Sometimes Religious Syncretism Works

Seventeenth-century altar rail in
an English (Anglican) Church

For many Catholics who are disturbed by the liturgical changes of the last fifty or so years one of the most upsetting has been the removal of the altar rails from their parish churches.  What many do not know, of course, is that the altar rail has its origins in the Protestant reformation. 

We can tell from reading the Fathers of the Church that the practice of receiving Holy Communion for at least the first seven centuries was—as it remained and still is in the Eastern Churches—for the communicant to present himself or herself standing to the priest at the foot of the altar.  In the very early centuries, let us say from apostolic times up until perhaps the seventh century, it was expected that all present would receive Holy Communion.  (Those who were not eligible—catechumens and penitents—had been dismissed after the sermon.)  However, as through missionary efforts Christianity spread northward into what is today Germany, England, the Low Countries, Austria, and eventually Scandinavia and Poland, and as the various “Barbarian” tribes swept down into Italy, the large number of poorly catechized converts saw a dramatic decline in the numbers of those who received Holy Communion.  Many never received at all.  An exaggerated emphasis on the need for Sacramental Confession before receiving Holy Communion and the imposition of very strict Communion Fasts also contributed to the decline in people receiving.  The situation became so desperate that in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council had to mandate that Christians must receive at least once a year and that during the period from Septugesima until the Octave of Pentecost—the Lent-Easter season.  Even then many never received the Sacrament from their first Communion until their deathbeds.  Communions became so rare that they were often separated from Mass with people receiving from the Reserved Sacrament in the Tabernacle before Mass or after Mass.  Indeed it was not rare for there to be no “Communion of the faithful” at Mass, with only the priest receiving.

In such cases those few receiving Holy Communion would present themselves kneeling in one of the smaller chapels of a large church or at a side altar of the main church before or after Mass.  Kneeling became a common practice after the seventh century as the Church more and more stressed the need for penance and demanded of communicants a penitential posture. 

Tourists and pilgrims visiting Rome are often surprised how few churches in the ancient city, and none of the old churches, have communion rails.  That is because of this practice of receiving outside of Mass.  With only four or five people receiving on any occasion—and often as few as one—the communicants would approach the priest one by one, kneel and receive Holy Communion.  The Rite for Communion outside of Mass involved the priest coming to the altar in surplice and stole, the candles being lit at the tabernacle.  The people, or more often the server(s) recited the Confiteor and priest granted the absolution that follows.  The priest then showed the Host to the communicants saying the Ecce Agnus Dei…and the response thrice given “Domine non sum dignus…” The communicants then approached the priest, knelt and received the Host on their tongue as the priest said the “Corpus Domini Jesu Christi…” There was then a final prayer over the communicants.  (There were local variations of this rite but the practice of Communion outside of Mass persisted as the normal form until the Liturgical Reforms of Pius X at the beginning of the 20^th century and was in common use even up to Vatican II.) 

The Protestant reformers tried to restore frequent and universal communion—with mixed results.  Luther had more luck with this than Calvin or with the Anglican Church.  Luther’s liturgical revisions were far less drastic than either Calvin or the English Church’s and much of the Mass appeared very little altered except for the substation of the vernacular for the Latin (though even the Latin persisted in some places, especially for the sung parts of the service).  From sixteenth century woodcuts of Lutheran liturgies we can see the introduction of the rail with communicants kneeling to receive.

Let me back up here for a moment.  Railing the altar in one form or another was nothing new.  At some older churches in Rome, notably Santa Maria in Cosmedin, San Clemente, Santa Sabina, we can see the rails that were erected as early as the sixth century to mark off the space for the choristers and the Sacred Ministers during the liturgy.  These were not Communion rails—they are approximately four-and-a-half feet to six feet high.  They were simply an effort to prevent the crowds from taking over the space around the altar needed for the Ministers to perform the Liturgy.  Similar barriers developed in the East into the Iconostasis.  In the West, particularly in England but also elsewhere, they became choir screens.  The magnificent choir screens of many of the Spanish cathedrals have survived but these are high walls—thirty and forty feet in height. 

During the Catholic Reforms of the fifteenth (Spanish) and sixteenth (Trent) legislation demanding that the altar area be railed off became normative and rails were built around the sanctuary to divide it form the nave. Originally they had nothing to do with the reception of Holy Communion but were to keep out stray animals, wandering children and over-enthusiastic worshippers.  Where these railings survive they are usually about four feet high (too high for communion rails) and without a kneeling step on which the communicants can kneel.  Communion rails were not needed in Catholic Churches since communions were relatively rare and usually conducted away from the main altar before or after Mass.

The Lutheran custom of the rail caught on in both Germany and Scandinavia.  In England there was a conflict.  The Puritan wing of the Church of England, Calvinst in theology, clung to Cranmer’s practice where Holy Communion was celebrated at an ordinary table placed in the chancel.  The communicants were expected to kneel around the table as the priest placed the bread into their hands and then gave them the cup from which to drink.  Frequent communion did not catch on in England at the time.  People would come for Morning Prayer and the Sermon and then leave with only a dozen or so remaining for Holy Communion.  But the efforts of the High Church Party under Archbishop Laud in the early seventeenth century won a significant number of people over to a more Sacramental worship.  The High Church party moved the table from the middle of the chancel or from the nave where Cranmer had put it back to the traditional position against the eastern wall of the Church.  And it introduced communion rails with the communicants kneeling at the rail rather than around the table.  All this was done away with during the Puritan Commonwealth but was restored with the Restoration of the Episcopacy and the Crown in 1660. 

There was a dramatic Reformation of the Catholic Church in France in the seventeenth century.  The French Crown had blocked the promulgation of the Decrees of the Council of Trent for decades but a determined group of French ecclesiastics under the leadership of (later Cardinal) Pierre deBérulle undertook an internal reform of the Church.  Old religious orders were reformed and new religious orders were founded along with the Society of Saint Sulpice to train diocesan clergy.  Francis de Sales preached an everyday spirituality for lay people that brought incredible new energy to the Church.  Great attention was paid to the liturgy and magnificent churches were built.  And in these new churches communion rails appeared.  There were many connections between England and France at this time.  Sizable communities of English Catholics—both lay and religious—had taken refuge in France.  People went back and forth across the channel with regularity.  Many French churchmen had contacts with Church of England clergy and academics.  Many English converts to Catholicism came to France for education in the faith.  England had a French Catholic Queen  from 1625 until 1649.  Catholic chapels were maintained in London by Continental European embassies throughout the sixteenth century except for the years of the Commonwealth.  We can’t say for certain that the communion rail was an import from the Church of England but its appearance in France from where it spread through much of the Catholic world strongly suggests a link.  

Let's Hear It For The Ladies cont.

Ven.Anne of Saint Bartholomew

who resisted outside control by

the Cardinal Berulle over the

Discalced Carmelite nuns in 17th

century France

Yesterday I wrote about women religious who resisted the efforts of bishops to exercise control over them and their congregations.  We looked at such outstanding figures as Saint Mary MacKillop, Mary Ward, Margaret Anna Cuscack, and Saint Teresa of Avila.   There are also stories of women who lost the battle—often to the detriment of their congregations. 

      Pierre de Bèrulle is a figure in Church history who, for the most part, I have always admired.  He was ardent for the reform of the Church of France in the early seventeenth century. You see, for a variety of reasons more political than religious, France had not yet accepted the Decrees of the Council of Trent (that only happened in 1615—some 53 years after the Council concluded) and there were a lot of leading French Catholics who saw the great need for reform.  Many of these devout Catholics (actually they were known as the parti dévot) gathered in the home of the wealthy French widow,  Madame Barbe Acarie to discuss plans for reform.  (Francis de Sales, Bennet Canfield, Jean Jacques Olier, and others were all regulars at the Salon Acarie.)  Bérulle understood that the key to reform of the Church was reform of the clergy and religious.  Olier established the Society of Saint Sulpice to prepare candidates for the secular priesthood.  John Eudes established the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament as well as the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge.  Bérulle himself established the French Oratory.  He also invited the two closest companions of Saint Teresa of Avila, Anna of Jesus and Anna of Saint Bartholomew, to come to France and established the Discalced Carmelite nuns.  It was a worthy cause, but as soon as French nuns were professed, Bérulle sent the Spanish Madres packing.   Like Teresa, they did not want the nuns to be subject to external authority and Bérulle wanted them to be under his thumb, er “guidance.”  The Spanish daughters of Teresa went up to the Netherlands where they established the Carmels from which are descended the majority of American monasteries of Carmelite nuns.  The French nuns buckled under and there has long been an argument among Discalced Carmelites whether the French Carmels preserved the heritage of Teresa or not, whether they are authentically “Teresian” or are they “Bérullian.”

     Here in America the disputes over the independence of the religious Sisters has also been a battle.  Bishop John Carroll persuaded the widowed convert, Elizabeth Ann Seton to establish the American Sisters of Charity modeled on the French Institute founded by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, but Carroll, a very busy man, gave Mother Seton a pretty free hand in her enterprise.  In 1817, just a few years before her death, Mother Seton sent three Sisters from Emmitsburg up to New York City.  When John Hughes became Bishop of New York, one of his first acts was to demand that the New York Charities be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Emmitsburg Sisters and placed under his jurisdiction.  He named his sister, Mother Angela Hughes, as the second Mother General of the New York Sisters.  Again, John Hughes is another figure whom I have always admired, but he had a tremendous psychological need for control that went far beyond the Sisters of Charity in his diocese.  His entire style as bishop was “one man rule”—sound familiar?

      Hughes was not exceptional in this matter.  Many religious congregations—both those founded in the United States  (The Charities, the various Newman Communities of Franciscans, the IHMs) as well as those coming from other countries (the Sisters of Mercy) met with demands from American bishops that they sever their ties outside the diocese and place themselves under the jurisdiction of the local bishop.  For the sake of the work that needed to be done for the immigrants, for the poor, for women, or orphans, the nuns acceded to these demands for control.  Other congregations such as the School Sisters of Notre Dame successfully resisted.   The Benedictines were always particularly successful in resisting Episcopal control—but their monastic roots gave them strong precedence on which to stand.  Today’s nuns are well and wise to insist on their autonomy and self-governance.  But a lot of the men just don’t get it—the world has changed.  Collaborative models work in our contemporary world, hierarchical models are as archaic as the Mastodon.  Of course, the danger that both bishops and Rome fear is that if the nuns can take responsibility for their own decision making, will others in the Church see possibilities for collaborative rather than hierarchal models of authority?  Why is always about power and never about the Gospel?

We're Back --And Back on the Question of Clergy Maturity

Pierre de Berulle, a leader in the seventeenth-century
French Spiritual Revival

Well, I am back from my time in the Czech Republic.   I had very limited access to the internet so I was not able to post any entries in the last week and a half, but am back and ready to post.  While I was away I I had an inquiry from a correspondent of mine, a priest who is doing doctoral work at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, as to reasons why there is a renewed interest today in seventeenth century French Spirituality.  I think he was trying to get me to do an exam question for him, but I thought I might share some of the reflections that I sent him with you.  

I think there are both good and not-so-good motives behind this recovery of what is a very rich spiritual tradition.  Note, I did not say bad—even if the reasons themselves may not always be healthy, the recovery of the French Tradition—the authentic tradition not its Jansenist or Quietist aberrations—will hopefully return an interest in spirituality to the contemporary Church which has too often, at least here in the United States, confused spirituality with a rather heady mixture of moralism and piety—what I am inclined to describe as the Tanquerey approach to spirituality  as opposed to the Garrigiou-Lagrange approach.  Alphonse Alfred Tanquerey, S.S., (not to be confused with the Gin) was a moral theologian ; Réginald Garrigiou-Lagrange ,O.P. was a systematic theologian.  Most twentieth century spiritual theology, at least before Vatican II, followed the one or the other of these two theologians.  Tanquerey seemed to have undue influence in English language countries and his thought, most of which I admittedly only know “second-hand,” seemed to have far too much emphasis on moral “perfection” and was far too shallow in regards to the nature and place of contemplative prayer, seeming to think that we should content ourselves with pious practices, leaving contemplation to “the professionals.”   This may be a caricature of this thought, but it does match both my memories of the priestly devotionalism of the mid-twentieth century and the exaggerated piety which see so much of today among the recently ordained graduates of such seminaries as (among others) “the Mount” in Emmitsburg, SJV Denver, or Kenrick-Glennon in St. Louis.   Not that these—and other—seminaries may not be good orthodox theological faculties, but a genuine crisis facing the Catholic Church in the United States (among other Churches in the Developed World) are priests who may know their dogma but have not been formed as spiritually and psychologically mature adults capable of speaking to a laity that is sometimes, and perhaps even often, more advanced in the spiritual life than many of their pastors.   If we can learn anything from the Fathers of the Church—and after all that is the Tradition part of our Catholic “Scripture and Tradition” as the two sources of Revelation—it is that sanctity will produce orthodoxy but orthodoxy will not necessarily produce sanctity.  But let us move on.           

I think the first reason—and the best—for the revival of seventeenth century French spirituality is that the everyday practical down-to-earth spirituality for the common man (and woman) as typified by the spiritual teaching of its “greats” and, in particular,  Francis de Sales  is undergoing a huge revival today as more and more ordinary people (not just monks and nuns)  are looking to deepen their spiritual life.  Of course de Sales drew on the rich tradition, especially Saint John of the Cross and and Saint Teresa of Avila, that preceded him but he had an incredible ability to make the highest teaching very practical in the everyday world.  For the secular priest and for the lay person in the world, one can probably not find a better introduction to the devout life than Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. 
Secondly, the Incarnational thrust of seventeenth century French Spirituality (again, the authentic Parti Dévot strain, neither the Jansenist nor Quietist aberrations) meets the needs of today’s people to come to the infinite love of God through the mediation of the human heart of Jesus.  Incarnational
spirituality speaks to people today in their everyday lives.  Yet, I believe (and as you know by now, I am no sack of pious manure) too often in the last forty years, an emphasis on the humanity of Christ has lacked the appropriate reverence and dignity due—in love—to Our Lord.  A return to the French Tradition, a very courtly tradition, models a balance between intimacy with God rooted in the human nature of Christ and the awe due to the mystery of God- become-human.   Saying that, I think that the particular expressions of that reverence used in seventeenth century France or sixteenth century Spain are artificial in twenty-first century America (and indeed point to the spiritual immaturity of those who fall back on antique and monarchical piety), but we have our own ways of expressing an authentic  admiration in the classic sense of the Latin ad –mirari.  Mirari, of course, is not only the Latin root of admire but also of “miracle.”   In “admire” it refers to the astonishment in the heart or the soul caused by love.  But enough of that.   That we will save for the spirituality blog when I get that revived.   
A third reason—and I suppose in some seminaries, the primary reason—for the revival of seventeenth century French Spirituality is a rediscovery of the priestly spirituality centered around the thought of Pierre de Bérulle, especially stressing the sanctity of the priesthood.  This became a “stamp” of Frech Spirituality, not only in the influence of Bérulle but of his disciples, Jean Jaques Olier and Jean Eudes.  A revival of priestly spirituality is much needed today.  In the North American Church this is sometimes exaggerated in an unhealthy way in which the holiness is attributed solely to the sacramental character of the priesthood without paying sufficient attention to the moral, psychological, and emotional maturity of the individual who may be finding a refuge from his own psychological and moral immaturity in the sacramental identity of the priesthood.  Nevertheless, today we need a new emphasis on the holiness of the priest to recover from the scandals of the last twenty years.  Of course such holiness must be cultivated within the individual priest and seminarian and not just supposedly super-imposed on him with the reception of the sacrament.  The holiness of the priest is found in neither the biretta nor the stole, but the heart filled with Charity—as Eudes would be the first to tell us.  So these are just a few thoughts on the revival of French Spirituality.  Perhaps once we get back to our Roots of the Reformation and make some more progress on that we can look at the very rich tradition of French Spirituality originating from the seventeenth-century parlor of Madame Acarie and still with much to us today.