The Dedication of Ss Peter and Paul

In honor of the dedication feast of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, and that of St Paul Outside-the-Walls, here are some interesting thoughts from the medieval liturgical commentator William Durandus on the Office and Mass of the dedication of a church. (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 7, 48) The version of the Office which Durandus knows is slightly different from the version in the Breviary of St Pius V, as will be noted in the text itself.

Pope Urban VIII draws the letters of the Latin alphabet in ashes spread over the floor, during the consecration of St. Peter’s Basilica on November 18, 1626, the 1300th anniversary of the original church’s consecration by Pope St Sylvester I. (Roman tapestry, ca. 1660)

The feast (of a church’s dedication) is solemnly celebrated by the Church, concerning which it is written in John’s Gospel (10, 22 and 23) “It was the ‘renewal’ ” , that is, the feast of the dedication in Jerusalem, “and Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch” in order to confirm that festival. It is called Solomon’s porch, because he was wont to pray there, and did so on the day of the dedication. (In many medieval Uses, such as that of Sarum, this Gospel, John 10, 22-38, was read on the octave of a dedication.)

This feast also took place in the Old Testament, whence we read in the book of Maccabees (1 Macc. 4, 42-43), “Judah Maccabee chose priests without blemish, and they cleansed the holy places.” Now the Church Militant can be cleansed, but not the Church Triumphant… * the Church on earth is built in baptism (i.e. washing), and in teaching, and in penance; here are heard (the noise of) the axe and every sort of metal tool, which are the many kinds of penances and disciplines in the Church Militant, … but the temple of Solomon signifies the Church Triumphant, in which these things are not heard.

The Jews celebrated the dedication for eight days, whence it seems that we likewise ought to solemnly keep the feast of the dedication for eight days. But it is strange that they celebrated it for eight days, when they kept Passover and Pentecost for only seven. The reason for this is that this festivity especially signifies the eternal dedication, in which the Church, that is, the holy soul, will be dedicated to God, that is, will be so joined to him that it cannot be transferred to other uses. And this will take place on the octave of resurrection, and therefore, in the New Testament, this feast has an octave. (In Durandus’ original text, this paragraph is actually where the red star is marked above, interrupting his allegorical passage about cleansing the Church.)

In the Office of Matins are said those Psalms in which there is a mention of doors, which represent fear and love, as in the Psalm “The earth is the Lord’s”, where it says “Lift up your gates, o ye princes” (23); those in which there is mention of an altar, as in the Psalm, “Judge me, o God, etc.” (42, not in the Roman Use); those in which there is mention of a city, such as “Our God is a refuge” and “Great is the Lord” (45 and 47); those in which there is mention of atria and gates, such as “How lovely are thy tabernacles” and “Her foundations are in the holy mountains.” (83 and 86)

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz during the consecration of the seminary chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the FSSP Seminary in Denton, Nebraska. After sprinkling the outside of the church with holy water, the bishop knocks on the door three times with his crozier, saying the words of Psalm 23, “Lift up your gates, o ye princes, and be lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in.” From within, the deacon answers from the same psalm, “Who is this king of glory?”, and the bishop replies “the Lord of hosts, he is the king of Glory!” A porter then opens the door, and the bishop blesses the threshold, saying “Behold the sign of the Cross, let all phantasms flee,” then, as he enters, “Peace to this house” to which the deacon replies “Upon thy entrance. Amen.”

But the question arises, why is the Psalm “O Lord, God of my salvation” (87) is said? To this, some say that it because burials are mentioned in it, but this reason is not correct, because the Psalm does not speak of such burials as those in which the bodies of the faithful dwell, or are buried in a church, but rather of the burials of the wicked. Wherefore, we say that that Psalm is said because it is a penitential Psalm, and treats especially of prayer, which is to take place in a church; whence it is said therein, “Let my prayer come in before thee.” And the Lord says of the Church, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.”

But the eighth Psalm (seventh in the Roman Use) is “He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High” (90), that is, in the Church, in which it is said, “thou hast made the most High thy refuge,” because the Church is founded above all, on the height of the mountains.

The last antiphon, that of the Magnificat at Vespers, is “Eternal peace,” since the dedication is celebrated for this reason, that we may dedicated, and have that eternal peace.

(This antiphon, incorrectly labelled in the video as the Salve regina, is found in the Dedication Office in most medieval Uses, with a number of minor textual variations. Note the long melisma on the O of the last ‘domui.’ “Pax aeterna ab Aeterno huic domui; pax perennis Verbum Patris sit pax huic domui; pacem pius Consolator praestet huic domui. - Eternal peace this house from the Eternal One; may the Word of the Father be everlasting peace to this house; may the Holy Comforter grant peace to this house.”)

  … To this feast certainly belongs Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and the angels ascending and descending, which is to say, he saw the whole Church in one vision, and raised up a stone, that is, Christ, who is the cap-stone, and the corner-stone, and foundation, who supports all the rest. He raised it up as a title of proclamation, of memory, of triumph, pouring oil upon it. For Jacob, who signifies the bishop, poured oil upon the stone, that is, on Christ, to show forth His anointings, and prophesied the same, saying, “How terrible is this place! this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven. Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” (Gen. 28, 17 and 16)

For the Church is terrible to demons, because of the likeness which it has to God, and therefore this is the Introit at the Mass, “Terrible is this place.” There follows “and it will be called the court of God.” The blessed Gregory added these words of his own initiative, since God is ready to hear us therein, as the Lord said to Solomon, “I have heard thy prayer etc.” But why it is terrible is shown in the verse, “The Lord hath reigned, he is clothed with beauty,” that is, in His members, and therefore the Church is terrible to demons. …

The Gradual “This place”, that is, the material church, “is holy”, because it is sanctified for this purpose, that the Lord may hear payers in it, and therefore it gives holiness to those praying. For Solomon prayed that the Lord might hear those who pray there, and the Lord said to him, “Thy prayer is heard.”

"The Altar Bell" and More at Romanitas Press

Many NLM readers will know about the good work of Louis Tofari at Romanitas Press, which has a new website that surely deserves a visit. I recently discovered many helpful resources there that I had not known about before.

Romanitas sells server cards, ceremonial books and notes, and classic reprints (e.g., Edwin Ryan's Candles in the Roman Rite, Geoffrey Webb's The Liturgical Altar, and various books in Latin by Callewaert). The "Peregrinus Gasolinus" stories from the 1930s, humorous fictions about points of liturgical ceremony, are definitely worth a look. His lists of rubrical reading materials and "where can I find...?" are excellent. Louis also offers training and consulting services.

Of note is a recently added set of articles about the altar bell (part 1, part 2).

Fraternity of St Vincent Ferrer in NYC Area

From the 15th to the 22nd of November, the founder of the Fraternity Saint-Vincent-Ferrier, Fr Louis-Marie de Blignières, accompanied by two fathers of his community, Réginald-Marie Rivoire and Ambroise-Marie Pellaumail, will be in New York.
- Thursday 17th: Holy Innocents Church (128 W 37th St). 18:00 : Solemn Mass in the Dominican Rite, followed by a conference.
- Sunday 20th : Pequannock, New Jersey, Our Lady of Fatima Chapel (32, W. Franklin Ave.) Masses and Homily: 9:00 ; 11:00 (Solemn Mass followed by a refreshment in the parish and a conference ; 17:00.
- Monday 21st : Saint Vincent Ferrer Parish, run by the Dominican Fathers, (869 Lexington Avenue). 19:00 : Solemn Mass in the Dominican Rite, followed by a conference.

(With my apologies for the lateness of the notice; I am currently traveling.)

Fr Rivoire celebrated a Solemn Mass in the Dominican Use earlier this year at the FSSP’s Roman parish, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, on the feast of St Thomas Aquinas, in thanksgiving for the successful completion of his doctoral studies.

Double Book Review: Psalms and New Testament and Vespers for Sundays and Feasts

Readers have probably noticed that I am reviewing a lot of books lately. Of course, Christmas is not so very far away and books always make great gifts for people who still use these odd manipulables of paper, glue, string, leather, and cardboard, but the main reason is that I have been flooded with wonderful books to review and have even had to say no to some offers.

I have paired together two books today, a beautiful edition of the Psalms and New Testament from Baronius Press, and a magnificent new complete Vespers for Sundays and First Class Feasts from Angelus Press. Part of the reason they come together in my mind is that both have the nice black cover that, to my mind, immediately says: "Liturgical book!," even if the Baronius book is meant for personal devotion.

Baronius's Psalms & New Testament

The Psalms and New Testament volume is simply delightful. I myself had been searching for a long time for a compact Bible to use for studying in English the psalms I pray in Latin, and for doing lectio divina with the Gospels. It might just be a personal thing, but I can't stand hauling around gigantic Bibles. It's much nicer to be able to pop a little book in your briefcase or backpack and take it on the road or to the chapel. Moreover, I wanted the Bible to have the Douay-Rheims translation, because it's by far the most helpful for those who are immersed in the traditional Latin liturgy, which uses the Vulgate. As time goes on, my distaste for other translations has increased as I have seen how remote they are from the Roman Catholic tradition. This is notoriously true of the New American Bible, which is a paraphrastic and stylistic travesty (written, as Anthony Esolen once quipped, in "Nabbish"), but it is also true in subtle ways of the Revised Standard Version.

This Baronius edition, therefore, which contains the Douay-Rheims/Challoner has exactly suited my lectio needs over the past few couple of months, and I suspect it will suit the needs of many others, too. It is not quite pocket-sized but it is conveniently small (the photos show that). The cover is flexible leather. As one would expect of top-end Baronius books, the binding is sewn in signatures and the edge is gilt. There is a single yellow ribbon.

The print is quite small, so if you have good vision or good reading glasses, it will be fine, but if you need a larger print for comfort, you'll have to search elsewhere. The formatting of the text is elegant and the typeface old-fashioned but not distractingly so. Cross-references are abundant.

The notes, which are from the Challoner edition of the mid-18th century, are few but potent. They tend to arise at passages that Protestants twist to mean something other than the Catholic Church teaches, or at places where the text is very obscure. I like their vigorous tone and theological meat, which is such a far cry from the spiritually desiccated and ecumenically neutered notes one sees in more recent Bibles.

The Psalms are printed first (pp. 1-78), in the usual Douay-Rheims style, where under each Psalm there is its Latin title, a one-line summary, and the Hebrew description of the Psalm, which in Vulgate Bibles is numbered as the first verse. The Fathers of the Church and the medieval commentators often made a big deal out of these at times rather obscure titles.

Once again, there is a benefit in re-publishing an older edition of Scripture. As C. S. Lewis says, past generations did not have the hang-ups we have. Thus, the editor's summary of Psalm 48 (pictured above) reads: "The folly of worldlings, who live on in sin, without thinking of death or hell." You won't find that in Today's Inclusive Bible.

The Baronius Psalms and New Testament is the best compact book of its genre (i.e., psalms and NT in one volume) that I have ever seen. It has become an invaluable component of my morning routine.

Angelus's Vespers for Sundays and First Class Feasts

In my capacity as choirmaster and schola director, I am frequently in the position of having to create Vespers booklets for special occasions. Since we often sing traditional Roman Vespers, it typically involves cutting and pasting from a PDF of the Liber usualis, supplemented by Benjamin Bloomfield's psalm-tone generator. There are times when I have thought: If this is how much time and expertise it takes to get chanted Latin Vespers ready, no wonder so few people and places are doing it!

Enter this incredible resource, hot off the press. If you want to sing Vespers in the usus antiquior on any Sunday or Holy Day of the year, everything you need is present in this 336-page book, clearly typeset in black and red and very easy to find. It is as if someone took all the helpful Vespers material out of the Liber usualis and reorganized it for non-experts and without any shortcuts or abbreviations.

(Apologies for the fuzzy images; my camera is not very good and neither is the steadiness of my hand.)

Here are some photos of the "Common of Sunday Vespers" to give a sense of how the chant and text are laid out.

Then, if we look (for instance) at the first Sunday of Advent, we get the proper antiphons for the Sunday psalms, the Chapter, Hymn, Versicle, and Magnificat antiphon, and the Collect for the day, as well as which Benedicamus Domino to use. Whoever put this together was aiming to make it as user-friendly as possible. There are two ribbons, a black and a red, which is all that one would need (one for the common, one for the proper).

Finally, as in the Liber usualis, this book groups together Vespers psalms and the Magnificat (simple and solemn) according to the eight tones with all possible terminations.

A pastor who wishes to bring sung Sunday Vespers back into his parish or a Music Director who has the possibility of doing the same should acquire this book post-haste and consider investing in multiple copies of it. What a vision: a parish whose hymn-racks are lined not only with the Parish Book of Chant or the Proper of the Mass or the Lumen Christi Hymnal but also with this Vespers volume... a parish where increasing numbers of families come back to the church at 4:30 or 5:00 pm to chant Vespers together, week after week. It is remarkable how much of a difference the right book can make. This is one we have been waiting for for decades.

To order the Baronius Press Psalms and New Testament ($24.95), visit here.

To order the Angelus Press Vespers for Sundays and Feasts ($39.95), visit here.

Tradition is for the Young (Part 2)

On Saturday, the church of the Immaculate Heart in Glasgow hosted the Una Voce Scotland annual Requiem Mass and general meeting. The Solemn Mass was offered by Fr Ninian Doohan (whose ordination we reported on in August), with Fr John Emerson FSSP as Deacon and Fr Mark Morris as Sub-Deacon; the schola sang the Requiem chants and Byrd’s Justorum Animae as the communion motet. Here is a nice little video from Sancta Familia Media, who came to video the service and interview people about what draws them to the Traditional Latin Mass.

EF Confirmations in Ireland and England

We have recently received photos of two different EF Confirmation ceremonies, one from Ireland and one from England. On Tuesday, November 3, His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke conferred the Sacrament of Confirmation and offered Pontifical Benediction at St Kevin’s Church on Harrington Street in Dublin, Ireland, the home of the Latin Mass Chaplaincy of the Dublin Archdiocese. Photos courtesy of Mr John Briody; the complete set can be seen here on his flickr account.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Catholic Artists Society Lecture in New York, November 19

The Catholic Artists Society is presenting a lecture by James Patrick Reid, T.O.P., entitled “Art and Transformation.” The presentation demonstrates, through the examination of paintings by Giotto, Chardin, and other masters -- correlated with insights from Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas -- the specific ways in which visual art magnifies the mysteries of the divine conservation and governance of nature. The lecture culminates in a meditation on the splendor of divine providence in a work by Beato Angelico. This event will take place on Saturday, November 19, at the Catholic Center at New York University, 23 Thompson Street, in New York City.

James Patrick Reid is a painter and scholar specializing in the intersection of art and theology. He has taught at Union College, the New York Academy of Art, and the Art Students League, and is currently on the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology. Mr. Reid has lectured at Thomas Aquinas College and the Franciscan University of Steubenville, among many other distinguished venues. His writings have appeared in the monograph Intimations of Paradise: the Photographs of Christopher Burkett, in the American Arts Quarterly, and in the journals Prosopon, Seen and The Catholic Thing. His article, Invisible Things Clearly Seen: Visual Art in the Drama of Salvation, will appear in the January/February issue of the Saint Austin Review.

Can Small-Scale Illumination Be Adapted for Large-Scale Liturgical Art?

In response to a recent article in which I proposed the English Gothic style of the School of St Albans as a possible model for today, one reader asked what I felt was a perceptive question. He wondered if this style, which had been done in miniature in the pages of a book, could be adapted into large scale works.

I think that it was a fair point to raise. In all the examples I gave, there was an intimate feel to the compositions that one could imagine in a Psalter, but not necessarily in a ten-foot tall work of art behind a high altar! Also, the narrative style of some the compositions is different from that of most large scale works, as in this example which shows one of the papal legate at work.

In response to the reader, I do think that the School of St Albans can be adapted to a full liturgical style. I think that what our questioner is seeing in the examples I showed is not so much as a result of the style, as it is a reflection of the composition. These pictures were designed by Matthew Paris to speak to a text which is close by; and relate to the viewer in an intimate way, because he knows that the viewer’s nose is just a few inches away.

In contrast, when the artist is painting on a large scale and knows that most people will be seeing the work from a distance, he will alter the composition accordingly. Also, any good artist will consider the setting for his work and try to make it speak appropriately both to other pictures and to the architecture around it. That means that an illustration in a book is very different from an altarpiece in design.

I will try to illustrate how I have approached this problem with examples that I have created from illuminations. Not all are in the St Albans style, but I hope they illustrate the points I am making. This has been a process of learning for me. I have been discovering these principles as I have been going along, and please bear in mind that as I look at them now, I don’t think that all of the following are perfectly successful by any means, but at least you can see what I am trying to do. As an artist, I try to be critical of what I do so that I can improve. (On that point, I am different from many artists. I don’t agonize over how bad my work is. When I first complete a work I am almost always pleased with it; it’s only as time progresses that I start to see my flaws!)

So here’s the first example. I saw the following image of St Michael and the devil, which is from an German early Gothic psalter. I decided to adapt it for a large scale work to go in Thomas More College chapel. The image I created is 6 feet by 3, and hangs high up on the wall behind the altar. The bottom of it is perhaps 10 feet from the ground. I have deliberately made my composition less busy so that it will have an impact at a distance. In the development of the underlying line drawing, I deliberately made the figures slightly more naturalistic in style, because I felt that these would connect with the contemporary viewer more easily. I looked to Greek style icons from the same period for inspiration here, especially in the drawing of St. Michael.

Similarly, the following image of Christ in majesty is a page from the Westminster Psalter, an illumination from the St Albans period. In composition, this is more devotional and less of an illustration, with a more modeled, colored-in approach. I’m guessing that this isn’t by the hand of Matthew Paris, but by another artist. I don’t know precisely how big it is, but it is a single page in a book, certainly much smaller than an altarpiece.

I based my Christ in majesty on this, and painted it on a wooden panel, slightly bigger than the St Michael, about 6.5 feet long. 

Again, in the drawing stage, I made it slightly more naturalistic, while in the coloration, I looked to the style of a 20th century Russian iconographer called Gregory Kroug; the way I have painted Christ’s blue robe is based on his style. I added the green and red angels after seeing them in a 16th century Christ in Majesty in the Russian Icon Museum in Clinton, Massachussetts, a large wooden panel of similar size. I felt happy that this would work in a design for a large piece of liturgical art, and wouldn’t look with all the detail in the red and green areas, because at a distance each colored area looks like a shimmering single mass of bodies, strongly bound together by the common colour.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Is Traditionalism a Spiritual Malady?

Judging from the number of readers and comments, my article from a while back, “On Needlessly Problematizing Our Situation,” seems to have struck a nerve. One commenter in particular raised what I consider to be important points, often met with and deserving of a fuller response.

The commenter maintained:

There is nothing wrong with a robust and loyal devotion and defense of Tradition, but the Pharisee temptation, the temptation to a fanaticism that protects us from what we neurotically fear, usually some post-traumatic-stress form of fear of contamination and intimacy and loss of control, is as powerful among those with the particular charism to defend Tradition as it is undetectable by them once it is given in to. I speak from personal experience. I have found that the awareness of this temptation, and one’s susceptibility to it, once it is has been given in to repeatedly, decreases as a function of the spiritual urgency of one’s need to recognize it in order to be free of it through repentance. In other words, it is the kind of sin that makes repentance nearly impossible — for it is “they” who need to repent, who are impure and disloyal and traitors to God, not me! … [W]hat is seldom mentioned is the possibility of “adherence to tradition” becoming a sign of one’s spiritual superiority and initiation into the “inner circle” of the REAL Catholics. Or, even worse, when adherence to tradition becomes a way of avoiding intimacy with God, oneself, and other people.
       Indeed, being a “traditionalist,” in the best sense of this term, meaning, simply, being steeped in Holy Tradition as the indispensable means — not an end in itself! — to encountering and loving God as He truly is in Himself, is a prerequisite for holiness, and hence the humble simplicity that is its essential quality. 

In reply, I wrote:

It seems that you are saying that while we cannot and should not try to escape from tradition, we can and must try to escape from pride. This is absolutely correct — but for that very reason, your position should never lead to contempt for tradition, the kind of contempt that is all too obvious in the past 50 years of experimentation, novelty, and the rationalistic (and Americanist) “we can do it better than everyone before us.”
       The great saints would agree with all you have said about finding God in the present moment — but they would not then pit that against being fully and traditionally Catholic. This is not an either/or but a both/and situation.
       If Tradition is an indispensable means, let us love it and treat it precisely as such. For example, if there were a single bridge by which one could cross a river, one would love, value, repair, and frequently use that bridge, not because it is an end in itself, but because by it one can reach the land one is seeking.

My interlocutor retorted:

I agree with everything you have just written, and you put it beautifully, as usual. But I do not think you got the essence of my point, which is not simply that we should avoid pride, and that loving and being loyal to Tradition is precisely the way to avoid such pride. It’s a more subtle point I am making, one that suggests that there is a dangerous temptation bound up with the adoption of a certain “inner circle” stance and attitude vis-à-vis the Church and the world and other people, and a unhealthy spiritual and psychological and emotional condition as both its cause and effect.

Here is my response to that objection.

Subtlety can be the undoing of us. Sometimes good, plain, honest judgment is better. When you look at something beautiful, noble, and reverent, you say (and you ought to say): “This is good, this is as it should be. Let’s embrace it wholeheartedly and use it to praise God and win eternal life.” When you see something that is the opposite, you say (and you ought to say): “This is bad, it will not help us, and it deserves to be rejected.” This is how matters stand, for example, with the proposal that bigamists or adulterers should be admitted to Holy Communion. A true Catholic simply says: “No way, not in a million years. Jesus taught the evil of adultery; St. Paul taught it; St. John the Baptist and St. Thomas More died over it; I am ready to die for it, too. I don’t care who says otherwise.”

Yes, sometimes we will make mistakes in our particular judgments, but it is a peculiarly modern (post-modern?) temptation to want to float in a region of non-judgment, where we can avoid the painful necessity of making up our minds and coming down on this or that side of the fence. We’d rather sit on the fence and pretend we have a superior disposition because we are not like those Pharisees down there on the one side, or those liberals on the other, all of whom have chosen decisively. Ironically, it sounds like the “view from nowhere” myth of the Enlightenment, which is a still subtler form of Pharisaism whereby those who keep themselves pure from definite positions can consider themselves clear-seeing, free from ideology. According to this stance, the people most free are those who do not bind themselves to a particular path, a way of life, a body of spiritual practices, a worldview. After all, since we could always be wrong, we need to refrain from such commitments.

This, of course, is the very essence of modernity’s error — an error no less pernicious for its being utterly incapable of actually being lived. For it is notoriously true that men who claim to be free from all prejudices often prove to be the most entrapped by a web of them. It is more honest to admit that all human beings have loves and hatreds, and that we are responsible for getting them sorted out and well-aimed, not for ridding ourselves of them. It is a form of reverence to God to acknowledge that He intends for us to seek true knowledge, to reach real conclusions, to make judgments about right and wrong, and to lay our lives on the line for what we believe.

We have to make choices about how and what we are going to do with ourselves as Catholics. Anyone who thinks that it’s as easy as “just listening to the Church” had better have his head examined. Who or what is the Church? Is it just whatever the Pope or any bishop says? Would that it were so simple, but it has almost never been so — and now, far less than ever before. From the dogmatic battles of the early Church to the political chaos of the Dark Ages, from the tangled allegiances of the Great Western Schism to centuries of compromise with worldliness (and, at times, overzealous opponents thereof), the story of Christian orthodoxy cannot be mechanically derived from the hierarchy as if one were retrieving files from a hard drive.

Our forebears in the Faith were content to believe and to do that which was handed down to them; there was no legalism, no hyperpapalism, no need to study reams upon reams of Vatican documents,[1] no need to apologize for loving what one’s ancestors loved. While it is impossible, at this time, to recapture fully that blissful simplicity of yore, there is much to be said for imitating it to the extent that we can. It uncomplicates Catholic life by focusing it on what is tried and true, rather than on this decade’s academic theories or this week’s tabloid revelations.

It is easy to bring up the specter of the Pharisees and Sadducees (for each of us has a little or a lot of them inside of us) without recognizing who, in the Church today, most fits their profile.[2] Jesus, after all, was the one who had the vastly more demanding teaching on marriage and family, and on the worship of God “in spirit and in truth.” Compared to Him, even the most rigorous Jews were compromisers and materialists. How about the neoconservatives who think they are the only “reasonable” and “moderate” people? Or the liberals and progressives who are convinced that the future would be theirs, if only ignorant throwbacks like NLM writers and readers would bite the dust? If one is not careful, one will end up saying that only those who are superficial and ignorant are spiritually safe, because, having no deep attachment to orthodoxy or orthopraxy, they are free of all Pharisaical dangers.

But the problem we are dealing with today goes deeper. It is not enough to stay on the level of spiritual generalities. One must also have the courage to look at the particular ways in which the Catholic Faith and its practice have been dismantled and corrupted. For this has had and will continue to have the most profound consequences for the encounter of men with God in Christ.

Let me put this point as succinctly as I can. There is no way to circumvent the temptations my objector pointed out, which will come upon every serious Catholic; and running away from traditional dogma, morals, liturgy, and devotion, as so many have been doing for decades — as indeed some have always done in every age — is never going to be a successful solution to the temptations that confront us in the spiritual life, any more than Protestantism was a solution to the corruption of the late medieval Church. It is a “solution” that contradicts the very essence of Catholicism, one that tosses out the baby with the bathwater.

The desire to not know or to look away; to not care whether one is divorced from one’s inheritance, and to assume that as long as churchmen are okay with deracination, one need not think twice about it; to imagine that these hard questions cannot or need not be asked; to be unaware of the enormous problem of rupture and discontinuity — these are signs of a spiritual sickness far more pervasive and dangerous than the supposed Phariseeism of traditionalists. For it is easier to be aware of a discrepancy between one’s noble ideals and one’s personal sanctity than it is to be aware of a fundamental disjunct between a modern reinterpretation of Catholicism (call it neo-modernism, with its paradoxical ultrapapalist commitment) and the Catholicism of the ages, that is, what would have been recognizable to any Father, Doctor, scholar, king, or peasant for the first 1,900 years of the Church. The reason is simple: we have to live day after day with our limitations, our flaws, and our sins (and if we are married or have good friends, we won’t be allowed to go for long without being reminded of them), but most people alive today cannot remember what things used to be like in past generations, do not make an effort to know history, and have little knowledge of the relevant principles by which to evaluate ecclesiastical affairs. This, incidentally, is why the battle of the modernists has always been a battle of attrition: if they can make their fabrications and falsehoods last long enough, they feel sure of triumph.

No wonder St. Pius X was so earnest and intent on smoking out the clever, subtle, and “edifying” errors of modernism. He did not call it the “synthesis of all heresies” for no good reason. It would be the most amazing naivete to think that the modernist crisis was a flash in the pan at the start of the 20th century and that it doesn’t exist anymore. On the contrary, as Hilary White said, apropos the last half-century: “The New Modernism had, in fact, become the new conservatism.” That is what we are seeing all around us, as Catholics scramble to rewrite their catechisms based on the latest Mormon-style revision from above.

For those who close their eyes or stop up their ears, of course, there is no problem; nothing’s really the matter. Such culpable cluelessness is a great spiritual malady of our times — one that prevents the Church, always in need of reform, from actually reforming her post-conciliar self.

A metaphor of the post-conciliar Church

NOTES

[1] It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that contemporary churchmen have created a new form of Rabbinical Judaism, in which only canonical experts can sort out the big and little questions.

[2] I highly recommend this article: "The Pharisees and Sadducees of Our Time" by Roberto di Mattei.

Tradition is for the Young

Many years ago, I read an interview with a famous “dissenting” theologian, as they are sometimes euphemistically called, (one who has now passed to his reward, and shall therefore remain nameless), in which he talked about the many things that had permanently disappeared from Catholic life, and of which younger Catholics would therefore never any experience or memory. As I recall it, funeral Masses in black vestments were named among them, and this was said with something of a wistful tone, since even the most obdurate revolutionaries could hardly deny the powerful sense which the tradition Requiem communicates of the reality of death, of the necessity and efficacity of prayers for the dead, and the duty of offering them. Perhaps (I speculate) even he sensed that white vestments, the same Alleluia which you hear every other weekend at the regular parish Mass, and “On Eagles’ Wings” are not quite the right thing to aid the prayers of a grieving family as they lay to rest a beloved parent or grandparent.

This admittedly rather vague memory came back to me as I was preparing our photopost for All Saints and All Souls earlier this week; we had far more submissions for the latter, and in all of them, the vestments were black. I then received this late entry from St Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Oberlin, Louisiana, and I am happy to give these photos their own post, because they show us very clearly that the memory of our Catholic traditions need not be lost to the young. Since the motu proprio came out, we have the means to make sure that it is not, and, thank God, more and more people have the will to do so. Surely we must be encouraged by seeing these young men participating in an ancient and solemn liturgy for which they are so clearly not just nostalgic.

The parish priest, Fr Jacob Conner (who hardly looks to be thirty), writes “So many have been working diligently the past three years here at St Joan of Arc, and, while there’s so much more to be done, I’m very hopeful because of our ‘upward’ trajectory. The Diocese of Lake Charles, moreover, is blessed with a wonderful Bishop who supports the EF. (Bishop Glen Provost will be celebrating a Pontifical on Dec. 28th; he offers a Pontifical twice per year at his cathedral.) The EF is in several parishes in the diocese, and there were other solemn or sung Masses in the diocese, in addition to ours ... The young and young at heart seem to be gradually, but consistently, awakening to these beautiful treasures of Holy Mother Church. As the Scripture says, there’s much cause for rejoicing here! The servers pictured at the All Souls Mass are a fraction of the number of altar boys at this small, country parish. Ever since we made the move to exclusively male service at altar, the number of servers has continually increased.”

First Weeks of St Joseph Oratory, Detroit

One of our regular readers and guest contributors, Teresa Chisholm, has sent in a bit of good news from Detroit about the new ICK Oratory getting off the ground there. “In the first three weeks of liturgical life at the new St Joseph Oratory in Detroit, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest has celebrated many beautiful High Masses with choir and chant schola - the First Mass on October 16, the Solemnity of Christ the King (the titular feast of the Institute), All Saints, and All Souls (with Fauré’s Requiem). On the following Sunday, November 6, the Rector, Rev. Canon Michael Stein, began his Lesson in Liturgy series with “The Reason for Liturgy: God then Man.” He encouraged the faithful to turn for additional study to Rev. Dr. Nicholas Gihr’s treatise The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained. All are invited to the next Lesson in Liturgy on November 27, following the 11 am High Mass, which will cover ‘Praying with your Missal: for Mind and Heart.’ The new weekly schedule for St. Joseph Oratory may be found on its website and Facebook page. Thanks be to God for His many blessings on this new parish.”

First Mass

Christ the King

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Thomas Aquinas on the Rite of Mass: Lecture Coming Up in NYC

On Saturday, December 3, at the Catholic Center at New York University, Fr. Innocent Smith, O.P. will give a set of lectures titled: “The Rest is Said in Praise to God: Thomas Aquinas on the Rites of the Mass.” Throughout his writings, St Thomas Aquinas offers profound insights into the liturgy that draw on the thought of his predecessors while offering new insights into the mysteries of the Church’s liturgy. These lectures will draw on the commentaries on the Mass that may be found in his Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa theologiae.

While focusing on the traditional and innovative aspects of Thomas’s liturgical thought within his 13th century context, these lectures aim to help us to enter more deeply into the liturgy as experienced in its various forms today. The first lecture takes place at 1:00 pm, the second at 2:30 pm, and Mass will be offered at 3:45 pm. Refreshments will be available before the first and second lectures. The event will take place at the Catholic Center at NYU (238 Thompson Street, New York, NY), and are part of The Wisdom of St Thomas Aquinas series sponsored by the Thomistic Institute at NYU (thomisticinstitute.org). To register for the lectures, which are free and open to the public, visit thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

In Memoriam: Norcia's Co-Cathedral and Madonna Addolorata

The co-cathedral of Norcia (no longer with us)

A week ago, I spoke of the Basilica in Norcia and how much we will miss it. (If this is true even for laypeople who visit only now and again, how much more true must it be for the monks, who have spent countless hours chanting the praises of God and offering His holy sacrifice within its walls, under its capacious dome?)

But as NLM readers know, this was not the only casualty: all the churches of Norcia collapsed in the last earthquake. Of the many churches in town, two others were particularly dear to me and my family: the Co-Cathedral and the Chiesa della Madonna Addolorata. (Norcia used to be its own diocese, but when it was fused with Spoleto to become the Spoleto-Norcia diocese, each town retained a cathedral for the single bishop.)

Pictures have their own eloquence that words cannot match, now that these noble buildings lie in ruins. Suffice it to say that the co-cathedral was beloved to many because of its beautiful fresco of SS. Benedict and Scholastica in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, and its various side-altars that had more beauty than the main sanctuary.

The Cathedral tower, seen from the bell tower of the Basilica

Side altar

Choir loft

Side altar with image of SS. Benedict & Scholastica

A close-up

The same, past the iron grill

The altar of the Crocifisso

The church of Our Lady of Sorrows (Madonna Addolorata) was built in the 13th century and, as is typical throughout Europe, Baroquified at a later period. It later belonged to the Oratorians, who outfitted it for music with multiple balconies. In more recent centuries it has housed a miraculous icon of Our Lady that the Nursini carry around in procession each year on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. My son and I were present for that procession in September 2015. (I'm assuming that the people removed this image right away after the first earthquake in August, but I don't know.)

The facade of Madonna Addolorata

The inside

(This picture was not taken by us. The lighting is better than we had.)

The choir loft

The main altar with the venerated image

My children and some friends singing medieval music in the church last July