Catullus and Cicero were certainly, although contemporaries, quite different men. Yet both took friendship ultimately seriously. Both agreed on one thing: to be immemor, to be forgetful of one’s obligations to one’s friends, was a terrible sin. To forget on purpose the bond that joins two friends who have agreed to enter into this relationship: that is the unforgivable sin. The sin of being immemor is taken to tragic and lofty heights by Vergil in the Aeneid. When Aeneas forgets on purpose who he is, that is to say, what he must do, what his destiny is, he is recalled in a terrifying way to do what he must do. And thus, for the Western hero, for the pre-Christian hero, to forget in a deliberate way who one is by forgetting what one must do—this is sin. Adam and Eve forgot deliberately who they were and what that meant. And they sinned. When Israel forgot who she was, the chosen people of God, she sinned. And then comes that moment in which the sin of being immemor is made forgivable by a gesture, by a word: “Do this in memory of me.” Memory and its pollution by sin is purified by the breaking of bread and the drinking of a cup of wine by God in the flesh: anamnesis makes memory the vehicle of God, the calling forth of God: the bell rings, the host is held on high, the people sigh, and God is with his people. Past becomes present: the unreality of the future is guaranteed and made real by this presence, the presence of God.

‘The bell rings, the Host is held on high, the people sigh, and God is with His people.’

One of my favorite pieces of literature is the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. In the third book, Prince Caspian, the prince is fighting a battle against the evil forces led by his wicked uncle, and the prince’s troops are losing. In desperation the prince blows on a magical horn that is able to summon the heroes of the past to come to the rescue of those in the present. The Prince sounds the horn and the kings and queens of the past come back and with great courage and fortitude lead the charge and win the battle. But here and really. Not nostalgia, not memory. But anamnesis. The horn sounds not to summon imaginary heroes from the past to fight battles of the present. The horn sounds, the bell sounds, the silence sounds, to summon the power and person of God himself to be present in and defend and make fruitful the Church, his Body, et portae inferi contra eam non praevalebunt.

Twenty years is a long time and a very short time. The Saint Gregory Society exists not to wallow in nostalgia. Not to exult in some sort of gorgeous Wagnerian glorification of the past and therefore the present. Not to preserve Gregorian chant and Lassus as a wonderful and beautiful art form, which both are. Not to wall its members off from the crass and vulgar and chillingly secular and anti-religious aspects of contemporary society. But rather, with the explicit support of Pope Benedict XVI, to refuse to be immemor, to refuse to pretend that the post-Vatican II liturgy, despite its validity and source of grace, is continuous with the traditional Roman rite, to refuse to reduce anamnesis to the memory of the present community: but more importantly to take on the task which is the task of the Cross: to bear the burden of Christ whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light; to continue to offer the Holy Sacrifice with dignity, reverence and faith, and to witness to the Church and to the world, by the beauty of the Mass and the holiness of its members, the reality of the truth, goodness, and beauty of God.

‘This rite is not convenient, for it demands that you allow yourself to be swept up into the re-presentation of Calvary; that you use silence, holy silence, to go where words cannot go.’

You who come here for the first time and experience the depth of Catholic worship which unites us beyond time and space with the dead and with the saints in heaven; you who come here occasionally when your schedule permits. Go home and consider whether what we do here and in my own parish of St. Mary in Stamford in the offering of the traditional Mass is important for the Church and important for you as Catholics. If what we do is important then it deserves the
active support of those who understand what is at stake—not merely time and financial support but bodily support, being present here to worship God in this timeless rite. It is certainly easier to pop into one’s parish church and sit through the Novus Ordo Mass and, knowing that that frail garment is a source of grace, to receive Holy Communion and go home and suppress the feeling that there is something missing, something wrong.

We are a people whose lives are based on convenience. And not only is this Mass not convenient to come to: the odd hour, the sketchy neighborhood, the peeling paint of the church: this rite itself is not convenient, for it demands that you give yourself, you lose yourself, you allow yourself to be swept up into the re-presentation of Calvary; it demands that you use silence, holy silence, to go where words cannot go; it demands that you participate deeply in the act, participatio actuosa, rather than persisting with the kind of “active participation” which belongs at a school assembly. To come here requires sacrifice, but that’s what it is all about anyway.

Today we ask for the intercession of Saint Gregory the Great, that he may give us the courage, strength, hope and joy to recall the Church to liturgical reform—not to bring something back from the past, but to recall the Church to its essence in the beauty of Christ as seen and experienced in the traditional Roman rite.

Sancte Gregori, ora pro nobis.

Find a Latin Mass: http://web2.iadfw.net/carlsch/MaterDei/churches.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Father Richard Cipolla is Chair of the Classics Department at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, CT and parochial vicar at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in nearby Norwalk. The parish, located in a suburb of New York City, is a vibrant, growing one, with a strong tradition of celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. This article is taken from a homily he preached at the 20th anniversary mass of the Saint Gregory Society on November 12, 2006. The Society can be found at http://www.saint-gregory.org .

A Solemn High Missa Cantata will be celebrated at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, 63rd Street & Lancaster Avenue (“Overbrook”), Philadelphia, PA 19151, at Midnight on Christmas Day, December 25. The schola will chant the Gregorian propers for the Christmas Mass at Night, i.e., First Mass of Christmas, and the choir will sing Haydn’s Little Organ Mass in B-flat. Christmas caroling will precede the Mass.

by Peter Kwasniewski

The Catholic Church has always been a death-defying miracle in that she can exist under the pressure of enormous internal strains that would tear apart any merely human institution, and indeed, she continues to produce fruits of holiness in the midst of it, at times because of the trials and at times in spite of them. In recent decades we have experienced the strain of a massive rupture at the very heart of the Roman liturgical tradition, and, often together with it, widespread confusion in teaching on faith and morals at the different levels of the hierarchy and throughout the people.

I was reminded again of the strangeness of this state of affairs when I read some remarks by (or at least attributed to) Archbishop Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and compared them with comments of quite a different sort by James Bogle, the new President of the International Federation Una Voce. Here are the quotations for your pondering.

Without the Second Vatican Council’s liturgy reform, dechristianisation might have forged ahead far faster than it has, Archbishop Müller said at a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium at Würzburg. “It is precisely because the liturgy was renewed in spirit and rite that it has proved an effective remedy against a godless culture.” The renewed liturgy was “a good means of evangelising”, he said. Archbishop Müller contradicted those who blamed the increasing disappearance of the faith and dwindling Mass attendance in the formerly Christian countries of the Western world on the reform of the liturgy following the Council, and expressly underlined the merits of the 1970 Missal. “All Catholics who think and feel with the Church realise that the reform was a success,” he said. [source]

And here is James Bogle, from the latest issue of Gregorius Magnus (September 2013):

As Michael [Davies] so rightly explained to the less educated prelates whom he so often was obliged to school, nothing in Vatican II authorised, let alone mandated, changes that followed. Indeed, the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, expressly required the retention of Latin as the norm, as also chant and polyphony. But how many Catholics now know this? Very few! Never was a stipulation of a Council more flatly defied!
There was no demand for the celebrant priest to face the people, nor that the prayers at the foot of the altar be removed, nor the Last Gospel be dispensed with, nor that almost all the Collects be replaced by new versions of which so many, as Professor Lauren Pristas, the American scholar, has shown, are doctrinally ambiguous.
Yet, the Second Vatican Council ordered that changes must not be made “unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them.” Did the good of the Church genuinely and certainly require the radical changes that have since been authorised? Or the much more extensive changes that were made in the parishes? Has there been a markedly greater increase in attendance at Mass and Sacraments, or in devotion to the Blessed Sacrament?
No. On the contrary, there has been an unprecedented, relentless and precipitous decline such as has perhaps never before been seen in the history of Christianity. Was that merely a coincidence? Or was it, perhaps, linked to that one event wherein all practising Catholics meet the Church, day by day or week by week—namely at Mass?

by Peter Kwasniewski

Fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, was promulgated by Pope Paul VI and nearly all the fathers of the conciliar assembly. Having considered the glaring discrepancy between what the Constitution says and what has become its legacy, one’s thoughts naturally turn to him—the Pope who, on the one hand, insisted, against the innovators, that the venerable Roman Canon be retained in the Latin rite, and, on the other hand, approved the most radical reconstruction of the liturgy ever witnessed in Church history.

No doubt about it: Pope Paul VI is a complex and difficult figure. It is one thing to cling to righteousness and suffer rejection and opprobrium, as did Our Lord Jesus Christ, the ultimate “sign of contradiction”—and as his Vicar, Paul VI, did at certain times as well. Humanae Vitae is the most shining example, even though its teaching is rejected, say the polls, by the vast majority of Catholics today. It is another thing, however, to have taken revolutionary steps that led, by an avalanche effect, to confusion, dismay, abuse, amnesia, rupture, and infidelity. He himself intended no such effects—and yet they came, came in abundance, occasioned and even abetted by some of his actions.

We can see the problem at work in two quotations. In an address of October 29, 1964, to the Consilium (the group entrusted with the renewal and revision of the liturgy), Paul VI said:

The proper implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium] requires of you that the “new” and the “old” be brought together in a bond that is both suitable and beautiful. What must be avoided at all costs in this matter is that eagerness for the “new” exceed due measure, resulting in insufficient regard for, or entirely disregarding, the patrimony of the liturgy handed on. Such a defective course of action should not be called renewal of the Sacred Liturgy, but an overturning of it. The liturgy, in fact, displays a similarity to a hardy tree, the beauty of which shows a continual renewal of leaves, but whose fruitfulness of life bears witness to the long existence of the trunk, which acts through its deep and stable roots. In liturgical matters, therefore, no real opposition should occur between the present age and previous ages; but all should be done so that, whatever be the innovation, it be made to cohere and to concord with the sound tradition that precedes it, and so that from existing forms new forms grow, as through spontaneously blossoming from it.

This sounds balanced and principled, emphasizing what we would call today the hermeneutic of continuity, and even gently warning against any course of action that would compromise or dilute the patrimony of the liturgy handed down to us, or appear to create novelties and disruptions. Then there is the same Pope, speaking these words right before the promulgation of the new Missale Romanum, the Novus Ordo Missae, just three years later, on November 30, 1969:

We may notice that pious persons will be the ones most disturbed [by the changes], because, having their respectable way of listening to Mass, they will feel distracted from their customary thoughts and forced to follow those of others. Not Latin, but the spoken [vernacular] language, will be the main language of the Mass. To those who know the beauty, the power, the expressive sacrality of Latin, its replacement by the vulgar language is a great sacrifice: we lose the discourse of the Christian centuries, we become almost intruders and desecrators in the literary space of sacred expression, and we will thus lose a great portion of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual fact that is the Gregorian Chant. We will thus have, indeed, reason for being sad, and almost for feeling lost: with what will we replace this angelic language? It is a sacrifice of inestimable price.

Is this the same man, the same thinker, the same pope? In the first address he is exhorting the group of experts to adopt continuity as their guiding principle; in the second address, he is apologizing to the people for the massive rupture about to occur, which he then went on to justify for “pastoral” needs. How exactly can genuine pastoral needs be opposed to true theological and liturgical principles? How exactly is abandoning vast swathes of tradition a response to the teaching of Vatican II, which not only reaffirmed the place of Latin in the liturgy but exalted the place of Gregorian Chant as no council had ever done before?

A pope of contradictions. He praised Latin and urged its preservation in many speeches—but he also approved and defended its virtual abolition. He defended the inseparable connection of the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act—but he also paved the way to an increasing acceptance of secularity and secularism in relations with modern governments and the United Nations, institutions that have turned violently against marriage and children. He wept at the opening of the first abortion mill in Rome, yet inasmuch as he did not violently resist modernity and all its pomps and works, he contributed to an environment in which an abortion mill was not, for the people of Rome, an unthinkable abomination but rather a sign of Modern Progress. He famously lamented that the smoke of Satan had somehow entered into the temple of God—but he had thrown open so many windows of that temple to a profane, anti-Christian worldview that he should hardly have been surprised when some of Satan’s smoke came drifting in.

What we saw in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI was an heroic effort to shut and bolt many of those windows, to restore much of what had been rejected or forgotten, to reorient the faithful towards the Good with unambiguous moral teaching, to lead us into the Truth with profound and precise theological doctrine, and to enrapture our hearts towards the Beautiful by the renewal of the sacred liturgy and the fine arts. The shallow innovation and rude experimentation that characterized the 1960s and 1970s began to crumble as the Catholic identity of the faithful was kindled anew.

We are at a decisive crossroads: the proponents of the legacy of rupture are still numerous and strong, and although the momentum of young and educated Catholics is no longer with them, there are structures that perpetuate the errors and missteps of the past, and there is also a combination of widespread ignorance and indifference that helps the status quo remain the status quo.

Never have the patient teaching of orthodox Catholic doctrine and the fervent practice of traditional Catholic worship been more important than they are now, when the very transmission of doctrine and the very essence of worship are at stake—things that could once be taken, in a way, for granted. We cannot undo the errors of earlier shepherds, but we can and must spread the good doctrine and sound model given to us by our tradition and by our best shepherds. This is our decisive and irreplaceable work at this moment of trial, in this season of grace.

Today marks the 450th anniversary of the end of the Council of Trent, which not only stood athwart the currents of the Protestant Reformation but even turned the tide of European history by launching the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

The achievements of the Counter-Reformation are breathtaking: It gave rise to great religious orders like the Discalced Carmelites, the Capuchins, and the Jesuits, who, in turn launched the great missions to South America, Africa, China and Japan. It gave birth to great saints like St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, and St. Francis de Sales and inspired a new era of devotional fervor, as exemplified in books written by many of those saints, like The Spiritual Exercises and An Introduction to the Devout Life. And it created the form of Catholicism that withstood centuries of social strife and political turmoil, from the French Revolution to the emergence of communism, as Catholic author George Weigel has observed.

Trent’s anniversary is an opportunity to not only celebrate such extraordinary success, but also to learn from it. In particular, it seems that there are two lessons from Trent and the Counter-Reformation it inspired that are especially applicable today: the emphasis on defending and defining dogma and the embrace of art as tool for evangelization and catechesis.

The first lesson: uncompromising defense of doctrine

At the time of Trent, the Church was facing challenges on seemingly every front from the Protestant Reformation—everything from the sacrificial nature of the Mass and the authority of tradition to the veneration of relics and the use of icons. The Council of Trent, in confronting the Protestants, did not temper its teachings. It did not water them down or soften its tone. Instead, the council took the opposite approach—one that Catholic writer David Carlin has well summed up:

[I]t was just a matter of taking every aspect of Catholicism that Protestants found objectionable and, so far from toning it down, glorying in it. Do Protestants object to ‘worship’ of the Virgin and the saints? Let us venerate them more wholeheartedly than ever. Do they object to the doctrine of transubstantiation? Then let us emphasize it; let us even develop a ritual in which we adore the consecrated Host. Do Protestants think it absurd for religious services to be conducted in anything other than the vernacular? Then let us keep on saying the Mass in a dead language, Latin (The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, 34).

When the Protestant Reformers were running away from centuries of tradition, Tridentine Catholics did not try to meet them halfway, instead, it ran in the opposite direction defining dogmas more forcefully than it had perhaps ever before. To take one example, consider transubstantiation. This teaching had been codified before, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215:

There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation. In which there is the same priest and sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors (Canon 1).

But the Council of Trent reasserted this teaching even more forcefully, using the unmistakable language of an infallible dogmatic definition:

If anyone says that in the sacred and, holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema (Session 13, Canon 2).

The same spirit drove Trent to reaffirmed reams of Catholic doctrine on everything from the nature of salvation, the number of sacraments and the existence of original sin to the authority of both tradition and Scripture and the veneration of relics and icons. All told, Trent used the ominous word anathema—Latin for cursed—at least 150 times in its canons.

The terms and tone of Trent may strike some of us today as unduly harsh. But it’s hard to argue with the fruit of the council—the extraordinary missionary activity, an entire new generation of saints, the birth of new religious orders, to restate some examples from above. In retrospect, the lesson is a simple one, but is one that is lost on so many today: clear teachings lead to decisive action—the decision to follow Christ, to accept one’s vocation and to live it out faithfully and forcefully.

The second lesson: art as a tool for evangelization

Of course, the Church did more than simply amass hundreds of dogmatic definitions. Tridentine Catholicism also provided the means for transmitting these clear teachings in terms that were understandable to the average believer. One way of doing this was the drafting of the Church’s first-ever catechism. But Tridentine Catholicism also put heavy emphasis on the arts, particularly the visual arts, as another means of spreading the faith. This is a second vital lesson for today.

In its 25th and final session, Trent affirmed the importance of art:

And the bishops shall carefully teach this, that, by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption, portrayed by paintings or other representations, the people is instructed, and confirmed in remembering, and continually revolving in mind the articles of faith; as also that great profit is derived from all sacred images, not only because the people are thereby admonished of the benefits and gifts bestowed upon them by Christ, but also because the miracles which God has performed by means of the saints, and their salutary examples, are set before the eyes of the faithful; that so they may give God thanks for those things; may order their own lives and manners in imitation of the saints; and may be excited to adore and love God, and to cultivate piety.

No doubt, some might associate the beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass with the aesthetic vision of Trent—which is after all also known as the Tridentine Mass—but the council did not so much institute a new Mass as standardize and preserve the liturgy that had been in use for centuries. So Trent’s contribution to the Latin Mass was one of conservation, rather than creation. (One could very well argue, were space permitting, that Trent’s reverence for tradition as the proper source for reform and renewal is a third lesson for the present.)

Tridentine Catholicism is also closely linked to the baroque style in the arts (although it’s not clear that the council fathers intended this development). The aesthetics of baroque art mirrored the dogmatic assertiveness of Trent, according to Carlin:

Do Protestants of the puritanical sort object to ornate churches? Let’s make Catholic churches even more ornate. Baroque church architecture is a manifesto in stone and painting of the popular Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation. … In the presence of these new church buildings … even the dullest person could understand that Catholicism had no intention of yielding one inch to Protestantism (The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, 34-35).

The renewed dogmatic emphasis on transubstantiation also spurred devotion to two of the greatest Christian relics, according to art historian Andrew Casper: St. Veronica’s veil and the Shroud of Turin.

In 1575, barely more than a decade after the end of Trent, the veil was put on public display in Rome. “It was by all accounts a watershed event with a reported attendance of over 400,000 pilgrims from all over Europe,” Casper writes in an article published in the recent book, Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe. (One of the pilgrims was El Greco, one of the great painters of the Counter-Reformation.)

The display of the shroud stirred a similar outpouring of piety, drawing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of the faithful to the city in the late sixteenth century, according to Casper.

Yet another notable intersection of faith and the visual was the surge in devotion to the Sacred Heart, which had roots before Trent, but was really spurred on afterwards, according to Henrik von Achen, a Norwegian art historian. He argues that the devotion was a means of responding to the individualism of the Protestant Reformation while deepening the faith of the laity:

Through the devotion to the Sacred Heart it became possible to rein in the latent excessive individualism promoted by the current devotional concentration on the human heart, but doing so from within piety itself, and not as an outwardly disciplinary manoeuvre. In this way a change of the Theology of the heart took place in Catholicism, a new direction, indeed, but deeply rooted in the entire prehistory and vocabulary of this spirituality, keeping Counterreformation piety from individualistic excesses without giving up the heart as a prominent religious symbol and metaphor.

Here a disclaimer seems in order: none of the above should be construed as an argument that the solution to all the ills of the present Church is to simply to make contemporary Catholic culture a carbon copy of the Counter-Reformation. But the lessons of the Trent can and should be applied to the altered circumstances of the present.

The Church today: the need for beauty

This is possible because it already happening in one area: the aggressive defense of dogma against a hostile culture. In the twentieth century and into the current one, arguably the most significant challenge to Church has been in the area of morals. The Church has responded now, as at Trent, by defining its teachings in this area even more forcefully.

One could easily write a synopsis of the Church’s response in the same fashion that Carlin did for Tridentine Catholicism: Does the popular culture celebrate sexual liberation from marriage? Let’s not only renew our commitment to chastity (Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body) but let’s declare that artificial contraception to be immoral—even for unmarried couples (the encyclicals Humanae Vitae and Casti Connubii). Does women’s liberation call for the erasing of gender differences? Let’s reaffirm an unmarried male priesthood (John Paul II).

Again, this should be construed as a call for reactionary extremism: If the culture does one thing, let’s blindly do the opposite and let’s go to even further extremes than before. Trent certainly took its time—the council last almost two decades after all—and the Church’s modern teachings on sexual morality have been carefully developed over several decades by many popes.

The distinctive mark of the Church’s defense of doctrine in both cases was the refusal to compromise with culture. But this was done with great prudence and fortitude, and—even though it might not seem like it—a measure of temperance. (For example, Trent refrained from condemning Luther individually as a heretic and the Church does allow natural family planning as an alternative to artificial contraception.)

But the Church is wanting today in the second area: art as a means of evangelization—something that should be painfully obvious to anyone who has ever been inside just about any church built after Vatican II.

Again, this is not a call for a church-building campaign that painstakingly imitates every detail of the baroque style. Instead, post-Vatican II Catholicism must find its own distinctive style in the arts, one that is both faithful to tradition and is also an authentic development of it. (The journal Image, edited by Gregory Wolfe, and The Way of Beauty at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts might point the way forward.) This most delicate of balancing acts—preserving tradition while applying it to the present—very well may have been the most extraordinary achievement of Trent.

Posted on 2 December 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I have written many times about the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan. This church has become a spiritual oasis for many.

Look at this at Catholic Stand from a New York taxi driver:

In this town even going to church can be pierced with the nails of the Culture of Death. I am sure you have all had similar experiences. On All Saints Day I take the day off from cab driving to attend Mass, but I also make the decision to really make it a holy day and to attend my first Extraordinary Form Mass. I get off the F-train across the street from Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret.

Normally I would never give it a second thought but this time of year they are gearing up for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. My eyes flash on Victoria’s Secret Store across the street. It dawns on me a few Sundays later that this is the very store where a 17-year old mother of two was arrested October 17th for shoplifting a pair of skinny jeans. One of her two children, a dead newborn was found in her bag. Officials are awaiting autopsy reports to see if she will be charged with murder. I would think about this in the weeks to come, but today I am trying to find a new church.

I make my way past hundreds of people on the sidewalk. It is easy to tell the tourists from the natives. The New Yorkers usually have that 1000-yard stare, that dead look in the eye that sees, but does not see. The tourists have that wonder still in their eyes, open. That’s why I like picking up the tourists in my cab. They are not so jaded. They still like to talk.

Most people today on the sidewalk are wearing blue jeans and sneakers, but some have green hair or orange hair or purple hair. Some have tattoos and nose piercings or lip piercings or eyebrow piercings. Some look bizarre with spiked hair or Mohican haircuts. And then it dawns on me that I am the freak here: the only one in suit and tie and carrying a red Adoremus Hymnal. So be it.

I walk up Broadway to 37th Street. I look both ways down the street searching, but I don’t see a church. Then I make out a white cross but that can’t be it. It looks like one of those old Protestant crosses that are in front of their small and sometimes storefront churches. In desperation I walk closer and make out the words in red: Holy Innocents Catholic Church.

The building is not at first impressive, obscured by the huge glass and steel office buildings around it. I kneel and make the sign of the cross and enter. Inside is a glorious Catholic Church. The Sanctuary is all in pristine white. Beautiful sculptures of angels all in white: St. Michael with his sword and St. Gabriel who would say the words that would change the course of human history. Innocence is unmistakably proclaimed here. I notice most of the parishioners are dressed up—many of the women wearing Mantillas, the Chapel Veils, and many men in suits or dress clothes. For the first time today I don’t feel out of place.

I look up to the vaulted ceiling and the choir starts. A Gregorian chant, and my legs wobble as the six torch bearers, the thurible carriers and the Priest and Deacons enter. At the Kyrie Eleison I sob for the first time—it is so breathtakingly beautiful. The choir is world class. My thoughts are that they are professionals from the Theatre or show business. Some of the hymns are thePolyphony of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina with the bass, altos, tenors and sopranos singing different parts. The soprano is the best voice I have ever heard. Her voice soars up to the vaulted ceiling along with the curling wisps of incense, trilling the r’s as she hits the high notes.

We sing the Gloria, the Credo, and the Our Father in Latin to those sacred Latin melodies. I cry for the second, third, and fourth time. The Priest and Deacons are facing the High Altar and genuflecting or bowing to it while incensing it often. The Priest is saying the prayers for us and I’m fine with that. I don’t need to be saying the prayers along with him to feel I am participating. I amparticipating by being here. He is our shepherd and he prays for us. That’s the way our elder brothers the Hebrews did it for 2,000 years before Christ, and that’s mostly how the Holy Roman Catholic Church has done it for most of the last 2,000 years up until post Vatican II.

At one point in the Mass the Priests sprinkles the parishioners with Holy Water and the altar servers incense them. I get lost and don’t know what is happening a few times, but I am fine with that. I am lost in Christ’s Church and that is one good place to be lost. I tried to prepare by reading my Adoremus Hymnal beforehand but my memory is really bad this last decade or so and I just can’t retain things. I better learn by the time I get to heaven though, if the Lord in his bountiful mercy grants that divine grace to me that my whole life is aimed at receiving. I better learn it because the heavenly banquet is going on all the time there. I find afterwards that there was a pamphlet with everything listed, all the readings and translations on a table that I didn’t see. Well, next time.

The climax of the Mass is the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No.1324). I see the Altar Rails. I am stunned and grateful that they are still here and haven’t been taken out and made into S.U.V.s. I fall to my knees before it sobbing for the final time. I receive the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and I get up wobbly, dizzy. I walk very slowly back to the pew and fall to my knees.

Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine’s
The Church’s Year

REMARK The Mass of this Sunday is always the last, even if there are more than twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost; in that case the Sundays remaining after Epiphany, which are noticed in the calendar, are inserted between the twenty-third and the Mass of the twenty-fourth Sunday.

The Introit of the Mass is the same as that said on the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost.

COLLECT Quicken, we beseech Thee, 0 Lord, the wills of Thy faithful: that they, more earnestly seeking after the fruit of divine grace, may more abundantly receive the healing gifts of Thy mercy. Thro’.

EPISTLE (Col. I. 9—14.) Brethren, We cease not to pray for you, and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of the will of God, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding: that you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God: strengthened with all might according to the; power of his glory, in all patience and long-suffering with joy, giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins.

EXPLANATION In this epistle St. Paul teaches us to pray for our neighbor, and to thank God especially for the light of the true, only saving faith. Let us endeavor to imitate St. Paul in his love and zeal for the salvation of souls, then we shall also one day partake of his glorious reward in heaven.

GOSPEL (Matt. XXIV. 15—35.) At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: When you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth, let him understand: then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains: and he that is on the house-top, let him not come down to take anything out of his house: and he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat. And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck, in those days. But pray that your flight be not in the winter, or on the Sabbath. For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be: and unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect, those days shall be shortened. Then, if any man shall say to you: Lo, here is Christ, or there: do not believe him: for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. Behold, I have told it to you before hand: if therefore they shall say to you: Behold, he is in the desert, go ye not out; Behold, he is in the closets, believe it not. For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west, so shall also the coming- of the Son of man be. Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together. And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be moved: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty: and he shall send his an­gels with a trumpet and a great voice, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them. And from the fig-tree learn a parable: when the branch thereof is now tender, and the leaves come forth, you know that summer is nigh. So you also, when you shall see all these things, know ye that it is nigh, even at the doors. Amen I say to you, that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.

EXPLANATION When you shall see the abomination of desolation. The abomination of desolation of which Daniel (IX. 27.) and Christ here speak, is the desecration of the temple and the city of Jerusalem by the rebellious Jews by perpetrating the most abominable vices, injustices and robberies, &c., but principally by the pagan Romans by putting up their idols. This destruction which was accomplished in the most fearful manner about forty years after the death of Christ, was foretold by Him according to the testimony of St. Luke. (XXI. 20.) At the same time He speaks of the end of the world and of His coming to judgment, of which the desolation of Jerusalem was a figure.

Pray that your flight be not in the winter or on the Sabbath. Because, as St. Jerome says, the severe cold which reigns in the deserts and mountains would pre­vent the people from going thither to seek security, and because it was forbidden by the law for the Jews to travel on the Sabbath.

There shall rise false Christs and false prophets. According to the testimony of the Jewish historian Josephus, who was an eyewitness of the destruction of Jerusalem, Eleazar, John, Simon, &c., were such false prophets who under the pretence of helping the Jews, brought them into still greater misfortunes; before the end of the world it will be Antichrist with his followers, whom St. Paul calls the man of sin and the son of perdition, (II Thess. II. 3.) on account of his diabolical malice and cruelty. He will rise up, sit in the temple, proclaim himself God, and kill all who will not recognize him as such. His splendor, his promises and his false miracles will be such that even the holy and just will be in danger of being seduced, but for their sake God will shorten these days of persecution.

Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together. That is, where the wicked are, who have aimed at spiritual corruption, there punishment will overtake and destroy them.

This generation shall not pass till all these things be done. By these words Christ defines the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and says that many of His hearers would live to see it, which also happened. But when the end of the world will come, He says, not even the angels in heaven know. (Matt. XXIV. 36.) Let us endeavor to be always ready by leading a holy life, for the coming of the divine Judge, and meditate often on the words of our di­vine Lord: Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.

(See the account of the Destruction of Jerusalem on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost.)

PRAYER Remove from us, O Lord, all that is calculated to rob us of Thy love. Break the bonds with which we are tied to the world, that we may not be lost with it. Give us the wings of eagles that we may soar above all worldly things by the contemplation of Thy sufferings, life and death, that we may hasten towards Thee now, and gather about Thee, that we may not become a prey to the rapacious enemy on the day of judgment. Amen.

INSTRUCTION CONCERNING PERJURY
Amen, I say to you.(Matt. XXIV. 34.)

The Son of God here, and elsewhere in the gospel, con­firms His word by an oath, as it were, for swearing is nothing else than to call upon God, His divine veracity, His justice, or upon His creatures in the name of God, as witness of the truth of our words. — Is swearing, then, lawful, and when? — It is lawful when justice or necessity or an important advantage requires it, and the cause is true and equitable. (Jer. IV. 2.) Those sin grievously, there­fore, who swear to that which is false and unjust, because they call upon God as witness of falsehood and injustice, by which His eternal truthfulness and justice is desecrated; those sin who swear in a truthful cause without necessity and sufficient reason, because it is disrespectful to call upon God as witness for every trivial thing. In like manner, those sin grievously and constantly who are so accustomed to swearing as to break out into oaths, without knowing or considering whether the thing is true or false, whether they will keep their promise or not, or even if they will be able to keep it; such expose themselves to the danger of swearing falsely. “There is no one,” says St. Chrysostom, “who swears often, who does not sometimes swear falsely, just as he who speaks much, sometimes says unbecoming and false things.” Therefore Christ tells those who seek perfection, not to swear at all, (Matt. V. 34.) that they might not fall into the habit of swearing and from that into perjury. He who has the habit of swearing should, therefore, take the greatest pains to eradicate it; to accomplish which it will be very useful to reflect that if we have to render an account for every idle word we speak, (Matt. XII. 36.) how much more strictly will we be judged for unnecessary false oaths! God’s curse accompanies him who commits perjury, in all his ways, as proved by daily experience. He who commits perjury in court, robs himself of the merits of Christ’s death and will be consumed in the fire of hell, which is represented by the crucifix and burning tapers, in presence of which the oath (in some places) is taken. If you have had the misfortune to be guilty of perjury, at once be truly sorry, weep for this terrible sin which you have committed, frankly confess it, repair the injury you may have caused by it, and chastise yourself for it by rigorous penance.