The Traditional Roman Liturgy Question and Eastern Liturgics

By now most Latin Catholics with an interest in liturgical matters know the complaint: The so-called 1962 books (Missale Romanum, Breviarium Romanum, etc.) which are approved for official Church use are inferior to those in use up until around 1954. The litany of changes instituted by Popes Pius XII and John XIII were imprudent, sloppy, and, in the case of Holy Week, revolutionary. However, as I have argued many times before, the average Catholic in the pew would hardly know the difference. The primary difference between a Sunday Tridentine Mass served according to the 1962 Missal and one served according to a 1954 (or earlier) Missal is the absence of commemorations. The third Confiteor was technically eliminated too, though many traditional groups, including the Society of St. Pius X, the Institute of Christ the King, and the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius continue to recite it. A noticeable number of diocesan clergy appear to as well. Where the 1955-62 liturgical changes are most noticeable is in the breviary, though due to the accidents of ecclesiastical history, the Divine Office is almost exclusively confined to the clergy. Public recitation has all but disappeared.

Schmemann on Papal Visits to America

Matthew Schmitz, over at First Things, has a thoughtful piece up concerning the limits of papal celebrity. It indirectly reminded me of this October 3, 1979 entry from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s journals, which is one of my favorites.

The Pope of Rome [John Paul II] is in New York. We watched him on television in Yankee Stadium. A mixed impression. On one hand, an unquestionably good man and full of light. Wonderful smile. Very genuine — a man of God. But, on the other hand, there are some “buts”! First of all, the Mass itself. The first impression is how liturgically impoverished the Catholic Church has become. In 1965, I watched the service performed by Pope Paul VI in the same Yankee Stadium. Despite everything, it was the presence, the appearance on earth of the eternal, the “super earthly.” Whereas yesterday I had the feeling that the main thing was the “message.”

This message is, again and again, “peace and justice,” “human family,” “social work,” etc. An opportunity was given, a fantastic chance to tell millions and millions of people about God, to reveal to them that more than anything else they need God! But here, on the contrary, the whole goal, it seemed, consisted in proving that the Church also can speak the jargon of the United Nations. All the symbols point the same way: the reading of the Scriptures by some lay people with bright ties, etc. And a horrible translation: I never suspected that a translation could be a heresy: Grace — “abiding love”!

Crowds — their joy and excitement. Quite genuine, but at the same time, it is clear that there is an element of mass psychosis. “Peoples’ Pope . . .” What does this really mean? I don’t know. I am not sure. Does one have to serve Mass in Yankee Stadium? But if it’s possible and needed, shouldn’t the Mass be, so to say, “super-earthly,” separated from the secular world, in order to show in the world — the Kingdom of God?

Byzantine New Year

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If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; and if ye shall  despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. And I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass; and your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; then will I also walk contrary to unto you, and will punish ye yet seven times for your sins.

– Leviticus 26:3-12, 14-17, 19-24 (Second Reading of Vespers for the Eastern Church New Year)

This strikes me as a most worthy and necessary meditation for our times.

Some Thoughts on Church Slavonic in the Liturgy

Church Slavonic, like all extant liturgical languages, is a dying tongue. The Russian Orthodox Church remains the single largest user of Slavonic, though many of its parishes in the diaspora—including those of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR)—have abandoned it in favor of the vernacular. The Orthodox Church in America, with few exceptions, has completely dropped Slavonic and other local churches, such as the Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox, have moved away from it as well. The main argument against using Slavonic in the liturgy is that few understand it anymore, particularly outside of traditional Orthodox homelands. In the Greek Catholic context, those churches which draw their heritage from the Slavic tradition now favor the vernacular. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which was once the largest Catholic communion to use Church Slavonic, now serves most of its liturgies in Ukrainian (with exceptions made for parishes in other parts of the world). This is somewhat ironic given all of the effort the Congregation for Oriental Churches put into producing a master set of “de-Latinized” Slavonic liturgical books for the Ukrainian and Ruthenian churches between the 1940s and 70s. So, is it time to move on from Church Slavonic? Should the liturgical language which sustained the Eastern Slavic churches (Catholic and Orthodox) for a millennium be abandoned once and for all? Or is it still possible to maintain a liturgical link to the past without sacrificing intelligibility to the point where the liturgy becomes either a museum piece or a performance?

New Edition of the Little Office of the BVM

Many moons ago I made mention of a new edition of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary which I had the good fortune to looking over before publication. Now it has been made available for purchase by the good folks at Angelus Press. This new re-typeset edition of the Little Office features dual Latin/English text and, unlike the other new edition of the office published by Baronius Press, features accent marks for the Latin text. As an added bonus, the Angelus Press edition also includes the entire Office for the Dead, which can easily prayed either in conjunction with the Little Office or as a distinct devotion.

Another Note on Latinizations

Note: Although I plan to continue posting primarily on the theme of integralism, there are several sketches sitting in my “Draft” folder — most dealing with liturgy and history — that I want to complete and post as well. This is one of them.

Some time ago I issued a post entitled “A Note on Latinizations,” which, not surprisingly, was met with a mixed reception. In the year since it was written I have had some time to rethink the matter in the light of both ritual integrity and the fraught history of the Greek Catholic Church in Galicia. A particularly illuminating article on these (and other) matters is John-Paul Himka’s “The Greek Catholic Church and Nation-Building in Galicia, 1772-1918,” 8 Harvard Ukrainian Studies 426 (1984). In it, Himka explores the singular role the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) played in creating a Galician (and by extension Ukrainian) national identity, one which owed more than a small debt to the so-called Josephine Enlightenment in Austria. Without opening the door too widely on that complicated period in European history, Himka offers a brief but informative analysis of how national and ritual identity clashed during the 19th Century for “Greek Catholic[s] [who] had an Orthodox face, Roman Catholic citizenship and . . . an enlightened Austrian soul” (pg. 438).

Today He Who Hung the Earth on the Waters is Hung on the Tree

The late Archbishop Job of the Diocese of the Midwest (Orthodox Church in America) chanting his haunting setting of the 15th Antiphon of Holy Friday Matins in 2009. That Holy Week would prove to be the good bishop’s last here on earth as God called him home in December. Of all of the priests and bishops I met during my time in Eastern Orthodoxy, he was one of the most kind, sincere, and dedicated to his calling. On this most holy and sorrowful day I pray for his soul and hope in turn that he will pray for mine.

Maundy Thursday

In his definitive biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais takes time to discuss “The Nine,” a band of former Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) priests who went on to form the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV) before eventually splitting apart. The SSPV, contrary to the SSPX, entertains the idea of sedevacantism while remaining loyal to the liturgical books in use prior to Pope Pius XII’s mid-to-late 1950s reforms. “The Nine,” according to Bishop Tissier, demonstrated a typically Anglophone tendency to ground the Faith in ritual, perhaps due to a lack of strong Catholic cultural roots. It is said that Bishop Tissier, like his predecessor Archbishop Lefebvre, has little patience for liturgical minutiae. Another way to frame this is to hold that the SSPX, or at least a significant number of its clerical members, avoids liturgical absolutism, preferring instead to take a broad view of what the fight for Catholic tradition entails. The Tridentine Mass is central; how many Collects are said on this-or-that Sunday during the liturgical year is not. Central, too, are the complicated and contentions issues that emerged out of the Second Vatican Council, including—but not necessarily limited to—collegiality, ecumenism, and religious liberty. For a relatively small but unhealthy number of Catholic traditionalists, doctrine matters little. Maybe it matters not. What does matter, however, is that the priest’s vestments be immaculately tailored, the servers be positioned just right during each liturgical movement, and that their living, breathing wax museum of ritual be left unsullied by the burdens of reality.

Holy Monday

The start of Holy Week provides another opportunity for faithful Catholics to pause, set aside all earthly cares, and express with absolute frankness and complete sincerity their disgust with the rite introduced by Pope Pius XII nearly 60 years ago. Their displeasure is understandable even if it is out of place during this particular time of the year. There are, after all, 51 other weeks in which these liturgically minded Catholics can toss out disparaging remarks about, say, the gutting of Palm Sunday or the absurd placement of Tenebrae (darkness!) in the morning light. A number of those dissatisfied with the normative “traditional” Holy Week rite of the Church enjoy extending their ire toward the so-called “1962 books” which, admittedly, also have problems. But as I have argued elsewhere, for the average Catholic in the pew who likely doesn’t have access to the Tridentine Mass outside of Sundays and a handful of feast days, the differences between Mass said out of a 1954 Missal as opposed to one printed in 1962 are minor, even unnoticeable. That doesn’t mean the 1962 books, specifically the Missal and Breviary, shouldn’t be reexamined in the light of what immediately preceded them; it’s just not a matter worth spilling blood over, particularly at this point in the liturgical year.