Adoremus Bulletin
JANUARY 2021
USCCB: ‘All are Welcome’ Hymn Not Welcome at Mass
Adoremus PO Box 385 La Crosse, WI 54602-0385
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CNA—The doctrine committee of the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB) earlier in 2020 produced a guide to evaluating the lyrics of hymns on the basis of their doctrinal content, noting that Vatican II declared sacred music’s purpose to be “the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.” The document was distributed to bishops in December 2020; they were encouraged by the USCCB to share it with diocesan worship offices, pastors, and parish musicians. The U.S. bishops’ doctrine committee provided two general guidelines for determining whether a hymn is doctrinally suitable for liturgical use: whether it conforms to Catholic doctrine, and whether its images and vocabulary appropriately reflect the usage of Scripture and the liturgical prayer of the Church. While hymns needn’t “be composed of doctrinal formulae…, [i]t is important to avoid language that could be easily misconstrued in a way that is contrary to Catholic doctrine,” the bishops explained. Hymnody’s beauty “is constitutively related to the truth of the mystery of faith it proposes for our wonder and praise,” the document’s preface notes. It adds that since beauty and truth are convertible, “there can be no competition, much less contradiction, between the two. The truth of the faith need not be—and indeed must not be—compromised or subordinated to the canons of compositional style or the needs of musical or poetic form. At the same time, the beauty of the faith cannot be neglected Please see HYMN on next page
XXVI, No.4
The Liturgy—Truly Human, Truly Divine Louis Bouyer on the Transfiguration of the Sacred by the Divine Sacrifice of the Eucharist By Keith Lemna
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oes Christian worship require the setting aside of a special sacred space and time in distinction from the profane space and time of our everyday lives? Should it elevate our moral and aesthetic sensibilities by putting Christian prayer in a ritual-symbolic context that moves our attention in a vertical direction beyond the horizontal plane of our daily experience? These and similar questions were at the center of a major debate in the Christian world that arose shortly after the Second World War. At that time, so-called “Death of God” theologians emerged on the scene in America and Europe who argued that the age of the sacred begun in the Neolithic period of human history was now being effectively succeeded by the age of technology, secularism, and, at long last, the consecration of daily human life in its intrinsic goodness. These theologians held that the loss of the transcendent common in our modern era of secularism should not be taken by Christians to be something deplorable. Rather, it should be recognized as a sign of human maturation to a new and advanced form of consciousness, enabling humanity to live at last at the heart of the world in full self-possession. The ancient divide between the sacred and the profane was now thought to be otiose. The development of this form of secularizing theology greatly impacted Catholic liturgists at that time, although it was foreign to the sensibilities of many of those who were the leading lights in the liturgical movement in the first half of the 20th century. It was not uncommon for theologians and liturgists influenced by this new current of thought to argue that our current era of secularization offers the opportunity to overcome at last the fissure between the sacred and profane realms
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Adoremus Bulletin JANUARY 2021
AB/WIKIMEDIA/EDVARD MUNCH (1863-1944)
News & Views
For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy
Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche claimed that “God is Dead, and we have killed him.” In this same spirit, after the Second World War, so-called “Death of God” theologians emerged on the scene in America and Europe who argued that the age of the sacred begun in the Neolithic period of human history was now being effectively succeeded by the age of technology, secularism, and, at long last, the consecration of daily human life such as it is in its intrinsic goodness.
that Jesus himself had drawn together by the fact of his Incarnation. Indeed, secularity could no longer be denigrated as “profane,” and liturgy should no longer be “God-centered and vertical.” Sacred space and time, in its true Christian meaning, is not something to be set apart from the secular domain of our quotidian history, the new liturgical theologians thought. Liturgical vestments, music, art, the rhythm of prayer—all these ritual or ceremonial externalities should be given new form befitting our awakening to the fact that Christ did not come to call us out of the world but to take root in it precisely within the context of what we used to denigrate mistakenly as profane. Recovery Efforts Keith Lemna is on a mission to restore the sacred and—with the help of Conciliar contributor Louis Bouyer—to rescue the reality behind what we say when we pray the liturgy. .................................................1 2020: Revised Edition The new year may be greeting us like a blank sheet of paper—but Christopher Carstens takes a closer look and sees 2020’s faded text still offering us lessons for 2021...............3 Middle-Age Crisis? Not so, says Timothy O’Malley, who refutes a presumptive “narrative of decline” in the Mass of the Medieval Church—seeing in it, instead, a rising model for liturgy today ........6
This secularizing view was common in the 1960s and 1970s, but the greatest theologians in the Church in those days were not all on board with the liturgical specialists who were perhaps the most fervent champions of this theological persective. It was opposed by theologians of the stature of Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Joseph Ratzinger, and Louis Bouyer. Each of these theologians recognized that the loss of the sacred in Christian liturgy was detrimental to the faith and that desacralization in its extreme forms needed to be challenged. These eminent theologians realized that the profane, just as it is, is not the foreordained divine milieu Please see BOUYER on page 4 To Our Best Recollection Each collect of the Mass, according to Father Randy Stice, serves as a powerful focal point of grace and gratitude through clarity and eloquence for priest and people ......................8 Bestselling Author—Ever! Jeremy Priest’s review of the Ignatius NoteTaking and Journaling Bible shows why God remains as good as his Word in this deluxe edition of the ultimate bestseller ...................12 News & Views ...................................................1 Readers’ Quiz .....................................................3 The Rite Questions ..........................................11