OK--What Is The Agenda Behind Cardinal Sarah and the "Ad Orientatem" Movement? IV

The versus populum altar

at San Giorgio in Velabro

There was an interesting line in letter to the New York Times this morning (July 19^th).  It had nothing to do with the question at hand: ad apsidem vs. versus populum for the celebration of the Mass-indeed, it was in the context of the role of historians in commenting on the current presidential election.  But despite the context, the principle is the same.  Historians keep our collective past in focus as an aid to determine our present (and future) choices.  Whether it be our cultural history, our political history, or our ecclesiastical history we often fall victim to vague generalizations, popular myths, and incorrect data all if which leads to wrong conclusions. 

Paris is one of my favorite cities and to see Paris from the air is a thrilling site. You can see the great ship of Notre Dame sailing eastwards up the Seine towards the rising sun.  Other great ships—Saint Eustache, Saint Germaine des Pres, Saint Sulpice, Saint Gervais accompanied by a flotilla of smaller sanctuaries such as the Sainte Chapelle, Saint Julien le Pauvre, Saint Étienne du Mont, Saint Séverin, Saint Merry, and countless others following in its wake are a reminder that Parisian Churches face east.  The same could be said for countless other cities in once-Catholic Europe—Prague, Vienna, Munich, Bamberg.  But curiously, it cannot be said for Rome. 

The orienting of the Churches was a widespread practice in the medieval world and, from the earliest days, an all-but-universal practice in the Christian East.  In these churches the congregation—and usually the priest—stood facing the Rising Sun to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice which that Rising Sun signifies.  But in Rome the ancient churches face every which way on the axis of the globe.  Saint Peter’ and Saint John Lateran face west!  (Of course, that does permit the bishop, when presiding versus Populum, at the main altar, to face east.)  Saint Mary Major’s faces north.  Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls on the Via Ostia is the only major basilica to face east—but even that church, in its original construction, faced west.  4^th century San Martino ai Monti faces Northwest as does near by Santa Praessede.  Also nearby, Santa Croce in Gerusalmme, also 4^th century faces southwest.  Santa Maria in Cosmedin faces southwest while nearby San Giorgio in Velabro faces almost due north. Across the Tiber, the very important 4^th century basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere faces almost due west.  Santa Maria ad Martyres, better known as the Pantheon, faces south.  The incontrovertible historical/architectural evidence is that the orienting of churches was not  part of the tradition of the Roman Rite.

But the question of versus populum was not simply a matter of the direction of the church building.  Today when visiting the four great papal basilicas one can see before the central altar a large open well sunk into the floor and into which pilgrims can descend to venerate the relics that lay beneath the altar.  The position of this well, known as a confessio, makes it impossible for the presider to stand at the altar with his back to the people.  The confessio is not limited to the basilicas but can be found in other churches where as well.  Another common arrangement found at San Giorgio in Velabro and Santa Maria in Trastevere, features the altar flush with the front wall of an elevated presbyterium.  Again, the space on the people’s side of the altar is nothing but open air and it is clear that these altars were designed for versus populum celebrations. 

Altars built for Mass versus populum were not limited to Rome—they seem to have been common in Ravenna, seat of the Imperial exarch as well, despite the dependency of Ravenna on Constantinople where ad orientem was a very important theological principle.  North of the Alps the ad orientem tradition took hold and it was only after the Reforms of the Council of Trent where many non-Roman features were introduced into the liturgy that the Roman Rite began celebrating with the priest facing away from the people.  In Rome, the papal altars continued to face the people for the celebration of Mass and in those ancient churches that were built for Mass versus populum the practice continued without comment or interruption.   In some churches such as San Martino ai Monti new altars were built that enabled the priest to celebrate ad apsidem, that is facing the rear wall of the church.

An interesting exception in Rome is the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.  The church was built when the papacy returned from Avignon and it was built by the Dominican friars.  The Dominicans had their own rite and like most medieval rites oriented the churches whenever possible.  Santa Maria Sopra Minerva was thus build facing east and presumably the altar was constructed for the ad orientem Mass.

OK--What Is The Agenda Behind Cardinal Sarah and the "Ad Orientatem" Movement? III

First of all, before we get further into this discussion, let me lift—though only a bit—the veil of anonymity that I keep drawn so tightly about myself.  At the time I began this blog, I had both a desk job in Rome (though not at the Vatican proper) and a teaching position on a theology faculty. I also had a number of Krazies after me from various books, articles, talks, tapes etc. that I had done over the years.  In fact I began the blog primarily as a way of differentiating for the blog-audience the difference between authentic Catholic Tradition and 1950’s style American Catholic traditionalism represented by a variety of blog sites managed by under-catechized self-appointed arbiters of Catholic orthodoxy. It was important that I be very discreet as not to compromise either my bosses in Rome or my teaching position.  Well, I gave up my Rome job about eight years ago and more recently have retired from teaching.  I am still not willing to let “my reading public” know my exact identity, but let me say that I am a Roman Catholic priest in good standing and a member of a religious Order.  I have been a professed religious for just shy of fifty years and a priest for forty of those years.  As I am still active in priestly ministry with full faculties and in a somewhat unpredictable diocese—or rather, a diocese with a somewhat unpredictable bishop—I am not ready to give my exact identity or location.  I also want to point out that while I had never admitted to being a priest or religious, I had never said anything that denied it—though, some of the things I wrote implied that I was one of you (lay people, you know, the Church’s ‘οἱ πολλοί, the Great Unwashed).  Anyway, I think we can now move on. 

 I am old enough to remember the Mass as it was before Vatican II.  I was an altar boy for that Mass.  I attended that Mass almost daily from the time I was eleven or twelve.  The first changes in the Liturgy after Vatican II took place in my sophomore year of high school but they were pretty minor—mostly some English during the Liturgy of the Word.  Now that I think of it however, that may have been the fundamental shift that passed unnoticed.  We used to speak of The Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful and now it had become, almost but not quite exactly corresponding to the above The Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  In the “old Mass” there were no lay readers to do the readings.  There were no “Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist” to help with Holy Communion.  There were no Leaders of Song to facilitate congregational singing—there was almost never congregational singing.  When there was music, which was relatively rare, it was performed by the choir or some old warbler up in the loft squeaking through the Agnus Dei.  There were no ministers of hospitality.  (There were ushers but their job was limited to taking up the collection.)  The only lay helpers were the altar servers who were, for the most part, boys (sometimes men but never women or girls) dressed up as little priests with cassock and cotta.  (The Italian word for an altar server is cherichetto which means a “little cleric.”)  

The liturgy itself was in a language which relatively few—perhaps in an educated society like our own, 10%—could understand.  Moreover the prayers were recited, for the most part, in a sub secreto voice.  Granted, books could be purchased with vernacular translations but relatively few people bothered with these and busied themselves with private prayers of either a devotional or “meditation” nature while the priest “read Mass.”  Those in the sanctuary, especially the priest(s), were dressed very differently than those beyond.  While Catholics tended to dress better for Church in those days (though never as respectfully as our Protestant neighbors) the priestly robes were most often over the top with elaborate lace surplices and albs and outer vestments of silk, brocade, or even velvet. 

In the old Mass the liturgical action was confined to a space segregated from the faithful.  The area around the altar was walled off from the people by a boundary wall formed by the altar rail.  It was mean to be a boundary wall—the legislation was very clear that the space was to be enclosed, even where there was no communion rail, by a wall “of at least chest-height”—to keep out those who were not essential to the sacred action.  Women were rarely permitted within the sacred space—generally on their wedding day but otherwise no, though nuns (and in parishes, widows) could be permitted in to clean.  In other words, everything in the liturgy and its environment made it clear that the laity were there as observers of a sacred action which the clergy performed on their behalf. 

The Mass was a drama in which the priest approached God on behalf of the people, interceding for them, bringing them assurances of the Divine mercy, and feeding them (literally feeding—from his hand to their mouth) with the Bread of Life.  All depended on the priest.  He was the intercessor, the mediator of grace.  From his sacred hands salvation was dispensed.  The welfare of the people, indeed their only hope for eternal life, was literally at his hands.

And so the Fathers generally lived in comfortable rectories built to give each priest a suite of rooms.  They were provided three cooked meals a day.  There was a housekeeper for their laundry and to keep their quarters clean.  They drove comfortable black sedans, wore good suits with straw hats in summer and homburgs in winter.  Should Father condescend to visit your home—in some places they were not allowed to save to bring communion to the sick or anoint the dying—he was offered the best food and beverage you could provide and he never left without an “Irish handshake” that left you ten or twenty dollars lighter in day in a day when that was real money. 

To be fair, if privileged, the life of a priest was not necessarily easy. There were poor parishes and rural churches to which troublemaking priests could be assigned without the comforts of life in an established and staffed rectory. Pastors ruled the roost and often bullied their assistants with ridiculous rules and curfews.  Once the morning Masses were over there was precious little to do.   This was before the era of liturgy committees, parish councils, finance boards, baptismal preparation classes, school boards, and other collaboration with the parishioners in parish matters.  A night out might mean an Altar and Rosary Society meeting or leading the rosary at a wake.  Days off were one a week—and not an overnight; it began after your morning mass and ended at the time the pastor’s curfew designated.  And, of course, a day off usually meant a day with Mom and Dad—maybe doctors’ appointments or going along to visit childless great-aunt Bea who was rumored to be worth “a couple hundred thou.”  No wonder alcoholism was rampant. 

But still it was a charmed life of being admired and kept comfortably away from want or need.  My experience is, however, that very few priests who experienced that life want to go back to it but there are those younger clergy who see that today you could have the privilege without the restrictions.  The trick is—how to recover the magic and reendow the priesthood with it.  One way, of course, is the Pope Francis way for the clergy to once again earn the respect of the faithful by giving the example of a life rooted in the gospel we preach.  The other way, the Cardinal Sarah way, is to make the Liturgy once again a magical act within the sole power of the priest and upon which all are dependent for salvation.  Magic is so much more fun—and far less hard work—than the Gospel. 

OK--What Is The Agenda Behind Cardinal Sarah and the "Ad Orientatem" Movement? II

In the previous posting, I laid out a theology of priesthood rooted in the Patristic tradition of the Church,  but  before moving on to Cardinal Sarah, the back-asswards Mass, and what is the underlying agenda I want to flesh out that patristic theology a bit more. 

Now, as I have often said, while I have a graduate degree in theology, I am not a theologian but a historian.  This may be why I prefer patristic theology to the scholastic, neo-scholastic, post-scholastic and—most common today—pseudo-scholastic theology.  When you work with the Fathers, you are working with historical texts. A historian can skim across the patristic pond without too much danger of falling in if he or she just stays with the sources. 

What I think we need to look at to grasp the patristic approach to the Priesthood, whether the priesthood of the faithful or the specific priestly ministry of the ordained, as a participation in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ is the precise nature of the Christian assembly as the Body of Christ.

Paul makes at least 17 references in his epistles to the Church being the Body of Christ and this relationship between the Church and her Lord is rooted in the Resurrection.  We must first erase from our consciousness the inherently false vision of the Resurrection with which we have all been raised.  First and foremost, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was in no way the resuscitation of a corpse.  It was not like the Raising of Lazarus, or the daughter of Jairus, or the son of the Widow of Naim.  In those cases a person who had been dead was brought back to life.  Paul makes it clear that the Resurrection of Christ—an absolutely unique phenomenon in history-to-date—is a new creation.  This is not to say that the physical body of the man who had been Jesus of Nazareth is still decomposing somewhere outside Jerusalem, but rather that Christ who is raised from the dead is both radically that same Jesus and yet is equally radically transformed in a new order of being, one that foreshadows a new order of being to which we are all called in the parousia. 

The second thing we must reconsider is the meaning of death.  For the Christian the moment of death and the passage to new life is not at the time of our corporeal shut-down but rather the moment of our baptism.  In baptism we have surrendered our lives and embraced death and in baptism we are raised to newness of life—to participation in that new order of being with Christ.  We are members of his Body.  Paul does not mean this metaphorically—he is quite literal about it.  We are members (limbs, organs, etc.) of the Risen Body of Christ.  He is the head and we are the members.  We (not individually but communally) are Christ and Christ is us.  As such all that can be attributed to Christ can be attributed to us.  Christ is the priest and we share in that priesthood because we compose the Risen Christ.  Christ offers the Sacrifice and we, as his Body, share in that offering of the Sacrifice.  The Eucharistic Sacrifice is, first and foremost, the Sacrifice of the Church because it is the Sacrifice of Christ who is inseparably united to his Body, the Church.  It is only in a secondary—though very real—way the sacrifice of the priest.  That is why the idea of the human priest offering the sacrifice on behalf of the Church is so patently offensive.  It undermines the entire nature of the Church as the Risen Body of Christ. 

We used to refer to the Church as the mystical Body of Christ and this was most unfortunate.  In English “mystical” has connotations of “spiritual” as opposed to “real.”  For Paul the reality of the one-and-the-sameness of the Risen Lord with the community of his disciples was realized on the road to Damascus when Jesus said “I am Jesus whom you persecute.”  Paul had known he was persecuting the Christian community—but in that revelation he realized that to persecute the Church was to persecute Christ, that Christ and his Church are one and indivisibly the same reality.   

We make a similar error when we take sacraments as something “symbolic” rather than “real.”  The issue is that symbols are more real than the literal.  Why do people get upset when they see the flag being burned or the Scriptures trampled underfoot.  It’s a piece of cloth!   It’s a book!  NO! It is not, it is something far more.  Symbols introduce us to levels of reality that transcend the boundaries of the literal, that open not only our minds but our psyches to visions of Truth that mere words can’t grasp. 

So when we say that the Bishop is the Symbol or the Sacrament of Christ the Priest—and admittedly with most of our current crew it is more a matter of blind faith than of spiritual insight—there is a profound reality of Christ the High Priest hidden there beneath an excess of avoir du pois, surly arrogance, and blind ambition.  Indeed, I cannot but wonder if this isn’t the main crisis in the Church in the United States today—that the Sacramental visibility of Christ in the clergy has not been totally obscured in too many cases by psycho-sexual-spiritual-intellectual immaturity of many with the ranks of hierarchy and clergy.  But read the prayer of ordination of a priest and see to what the priest is called—it is an amazing thing really.  No wonder so many of the less worthy want to put things back to Latin—they wouldn’t have to be confronted by the grace of understanding. 

So to sum it up: we all, by virtue of our baptism, share in the Sacrificing Priesthood of Christ and thereby we all, in the specifically unique capacities appropriate to our place in the Christian community, offer the Sacrifice in union with Christ whose Body we are.  Within the Community of the Body of Christ there are those who sacramentally re-present the specifically priestly Presence of Christ.  They have an unique and indispensible place but the priesthood of Christ does not belong to them alone but is shared by all who compose the Body of Christ, the Church.

Now—if you were to take this theology of priesthood seriously, what would liturgy look like?  What would the Christian assembly look like when gathered for worship?  How would the space be arranged?   Rather than top-down pyramidal structure, might it not be concentric circles gathered around an altar—a community with its sacramental leadership in solid communion with one another?  But more next time.  

OK--What Is The Agenda Behind Cardinal Sarah and the "Ad Orientatem" Movement?

 

Christ the High Priest
Byzantine Icon of
Christ in Bishop's Robes

Ok, I am going to try to keep this simple so that I can be perfectly clear.  Some of the Krazies who troll this site will be screaming “heresy” as it is so it is important that I aim for precision. And consequently it has taken a little longer to check my research and make sure everything is both precise and well-defined.   

It won’t be obvious in this first post where I am heading in the next two or three unless I give you a clue—so let me put it out front.  What is the real agenda behind this movement for the priest to face ad apsidem (towards the rear wall) for the celebration of Mass? I say ad apsidem rather than ad orientem because unless the church itself is built facing east, the presider is not facing ad apsidem.  The term—and indeed the concept—of “liturgical east” is one of the most patently ridiculous ideas to come down the pike.  I understand why, in many of the Church’s Rites, the churches (and those within) are “orientated” and in the context of those rites where this is an ancient tradition it makes great sense—but only if it is true east and not a south-by-northeast that we are somewhat pompously referring to as some mythical “liturgical east.”  But we don’t start there: let’s look first to the root of the problem: the understanding of the ordained priesthood. 

In both Latin and in Greek, the two languages that serve to shape the Church’s articulation of the deposit of faith, there are two distinct words that the one English word, priest, is used to translate.  It is unfortunate that English lacks this precision because each of the two words in Latin, like their Greek counterparts, relates to a substantially different reality.

The Latin word sacerdos (and its Greek equivalent ὁ ἱερεύς) signifies a cultic figure whose work it is to offer sacrifice.  The Latin word presbyter (and its Greek Equivalent, ὁ ‎πρεσβύτερος) signifies “elder” in the sense of a member of a governing board of a 1^st century synagogue.  (The first and second generations of the Church simply borrowed the administrative structures with which they were familiar from the synagogues.)  In the New Testament—and we see this theology developed most clearly in the Letter to the Hebrews—there is but one sacerdos, one sacrificing priest, Jesus Christ.  There is also one and only one sacrifice, the once and for all eternal Sacrifice in which Christ offers himself on the Cross as both priest and victim.   While in every celebration of the Eucharist we are given access to this one, eternal Sacrifice, that sacrifice is not repeated.  Christ is not sacrificed over and over again, day after day, on the altar, but rather in the Eucharist we move beyond time and space to become sacramentally present to that one eternal Sacrifice of the Cross. 

Now we in the Church are not passive witnesses to this Sacrifice but by virtue of our baptism, we share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  1 Peter 2:9 refers to us (collectively) as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.  The sacred author uses the word ἱεράτευμα (priesthood), a cognate of ἱερεύς indicating that Christians, by virtue of their incorporation into Christ in baptism, become participants in his sacrificing priesthood. 

Now—and this is where we need to be careful—while we all share in the sacrificing priesthood of Christ by virtue of our baptism, there is a unique participation in that priesthood reserved to the bishop. 

According to the patristic Tradition—and again we Catholics recognize two sources of revelation: scripture and Apostolic Tradition passed down through the centuries—the Bishop is the Sacramental Presence of Christ the High Priest in the Church.  The Bishop stands as Christ in the Church and when the Church is gathered around him for the Eucharist he, not of his own authority but in virtue of his re-presenting Christ the High Priest—he alone offers the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The bishop stands at the altar offering the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving; he was flanked by his presbyters and assisted by his deacons but there was only one Eucharistic celebration to which the entire Christian community was expected to come.  The deacons helped with the offerings of the faithful and prepared the bread and wine upon the altar but they did not assist directly in the Eucharist. The presbyters helped the bishop with the distribution of the Eucharistic elements and it can even be said that they concelebrated the Eucharist with the bishops, though not according to the manner our contemporary rites, but it was the bishop alone who offered the Eucharistic Prayer.  

By the middle of the third century, many Christian communities had grown beyond the capacity of a single Sunday assembly.  The bishop would then assign a senior presbyter to preside over a second gathering in another place but to show that there was only one Eucharist in the one (local) Church, the bishop would dispatch a deacon from his Mass with a piece of the Bishop’s hostia (the consecrated bread).  That Eucharistic fragment (called a fermentum) was then placed in the chalice at the presbyter’s assembly to show that while the one community was meeting in two separate places, it was still only one community.  The evolution of presbyter-led Eucharists make it clear that presbyters were acting not in their right in celebrating the Eucharist but in persona episcopi. 

In the fourth century the Church adapted the Roman Imperial administrative system of dioceses and bishops became the religious leaders of much larger areas that required many more Eucharistic assemblies to meet the challenge of a rapidly growing faithful as well as the relative distances under the Church’s administration.  As presbyters took over the various outlaying churches presbyter-led Eucharists became the norm but the Church has always made the distinction between the bishop (sacerdos) and the priest (presbyter).  Technically a priest is not supposed to celebrate the Eucharist without receiving “faculties” from the local bishop—and—except in danger of death—he may not hear confessions or absolve without those faculties.  The priest still performs his ministry in persona episcopi.

And for those who cherish all things pre-Vatican II, the hymn: Ecce Sacerdos Magnus (Behold the Great Priest) was sung only for the entrance of a bishop, never a priest 

Now, the fatal flaw in this theology of the Bishop being the presence of Christ the Priest and his presbyters sharing in the priesthood of Christ as extensions of the bishop is through the centuries too few bishops have proved themselves worthy of the august responsibility.  Bishops have done well, in their day, as Imperial administrators, as princes, as patrons of the arts and learning, as bankers and today as CEO’s—but none of this lets us look at our Bishop and see Christ the Priest.  Maybe that is why Pope Francis seems such an odd duck with all his talk of mercy and a poor church.