Whys and Wherefores

Been there, done that, not going back

I do get asked from time to time why I do this blog.  It is time consuming and I have a fairly heavy set of responsibilities as it is.  I do enjoy the research and the thought processes preparing the blog entails.  It keeps me learning new things and finding new perspectives.  But the primary reason that I do it is that I had been finding over the past several years that the understanding of the Church was, for many Catholics, growing more and more narrow because of a lack of historical perspective that was letting them drink the Kool-Aid of the Catholic religious right. 
I am a child of Vatican II.  I was born and mostly raised before the Council.  I remember the Traditional Latin Mass well.  I was an altar server.   Being both the altar boy MC for Solemn Masses and a weird kid, I knew the rubrics and ceremonial in great detail. Moreover, I have had six years of Latin in school (and later became a Latin teacher) and always liked the Latin stuff.  Pius XII was the pope of my childhood and I remember the October night when they broke into the television shows to tell us that he had died.  I remember the meatless Fridays, the Ember Days, the Lenten fast.  When I made my first communion there was nothing to eat or drink ( but water—I am not that old) from midnight.  Nuns were dressed in yards of black serge and heavily veiled.  We had may-crowning every May, Benediction every Wednesday, Stations of the Cross every Friday in Lent.  We stood when Father came in, knelt for Holy Communion, and learned to genuflect on the left knee to kiss the Bishop’s ring. It was Full Monty Catholicism. 
Moreover we were a very religious household.  My Dad was for many years a daily mass-goer as was his father.  Mom went to Mass on Sundays.  We said the rosary after dinner during Lent and whenever else it would strike my parents that we should do so.  We had grace at table.  There was a crucifix in every room but the bathroom.   The Infant of Prague presided over the living room, the Sacred Heart in the foyer.  Various other images and pictures could be found elsewhere around the house. Dad’s sister was a nun, his aunt a Reverend Mother.  Masses were said regularly for deceased relatives.  Candles were lit in Church.  And there were always priest friends in the house.
Maybe it was the priest-friends but ours was not a thoughtless Catholicism.   Religion was discussed and argued.  We had books and magazines about our faith.  My parents belonged to CFM (Christian Family Movement) and several couples would gather monthly in our house with one of the parish priests to study their faith. Dad would ask us at dinner what we had learned in school that day and paid particular attention to religion.  God help the nun who was tinged with Feeneyism.   When priests were over—which was often several times a week—we kids could listen to the conversations and we could ask questions.  Our religion was not something hard and fast, something embalmed or mummified, but something alive and vital.  It certainly wasn’t something somber or joyless.  And it was never above questioning.  You followed the rules—especially Sunday Mass and frequent confession—but you could question anything and anyone.
I remember when Vatican II was announced.  I had no idea what an Ecumenical Council was—who did?  There hadn’t been one in our lifetimes.  We were fascinated by this opening the door to our Protestant neighbors.  (There were, in my family, no Protestant relatives.)   After all these years of cold shoulder, they were now  to be “separated brothers?”   I remember first hearing “A Mighty Fortress” being belted out on the pipe organ in our Church—it was a postlude after Benediction one Wednesday evening and it was Art Smith, a seminarian from our parish at the keyboard.  I knew Luther had composed it; but then I always knew things I wasn’t supposed to know.  I told  you I was a weird kid who had a lot of useless information.  And I knew hearing it that a new day was dawning for me and my Catholic faith.  I have never lost the thrill of that dawn and for me Catholicism represents a continuous dawn.
I began to panic about twenty years ago that the sun that had been so long dawning was now beginning to set.  I could see the slow but steady shutting down of the optimism generated by the Council.  The windows once opened were now being closed and locked.  I was willing to allow the changes to come progressively—not all at once; the slow pace of change made that dawn last.  But now changes were not only coming more slowly, they were being reversed.  I saw things creeping back into the liturgy.  Some priests were refusing to give people communion in the hand.  Others were banning women from serving as lectors or Eucharistic ministers.  Churches where communion had been given under both species were now backtracking on that.  Under the banner of “dignity” the liturgy was being reduced to rubricism in some places.   I was in the diocese of Arlington Virginia at the time and that diocese is particularly weird, or I should say has more than its fair share of abnormal clergy, but there was Father Fessio and Adoremus and there was Mother Angelica and EWTN and there was the Diocese of Lincoln and the Diocese of Peoria and I saw the seeds of this (what one colleague of mine calls) “Mordor Catholicism” starting to propagate like dandelion fluff on a summer breeze. Were we going to lose the Council and the Church of the ordinary folk?
It was at this time that I was offered an editorial position in Rome.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with the Vatican, of course, but it was Rome and it put me into the stream of international Catholicism.  I had lived in Rome before—while doing my graduate work—and was a frequent visitor to the city, but living there deepened my experience of a genuinely Catholic culture that is far richer and more diverse than the ultramontane knock-off Catholicism some people were trying to push as “authentic” Catholicism back in the States.   I saw that the parishes of Rome had altar girls and Eucharistic ministers and women lectors and contemporary music choirs.  I saw that they not only stood for communion but for the consecration at Mass. Italian priests wore regular clothes.  (We always said that if you saw a priest on the street in Rome in a cassock, nine times out of ten he was American, and eight times out of that nine he was an American on vacation in Rome.)  Most of the religious sisters in Rome wear regular clothes. 
Modern religious art is highly valued in Rome—and one of the best collections is in the Vatican museum. 
Coming back Stateside I grew more and more concerned that an unhealthy distortion of Catholicism was being pushed by certain segments of the Church in this country as somehow or other “more Catholic” than mainline Catholicism.  In my work as an academic I have been able to travel extensively and I saw that the Church through most of the world was still alive and vibrant.  I was puzzeled that it was easier to find a Tridentine Mass in Washington DC or New York than it was in Rome and yet this revival of the TLM was allegedly at the desire of the Pope.  I was puzzled to see priests wearing things here (birettas, fiddle-back chasubles, ferraiolos) that you weren’t seeing in Rome.  And prelates in the cappa magna and with the winter cappa of fur—which had been banned by Paul VI—but there were prelates like Cardinal Burke sashaying into TLM’s like the Queen Mother going to the opera.  What was this all about??? 
I don’t make any claim to be any more authentic than anyone else’s blog or that my Catholicism is any  more orthodox than the next Catholic’s.  But I do want to look at our history—both accomplished and in the making—as a voice that sometimes seems to cry in the wilderness to look to draw from the past but to trust the future rather than to build a future on a poorly thought-out appreciation for a distorted past.    More to come. 

The Foundation of the Anglican Church III

The Image of Christ as Apollo

found in the Vatican Necropolis

beneath St Peter's Basilica.  The

rising sun is here used as a

symbol for the Resurrected

Christ.

Before we go on let me draw your attention to two aspects of Romano-British Christianity that bear note.  The first is a small point but could have some significant repercussions.  In my last posting, I used the illustration of an ancient church discovered in the archeological dig at Calleva Attrebatum, a Roman town on the site of modern Silchester in Hampshire.  What I found curious about this church is that while it runs on an east-west axis, the altar was at the western end, the doors at the eastern end.  I say this because there is always much discussion about how early churches were oriented, that is built facing eastward to that priest and people faced the rising sun as they celebrated the Eucharist.  This argument is used by those who want to reverse the altars in Catholic Churches and have the priest again face away from the people as was the usual custom before the Second Vatican Council.  Well, this ancient church could be a sort of fluke in the normal practice except that as I have noted in other blogs that deal with the “ad orientem” (facing eastward) issue, the practice was not followed at Rome where ancient churches can be found facing every direction of the compass.  Yes, the ancient churches of Rome face every direction of the compass except that Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint John Lateran Basilica—two of the three Constantinian Basilica’s in Rome face westward. That does not seem to be a co-incidence given that they are such prominent churches built under imperial supervision. The argument, for St Peter’s, was always given that the terrain of the Vatican Hill gave the builders no choice in how to situate the church, but in fact Constantine had his builders level out the hill and built the basilica on top.  It could have  been built in an eastward position.  Moreover, while the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls—the third of the Constantinan basilicas in Rome and the “twin” to St. Peter’s—faces east, I was surprised on a recent visit to Rome to read in a museum display at Saint Paul’s that it too originally faced west.  Hmmm.  And now we find an ancient church in Roman Britain also facing west.  Could it be that these churches were built so that the bishop or priest standing at the altar faced, not the rear wall of the Church, but, looking over the altar, faced the east and the rising sun?  Was there a Roman peculiarity here of situating the priest—but not the faithful—to face the rising sun?  We do know that the custom in Rome up to at least the 11^th century was for the bishop or priest to stand behind the altar facing the people, not with his back to them.  A westward facing Church would permit the celebrant to face the rising sun while maintaining the Roman custom of facing the faithful over the altar.
Now, the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber in his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (Die Reform der römischen Liturgie)made the somewhat preposterous claim that in St. Peter’s and other westward facing churches, the people stood at the Eucharist facing eastward towards the open doors of the Church to greet the rising sun.  This means, that they would have stood with their backs to the priest and the altar for the Eucharistic Liturgy—a very strange position, especially if they believed that Christ became truly present in the Eucharist.  Gamber would have us believe that the faithful stood facing a symbol of Christ—the rising sun—while their backs were to his Real Presence in the Eucharistic Gifts?!?  Gamber was opposed to the liturgical reforms that followed the Council and his work is more a polemic undermining the Liturgy of Paul VI than it is a critical study of Liturgical history.  Jungmann and Dix still remain the better works for liturgical history.  Nevertheless, Gamber is often cited by those neo-traditionalists who want to restore the pre-conciliar rites, especially the ad apsidem position of the priest at the altar with his back to the people.    
What we do know about this small Roman church in Hampshire is that the altar was freestanding.  A somewhat more elaborate mosaicked square in the apse of the Church marks where the altar would have stood and like all other altars of the period it was square and free standing.  The priest presumably stood behind it in the Roman fashion facing the congregation and beyond them the rising sun. 
What is this importance of the rising sun?  We have wandered far from the topic of this chain of postings—the history of the Anglican Church but it is worth commenting on none the less.  The Eucharist was normally celebrated early in the morning—at dawn.  The ancient cultures were far more sensitive to the interplay of nature and religious faith and the liturgy expressed this.  From the beginning of the Christian cult the rising sun was a symbol of the Risen Christ.  In the catacombs of Rome, or rather in a Christian tomb in the necropolis beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica, one can see Christ depicted at the god Apollo whose chariot daily drew the sun on its arc across the sky.  The paradigmatic liturgy of the year—the great Vigil of Easter—was always timed so that the great prayer of Thanksgiving, the Eucharistic Prayer, was being sung at the moment that the morning sun, representing the Risen Christ, broke over the horizon.  Each Sunday, therefore, the liturgy was celebrated at dawn to continue the Easter celebration in the weekly Eucharist.  The Sunday Eucharist was seen—and still is—as the weekly renewal of the Easter Proclamation.  We moderns with our vigil Masses and our preference to lie abed on Sunday mornings with coffee and papers have lost that connection.  Anyway, let’s get back to British Christianity.   
My second point that I wanted to make regarding Christianity in Roman Britain is that is spawned a heresy.  Pelagius (c. 354- c.420) was a British monk who came to Rome at the end of the fourth century. (There is some possibility that he was from Brittany in France rather than from Britain but most sources believe he was British.)  Coming out of the very strict ascetic tradition of hiberno-british monasticism, he was a man of very severe temperament shocked by the moral laxity in Rome.  (He would have an absolute apoplectic seizure if he saw Rome today.)  He blamed this laxity on the influence of Augustine of Hippo—who was still alive—the distinguished North African bishop-theologian who determined the course of Western theology and is usually considered a rigorist, though not by Pelagius.  Pelagius was actually far more morally rigid than Augustine and he thought that Augustine’s emphasis on grace was simply a cop-out that let people blame God for their own moral failures.  “I committed perverse sexual acts because God didn’t give me the grace to resist,” or as Geraldine used to say “The devil made me do it.” 
Little of Pelagius’s writings have survived.  His name being associated with heresy, his once-extensive writings were destroyed early on.  We know what various councils such as the one Augustine called at Carthage in 418 claim he taught but Pelagius was not at that Council and had no opportunity to explain himself.  The Council of Diospolis in 415—at which he was present—heard him out and confirmed his orthodoxy.  From what little we do know, we probably should conclude that Pelagianism, the heresy named after him, is more of a caricature of his actual teaching than an accurate reflection.  Pelagianism says that the human person is capable of doing good moral acts independent of God’s grace.  This is a heretical position, but nowhere do we find that it is actually what Pelagius taught.  Being a strong Augustinian myself and having what might even be an overdeveloped appreciation for the mystery of Grace, I abhor Pelagianism which I see very much reflected in the shallow naiveté  of today’s happy-clappy Matthew Fox pseudo-Christianity.  Of course I think the morose and sullen pseudo-Catholicism of Michael Voris and Joseph Fessio is shot through and through with Jansenism, equally heretical and the moral opposite of Pelagianism. 
All this takes us far away from today’s topic, the development of the Ecclesia Anglicana but I did want to draw reader’s attention to the vitality of the Romano-British Church before we move onto its Celtic salvation and the Anglo-Saxon era.                

Reform of the Reform: A Rationale For the Craziness

I recently made a reference to “The Reform of the Reform” and some readers inquired as to what I meant.  I first heard of the term myself in an article by Monsignor M. Francis Manion in America Magazine some twenty years ago.   Monsignor Manion was at the time the Rector of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City and he outlined five different approaches to liturgical renewal that were prevalent at the time.  To the far right were the restorationists who were campaigning for the full restoration of the pre-conciliar liturgy, the so-called Tridentine Mass or Mass of Pius V.   Right of center, but not to the extreme of the restorationists, is “The Reform of the Reform.”  At the time it was a somewhat marginal movement but with the election of Benedict XVI it has moved into an undeclared but papally preferred first place guiding philosophy for reshaping the Church's Liturgy. 

“Back in the day” of Msgr. Manion’s article, the Reform of the Reform was represented in the United States by a group of neo-traditionalist (as opposed to traditionalist, i.e. restoratinist) clergy under the leadership of Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.  Fessio did his doctoral studies at the University of Regensburg where then professor Josef Ratzinger (yes, that Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI) directed his dissertation. 

Father Fessio has had a rather volatile career.  In 1976 he founded the Saint Ignatius Institute at the University of San Franciso.  The Saint Ignatius Institute became somewhat of a university within the university and generated much controversy over the years but even though I tend to the liberal side of things, it seems that the Institute (and Fessio) were treated rather heavy-handedly for their conservative approaches.  It may have been Fessio’s personality, or even lack of a sound ethical (I hesitate to use the word “moral” as that might imply wrongly) compass, that caused this.  Fessio eventually resigned from the Institute to devote his time to Ignatius Press, another endeavor which he founded and which has provided somewhat of a balance to the more liberal Paulist Press as a Catholic publishing house.  Again, while I tend to the liberal, Ignatius Press continues to provide valuable service to the Catholic and intellectual world and I am a frequent purchaser of their books for a library with which I am involved.  Father Fessio went on to a number of academic posts and was connected with Ave Maria University where his involvement in several controversies led to his being fired as provost and then two years after fired from the faculty. 

One story about Father Fessio that was related to me while I was living in Rome was that shortly after the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict, Father Fessio had a group of benefactors of Ave Maria University with him in Rome and was going to present them to the Holy Father after the weekly papal audience.  Fessio was so presumptuous as to introduce “my friend, Pope Benedict.”  Now one thing about the Holy Father is that he is very sensitive to any lèse-majesté against the papacy. Consequently Benedict is not one to champion undue familiarity.  He deeply resented Gamarelli’s (Rome’s premier ecclesiastical tailors) presumption to exploit their relationship is previous popes and it wanted it to be known that Prada did not in fact make his famous red shoes.  When Father Fessio referred to His Holiness as “my friend,” the Pope reportedly immediately and publicly corrected him reminding Fessio that he (the Pope) had been his (Fessio’s) professor, not his “friend.”    

Fessio is a bit of a slippery character, but then he is a Jesuit.  I remember a business dealing a project with which I was involved had with him at Ignatius about ten years ago.  The kindest word that I could attribute to him would be “duplicitous.”   He definitely has an agenda and one of the ways he has furthered that agenda is in an organization for the “renewal” of the liturgy called Adoremus.

Fessio and other advocates of the Reform of the Reform draw their ideas from the work of Monsignor Klaus Gamber and in particular from his book Die Reform der römischen Liturgie, (in English: The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background, Una Voce Press, 1993).  Being a historian myself, I find Gamber’s work skewed by his vehement bias against and opposition to the liturgical reforms of Paul VI.  Far more reliable histories of the liturgy are Gregory Dix’s and Josef Jungmann’s classic works.  But the problem is that then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger wrote the introduction to Gamber’s book.  I find this troubling as it indicates that the current Pope has reservations about the liturgical reforms of Paul VI and I hate to see any turning back.  But for the purposes of this entry let’s just say that Fessio’s Reform of the Reform ideas which are embraced by a significant number of the Arlington clergy—and indeed the “biretta brigade” elsewhere—are derived from Gamber’s uneven work.   

Let me just make one final clarification.  If the Holy Father has theological reservations about the Liturgical reforms of Paul VI, or indeed if anyone with a competency in theology, has theological reservations about the “new Mass” that is worthy of further investigation and discussion.  I am not a theologian and not qualified to judge the theological issues regarding the post-conciliar liturgy.  My critique and negative evaluation of Gamber’s work is not theological—and Gamber’s work  is not a theological book—it is historical. There I do have some competency. I don’t fault the Pope theologically and his claims to infallibility do not mean that he is not above criticism for a lack of historical competency displayed in his endorsement of Gamber’s work.  Of course most of the Reform of the Reform advocates have expertise neither in theology or history.  And frankly, when you see the liturgies they construct in their nostalgia for the good old days of Father Chuck O’Malley the Bells of Saint Mary’s, it shows. 

 This brings us back to the question about Vatican II and is it being undone.  More on that soon. 

Why Arlington? Historical Context of Clerical Madness 3

While I mentioned Fathers X, Y, and Monsignor Z, unnamed clergy of the Arlington diocese who developed disciples among the more extreme younger clergy of their diocese in order to pass on the “true faith” of old-time-religion, Catholic style.   One of these had come to the diocese in its early days having been refused final vows in the Dominican Order because he was too backwards looking for the Dominicans.  Now, internationally the Dominicans are a very liberal order, faithful to their mendicant tradition of service to the poor and so one of the most committed orders to the principles of justice and peace as laid out at Vatican II and in a string of encyclical letters going back to John XXIII and Mater et Magistra, but the East Coast Province in the USA, the Saint Joseph Province is not typical of the larger Dominican family.  They are good men and well trained in theology and they perform well in their many ministries, but when it comes to the trappings of religious life and to their theological methodologies, they are antiquarians of the first degree.  It is impossible for me to imagine what it would take to be dismissed from them for being “too conservative.”  But seminarian X was.  He was no sooner out of the Dominicans than picked up for Arlington and ordained by Bishop Welsh for the Arlington Diocese. 

I don’t know as much about Father Y except that he is not native to the Arlington Diocese but a refugee from the then liberal Archdiocese of Detroit from the days of Cardinal Dearden.  He has ties to Opus Dei, and is a polished orator—perhaps more accomplished as a stylist than for his content.  In other words, he is more articulate than knowledgeable—a common quality of many clergy.  Well, it would be if one could say that there were many of the Catholic clergy who were at least articulate.  Father also is given to the buttons and bows of clerical dress and to gilding the lily of the Mass with as many liturgical antiques as can be devised.  Before the restoration of the Tridentine Mass he was known as a specialist in tricking out the “new Mass” to look like the old in the “Solemn High Masses” at his former parish.    However, to his credit, I hear that he makes a charming guest at dinner parties in the better homes of Northern Virginia. 

Monsignor Y—and to be honest, while I am not certain that he is a Monsignor (I suppose I could check the Kennedy Directory) I know that that he does not contradict those who called him that—is a pompous Irish windbag who would introduce himself as “Doctor Y” although he had never finished his dissertation.  The Irish are very good at making fun of pompous asses, but that requires that there be among them pompous asses of whom to make fun and Monsignor Y has always been good enough to oblige.  He particularly liked to criticize the “faulty” translation of the 1970 Sacramentary when the fact was his Latin was not, shall we say, itself Ciceronian.  

There actually was (is) a fourth horseman to this Arlington Apocalypse.  This fellow is bright, and I hear an above average Latinist.  He has always dreamed of living in a world untouched by Vatican II and so appealed to go to Bishop Fabian Bruskewicz’s Diocese of Lincoln, the only diocese more conservative than Arlington.  Unfortunately he was sent back after only a few years.  Like the others he was given to whining and complaining about the liturgy and was very active in the “Reform of the Reform” movement championed by Father Joseph Fessio, a member of the minority of Jesuits who have rejected the direction that the late Father Pedro Arrupe took the society during his tenure as General (1965-1983).  These Fathers were the nucleus of a catechetical school for young priests to unteach them anything they had learned in the seminary that smacked of progressive thought and to reform them in their own image and likeness as “Reform of the Reform” clergy.  They have had great influence over many of those 84 priests ordained by Bishop Keating and not a few of those ordained by the current bishop, Bishop Loverde, and their catechisis has created a distinctive sort of priest that one does not often find elsewhere.  In Arlington one might find a priest in his cassock picking up a few items at the supermarket or taking the parish youth for ice-cream at Coldstone Creamery.  In Arlington it is not all that unusual to find a priest facing away from the people for Mass or celebrating the preconciliar Requiem Mass, perhaps in English with some mumbled Latin, for a funeral.  Birettas are common, Roman or fiddle-back chasubles more common.  Purple Vestments (rather than Resurrection-white) is a common color for funeral Masses. Churches being built in the diocese these days are an architectural throwback to the 1950 Chicago-gothic and antique fixtures from the closed churches of Boston and other northern cities are finding new homes in the parishes of northern Virginia.  God forbid you come to Church with an Obama bumper-sticker on your car—you will find a note on your windshield telling you that you shouldn’t be coming to communion and just to make sure, it is not unlikely that some parish stalwart might track down your license plate and tell your pastor that he should refuse you communion at Mass.  It is not only a considerable number of the clergy in Arlington who are throwbacks to the days of the gentle Torquemada but an invisible empire of NKVD apparatchiks who monitor everything from the sermons of the suspiciously liberal to the liturgical oddities of the boomer generation priests to textbooks in religious education programs, to hymns sung at Mass.  One of their favorite targets of complaint and criticism is none less than the bishop himself.  But more on that in future postings.      

What Makes "Real (?) Catholic T.V." Real Catholic?

And then there’s Michael Voris and “Real Catholic T.V.”  Michael Voris might be a real Catholic but “Real Catholic T.V.” is not really Catholic—at least in any sense that the Catholic Church recognizes.  Let me explain.  What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You is not a Catholic Blog.  O sure, it’s author is a Catholic in good standing, very good standing.  But the blog itself: it is neither endorsed nor sponsored by the Catholic Church.  I have no authorization from the Holy See or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), or a local bishop to produce this blog.  Of course, I wouldn’t want one—nor do I need one.  This blog is about history—not faith or morals.  I make no pretense of doctrinal authenticity in matters of faith and/or morals.  I wouldn’t deliberately lead people astray regarding the Magisterium but even when dealing with matters of faith and/or morals, I will only present them from a historical point of view.  And history falls outside the authority of the Magisterium—which is one reason, by the way, that I went into history and not theology.  But Mr. Voris works very hard to give the (false) impression that he speaks for the Church when in fact he speaks only for himself.  There is no guarantor that he is, in fact, “orthodox” or that he accurately represents the position of the Holy See or the teachings of the Church.  In fact, he is often at odds with the Church in some of the claims that he makes especially on the “flash points” of ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, sacred worship, canon law, Church authority, and several other topics. No one, at any level of Church authority, has granted Mr. Voris recognition as being an authentic channel of Catholic doctrine.  Mr. Voris, like others such as Father Maciel of the Legionnaires of Christ, Father Fessio, Mother Angelica, the former Father Corappi, and various others, has discovered that a neo-traditionalist message brings considerable financial advantages.  I believe however that unlike Father Fessio and Mother Angelica, Mr. Voris is not acting in (mistaken) good faith but simply establishing himself in a niche in the neo-con market for his own financial and career purposes.  The primary aim of the vortex is to suck money out of the pockets of those who mistakenly believe their support of Mr. Voris is a support of an “authentic” Catholicism.     

The "New Translation" of the Mass III--More on the "Reform of the Reform"

A medieval illustration from the

Bibliothèque nationale de France

depicting a Requiem Mass being

celebrated ad apsidem (facing

the rear wall of the Church

I mentioned in the last post the “Reform of the Reform” school of liturgical renewal that feels that Paul VI went far too far in the Reform of the Roman Rite in the 1970 Missal and who have been advocating “correcting” the excesses of the Novus Ordo.  I also mentioned Father Joseph Fessio who as founder and president of Adoremus has been the chief American voice for the movement.  He is not the only advocate of the program, nor is his position on revising the current Rite even the most extreme.  Father Fessio may be a conservative and suffer from an exaggerated sense of his own importance, but he is both intelligent and highly educated.  Not all voices have such credibility.  I had mentioned Father Jerry Pokorsky from the Arlington Diocese.   He founded an organization called CREDO which has long agitated for revisions in the Novus Ordo including a more literal translation of the Latin texts.  Father Pokorsky holds an undergraduate degree in business and a seminary degree in theology.  A liturgical experience in his parish, Saint Michael’s in Annandale is, well to avoid the word eccentric, unique.  There is much razzle-dazzle, one could even say sacred glitter, but little substance in the way of sound liturgical spirituality.   One of  his partners in CREDO, Father Cornelius O’Brien often made pretense to a doctorate which in fact he had never completed.  Sermons by some of the CREDO priests in the diocese of Arlington are often otherworldly—not as in Divine or ethereal, but in the sense of “what planet is this priest from.”  Tales of spurious miracles and implausible hagiographic stories replace the scriptures in “thrill ‘em and chill ‘em” pulpit pyrotechnics.   Father Brian Harrison, an Australian priest who is a convert to Catholicism, received a doctorate from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross but his tapes on biblical exegesis that contradicted the Pontifical Biblical Commission and attacked biblical scholarship since Pius XII’s encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu have undermined, indeed destroyed, what little academic credibility he might otherwise have enjoyed.  All in all this is the problem with the Reform of the Reform—From Msgr. Gamber down to “Doctor” O’Brien, there is a lack of intellectual bottom to the movement.   Of course that is not to say that any of the other “schools” of liturgical renewal are any better.  Frankly, I wonder where the scholarship of the Jungmann’s and Dix’s and Deiss’s is today.  Where are the successors of  Odo Casel and Ildefons Herwegen and Lambert Beauduin? Frankly, there is grave need for ongoing renewal of the Roman Liturgy but it cannot be undertaken until a new generation of serious scholars, scholars that have credibility beyond the narrow and intellectually thin world of contemporary Catholic “Theology.” 
     Looking through the publications of various “Reform of the Reform” advocates we can see the movement’s agenda.  This is not to say that each and every voice of the movement subscribes to each and every point, but it does give us an overall view of what this particular group would like to see the Catholic Liturgy adopt.  
      What is the Reform of the Reform all about? 

1.    The priest and people facing the same direction in the liturgy
2.    The restriction of communion to one species for all but the celebrating priest
3.    The elimination of the sign of peace
4.    The restoration of kneeling for holy communion
5.    The administration of holy communion directly on the tongue
6.    The recitation of the Canon in Latin
7.    The translation of “pro multis” to be restrictive (for many) rather than inclusive (for all)
8.    The abolition of all other Eucharistic Prayers other than Prayer I—the “canon” of the Mass in the Tridentine Liturgy
9.    The use of two scripture readings at Sunday Mass rather than three
10.The elimination of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist at the liturgy
11.The exclusive use of men in liturgical ministries
12.The use of black or purple vestments for the funeral liturgy
13.The elimination of concelebration of the Liturgy
14.The use of “Roman” vestments –the “fiddleback” chasuable
15.The revival of suppressed or archaic customs such as the use of the maniple, the biretta, and, for prelates, the cappa magna.
     The 2000 Third Edition of the Roman Missal addressed none of these issues.  The new translation—at the insistence of Pope Benedict—does translate the “pro multis” as “for many,” but other than that doesn’t  address the “Reform of the Reform” agenda.  I don’t mean to say that the “new” missal isn’t problematic, even a step backwards, but it isn’t a threat to the substantial revisions made in the Liturgy after the Second Vatican Council.  What is a threat is what happens in many parishes where priests on their own authority begin to turn back the clock, withdrawing the chalice from the laity, eliminating the sign of peace, closing liturgical ministries to girls and women.     

The "New Translation" of the Mass II--The "Reform of the Reform"

This medieval bas-relief on the facade of Lucca

cathedral testifies to the practice of celebrating Mass

versus populum (facing the people) in the medieval

period.

Almost twenty years ago Monsignor Francis Manion, then rector of the Cathedral of the Magdalene in Salt Lake City, published an article in America Magazine on five schools of thought regarding how the Roman Catholic Liturgy should be celebrated.  It has been a very important article to track the development of various liturgical movements through the reign of John Paul II and into Pope Benedict’s pontificate.  One of the “schools of thought” then on the fringe that Monsignor Manion identified was a groups he termed(and others have used this phrase, including its adherents) “The Reform of the Reform.”  
      The “Reform of the Reform” school of liturgical renewal believes that Paul VI went far beyond the mandate of the Council Fathers in his restructuring of the Liturgy in the 1970 Roman Missal.  They insist that the Council Fathers wanted certain portions of the Mass, mostly those parts which gave the laity a direct participation of listening (the Liturgy of the Word) or singing (the various chants proper to the celebration such as the introit, the gradual, and the offertorium) put in the language of the people, while the core prayers were to stay in Latin.  They insisted-and I think they are substantially correct—that the Council Fathers had not called for the radical restructuring of the “offertory” rites, the repositioning of the altar to face the people, the multiplicity of Eucharistic (consecratory) prayers, and what they perceive to have been a deemphasizing of the role of the priest-celebrant in favor of an expanded role of the laity that creates the impression that the non-ordained in any way “celebrate” the Liturgy along with the priest or bishop.  Advocates of the “Reform of the Reform” also are quick to point out that the Council never mandated the altar to be turned so that the priest faced the people.   
      The “Reform of the Reform” has taken its energy from a book written by Monsignor Klaus Gamber (1919-1987), a German liturgical historian who wrote a book known in English as The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background.  The book is not without its historical problems and differs in substantial ways from the earlier liturgical histories written by the Jesuit Josef Jungmann and the Anglican Benedictine Dom Gregory Dix.  The Jungmann and Dix works have been surpassed by subsequent research which both validates their research and theses and builds on their work.  But we can save that for a future entry.  As I have written in some earlier entries, my chief problem is with Gamber’s thesis that priest and people have always faced in the same position—facing eastwards—during the liturgy.  While the predominance of the ad orientem (eastward positioning for prayer) seems to be true in the East (due to the influence of the synagogue tradition) and in even northern Europe, the archeological evidence is clear that it was never the custom in Rome.  Moreover, various paintings, book illustrations, bas-reliefs, and mosaics show that it was not a universal practice in the western Church even outside of Rome.  I think in particular of a medieval bas relief on the façade of the Cathedral of Lucca that clearly shows a Eucharistic celebration in which the clergy face the people over the altar.  The illustration I used on the previous blog is another example of a medieval liturgical celebration facing the people.  But again, I have done entries on the ad orientem vs versus populum debate and don’t want to get side tracked here.  (See entries for January 25, February 26, March 3, August 9, and 16, all of this year.) 
    Joseph Fessio SJ—the somewhat troublesome and seemingly troubled founder of Ignatius Press, and one-time provost of Ave Maria University emerged as the American leader of the “Reform of the Reform movement.”  Let me make it clear that Father Fessio is a priest in good standing and impeccable reputation regarding his personal life, but the hills and valleys of his career indicates a troubled soul whose personal agenda often overpowers an ability to work collaboratively or integrate his vision with other members of a team.  In other words, he would seem to be a raging megalomaniac.   I don’t mean this to be an ad hominem attack but an attempt to put the “Reform of the Reform” into the context of the actual people behind this agenda.  Father Fessio established an organization known as Adoremus to further the “Reform of the Reform” through their newsletter, speaking engagements, and various publications including a traditional hymnal.  In addition to Father Fessio, the executive committee of Adoremus also includes the traditionalist spokesperson Helen Hull Hitchcock and another, to put it kindly,  “highly eccentric” member of the clergy, Father Jerry Pokorsky of the Arlington (Virginia) Diocese.  Adoremus has done a noteworthy job of advancing the agenda of the Reform of the Reform, but the success of the movement has depended more on an admirer of Monsignor Gamber’s work, Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. 
       Then-Cardinal Ratzinger had always been very clear in expressing his opinion that he perceived problems with the Novus Ordo of Paul VI and that he saw the work of Liturgical Renewal as not finished with then current edition  but in need of continuing Reform—the exact point of the “Reform of the Reform.”  While he was no supporter of the late Marcel Lefebvre, the schismatic archbishop who consecrated his own bishops in defiance of the Holy See, Ratzinger was in constant supportive dialogue with those who continued to celebrate the preconciliar rites.  His Eminence was a regular participant in liturgical conferences at the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault which has been a center for the preservation of the pre-conciliar rites.  At the same time, the Cardinal also wrote theological justifications for maintaining the “ad orientem” position with priest and people alike facing eastwards in the liturgy.  He also expressed deep concern about the translations of the Words of Consecration of the chalice that declared that Christ died “for all” rather than “for many.”  This is a very complex issue both theologically and linguistically and merits a blog entry or two on its own.  
      Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a preface to Gamber’s book and this energized Gamber’s disciples in the Reform of the Reform, but it was only with the election of Ratzinger as Benedict XVI in 2005 that the weight of a pope (as opposed to that of a Cardinal) shifted the movement from fringe to mainline.  Ironically, since his election, Benedict has backed away from (not renounced) his support for the ideas espoused by the Reform of the Reform.  On only one occasion that I know of has the Pope celebrated the liturgy ad apsidem, that is facing the wall.  He has never (publicly) celebrated the Tridentine Rite.  On the other hand, he has insisted that those receiving communion from him receive kneeling and directly on the tongue and these are two of the cardinal “reforms” of the Reform of the Reform.  
       The Third Edition of the Roman Missal, issued by Pope Benedict’s predecessor, Blessed John Paul II,  in 2000 has been a big disappointment to the “Reform of the Reform” as it has not addressed any of their principal concerns for a genuine “reform” of the Novus Ordo.  In as that the Mass of Paul VI remains substantially intact beneath the new translation mandated at the time of the Missal’s promulgation it is no more likely to please the “Reform of the Reform” advocates whose agenda it fails to meet than it will please those who have been happy with the Novus Ordo since it has been in place these last forty years.  It was well within Cardinal Ratzinger’s power to insist, as the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that the 2000 missal address the doctrinal concerns of the “Reform of the Reform;” his election as Pope in 2005 empowered him, if he had so chosen, to supersede the 2000 Missal with yet a fourth edition that would have mandated various items of their agenda.  Neither as Cardinal Prefect or as Pope has Benedict XVI made substantial changes in the 1970 Rite.  While I am less than happy with the new translation, it is to Benedict’s credit that he is not turning the clock back on the post-Conciliar Rite.