Adoremus Bulletin - November 2019 Issue

Adoremus Bulletin

NOVEMBER 2019

Vatican Inculturation Document Sets Limits on Liturgical Inculturation in the Amazon

By Joseph O’Brien (National Catholic Register)

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The Synod of Bishops for the PanAmazon Region has gained international attention for proposals made in the name of greater inculturation in the Amazon Basin, including pastoral concerns that touch on the liturgy, such as allowing married men (viri probati) in the region to be ordained priests and laywomen in the region to be ordained deaconesses.

But another recent proposal at the synod invoking the need for greater inculturation has a more direct bearing on the liturgy: the call for a new ad experimentum (“as an experiment”) Amazonian rite of the Mass.

On October 15, however, Bishop Eugenio Coter, apostolic vicar of Pando, Bolivia, clarified in a press conference that the synod is asking “for an inculturated liturgy and not a new rite altogether,” according to a CNA report.

As a way to properly understand how to inculturate the liturgy, in 1994, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) issued Varietates Legitimae (Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy). This important document—which turns 25 this year—also ought to serve as a prudential guide in the synod, where any discussion of the liturgy as a means of inculturation may raise more questions than it answers.

Varietates Legitimae notes that through the liturgy the Church seeks to present a clear expression of the faith to various cultures while also Please see AMAZON on next page

Vol. XXV, No. 3

“The Most Joyful and Blessed Ordinance of the Gospel”: Saint John Henry Newman on the Liturgy

a Christian life and so offer the “acceptable sacrifice.”2 In the 1830s, Newman developed the idea that the Church of England, one of the branches of the undivided primitive Church, had preserved the doctrines of the patristic Church best and thus represented the “Via Media” or middle way between the errors of Protestantism and the corruptions of the Roman Church (at least on the popular level).

At the same time, Newman strongly

By Father Uwe Michael Lang

O

n Sunday October 13, in a solemn ceremony on St. Peter’s Square and in the presence of many faithful especially from the Anglophone world, Pope Francis canonized the English Oratorian and Cardinal John Henry Newman (18011890). The new saint is remembered and venerated as a dedicated pastor of souls and the founder of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in England. Newman is widely considered one of the most religious thinkers in the modern age.

Among his seminal contributions stand out his essay on the development of Christian doctrine, his appreciation for the role of the laity in the Church, his profound theology of conscience, his work on education, and his theory of religious belief and certitude. This remarkable intellectual apostolate continues even today, as his writings have guided many people to embrace the fullness of Christianity in the Catholic Church.

Liturgical Seeds The sacred liturgy does not feature prominently in Newman’s vast literary corpus. At the beginning of the 19th century, marked by post-Enlightenment rationalism, liturgical life in the Church of England was at a low point.

Newman’s early religious upbringing as an Anglican consisted chiefly in reading the Bible, both in church and in the home. After completing his studies and being elected to a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, he took Anglican orders as a deacon in June 1824 and as a priest in May 1825. As curate of the small parish church St. Clement’s and, from February 1828, as vicar of the university church St. Mary the Virgin, Newman made preaching the focus of his pastoral work. At the same time, he was very conscious of exercising this ministry as part of the Church’s public worship. John Keble’s The Christian Year (1827) greatly influenced Newman’s understanding of the liturgical seasons and this heightened sensibility for the annual cycle of celebrating the mysteries of the faith shaped his preaching. Notably, Newman arranged the second volume of his Pastoral and Plain Sermons, published in 1835, not according to their order of delivery, which stretched over several years, but according to the liturgical year.1

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Adoremus Bulletin NOVEMBER 2019

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News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

St. John Henry Cardinal Newman (18011890) was canonized on October 13, 2019, by Pope Francis. “Once he became Catholic,” writes fellow Oratorian, Father Uwe Michael Lang, “he truly found peace and serenity, even in the midst of severe external trials, and his prayerful dedication to the Church’s divine worship made his priestly life exemplary.”

Newman was among the founders of the Oxford Movement, which stood against the increasing tide of religious liberalism in the Church of England and intended to reclaim its Catholic heritage by building on the early Fathers of the Church and the Anglican divines of the 17th century. In his scholarly writings on early Christianity, Newman discusses liturgical themes only in passing, but his preaching contains important reflections on the nature of divine worship. Of particular note is a series of sermons preached between 1829 and 1831, which offer a rich liturgical and sacramental theology. In a sermon entitled “On Preaching,” delivered first in 1831 and again in 1835, Newman affirms that “the most blessed and joyful ordinance of the Gospel is prayer and praise…, it is the peculiar office of public prayer to bring down Christ among us—it is as being many collected into one, that Christ recognizes us as.” Preaching is a means to an end, Newman says, which is “our praying better and living better.” The public, sacramental prayer of the Church offers us access to God’s grace, which makes us capable of living

“ Newman was among the founders of the Oxford Movement, which stood against the increasing tide of religious liberalism in the Church of England and intended to reclaim its Catholic heritage by building on the early Fathers of the Church and the Anglican divines of the 17th century.” felt that the poverty of Anglican liturgical life had to be remedied. Thus he wrote in retrospect: “While I had confidence in the Via Media, and thought that nothing could overset it, I did not mind laying down large principles, which I saw would go further than was commonly perceived. I considered that to make the Via Media concrete and substantive, it must be much more than it was in outline; that the Anglican Church must have a ceremonial, a ritual, and a fulness of doctrine and devotion, which it had not at present, if it were to compete with the Roman Church with any prospect of success.

Such additions would not remove it from its proper basis, but would merely strengthen and beautify it….”3 Prayer by the Book The early Tractarians (the members of the Oxford Movement were known for Please see NEWMAN on page 4

Hello, Newman!

One of the Church’s newest declared saints—St. John Henry Newman—had a lot of things to say about a lot of things—including the liturgy, says Father Uwe Michael Lang...................................... 1

Be the Glory Glorifying God is not just a liturgical act—it can also be a part of our very being, as Anthony Lilles shows is the case in the spirituality of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.......................................... 9

Benedictions on Culture A bunch of Benedicts, writes Roland Millare— St. Benedict, Benedictine Father Virgil Michel, and Pope Benedict XVI—place liturgy at the heart of culture—any culture!............................... 5

Got Beer?

Then drink a draught of some good Catholic culture too—so says R. Jared Staudt in The Beer Option, reviewed by Joseph O’Brien in this last call on inculturation for 2019!............................12

A Parable of Two Cities John Johnson joins Jerusalem’s two St. Johns (the Baptist and Evangelist) to Athens’ most famous philosopher as models for a humble liturgical approach to Advent................................................ 7

News & Views...................................................2 The Rite Questions....................................... 10 Donors & Memorials................................... 11

2 Continued from AMAZON, page 1 readily adopting and adapting aspects of those cultures that are not opposed to the faith or to the common good.

“On the one hand the penetration of the Gospel into a given sociocultural milieu ‘gives inner fruitfulness to the spiritual qualities and gifts proper to each people…, strengthens these qualities, perfects them and restores them in Christ,’” the document states. “On the other hand, the Church assimilates these values, when they are compatible with the Gospel, ‘to deepen understanding of Christ’s message and give it more effective expression in the liturgy and in the many different aspects of the life of the community of believers.’ This double movement in the work of inculturation thus expresses one of the component elements of the mystery of the incarnation” (4).

The document acknowledges that liturgical inculturation “constitutes one of the aspects of the inculturation of the Gospel, which calls for true integration in the life of faith of each people of the permanent values of a culture, rather than their transient expressions. It must, then, be in full solidarity with a much greater action, a unified pastoral strategy which takes account of the human situation.”

Thus, the proposal of liturgical inculturation in the Amazon must be understood within the larger pastoral context of inculturation that the Church addresses in such documents as John Paul II’s 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer) and Pope Francis’ 2014 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

Because of its limited scope, Varietates Legitimae may not be as well-known as John Paul II’s or Pope Francis’ documents on inculturation (in fact, it does not appear among the CDW documents published at the Vatican website). But of all the Church’s documents on inculturation, the 1994 instruction speaks most directly to how this process can and should involve the liturgy, said Father Neil Xavier O’Donoghue.

A priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and theologian at the Pontifical University at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland, Father O’Donoghue noted in a June post at the “Pray Tell” blog that, in fact, Varietates Legitimae presents the ideal model for liturgical inculturation.

“Varietates Legitimae proposes that vernacular translations are really the apex of legitimate inculturation in the Roman Rite,” he writes. “No. 53 of the document goes so far as to suggest that ‘the first significant measure of inculturation is the translation of liturgical books into the language of the people.’ The rest of the document does not leave much room for other expressions of inculturation.”

In addition, he writes, “inculturation is a difficult process,” especially as it touches on the people of the Amazon and “needs to be based on the local culture, which has been purified through contact with the Gospel, given that all cultures are a mix of good and bad elements and tendencies, and every culture benefits from contact with Christ. But it takes the Wisdom of Solomon to distinguish between the elements of rite that belong to the deposit of faith and which cannot be changed from those that can be changed. Not to mention deciding on when it is better to leave well enough alone and when it is more beneficial to leave things as they are. This is particularly the case when the millions of people in the Amazon region have already been exposed to the Christian Gospel for centuries.”

While the proposal of a new Amazonian rite is off the table at the Amazonian synod, the October 15 CNA report noted that Bishop Coter proposed that a commission be created to examine liturgical inculturation in the Amazon, which may consider translations of the Mass into local languages, and a proposal by Bishop Rafael Alfonso Escudero of the prelature of Moyobamba in Peru, to integrate “ornamental” symbols and rituals that “do not impact what is essential” to the Mass.

According to Father O’Donoghue, there are some ways in which the Church can accommodate such symbols and rituals in the liturgy.

“I’m not an expert in Amazonian culture, but in a number of news reports, they’re talking about some sort of blessing with water for the Amazonians during Mass,” he said. “We already have a blessing and sprinkling rite in the Roman Rite. We have the possibility of blessing with water at the beginning of Mass, particularly during the Easter season and particularly during those Sundays of Easter. If this rite of sprinkling was somehow to be strengthened in the Amazonian Church, and given more prominence, that could be an easily achievable form of liturgical inculturation in the Amazon region.”

Whatever happens regarding these proposals for liturgical inculturation, any decision would most likely require consulting Varietates Legitimae.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

NEWS & VIEWS “Varietates Legitimae is the Church’s last extended magisterial treatment on liturgical inculturation,” Father O’Donoghue said. “So if you’re going to do some serious work on liturgical inculturation, you have to give this document serious consideration.”

Editor’s Note: On October 26, Edward Pentin reported for the National Catholic Register on the Vatican’s working translation of a final synodal document included a paragraph on the liturgy in the Amazon. Despite Bishop Coter’s October15 clarification that the synod was only looking for ways to better inculturate the Roman Rite, this paragraph calls for a new Amazonian Rite: “119. The new organism of the Church in the Amazon must constitute a competent commission to study and dialogue, according to the customs and customs of the ancestral peoples, the elaboration of an Amazonian rite that expresses the liturgical, theological, disciplinary and spiritual patrimony of the Amazon, with special reference to what Lumen Gentium affirms for the Oriental Churches (cf. LG 23). This would add to the rites already present in the Church, enriching the work of evangelization, the capacity to express the faith in a proper culture, and the sense of decentralization and collegiality that the catholicity of the Church can express. It could also study and propose how to enrich ecclesial rites with the way in which these peoples care for their territory and relate to its waters.”

Pentin’s report also indicated that Pope Francis could issue a post-synodal apostolic exhortation as early as next spring.

Pope Francis Institutes Day to Promote Knowledge, Love of Scripture

By Hannah Brockhaus

Vatican City (CNA)—Pope Francis has declared the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be the Sunday of the Word of God in order to promote a closer relationship with holy scripture and its dissemination in the world.

“A day devoted to the Bible should not be seen as a yearly event but rather a year-long event, for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the Scriptures and of the risen Lord,” the pope wrote in an apostolic letter Sept. 30.

“For this reason, we need to develop a closer relationship with sacred Scripture; otherwise, our hearts will remain cold and our eyes shut, struck as we are by so many forms of blindness.”

He said “the Bible is not a collection of history books or a chronicle, but is aimed entirely at the integral salvation of the person.”

Pope Francis instituted the special day for celebrating the Word of God in the Church with the promulgation motu proprio of the apostolic letter Aperuit Illis, published Sept. 30, 2019, the 1,600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and his feast day.

The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, on the Roman calendar, typically falls around the end of January.

In Aperuit Illis, Pope Francis said Catholics should keep in mind God’s teaching in the Book of Revelation: that the Lord is standing at the door and knocking. “Christ Jesus is knocking at our door in the words of sacred Scripture. If we hear his voice and open the doors of our minds and hearts, then he will enter our lives and remain ever with us,” he said.

“The Bible,” he noted, “cannot be just the heritage of some, much less a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words.”

“The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity. The word of God unites believers and makes them one people,” he stated.

Adoremus Bulletin

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Adoremus Bulletin (ISSN 1088-8233) is published six times a year by Adoremus— Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Adoremus is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation of the State of California. Nonprofit periodicals postage paid at various US mailing offices. Change service requested.

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Adoremus at the Triduum: A Conference on the Spirituality of the Triduum Liturgies

Featuring: Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ Dr. Anthony Lilles Christopher Carstens

SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 2020 ~ 9:00 AM TO 4:00 PM ~ $35.00 Historic Sacred Heart Chapel ~ 381 West Center Street ~ Covina, California

For more information visit: virginmostpowerfulradio.org

Adoremus Conference Slated for March 14, 2020

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hy is it essential to foster in oneself and one’s family and parishioners a vibrant spiritual life—especially in the liturgy—and especially for the high point of the Church’s liturgical season, the Easter Triduum?

Next year’s upcoming Adoremus Conference, held during Lent 2020 at the historic Sacred Heart Chapel in Covina, CA, will seek to answer this and other questions related to the spirituality of the Triduum liturgies.

Speakers at the conference include Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, founder and editor of Ignatius Press and founding member of the Adoremus Society; Dr. Anthony Lilles, academic dean of St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, CA, and a specialist in the Church’s mystical traditions; and Christopher Carstens, editor of Adoremus Bulletin, instructor at the Liturgical Institute-University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL, and director of the Office for Sacred Worship in the Diocese of La Crosse, WI. The daylong event begins at 8:45 am with Morning Prayer and concludes with Mass at 4:15 pm. The conference program kicks off with a keynote introduction by Father Fessio, and Lilles and Carstens will be presenting sessions throughout the day. In his keynote, Father Fessio will speak on “Praying with Jesus,” while Lilles and Carstens will present on “Developing a Liturgy Spirituality,” and reflecting on how that spirituality can be integrated into the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Paschal Vigil, and throughout the Easter season.

Cost to attend the conference is $35.00 and includes lunch and amenities. To register, visit the conference page at Virgin Most Powerful Radio’s website: www.virginmostpowerfulradio.org/ adoremus-conference/.

EDITOR - PUBLISHER: Christopher Carstens MANAGING EDITOR: Joseph O’Brien CONTENT MANAGER: Jeremy Priest GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Danelle Bjornson OFFICE MANAGER: Elizabeth Gallagher PHONE: 608.521.0385 WEBSITE: www.adoremus.org MEMBERSHIP REQUESTS & CHANGE OF ADDRESS: info@adoremus.org LETTERS TO THE EDITOR P.O. Box 385 La Crosse, WI 54602-0385 editor@adoremus.org

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The Rev. Jerry Pokorsky = Helen Hull Hitchcock The Rev. Joseph Fessio, SJ

Contents copyright © 2019 by ADOREMUS. All rights reserved.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

Novus Cultus: Looking at the Liturgy with 2020 Vision

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

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or the past year, Adoremus Bulletin has devoted much of its space to the inculturation question: how the cult (i.e., worship) of the Church engages and transforms the secular culture, and how these earthly cultures enrich the life of the Church. The impetus for treating the topic was the Church’s procedures for inculturation found in her instruction Varietates Legitimae (Fourth Instruction for the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy), promulgated 25 years ago in 1994.

As it turns out, the inculturation question deserves our attention for reasons beyond its silver anniversary.

For example, the Amazon Synod sees inculturation as the key issue. How can the Church, it asks, accommodate its pastoral work to those in need of her care, while bringing legitimate aspects of Amazonian culture into the universal sphere of her influence, divinizing and sanctifying them?

The $64,000 question, both in the Amazon Synod and in all matters of inculturation, is just when, where, and to what degree ought the Church change her laws, customs, and liturgies to accommodate the culture in question—all while retaining the “substantial unity” of her Roman Rite, as Sacrosanctum Concilium (38) says.

Furthermore, where, when, and how should the local culture purify and elevate itself so that it reflects not merely the City of Man but more and more the City of God? Where this proverbial line is drawn—not in order to divide but to mark the place of encounter—has been the stuff of daily reports from the Synod. Mary, Mother of the Church: pray for us!

At the core of inculturation, in the Amazon and elsewhere, is the question of cult, or worship. The process of inculturation takes place on many levels. On its broadest plane, inculturation affects morality, art, politics, and science. A Christian artist, for example, not only sees herself as revealing her own subjective vision of

From Novus Ordo to novus cultus: the New Mass was meant to produce a new Christian culture. Has it? Will it?

the world, but she knows she also works as an “image of God the creator,” as Pope John Paul II says in his Letter to Artists. Next, inculturation influences a people’s specifically spiritual inclinations. All humans, for example, are naturally drawn to the supernatural and transcendent; for this reason, Eastern Catholics, acting on those natural impulses and formed by their culture, tend to emphasize Christ as the victorious and heavenly ruler.

All humans are also drawn to the sensible and rational; for this reason, those of us in the West, while still drawn to the transcendent, relate through our culture more to the earthly, even suffering, aspects of Jesus of Nazareth.

But undergirding all levels of inculturation stands the liturgy, the source and font from which all Christian culture emerges. While inculturation is not limited to the liturgy, the Church’s instructions on the matter appear in a liturgical document—Varietates Legitimae— which is itself an elaboration on the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

The etymological root of “liturgy” and “energy” is the same: ergon, which means “work.” The ecclesial energy source, that which powers the Church’s saving mission, is her liturgy. When we humans get the liturgy right,

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the Mystical Body is rightly efficacious in saving souls.

When we dampen her worship, the Church’s mission often fizzles. Or, to put it in terms of inculturation: an unfruitful cult can’t cultivate a vibrant Christian culture.

It’s thus that, while we keep an eye open to the possibility of Christian culture, we must also focus on Christian cult, or worship. And as Adoremus focused with clarity and insight on inculturation in 2019, we will look incisively at the Missal of Paul VI—50 years old this November—in the year 2020. Has the Novus Ordo yielded a novus cultus? Will it do so in the future? Not all Christian culture is reducible to Christian cult, but without such liturgical worship no Christian culture is possible.

Consider, by way of introduction to our review of the Novus Ordo Missal, Pope Paul VI’s own astonishing and hopeful words about the Council’s Missal (see full text, below). At this November 1969 Wednesday Audience, just four days before the Novus Ordo was introduced in Italy, the Holy Father heaps high praise on certain aspects of the liturgical tradition—the use of Latin, Gregorian chant, and longstanding ceremony—and goes on to name their anticipated loss with such terms as “annoyance,” “regret,” and “bewilderment”!

All the same, and despite the changes—indeed, in some cases, because of the changes—Paul VI sees the introduction of the revised Missal as a moment “shaking the Church, arousing it, obliging it to renew the mysterious art of its prayer.” The New Mass, he hopes, will inspire a new Christian culture—and will, as the Council hoped, “impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1).

Cult cultivates culture. As we look during the upcoming year at the Novus Ordo Missal—in light of tradition, through the hermeneutic of reform and renewal, with an eye on the pastoral circumstances of our own day, and as a participation in heaven’s own praise of God—may we come to see in it the means of sanctity, not only for ourselves, but for the wounded culture that surrounds us.

50 Years Ago: Changes In Mass for Greater Apostolate

By Pope Paul VI Address to a Wednesday General Audience, November 26, 1969

1. We ask you to turn your minds once more to the liturgical innovation of the new rite of the Mass. This new rite will be introduced into our celebration of the holy Sacrifice starting [in Italy] from Sunday next which is the first of Advent, November 30.

2. A new rite of the Mass: a change in a venerable tradition that has gone on for centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled. It seemed to bring the prayer of our forefathers and our saints to our lips and to give us the comfort of feeling faithful to our spiritual past, which we kept alive to pass it on to the generations ahead.

3. It is at such a moment as this that we get a better understanding of the value of historical tradition and the communion of the saints. This change will affect the ceremonies of the Mass. We shall become aware, perhaps with some feeling of annoyance, that the ceremonies at the altar are no longer being carried out with the same words and gestures to which we were accustomed—perhaps so much accustomed that we no longer took any notice of them. This change also touches the faithful. It is intended to interest each one of those present, to draw them out of their customary personal devotions or their usual torpor.

4. We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect.

5. So what is to be done on this special and historical occasion? First of all, we must prepare ourselves.

This novelty is no small thing. We should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, of its exterior forms. As intelligent persons and conscientious faithful we should find out as much as we can about this innovation. It will not be hard to do so, because of the many fine efforts being made by the

Church and by publishers. As We said on another

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Our Dear Sons and Daughters:

Anticipating the loss of Latin in the liturgy, Pope Paul VI confesses that Catholics have reason “for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why?” He replies: “Understanding of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more.”

occasion, we shall do well to take into account the motives for this grave change. The first is obedience to the Council. That obedience now implies obedience to the Bishops, who interpret the Council’s prescription and put them into practice.

6. This first reason is not simply canonical—relating to an external precept. It is connected with the charism of the liturgical act. In other words, it is linked with the power and efficacy of the Church’s prayer, the most authoritative utterance of which comes from the Bishop. This is also true of priests, who help the Bishop in his ministry, and like him act in persona Christi (cf. St. Ign., ad Eph. I, V). It is Christ’s will, it is the breath of the Holy Spirit which calls the Church to make this change. A prophetic moment is occurring in the mystical body of Christ, which is the Church. This moment is shaking the

Church, arousing it, obliging it to renew the mysterious art of its prayer.

7. The other reason for the reform is this renewal of prayer. It is aimed at associating the assembly of the faithful more closely and more effectively with the official rite, that of the Word and that of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, that constitutes the Mass. For the faithful are also invested with the “royal priesthood”; that is, they are qualified to have supernatural conversation with God. 8. It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant.

9. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why? What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church’s values?

10. The answer will seem banal, prosaic. Yet it is a good answer, because it is human, because it is apostolic.

11. Understanding of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more—particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech.

12. If the divine Latin language kept us apart from the children, from youth, from the world of labor and of affairs, if it were a dark screen, not a clear window, would it be right for us fishers of souls to maintain it as the exclusive language of prayer and religious intercourse? What did St. Paul have to say about that? Read chapter 14 of the first letter to the Corinthians: “In Church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (I Corinthians 14:19).

13. St. Augustine seems to be commenting on this when he says, “Have no fear of teachers, so long as all Please see MASS on page 11

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

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nity’s daily prayer. While they had recited the Latin text in the Anglicizing manner familiar from school and university, after that momentous day they adopted the Italianate pronunciation known as “Church Latin.”11

In response to criticism for his conversion from the Church of England into the fullness of the Catholic Church in 1845, Cardinal Newman penned his Apologia Pro Vita Sua in 1864. Here, Dominican Friars view Newman’s manuscript on the desk upon which he wrote the work.

Continued from NEWMAN, page 1 the publication of their Tracts for the Times) advocated a full application of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, especially the daily services of Matins and Evensong, which had fallen out of use, and a more frequent celebration of Communion. Through his friend Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836), Newman learned about the private lectures on liturgy by Charles Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity (1784-1829). Lloyd highlighted the pre-Reformation elements in the Book of Common Prayer, and also introduced his hearers to medieval liturgical books. On June 30, 1834, Newman began with the daily service of Matins in St. Mary the Virgin, and from 1836 he ensured that Evensong was celebrated every day in his newly built church in Littlemore. After some consideration, Newman instituted an early Sunday morning Communion service in the University church at Easter 1837.4 Newman was careful to follow the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer to the letter, since any alteration of the established customs would have added fuel to the controversy about the Oxford Movement, which was seen as “Romanizing.” For the Communion service, it is reported that Newman, wearing surplice and hood, always stood at the “north end,” that is, on the left side of the wooden table, unlike other Tractarians who strongly made a case for facing east in liturgical prayer to evoke the sacrificial character of the Eucharist.5 In the new church of St. Mary and St. Nicholas he had built in Littlemore (then a village near Oxford) in 1836, Newman included a stone altar with a reredos that featured a stone cross. John Rouse Bloxam, Newman’s curate in Littlemore, had considerable freedom in his ministry, and he gradually added elements, such as two candlesticks and a credence table. Other leaders of the Oxford Movement went much further in their criticism of the state of Anglican worship and encouraged the use of Roman liturgical books. Such criticism was especially pronounced in Froude’s Remains, which caused a stir when they were published posthumously in 1838. Even Newman’s more modest measures were enough to raise suspicions in the Established Church, and he defended himself against the charge of introducing “Romanism” into Anglican worship in a long letter to the Bishop of Oxford in 1841: “I have left many things, which I did not like, and which most other persons would have altered.”6 At the time, Newman was convinced that the desired recovery of Catholic doctrine and practice could be achieved within the framework of the Cranmerian Book of Common Prayer.

Official Sequel But this book was to give way to another important volume of prayers. Donald A. Withey’s important work demonstrates what a profound impact the discovery of the breviary had on Newman’s spiritual journey.7 In 1836, Newman inherited Froude’s copy of the Roman Breviary after his friend’s untimely death. He began to explore in depth the divine office, with the help of Bartolomeo Gavanti’s Thesaurus Sacrorum Rituum (1628) and Francesco Zaccaria’s Bibliotheca Ritualis (1776-

1781). The result of this research was Tract 75: On the Roman Breviary as embodying the substance of the Devotional Services of the Church Catholic, dated June 24,1836. The book-length publication consists of a historical overview of the breviary and a translation of selected offices. The praise Newman offers in his preface for “so much of excellence and beauty in the services of the Breviary” is still embedded in anti-Roman polemics, as he intends “to wrest a weapon out of our adversaries’ hands.” Stripped of its Roman additions, in particular the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, the breviary, Newman claimed, is a witness

“ Newman was deeply impressed by the breviary’s daily round of prayer, with the psalms at its heart, and suggested Anglicans could use it for private devotions.” to the prayer of primitive Christianity and “whatever is good and true in it” belongs to “the Church Catholic in opposition to the Roman Church.”8 Newman also wants to show that the daily services of the Prayer Book derive from the Roman Breviary and can be better understood in the light of the latter. At the same time, Newman was deeply impressed by the breviary’s daily round of prayer, with the psalms at its heart, and suggested Anglicans could use it for private devotions.

Newman’s Tract 75 was widely received and inspired his friends Robert Williams (1811-1890) and Samuel Wood (1809-1843) to embark on an English translation of the entire Breviarium Romanum. The project was eventually abandoned, mainly because of Newman’s concern about the hostility such a translation (even in an edited form) would meet at a time when antagonism towards the Tractarians was growing in the Anglican Establishment.9 As part of Tract 75 and of his involvement in the breviary project, Newman produced English versions of Latin office hymns, which anticipated the better-known translations of the Anglican John Mason Neale (1818-1866) and of his fellow Oratorian Edward Caswall (1814-1878). Not all of Newman’s 47 translations were printed during his lifetime, and Withey’s study includes ten hymns, which had not appeared in print before, from notebooks kept in the archive of the Birmingham Oratory.10 Newman’s love for the Divine Office illumined his path towards the Catholic Church. When in spring 1842, beset by doubts in the theory of the Via Media, he retired to Littlemore for a period of prayer and study, joined by a number of like-minded friends, the daily recitation of the Roman Breviary (with some omissions, such as the Marian antiphons) became a staple of their community life. After Newman and two of his companions were received into the Catholic Church on October 9, 1845 by Blessed Dominic Barberi (1792-1849), a small but significant change occurred in the commu-

Rest in Peace In his Apologia, Newman gave a moving testimony about the spiritual peace he found after having been received into what he described to his family and friends as “the one true fold of the Redeemer.” Newman writes, “From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever.”12 What this passage does not convey is the fact that Newman came into contact with the fullness of Catholic liturgy only after his conversion. Ian Ker observes that Newman’s embrace of Catholicism was to a large extent intellectual and preceded his actual experience of it: “while Newman knew a very great deal about the early Church, he knew extraordinarily little about contemporary Catholicism, apart from its formal doctrines and teaching.”13 As an Anglican, Newman found contemporary Catholic liturgical and devotional life emotionally attractive, but tended to avoid it because of his intellectual conviction that Rome had introduced many novelties and corruptions to the pure faith of the primitive Church.14 Both in his preaching and in letters to friends, Newman repeatedly emphasized that conversion is a slow work and that such a decision needs time and reflection to mature. Had he followed his heart alone, he may have joined the Catholic Church years earlier, as many of his friends from the Oxford Movement did.

Characteristically, however, Newman wanted heart and mind to agree. Once the truth of the Catholic faith became a certainty to him, he threw himself fully into the Church’s liturgical life. Newman’s first novel Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert, published anonymously in 1848, contains warm and fervent descriptions of Mass and Benediction by the Catholic converts Willis and Reding, with clear autobiographical echoes.15 In the appendix to his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman wrote: “I looked at her [the Catholic Church]; – at her rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts; and I said, ‘This is a religion’; and then, when I looked back upon the poor Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so hard, and upon all that appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts to dress it up doctrinally and aesthetically, it seemed to me to be the veriest of nonentities.”16 Newman had a particular devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and found in the presence of Christ in the tabernacle great strength and comfort. After his ordination to the priesthood on May 30, 1847, the daily celebration of Holy Mass became the heart of his spiritual life. Newman’s chosen vocation as an Oratorian had a particular liturgical dimension. Since its foundation in 1575, the Congregation of the Oratory had been known for its attention to solemn liturgy and sacred music. The Oratorian houses in Birmingham and London resumed this tradition from the moment of their foundation, despite their limited initial resources and the occasional criticism they received for undue attention to such matters.17 Liturgical Heart In conclusion, there is no doubt that the sacred liturgy was at the heart of St. John Henry Newman’s life and thought, even though it obtains a minor role in his enormous written opus. As is often the case with Newman, it is his intellectual and spiritual development as an Anglican that attracts greater notice.

Once he became Catholic, he truly found peace and serenity, even in the midst of severe external trials, and his prayerful dedication to the Church’s divine worship made his priestly life exemplary.

Father Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Nuremberg, Germany, is a priest of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in London, where he serves as Parish Priest. He holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford, and teaches Church History and Patristics at Allen Hall Seminary. He is a Visiting Fellow at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, an Associate Staff Member at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, and on the Visiting Faculty of the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein, Illinois. He is a Corresponding Member of the Neuer Schülerkreis Joseph Ratzinger / Papst Benedikt XVI, a Member of the Council of the Henry Bradshaw Society, a Board Member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and the Editor of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal.

Please see NEWMAN on page 5

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

The Logos Localized: The Heart of Authentic Inculturation

By Roland Millare

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oseph Ratzinger, upon receiving the St. Benedict Award in Subiaco, Italy, on April 1, 2005, maintains, “Our greatest need in the present historical moment is people who make God credible in this world by means of the enlightened faith they live…. We need men whose intellect is enlightened by the light of God, men whose hearts are opened by God, so that their intellect can speak to the intellect of others and their hearts can open the hearts of others. It is only by means of men who have been touched by God that God can return to be with mankind. We need men like Benedict of Nursia, who, in an age of dissipation and decadence, immersed himself in the uttermost solitude. Then, after all the purifications he had to undergo, he succeeded in rising again to the light.”1 Drawing from Benedict’s words, we can say that we also need women and men who draw upon the living well of the Logos within the liturgy to transform culture. Modern culture needs the witness of St. Benedict and disciples of Benedictine thought (or followers of a “Benedict option”) to learn about authentic inculturation.

St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) is rightly called the Father of Western Monasticism. He might also be called the Father of Inculturation. For this future father, having left the city of Rome and its worldly allurements, found God in the country. After gathering around himself other like-minded men, he set down his famous Rule, a formula for cultivating God-centered living that would eventually serve as the basis of other monastic houses, themselves the seed bed of Western culture for years to come.

What was the Rule’s secret? In fact, it was no secret at all, for both Benedict’s own name—“to speak well,” bene dicere—as well as his Rule’s opening line say it all: “Listen, my son, with the ear of your heart.” This speaking well and heart-felt listening focus on nothing other than the Reality of all realities: the Logos. Because he and his future orders were based on the Logos, the Benedictine cultus—and the West’s culture—was planted, grew, and reached to the heavens. It is fitting, then, that in our own day Benedictine Father Cassian Folsom, Pope Benedict XVI, and Benedictine Father Virgil Michel, three sons of Benedict, speak so well of the restoration of our culture, which is based upon the Christian cultus, and is itself rooted in the heart of the Trinity, upon the Logos.

For example, in his article, “Cultus, Culture, and Counterculture: An Enlightened Monastic Response to Our Secular Dark Age,” published in the May 2019 Adoremus Bulletin, Father Cassian highlights the clear etymological relationship between the words “culture” and cultus (“worship”).2 In light of this connection, he makes the case that culture is formed by the celebration of the liturgy. An authentic Christian culture will only come to fruition when there is an appreciation, an understanding, and a reverence for the celebration of the sacred liturgy, which is the source of what fellow Bene-

St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547), writes Roland Millare, “is rightly called the Father of Western Monasticism. He might also be called the Father of Inculturation. For this future father, having left the city of Rome and its worldly allurements, found God in the country. After gathering around himself other like-minded men, he set down his famous Rule, a formula for cultivating God-centered living that would eventually serve as the basis of other monastic houses, themselves the seed bed of Western culture for years to come.”

dictine Virgil Michel (1890-1938) refers to as a “true Christian spirit.” In this regard, Michel has a shared sacramental worldview with another “Benedict,” Joseph Ratzinger, for whom the sacred liturgy (cultus) is also foundational for an authentic Christian culture.3 Indeed, each of these “Benedicts” come to the same conclusion: the liturgy of the Logos is the essential ingredient in any culture that aspires to become truly Christian.

The liturgy, Michel insists, insofar as it is the source of the “true Christian spirit,” is also the source of renewal of culture, a point which Michel makes with the help of a clear and concise syllogism: “Pius X tells us that the liturgy is the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit; Pius XI says that the true Christian spirit is indispensable for social regeneration. Hence the conclusion: the liturgy is the indispensable basis of social regeneration.”4 In other words, social regeneration cannot take place without the liturgy. Ratzinger also reaches this conclusion, although, whereas Michel emphasizes the notion of the “true Christian spirit,” Ratzinger highlights the idea of “logicizing,” which can take place in the life of the individual participating in the liturgy. The liturgy in Ratzinger’s view is intended in part for “the ‘logicizing’ of my existence, my interior contemporaneity with

“Lead, Kindly Light”

From an 1833 sick bed, the Anglican priest, John Henry Newman penned what would become his most famous hymn text, “Lead, Kindly Light,” a text most commonly sung with to the tune, Lux Benigna by John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876). Based upon the account of the Chosen People’s crossing of the Red Sea, the text might fittingly be said to accompany his own pilgrimage into the fullness of the Church and her liturgy.

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on.

O’er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on!

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod, Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith, Home to my God. To rest forever after earthly strife In the calm light of everlasting life.

1. See Joseph Alencherry, “Newman, the Liturgist: An Introduction to the Liturgical Theology of John Henry Newman”, in Newman Studies Journal 13 (2016), 6-21, at 12.

2. John Henry Newman, Sermons, 1824-1843. Vol. 1: Sermons on the Liturgy and Sacraments and on Christ the Mediator, ed. Placid Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 25-26. On these sermons, see Alencherry, “Newman, the Liturgist," and Robert C. Christie, “Conversion through Liturgy: Newman’s Liturgy Sermon Series of 1830," in Newman Studies Journal, 3 (2006), 49-59.

3. John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Being a History of His Religious Opinions, New Impression (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 166.

4. See Donald A. Withey, John Henry Newman: The Liturgy and the Breviary. Their Influence on his Life as an Anglican (London: Sheed & Ward, 1992), 8-17.

5. See the monograph of Alf Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 8 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1965).

6. As quoted in John Henry Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, New Impression, 2 vol. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), vol. II, 419.

7. See Withey, John Henry Newman: The Liturgy and the Breviary, 82-89.

8. John Henry Newman, On the Roman Breviary as Embodying the Substance of the Devotional Services of the Church Catholic, Tracts for

5

the self-giving of Christ. His self-giving is meant to become mine, so that I become contemporary with the Pasch of Christ and assimilated unto God.”5 Hence the liturgy is essential for the authentic renewal of culture, which cannot come to fruition apart from the faith.

But there are other ways in which Michel’s and Ratzinger’s thoughts are commensurate regarding this question of liturgy and culture. Drawing upon the thought of Romano Guardini, the primacy of the logos over ethos (which Guardini examines in the final chapter of his The Spirit of the Liturgy) is a hermeneutical key to understanding the unique vision of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy and its relationship to culture. The logos (“word,” “meaning,” or “reason”) of a culture forms or directs the ethos (“habit,” “custom” or “moral values”) of individual people within a given society. In a sacramental worldview, the authentic Christian logos is best defined as a communio and selfless love is its corresponding ethos.

To reframe this within the language of Michel’s work, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ (logos) is the source of the true Christian spirit in her celebration of the liturgy (ethos). This dynamic relationship between logos and ethos is essential as we develop the link between faith and culture, define Christian culture, and offer nuance to help us better understand the term “inculturation.”

Faith and Culture Let us examine, then, how faith and culture are related in the works of Michel and Ratzinger. In his work Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger emphasizes that religion is the essential element of a “definitive culture.”6 Ratzinger reiterates this point by writing, “faith itself is cultural” in that it is “creating culture and is culture.”7 Michel contends that culture “implies human improvement of nature, but for the purpose of greater realization of the possibilities of nature.”8 Further, Michel asserts that culture is “the application of human endeavor and of reason to the natural abilities of man for the development of the best that is in him.”9 The work of faith, of course, “cultivates” nature unto a supernatural end in God, where a “new heavens and a new earth” live forever (Revelation 21:1).

Both Michel and Ratzinger would agree with the English historian Christopher Dawson, who argues, “We cannot separate culture from religion any more than we can separate our life from our faith. As a living faith must change the life of the believer, so a living religion must influence and transform the social way of life— that is to say, the culture.”10 Faith by its very nature orients natural human culture towards its final end in God, and a culture separated from religion is a dying culture because it has lost contact with its authentic source of life: Jesus Christ.

The current challenge faced in contemporary society is a culture which chooses to ignore the sacramental Please see CULTURE, page 6

the Times 75 (London – Oxford: J. H. Parker – J. G. and F. Rivington, 1836), 1-2.

9. See ibid., 25-66.

10. bid., 115-123; see also Withey’s annotated list of the hymns translated

by Newman on 124-136.

11. See ibid., 73-81.

12. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 331.

13. Ian Ker, “Newman's Post­-Conversion Discovery of Catholicism,” in Newman and Conversion, ed. Ian Ker (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 37-58, at 37.

14. This tension is evident from the first stanza of the poem “The Good Samaritan,” written in Palermo on 13 June 1833, while he was recovering from a serious illness:

Oh that thy creed were sound!

For thou dost soothe the heart, thou

Church of Rome,

By thy unwearied watch and varied round

Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.

I cannot walk the city’s sultry streets,

But the wide porch invites to still retreats,

Where passion’s thirst is calmed, and

care’s unthankful gloom.

- John Henry Newman, Verses on Various Occasions, New Impression (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), 153.

15. S ee Ker, “Newman's Post­Conversion Discovery of Catholicism,” 51-54.

16. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 340.

17. I n a letter to the editor of the Catholic weekly The Tablet, dated October 20, 1850, Newman writes in response to a disapproval of the Oratorians’ regular celebration of Vespers: “… we are bound by our rule to the solemn Ritual services of the Church, and we keep it.

Both our own House here, and the Oratory in London, sings High Mass and Vespers every Sunday, and other principal festivals … . The Congregations of the Oratory have ever been remarkable for their exact attention to the rubrics of the Ritual …”; The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Volume XIV: Papal Aggression, July 1850 to December 1851, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain and Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S.J. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), 106.

Christian Culture But what is necessary for a truly Christian culture? Dawson argues, “The only true criterion of a Christian culture is the degree in which the social way of life is based on the Christian faith. However barbarous a society may be, however backward in the modern humanitarian sense, if its members possess a genuine Christian faith they will possess a Christian culture—and the more genuine the faith, the more Christian the culture.”14 An authentic Christian faith, Dawson notes, will view culture from a sacramental perspective, seeing the spiritual potential of every material aspect of culture. By contrast, Michel says, the secular worldview “necessarily makes material progress an end in itself.”15 In a Christian culture, Michel contends, “the material is always the sign and instrument of spirit.”16 When the material is the ultimate end, then it comes as no surprise that utility, mechanical artificiality, and even ugliness reign in contemporary music, art, and the manner in which the liturgy is celebrated. In a similar vein, Ratzinger writes, “[T]he Church as a whole must, for the sake of God, strive for the best, for from the very nature of the liturgy, by an inner necessity, comes a culture that becomes a standard for all secular culture.”17 Although Ratzinger makes this statement in relationship to sacred music, it can easily apply to all forms of the ars celebrandi. The celebration of the liturgy in many contemporary parishes takes its cues from the culture, whereas the liturgy should take the lead in forming and renewing culture—an authentic inculturation of the faith.

Authentic Inculturation In his work, Ratzinger has emphasized that there is a need to inculturate the faith into contemporary culture if a Christian culture is to survive.18 Although Michel’s work predates explicit treatment of the term inculturation, he and Ratzinger once again show remarkable agreement when it comes to understanding the basis for true inculturation—whether through what Michel calls the “Christian spirit” or through Ratzinger’s notion of “logicization.” But because there is some confusion about the ends and means of inculturation, there is also an equal and corresponding need to define (or redefine) inculturation, so the liturgy does not become the means of promoting one’s own individual culture but a true expression of Christian culture.

The Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah notes that when “we really understand the meaning of the term ‘knowledge’ as penetration of the Mystery of Jesus Christ, we then possess the key to inculturation, which is not to be presented as a quest or a claim for the legitimacy of an Africanization or Latin-Americanization or Asianization of Christianity instead of a Westernization. Inculturation is not the canonization of a local culture or the decision to settle in that culture at the risk of absolutizing it. Inculturation is an epiphany of the Lord, who breaks into the most intimate recesses of our being.”19 In practice, inculturation within the liturgy has often reduced worship to a cultural variety show highlighting the use of music, language, instruments, or dances from varying cultures. In light of Cardinal Sarah’s definition, authentic inculturation will allow the liturgy to be celebrated in a manner that its authentic cosmic and eschatological symbolism will become clearly evident so it can reorient a culture, and especially our own Western culture, drowning in the deep and deceptive waters of mechanistic autonomy.

Like Sarah, Ratzinger stresses the cosmological symbolism of the liturgy as a corrective against the anthropocentric tendency (“self-made world”) within modern

AB/LAWRENCE OP AT FLICKR

Virgil Michel saw culture as the “greater realization of the possibilities of nature,” the supreme example of which is the Catholic Mass. Could merely natural bread, water, and wine attain such a supernatural end without God-and-man’s liturgical cultivation, that is, cultus?

Benedictine Virgil Michel contends that culture “implies human improvement of nature, but for the purpose of greater realization of the possibilities of nature…. The work of faith, of course, “cultivates” nature unto a supernatural end in God, where a “new heavens and a new earth” live forever (Revelation 21:1).

AB/LEVAN RAMISHVILI ON FLICKR

view of reality—the lenses of faith—in favor of a merely materialistic worldview. Again, both Michel and Ratzinger recognize this danger. For Michel such a worldview empty of the transcendent reduces reality to an “unchristian naturalism” and materialism.11 This type of naturalism, which rejects the transcendent or the supernatural, Ratzinger sees as the great difficulty of the 20th century—what he describes as a “crisis of sacramentality.”12 The majority of people in modern culture have, in Ratzinger’s estimation, “grown accustomed to seeing in the substance of things nothing but the material for human labor—when, in short, the world is regarded as matter and matter as material—initially there is no room left for that symbolic transparency of reality toward the eternal on which the sacramental principle is based.”13 In other words, there is only room for an immanentization for all created reality with no possibility for the transcendent to enter into that reality. In the end, the only way to reorient modern culture is to recover the true Christian spirit, which Michel and Ratzinger insist begins by recognizing the sacramental liturgy as the ultimate source of cultural renewal.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

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The Church as a whole, writes Joseph Ratzinger, “must, for the sake of God, strive for the best, for from the very nature of the liturgy, by an inner necessity, comes a culture that becomes a standard for all secular culture.”

“ The celebration of the liturgy in many contemporary parishes takes its cues from the culture, whereas the liturgy should take the lead in forming and renewing culture.” culture: “Today we are in the midst of a crisis in the anthropocentric view of the world, a crisis that pervades the whole of man’s self-made world. At such a time we need to rediscover (and indeed we are rediscovering) the significance of creation.”20 Consequently, Ratzinger argues, we “need to be reminded that liturgy involves the cosmos—that Christian liturgy is cosmic liturgy. In it we pray and sing in concert with everything ‘in heaven and earth and under the earth’ (Phil 2:10), we join in with the praise of God and a sign of the mystery of Christ for the assembled community.”21 Through the celebration of the liturgy we not only anticipate the omega of the eschaton—that is, Christ’s second coming—but we can witness the alpha of God’s original plan for creation. Without these alpha and omega points to human history, the predominance of the materialist ontology results in a view of the world as simply self-made by man’s autonomous ethos, which precedes from the logos of technē. Ratzinger argues, “God’s creation and ‘nature’ are having to defend themselves against the limitless pretentions of human beings as creators.

Human beings want to understand the discovered world only as material for their own creativity.”22 In the celebration of the liturgy, as the Church joins in the worship of the entire cosmos, the truth—God’s centrality in all of reality—that has been neglected comes to foreground: all of creation has its origin in the Creator.

According to the Pope Emeritus, in the presentation of the gifts on the altar we recognize creation’s indebtedness to God explicitly with these words prayed by the priest: “fruit of the earth,” “fruit of the vine,” and “work of human hands.”23 The bread and wine have been made by the human person, but first they are fruits of creation; as such, bread, wine and even human work find their

origin—their alpha—in the Creator. Now, too, these gifts will become transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. This sacramental transformation is also symbolic of the omega—the coming cosmological transfiguration of the eschaton.24 Michel, of course, would welcome the future pope’s reflections on the point.

Recall that Michel’s own view of culture’s purpose is the “greater realization of the possibilities of nature.”25 Could merely natural bread, water, and wine attain such a supernatural end without God-and-man’s liturgical cultivation, that is, cultus?

The world was created as part of God’s plan, and consequently it must be transformed by his sacrificial love.

Explicitly, Ratzinger contends that the plan of providence includes the divinization of all creation. “That is why St. Augustine could say that the true ‘sacrifice’ is the civitas Dei, that is, love-transformed humanity, the divinization of creation and the surrender of all things to God: God all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). This is the purpose of the world. That is the essence of sacrifice and worship.”26 The transformation of the created order in its entirety is a part of God’s plan. Continuing his remarks on divinization in God’s vision for the world, Ratzinger maintains, “the goal of worship and the goal of creation as whole are one and the same—divinization, a world of freedom and love.”27 Ratzinger makes the implications of the close relationship between creation and worship clear: “But this means that the historical makes its appearance in the cosmic. The cosmos is not a kind of closed building, a stationary container in which history may by chance take place. It is itself movement, from its one beginning to its one end. In a sense, creation is history.”28 The origin and goal of creation is one and the same, communion with God. Therefore, worship and creation share this same goal. Because of this connection, there is a clear need to make the symbolism of the cosmic and eschatological nature of the liturgy clearer through the various ars celebrandi. Only in this context, for example, can we fully appreciate Ratzinger’s repeated emphasis on the need for the celebration of the liturgy ad orientem throughout his writings:29 facing creation’s sun orients us to the Father’s Son. Subsequently, the liturgy can assist in helping people to see the divine plan for the cosmos, which ultimately is recreated in Christ. The world has been created by the Logos of God and we are called upon to worship according to the Logos (cf. Romans 12:1). Revealing this same plan unfolding in time yet transcending time, the letter to the Ephesians provides insight into the recapitulation of all creation in Jesus Christ: “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”30 As St. Paul notes, the Incarnation is already a realization of God’s plan for creation as Jesus’ human nature is united with his divine nature. That plan is once and for all but continues to unfold today so that, at the Incarnation, the Logos incarnatus forms the foundation for a Christian culture, which is the fruit of an authentic inculturation. In Cardinal Sarah’s view, “Inculturation is God descending and entering into the life, the moral conduct, the cultures and customs of men so as to free them from sin and to introduce them into the Trinitarian life.” Hence full participation in the liturgy is itself a form of inculturation that allows the person to share in the supernatural life of grace. Likewise, although Virgil Michel does not use the term “inculturation,” when Please see CULTURE on page 8

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

Dark Epiphanies and Brilliant Enthymemes: St. John and the Unknowing of Advent

City of Reason The year is 426 B.C. and the place is Athens, Greece. It was during this time that this city bore witness to a philosophical and literary Golden Age—an age which produced that great quartet of playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, known for their tragedies, and Aristophanes, known for his ribald comedies. Athens at that time also gave rise to that trio of great minds, Socrates, his student Plato, and Plato’s student, Aristotle, on which the foundations of Western philosophy rest secure.

Chaerephon, a friend of Socrates, asks the Oracle at Delphi if there is a wiser man in Athens than Socrates. The Oracle answers by claiming that there is no man in Athens wiser than Socrates. Perplexed by this, Socrates takes it upon himself to find a man who is wiser than he. He cannot. And so, on trial for his life, he admits before the court: “And I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing…. He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.”1 Socrates is claimed to be the wisest man in all of Athens, the city of reason. But why should a Catholic concern himself with the claims of a pagan oracle? Because as our Common Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas affirms, in a way that can be somewhat jarring to the modern faithful, there is reason to believe that this pagan oracle was indeed Divinely inspired. “Multis gentilium facta fuit revelatio,” (“Revelation has been made to many pagans.”),2 says St. Thomas. His specific example of such revelation even includes the gentile oracles, noting, “it is likely that the mystery of our redemption was revealed to many Gentiles

Socrates is claimed to be the wisest man in all of Athens, the city of reason. “And I am called wise,” says the sage Socrates, “for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.”

before Christ’s coming, as is clear from the Sibylline prophecies.”3 This wisdom of Socrates was in its day uniquely apophatic; that is to say, he was the first to know he did not know, and in this act of unknowing, prepares the city of reason to receive Wisdom itself. As St. Paul, who is sent to fulfill the unknowing of the Athenians centuries later, acclaims, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23).

City of Faith But the Gentiles did not have a monopoly on such humble erudition. Jerusalem, the city of faith, is similarly prepared through the person of St. John the Baptist. Commenting on the prophesy of the Baptist, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that St. John is “more than a prophet” because he synthetically acts in salvation history as the end (terminus) of the Old Law and the beginning (initium) of the Gospel. Not only in word but in deed does the Forerunner initiate the entrance of Christ into the hearts of men. As St. Thomas notes, “John was not only a prophet, but ‘more than a prophet,’ as stated in Matthew 11:9: for he was the term of the Law and the beginning of the Gospel. Therefore it was in his province to lead men, both by word and deed, to the law of Christ rather than to the observance of the Old Law.”4 Like Socrates, the Baptist’s excellence is characterized in apophatic terms, that is, by self-denial: “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’

He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’

And he answered, ‘No’” (John 1:19-21).

John recognized that his excellence was characterized by his awareness of one infinitely greater than himself. Indeed, so the Church teaches, “Between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude.”5 St. John’s expression of this dissimilitude is strong, but his words represent also a notable first among Old Testament figures whose deeds are famously sordid (at their worst). Moses was a murderer; David and Abraham were adulterers; Jonah was disobedient; Elijah was a coward who begged for death—the list goes on.

As the best man of the Old Covenant, the Baptist prepares the world to receive her Bridegroom, not only in his prophesy, but by his very life.

But if the greatest mind of Athens and the greatest believer in Jerusalem share an affinity for such humble wisdom, Athens and Jerusalem find their confluence in Rome—the city of Faith and Reason.

In God’s loving providence, he prepares both cities for his entry, as he prepares our

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“What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?”

So asked the 2nd-century Church father Tertullian, rankling to think that the pagan city has any relation to the holiest of holy cities—and the site of our Lord’s death and resurrection.

In answer to this question, we can say, “More than you might think, Tertullian.”

In fact, two men who represent the best that these two cities had achieved in human history, the Athenian philosopher Socrates and Jerusalem’s famous preacher St. John the Baptist, share a remarkable affinity in their approach to the truth: each in his own way proclaims that wisdom by admitting that he only knows that he does not know. The achievement of such knowledge not only constitutes human firsts in the respective cities of reason and faith but points acutely to the mystery of Christ’s coming during Advent—and indeed prepares for that coming in the hearts of the faithful. From the wisdom these two men shared, we can learn much about how to approach Advent in its liturgical, epistemological, and eschatological dimensions. In these co-exemplars of the limits of natural human excellence, we find models of the humility that alone can prepare the way for Christ who seeks to find a dwelling in our emptiness and convey his saving mysteries to his beloved.

When our Lord teaches that a grain of wheat remains just a grain of wheat unless it die, or that any man who seeks to find his life must lose it, is he giving us a new commandment or evangelical counsel?

No. He is simply reminding us of the way things are: that ultimate fulfillment is only found through a self-emptying—and that ultimate knowledge is only found through an unknowing.

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By John Johnson

Like Socrates, the Baptist’s excellence is characterized in apophatic terms: “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they asked him, ‘What then?

Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’”

intellects and our wills, through ascetic self-denial. As such, these men stand as exemplars of the ascetic dimensions of the mystical life.

As the oracle says of Socrates that no man is wiser, Our Lord says of the Baptist, “among those born of women none is greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he (Lk. 17:28).” Christ is drawing us to an awareness of natural, human excellence—the greatest we can be by our own power, and so the most prepared to receive him wholly, both in his nativity and in his Eschaton, that is, his second coming. This is the purgative way; it is the via negativa. And it constitutes the fundamental liturgical disposition of the Church during Advent: self-emptying, self-denying, unknowing.

“This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.”6 The Forerunner When St. John the Baptist first encounters his Lord, he does so in great joy, but as through a beautiful darkness, the darkness of the womb. Like the Baptist, we can only encounter our Lord for the first time through this beautiful darkness, a darkness of wonder. It is not only the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, but the darkness of the cave in Bethlehem. It is the same beautiful darkness in which we as a Church now find ourselves, that of a mystical body waiting-in-utero with hope, pain, and anxiety for our ineffable birth into the light. It is this darkness that St. John of the Cross teaches is necessary for a soul to journey to union with God.7 And this darkness through which the soul must pass intensi-

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fies gradually, from an active purification of the senses through darkness, to a passive purification of the senses through darkness, to a total purification of the spirit through darkness as she moves more deeply into the mystical life of Christ. For the soul, as for the Church-in-utero, this process of growth through darkness into Christ’s life increases in intensity as it approaches its terminus. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

Analogously, the darkness through which St. John the Baptist first knows God—that of a joy-filled womb—later gives way to two kinds of darkness of increasing intensity: that of human (though faith-filled) uncertainty—“So John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

(John 7:18-19)—and ultimately to the decisive and painful darkness of Herod’s dungeon where the Baptist is born into light through the shedding of his blood.

Only to the extent that the Baptist decreases, can Christ increase. In our hearts and in the Church, Christ who is light and life of men finds dwelling in our emptiness.

The Baptist’s ever deepening movements into this life-giving darkness are an exemplary prefigurement of the soul ascetically moving to the end of itself and into Divine union as well as the mystical body of Christ moving into triumphal, eschatological union with her King.

Good News: John and John The beautiful darkness of the forerunner gives way to the ineffable splendor of the Lamb. Throughout Advent and Christmas, we see that the Church’s liturgical readings (both in the new and traditional calendars) convey John the Evangelist’s charism at work harmoniously and diametrically—with John the Baptist’s testimony leading up to our Lord’s Nativity, and the Evangelist’s testimony emanating out of it. A charism is a grace given to one or a few for the good of the many or the whole. Both St. John the Baptist, and (originally) his pupil, St. John the Evangelist (see John 1:37) share in one charism: to see the saving Lamb when others can’t, to point to him, and to make him known.

We encounter this beautiful convergence of both St. Johns and their charism in the Prologue read as the Gospel on Christmas Day. “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light” (John 1:6). Is the Evangelist referring to the Baptist or Gospel writer in this verse? Yes. This shared Johannine charism is especially replicable and providentially intended to be imitated by the faithful until our Lord comes again.8 This self-negating unknowing of the Baptist is mimetically echoed in word and deed by his disciple, the Evangelist, who punctuates his Prologue apophatically, or negatively: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18). The weight of this verse in salvation history is more intelligible if we can understand a rhetorical principle at work throughout John’s Gospel, one that he imports from the Greeks (pace, Tertullian!). It is a principle that the modern social media connoisseur will be only too familiar: that of the meme.

Besides being a disciple of St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist was almost certainly schooled in the Hellenistic philosophical tradition and, indirectly, Socrates.

He would have known the great Greek thinkers through his studies, possibly as a member of the Temple elite in training. He likely studied the work of Plato as is well-

8 reflected in his narrative style. He gives two significant Greek words to the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, Logos and Paraclete (the only Evangelist to do so). Like St. Paul, he would have known well the significance of the unnamed God in the Areopagus, and the apophatic role of Socrates, the Greek, who must go in like manner unnamed as a penultimate forerunner to Christ.

While skeptics of our age have been known from time to time to use John’s obvious Hellenistic influence as a bludgeon against the apparent veracity of the Gospel and its personal authorship at the pen of St. John, we can gratefully see with the Church the likes of St. John, St. Paul, St. Luke, and others who import the preordained philosophical treasury of Athens unto the saving work of Christ. Importantly, St. John is almost certainly familiar with—and indeed a well-read student of—Aristotle’s work. We know this because St. John makes persistent use of principles outlined in Aristotle’s rhetoric.

Holy Memes According to Aristotle, a meme—or enthymeme—is “the most powerful form of rhetoric.”9 An enthymeme is a syllogism, left intentionally void of one premise or a conclusion, that the reader or hearer is left to deduce. In “figuring it out” for herself, the truth conveyed becomes deeply knowable and infinitely sharable (or “viral,” to use a colloquialism).

Example: Minor premise: A=B Major premise: B=C Unstated Conclusion: You are left to figure it out….

(A=C).10 St. John employs the use of enthymemes throughout his Gospel. We find more each time we read it. One example is John 20:21: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”

Minor premise: So I send you.

Major Premise: The Father has sent me.

Unstated Conclusion: You are sent by the Father.

Or another, John 6:57: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.”

Minor premise: Whoever eats me will live because of me.

Major premise: But I live because of the Father.

Unstated Conclusion: Therefore he who eats me lives (also) because of the Father.

While there are dozens of enthymeme’s throughout John’s Gospel, the enthymeme that most concerns us here has its first premise in John 1:18, noted above: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom (eis ton kolpon) of the Father, he has made him known.”

Here we have the first premise of a mega-enthymeme, spanning the Gospel and plumbing its depths, that the Beloved Disciple will conclude only in his account of the Last Supper when it is not only the Son in the bosom of the Father, but St. John himself in the bosom of the Son consoling his master as he announces His betrayal. “One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast (en tō kolpō) of Jesus” (John 13:21).

The reader can now see John’s Prologue and Last Supper account as being united in a single enthymeme, and its power cannot be overstated: Minor Premise: Only the Son who is in the bosom of the Father has seen him and so can make him known.

Major Premise: St. John is now in the bosom of the Son. The unstated conclusion is for you, the reader. It serves as an invitation to imitate the hidden adoration of both St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist who, through a rootedness in this adoration, can see our Lord and so make him known. In it, we find the mystery of both Advent that terminates in Christmas and in Christmas that terminates in Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. And in it we find an acceptable response to the chaos, tumult, and labor pains that precede birth (many so evident in the Church today).

The Way Forward In the bosom of Jesus, and so in the bosom of the Father, John prepares the way in deed for Christ’s saving Passion.

John could have broken from adoration to answer Peter’s command, “Tell us who it is of whom he speaks” (see John 13:24). He could have entered into a former mimetic cycle, that of the Old Covenant and all of its bloodshed now come to a head in the treachery of Judas, son of destruction. In that upper room, witnessing apostolic betrayal, John could have entered into that chaos and named Judas to Peter. We know from Luke’s Gospel that the apostles were armed. So we know what would have happened to Judas.

John sees another way when even ten other apostles do not. He sees that the Blood of the Lamb must be shed—not

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019 yet the blood of the betrayer. So he adores, and in his adoration he is able to follow his Lord to his saving Cross when even Peter and the others cannot. And this deed of adoration illuminates a central aspect of the Johannine charism, one that is evident with the Evangelist standing with his new Mother at the foot of the Cross, but hidden in the Baptist still resting in the womb of his mother, Elizabeth.

If we understand the Passion of Jesus in its broadest sense, we may conclude that it begins when he undertakes to be willingly affected by his own creation. In this sense, the Saving Passion of Jesus begins at the moment of his Incarnation. In the womb of his Blessed Mother, he begins to suffer those he loves. In the womb of his mother, he begins to die for his bride. The Church, then, should see St. John the Baptist in his leaping for joy in Elizabeth’s womb as a primal, hidden, witness to the saving Passion of Christ— one that culminates in the public witness of St. John the Beloved at the foot of the Cross. Advent points to the Paschal Mystery. Hidden adoration, initially a secret between friends, gives way to glory that will be universally manifest on the last day.

Know How to Say No To see the saving Lamb of God before he is revealed in glory is to operate in the charism of St. John, but as the season of Advent calls us to remember, this perspicacious sort of vision is only possible through self-denial. For this reason, Advent is an invitation to enter into the beautiful darkness of unknowing. In our preparation to receive our King, we can meditate on and strive to imitate the heroic limits of man’s natural capacity, all of which are negative and personified by Socrates, the wisest man in Athens and, St. John the Baptist, the greatest man born of woman. This twofold human emptiness finds confluence, through grace, in the beloved.

If we succeed in this unknowing of Advent, we can be Continued from CULTURE, page 6 speaking about the transformative power of the liturgy, in Michel’s view the liturgy is the “ordinary school of the development of the true Christian, and the very qualities and outlook it develops in him are also those that make for the best realization of a genuine Christian culture.”

Through the individual’s genuine embrace of Christ, in other words, the culture to which the individual belongs also wholeheartedly embraces Christ.

Inculturation of the Logos In discussing evangelization, Ratzinger employs an image that is attributed to St. Basil the Great.33 Alluding to the prophet Amos and his image of the sycamore tree (see Amos 7:14), Basil maintains that this tree is a symbol for the pagan culture of his time because “it offers a surplus, yet at the same time it is insipid. This comes from living according to Pagan customs. Alone, the sycamore tree and its fruit are incapable of bringing about their own transformation.” However, Basil notes, “When one manages to slit” open the sycamore’s fruit (representing for Basil the pagan world) “by the means of the Logos, it is transformed, becomes tasty and useful.”34 In a similar manner, Ratzinger argues, “The Logos itself must slit our cultures and their fruit, so that what is unusable is purified and becomes not only usable but good…; ultimately only the Logos himself can guide our cultures to their true purity and maturity, but the Logos makes us his servants, the ‘dresser of sycamore trees.’”35 The Logos can lead the liturgy and ultimately cultures to their authentic end, which is communion with God in Jesus Christ.

Both Ratzinger and Michel consistently demonstrate that the transformation of the person and the culture cannot be realized by humanity’s efforts alone, but by the true Christian Spirit which we receive through participating in the sacred liturgy. Thus, while inculturation itself may be a relatively recent term, students of liturgy examining the “Christian spirit” which informs authentic inculturation can only benefit from a study of Virgil Michel and Joseph Ratzinger as two minds very much in tune with the mission of the Church to spread the Gospel today as yesterday.

By this study, today’s efforts continue the work begun centuries ago, work given a special grace through the life and work of St. Benedict. Listen with the ear of the heart to the Logos; speak clearly the life-giving Word of the Father; and let the Christian cultus cultivate a Christian culture.

Roland Millare serves as the chair of the Theology Department at St. John XXIII College Preparatory, Katy, TX, the Program Director of Shepherd’s Heart (a continuing education and formation program for priests and deacons) for the St. John Paul II Foundation, Houston, TX, and an adjunct professor of theology for deacon candidates at the University of St. Thomas School of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary, Houston, TX. Roland earned a doctorate in sacred theology

(STD) at the Liturgical Institute/University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL.

sure of a bountiful share in the Christmas Joy—and ultimately the Paschal Joy—of our Lord who so thirsts to make a dwelling with his Father in our emptiness.

I must decrease.

Come, Lord Jesus.

John Johnson is the Executive Director of the Albertus Magnus Institute, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the promotion of Catholic higher education, and the host of the Magnus Podcast. He has a philosophy degree from St. Mary’s College of California, Moraga, CA, and a Masters degree in Theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, CA,where his studies focused on the beatific epistemology of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has spoken at Catholic retreats and events across the country and lives in California with his wife and four children.

1. Plato, Apology, Benjamin Jowett (trans), The Dialogues of Plato (New York: Bantam, 1986), 8.

2. S t. Thomas Aquinas. Primae redactiones Scripti super Sententiis. (Corpus Thomisticum, 1962), 3 d. 25, 2, 2, 2 ad 3, See also ST II, II, 2, 7 ad 3.

3. Th omas Aquinas, Questiones Disputatae de Veritate. Html edition by Joseph Kenny, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1953), http://dhspriory.org/ thomas/QDdeVer.htm (accessed November 30, 2010), 14, 11 ad 5.

4. Th omas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Second and Revised Edition, 1920, Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

5. Lateran Council IV: DS 806.

6. Thomas Aquinas. Questiones Disputatiae de Potentia Dei, 7, 5, ad 14.

7. Cf. Ascent of Mount Carmel, IV. 8. C f. John 21:22. “Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to to you?’”

10. Aristotle, Rhetoric.

11. T o understand internet “memes” as what Aristotle calls enthymemes, consider any common, humorous internet meme. Take “success kid” for example (the reader ignorant of said meme may find it with an internet search). We are given a picture of a cute toddler pumping his fist on the beach with a victorious, determined facial expression. That’s the minor premise. And it’s accompanied by a caption, the major premise—something like, “Got a raise!”

The viewer is then left to deduce the unstated conclusion: “It feels great to get a raise.” When we figure it out, it becomes our own—something we can internalize and share, generating a memetic effect that would be impossible if the teacher stated the conclusion outright.

1. J oseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, Trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 52-53.

2. See Adoremus Bulletin, Vol. XXIV, No. 7 (May 2019): 1; 4-5.

3. O n the affinity between Ratzinger and Michel, see this author’s article “The Spirit of the Liturgical Movement: A Benedictine Renewal of Culture.”

Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 17.1 (Fall 2014): 130-154.

This article offers a fuller development of parallel themes in their respective writings on the liturgy.

4. V irgil Michel, “The Liturgy: The Basis of Social Regeneration,” In Orate Fratres 9 no.12 (1935): 545.

5. Joseph Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy: The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, ed. Michael J. Miller, trans. John Saward, Kenneth Baker, S.J., Henry Taylor et al., Collected Works 11 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 34; cited henceforth as JRCW 11.

6. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, Trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 59.

7. Ibid., 67.

8. Michel, “Christian Culture,” In Orates Fratres 13 (1939): 296.

9. Ibid.

10. Christopher Dawson, “The Historical Reality of Christian Culture,” In Christianity and European Culture: Selections from the Work of Christopher Dawson, Ed. Gerald J. Russello (Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 1998), 54.

11. Michel, “Christian Culture,” 299.

12. JRCW 11:153.

13. Ibid.

14. Christopher Dawson, 4.

15. Michel, “Christian Culture,” 302.

16. Ibid.

17. JRCW 11:132.

18. Ratzinger notes, “It is therefore ever more strongly emphasized today that in order to survive, faith must inculturate itself into the modern technical/ rational culture. But then the question natural arises: Can we refer to the civilization of technical unity as a ‘culture’ in the same sense as the great cultures that have grown up at different times and places in the life of mankind? Can faith be inculturated in one and in the other at the same time? What identity could it then still have at all?” (Truth and Tolerance, 58).

19. Robert Cadinal Sarah (with Nicolas Diat), The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, translated by Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 225-226.

20. JRCW 11:391 21. Ibid.

22. In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall, trans.

Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1990), 81.

23. Benedict XVI, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2007), 92.

24. Commenting on the insight that Teilhard de Chardin offers for the Eucharist, Ratzinger posits, “The transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divinization of matter in the christological ‘fullness’” (JRCW 11:15-16).

25. Michel, “Christian Culture,” 296.

26. JRCW 11:15.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ratzinger’s commentary on worship ad orientem is a theme developed in The Spirit of the Liturgy and throughout his writings. See JRCW 11:40-51.

Consistently, Ratzinger maintains the cosmic and eschatological symbolism of celebrating the liturgy ad orientem: “For the true location and the true context of the eucharistic celebration is the whole cosmos. ‘Facing east’ makes this cosmic celebration of the Eucharist present through liturgical gesture. Because of the rising of the sun, the east – oriens – was naturally both a symbol of the Resurrection (and to that extent it was not merely a christological statement but also a reminder of the Father’s power and the influence of the Holy Spirit) and a presentation of the hope of the Parousia. Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also an interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of Resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of Parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ” (JRCW 11:389).

30. Eph 1:10-11.

31. Sarah, 226-227.

32. Michel, “Christian Culture,” 296.

33. Ratzinger cites Basil, In Is 9, 228 (commentary on Isaiah 9:10), PG 30, 516D/517A, cited in Christian Gnilka, Chrêsis: Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur, vol. 2 of Kultur und Conversion (Basel, 1993), 84-86. Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans.

Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 46-47.

34. Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, 46.

35. Ibid., 47.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

How to Be The Praise of Glory A Primer on St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s Eucharistic Spirituality

to offer her own imperfect love in return.

But this union is not something that she believes she can do on her own. She needs the ministry of a priest. She needs the Mass.

In the Mass, at the moment of consecration, she is convinced that a power is unleashed by which she might realize this noble dream.

Through the Mass and the ministry of a priest, her desire for becoming the praise of glory is realized.

By Anthony Lilles

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aint Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) sets the standard for contemplative prayer.

Her many letters and spiritual writings offer spiritual food for those who long to go deep into mystery of God’s heart.

Born Élisabeth Catez in central France in 1880, the future St. Elizabeth had been drawn to the Carmelite order since childhood. She entered the discalced Carmel in Dijon at the age of 21, just four years after the death of another French Carmelite, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897). Her day-to-day praise of the Trinity, her Eucharistic spirituality, and her reliance on silent contemplative prayer make her a model for anyone wishing to foster a true liturgical spirituality. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity was canonized by Pope Francis on October 16, 2016, and her feast day falls on November 8.

Given St. Elizabeth’s life, anyone who reads her writings knows that there are silences that await us in the depths of God’s heart that can utterly transform our existence, an impact of divinity and humanity that raise up our lives even as the world falls apart around us. To this end, St. Elizabeth does not advocate any complex techniques or psychological tricks.

Instead, she offers a very humble and simple movement of love, a surrender with confidence into the saving dynamism of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work in the soul. In this work, the soul becomes completely identified with the life of the Holy Trinity, a life opened up through the passion and death of Christ.

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Identity in Christ The Mass also helps St. Elizabeth realize another dimension of not only practicing but becoming the praise of glory. This dimension is once again connected to her desire to be totally identified with Christ—even to the point that she becomes another humanity for him by which he might renew his whole saving ministry. Such an offering of self, she describes as “annihilation.” If the humanity of Christ was annihilated for love of her on the Cross, she wants his annihilation to be extended through her own humanity that his saving work might be increased through the life of the Church. Here is the power that overcomes our hostility toward God and brings to birth the fire of a new love in the human heart.

As she approached her own death, she realized that it was through the ministry of the priest and the moment of consecration that this grace was to be realized for her. Among the last letters she wrote as she suffered a prolonged agony in the final stages of Addison’s St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s mysticism found its source in the Mass. She writes, disease, she writes to a priest who has men“When you consecrate the host where Jesus, ‘who alone is Holy,’ will be incarnate, tored her since childhood.

Surrender to Life consecrate me with Him ‘as the victim of the praise of glory’ until all my aspirations, “As a child might ask her father,” she writes, There is more to this surrender into the Word’s all my movements, all my actions pay homage to the Holy One.” “I ask you at Mass, to consecrate me as a ‘host’ surrender than the silence of death. When it of praise of God’s glory. Oh, consecrate me descends into this deep silence of Christ’s total until I were no longer me by Him. Would that offering of himself for our sake, the soul through Christ, the Father could, in looking upon me, recognize Him. with Christ, and in Christ even becomes the “prey” of the Blessed Sacrament shines forth as a threshold, a Would that I would be conformed to His death, that I the Trinity. This mutual surrender, far from morbid, mystery of encounter where Jesus puts us face to face would suffer in myself whatever is lacking in His pasallows the Source of all Life to contemplate his glory with the immensity of love that the Father yearns for us sion for his body, which is the Church. Thus bathe me anew in the most fruitful and powerful ways. A new to know, “Whoever sees me sees the Father” (John 14:9). in the Blood of Christ until I be made strong with His generative power is unleashed. St. Elizabeth believed strength. I feel so little…so weak…” (L 294, July 1906). her friends and her whole society profoundly needed Devotion to Liturgy this power. This was why she dedicated herself to conIn her humble request for the priest to remember her St. Elizabeth roots her Eucharistic devotion in the most templative prayer and brought it to bear in her liturgical sacred moment of the Mass—thus, we also see that this at Mass, she assumes an intrinsic link between her efdevotion. She was convinced that her spiritual mission forts at prayer in death to the liturgy and to the life of kind of communal praise is not an individualistic or from heaven would be to lead her friends out of their the Church. Contemplative prayer is not the attainment private pursuit, but one that involves the whole body of preoccupations with “self ” and into the splendor of this of the psyche or the achievement of a state of consciousChrist. The surrender that she aims for coincides with meeting of the soul with God. Utterly consumed by the ness, but instead a humble surrender to the Father’s savthe ministry of the priest in the words of consecration. love of the Trinity, she understood that the person of ing gaze. Mental prayer is not an accomplishment of the As she enters into a prolonged period of intense mental prayer becomes most fully himself—he or she becomes spiritually elite, but the refuge of the spiritually weak prayer, she asks for the priest’s help: “When you consethe praise of glory. and poor. Such prayer, raised up in the Eucharist, is not crate the host where Jesus, ‘who alone is Holy,’ will be While some contrast this simple movement of heart incarnate,” the saint says, “consecrate me with Him ‘as therapeutic in the sense that such a conversation with as private, emotive, and perhaps even esoteric, this is the victim of the praise of glory’ until all my aspirations, God is merely a method for managing life’s problems— not the case for this Carmelite saint. If von Balthasar all my movements, all my actions pay homage to the rather, it confers a strength that even at the moment of identifies her as “the mystic of Dijon,” her mysticism Holy One” (L 244, October 1905). death, can never be overcome. was liturgical, an act of public worship in the fullest and most existential ways. True, what she has to say about A Saintly Path for All “ There are silences that await us in the liturgy itself is limited. Yet, her writings direct our For Catholics who want to deepen their devotion to gaze upon the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christ, this beautiful vision of contemplative prayer can the depths of God’s heart that can contemplative prayer, the means by which we can bebecome an avenue for deeper participation in the litcome the praise of glory of the Trinity. We see this in utterly transform our existence.” urgy. Not only by understanding the liturgical rites, but her conviction that the Word of the Father speaks to us also by believing in God’s action in these rites and sacin Eucharistic adoration: “In the silence of adoration, raments, each Catholic can understand that something we listen to Him, the One who is from the ‘Beginning’, The context for this request is her contemplative life is unleashed into our lives, something that this world is who speaks into our interiority, and does He not say to and an immediate opportunity, which her communot big enough to hold. This is a mystery of superabunus, ‘The One who has sent me is true and all that I have nity has given her, to withdraw for a period into deep dant love so rich that, no matter what we suffer, this love heard from Him, I tell to you’?” (John 8:25-26). prayer. Rather than an accomplishment for herself and can infuse it with meaning and transform the whole The silence of adoration allows the words of the Word by herself, she reckons contemplative prayer as an activworld around us. to echo in the soul. St. Elizabeth is convinced that the ity geared to the praise of God’s glory and reliant on the As the life and words of St. Elizabeth attest, when Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament is a dynamic ministry of a priest. contemplative prayer flows from and is directed toward presence, one in which God speaks to us and evokes Elsewhere in her writings, St. Elizabeth develops the the Eucharist, we become capable of uttering—and bea response—a response in adoration and obedience. theme of identification with Christ, a theme which cocoming—a praise of glory that offers hope where hope To obey means to listen with the heart to the words of incides with her vision of becoming the praise of glory. is most needed. another and to allow these words to influence how we The incarnate Christ is present through the ministry see the world and how we act in it. It implies a letting of the priest anew—thus the priest is intimately identiAnthony Lilles is married to Agnes Lilles, and is a spego of our own agendas and surrendering to the plans fied with Christ—and it is this mystery with which she cialist in the mystical tradition of the Church and an exof someone else. Placing ourselves before the Blessed too wants to be completely identified.

Such an intimate pert in the spiritual doctrine of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.

Sacrament, we are invited to surrender to the Father union allows her to become the praise of God’s glory The academic dean of St. Patrick’s Seminary and Unithrough Jesus’ real presence. just as Christ glorified the Father through the offering of versity in Menlo Park, CA, he podcasts at www.discernThis surrender, of course, is always a challenge in the his own life on the cross.

St. Elizabeth sees the personal inghearts.com and blogs at www.spiritualdirection.com. spiritual life, but it is especially daunting in our own With Dan Burke, he co-founded that Avila Institute of mystery of her own life as utterly caught up in what the time when a crisis of fatherhood presents a serious obSpiritual Formation. He has also founded the Saint John Lord has done for her.

It is the only response she can stacle to such surrender. There is no denying that our Paul II Center for Contemplative Culture. make in the face of the immensity of love that he unveils culture holds God the Father in hostile suspicion—but

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

Q

THE RITE QUESTIONS

: What is a Mass offering properly

called and why is the practice acceptable in the Catholic Church?

A

:What has traditionally been called

a Mass stipend is an offering, usually monetary, which the faithful give to a priest and which, on acceptance, obliges him in justice to offer the fruits of the Mass for the intention of that donor. Although the 1917 Code of Canon Law used the word stipend (stipendium) for this offering, the current Code uses the term offering (stips). The reason is that the Latin stipendium means payment or salary, while stips means gift or donation. Since any “semblance of trafficking or trading is to be entirely excluded from Mass offerings” (canon 947), the latter term is more appropriate.

English translations of the Code use the word ‘offering’ for stips.

Although every Mass is offered for the benefit of the entire Mystical Body, as is clear from the liturgical prayers themselves (e.g., “for our good and the good of all his holy Church”), it has also been the custom since ancient times to offer Mass for particular intentions or needs of the faithful. The 2nd-century Church father Tertullian urged wives to have Mass offered for their husbands on the anniversary of their death (De monogamia, 10), and St. Augustine said that the “sacrifice of our redemption” was offered for his mother, St. Monica, on the day of her burial (Confessions, 9:12). At the same time, the faithful also participated more closely in the sacrifice by providing the bread and wine as well as other gifts for the support of the clergy and care of the needy. These offerings would often be presented to the priest during the liturgy.

These two practices gradually coalesced, so a gift would be presented to the priest sometime before Mass with the request that the Mass be offered particularly for the donor’s intention. By the 11th century the custom of giving the priest a monetary offering so that Mass would be offered for a specific intention became widespread.

This practice provides a spiritual benefit to the faithful while contributing to the material support of the priest, since “those who work in the temple are supported by the temple, and those who minister at the altar share the offerings of the altar” (1 Cor 9:13).

Later theological tradition explained the meaning of this practice. The celebration of Mass produces various “fruits” for human beings: impetratory (spiritual and temporal benefits), propitiatory (forgiveness of sins), and satisfactory (remission of temporal punishment). These fruits redound to the whole Church (“general”), to those participating in the Mass (“special”), to the priest himself (“personal”), and to those for whom the priest is offering the Mass (“ministerial”). The ministerial fruits are applied by his intention in offering the Mass. If he has accepted an offering for the Mass, he is obliged in justice to apply those fruits to the donor’s intention.

The abuses which had crept into the practice of accumulating Mass offerings was one of many factors leading to the Protestant Reformation, so the Council of Trent urged bishops to be vigilant in eliminating any practice that made the acceptance of Mass offerings resemble a business transaction (Session 22). Subsequent enactments of the Roman Pontiffs were codified in 1917 and substantially retained in the 1983 Code.

The fundamental principle is one offering for each Mass, and one Mass for each offering: “Separate Masses are to be applied for the intentions of those for each of whom an offering, even if small, has been made and accepted” (canon 948). A cele-

brant or concelebrant may accept only one offering for each Mass, although the donor’s intention may include many individuals (e.g., “all my deceased relatives”). The question is not how many people can receive the fruits of the Mass, but how many Mass offerings—only one!—may be accepted for each Mass. If a priest celebrates more than one Mass on a given day, he may apply each Mass for the intentions of the donor who has made an offering; but, with the exception of Christmas Day, he may never keep for himself more than one offering per day. The offerings he receives for a second or third Mass on a given day must be donated to the purposes determined by the Ordinary (e.g., the diocesan seminary or the missions). A priest who concelebrates another Mass may not accept an offering for that other Mass on any grounds (canon 951). The amount of the offering for each Mass is determined by the bishops of each ecclesiastical province.

For example, in the province of Chicago (which is coterminous with the civil state of Illinois), the Mass offering is $10.00 No priest, diocesan or religious, may request more for an offering (canon 952).

Contrary to the fundamental principle of one offering per Mass, which the Church has strictly enforced to avoid “any semblance of trafficking or trading,” the practice began to spread in the 1980s of accepting multiple offerings for a single Mass, so-called “collective intentions.”

Some of this was due to an inadequate understanding of what application of the fruits of the Mass really means and confusing it with reading out a name in the general intercessions, or with “buying a Mass card.” The practice led some people to think they can drop by the parish anytime and “get a Mass said” for any day or time they want. Whatever the rationale, the Holy See intervened in 1991 as the Vatican stated that the “arguments in favor of this new practice are specious and pretentious if not reflecting an erroneous ecclesiology” (Congregation for the Clergy, Decree Mos iugiter).

At the same time, the Congregation recognized that offering Mass collectively for a number of intentions for which separate offerings have been made can sometimes be acceptable but under the following conditions: 1) the faithful must knowingly and willingly agree to have their intentions combined in a single celebration; 2) the time and place of this celebration is to be publicly announced; 3) such celebrations may occur at most twice a week in the same church; and 4) the celebrant may retain for himself only what amounts to the offering for one Mass, the rest being given to the purposes determined by the Ordinary. A “collective” intention is thus an exception that is permitted no more than twice a week.

— Answered by Msgr. Robert J. Dempsey, Pastor of St. Patrick Church, Lake Forest, IL

Cremation: Frequently Asked Questions What is the ideal order of funeral liturgies relative to cremation?

“When the choice has been made to cremate a body, it is recommended that the cremation take place after the Funeral Liturgy” (Order of Christian Funerals [OCF], 418; emphasis added). That is, even though it is permitted to have cremated remains present at the Funeral Liturgy, the preferred order has the body of the deceased at the Vigil and the Funeral Mass or Liturgy outside of Mass, then cremation, followed by committal of ashes.

How does the funeral liturgy conclude when interment is delayed?

If cremation is to take place after the Funeral Liturgy, or if interment of cremated remains is delayed in order to take them to their final location, an alternate form of dismissal is used. “At the conclusion of the Funeral Liturgy, the Rite of Final Commendation and Farewell takes place, uing the alternate form of dismissal: ‘In the sure hope of the resurrection, we take leave of our brother/sister: let us go in peace’” (OCF, 419, 437).

What is the proper container for holding cremated remains during the funeral liturgy?

“The cremated remains of the body are to be placed in a worthy vessel” (OCF, 427).

What are the proper words for the committal of cremated remains?

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother/sister N., and we commit his/her earthly remains [vs. “his/ her body”] to the ground [or the deep, or their resting place]: [earth to earth,] ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him/her and keep him/her and be gracious to him/her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him/her and give him/her peace” (OCF, 438).

Is holy water used at a funeral with cremated remains?

Yes. “When the Funeral Liturgy is celebrated in the presence of the cremated remains, the priest, with assisting ministers, goes to the door of the church and using one of the greetings in number 159, or in similar words, greets those present. The priest then sprinkles the cremated remains with holy water, saying: ‘As our brother/sister N. has died with the Lord, so may he/she live with him in glory’” (OCF, 432-433). Note the change in language from a funeral with a body: “In the waters of baptism, N. died with Christ and rose with him to new life…” (OCF, 160). Because the body of the deceased is no longer present, the explicit reference to its baptism is omitted when only cremated remains are present.

Is the pall used?

No. “The covering of the cremated remains with the pall is omitted” (OCF, 434). The pall is a “reminder of the baptismal garment of the deceased” (Cf. OCF, 38, 133), and its use is a symbolic clothing of the body of the deceased.

When the body no longer exists, there is nothing to clothe.

Are the cremated remains carried forward in procession?

Optional. “A small table or stand is to be prepared for [the cremated remains] at the place normally occupied by the coffin. The vessel containing the cremated remains may be carried to its place in the entrance procession or may be placed on this table or stand sometime before the liturgy begins” (OCF, 427).

Is incense used during the Final Commendation?

Optional. The “Funeral Mass [with cremated remains] is celebrated as laid down in the Roman Missal and this ritual” (OCF, 428)—that is, unless otherwise noted, the Funeral Liturgy occurs as usual. The instruction at the Final Commendation reads: “The coffin may now be sprinkled with holy water and incensed…” (OCF, 173).

Can cremated remains be spread, divided, or kept in the home?

No. “It is not permitted to scatter cremated remains over a favorite place, and it is not permitted to keep cremated remains in one’s home or place other than a cemetery” (OCF, 417). “[T]he ashes may not be divided among various family members and due respect must be maintained regarding the circumstances of such a conservation. In order that every appearance of pantheism, naturalism or nihilism be avoided, it is not permitted to scatter the ashes of the faithful departed in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry or other objects (“Instruction Ad resurgendum cum Christo [AR] regarding the burial of the deceased and the conservation of the ashes in the case of cremation,” by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, August 15, 2016, 6-7).

Should funeral rites be denied when there are no plans to inter remains?

“Following the most ancient Christian tradition, the Church insistently recommends that the bodies of the deceased be buried in cemeteries or other sacred places” (AR, 3). Thus, pastors are obliged to make their best efforts to see that cremated remains are properly interred; but, in the end, cremated remains are the possession of the family and are theirs to do with as they will. However, when “the deceased notoriously has requested cremation and the scattering of their ashes for reasons contrary to the Christian faith, a Christian funeral must be denied to that person according to the norms of the law” (AR, 8).

— Compiled by Christopher Carstens

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

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Continued from MASS, page 3

are instructed” (P.L. 38, 228, Serm. 37; cf. also Serm.

229, p. 1371). But, in any case, the new rite of the Mass provides that the faithful “should be able to sing together, in Latin, at least the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, especially the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father” (Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 19).

14. But, let us bear this well in mind, for our counsel and our comfort: the Latin language will not thereby disappear. It will continue to be the noble language of the Holy See’s official acts; it will remain as the means of teaching in ecclesiastical studies and as the key to the patrimony of our religious, historical and human culture. If possible, it will reflourish in splendor.

15. Finally, if we look at the matter properly, we shall see that the fundamental outline of the Mass is still the traditional one, not only theologically but also spiritually. Indeed, if the rite is carried out as it ought to be, the spiritual aspect will be found to have greater richness. The greater simplicity of the ceremonies, the variety and abundance of scriptural texts, the joint acts of the ministers, the silences which will mark various deeper moments in the rite, will all help to bring this out.

16. But two indispensable requirements above all will make that richness clear: a profound participation by every single one present, and an outpouring of spirit in community charity. These requirements will help to make the Mass more than ever a school of spiritual depth and a peaceful but demanding school of Christian sociology. The soul’s relationship with Christ and with the brethren thus attains new and vital intensity. Christ, the victim and the priest, renews and offers up his redeeming sacrifice through the ministry of the Church in the symbolic rite of his last supper. He leaves us his body and blood under the appearances of bread and wine, for our personal and spiritual nourishment, for our fusion in the unity of his redeeming love and his immortal life. [...]

19. In every case, and at all times, let us remember that “the Mass is a Mystery to be lived in a death of Love. Its divine reality surpasses all words…. It is the Action par excellence, the very act of our Redemption, in the Memorial which makes it present” (Zundel).

MEMORIAL FOR Nancy Bartell — John Bartell Herbert Di Grazia — Barbara Di Grazia D’Ann G. Rittie — Robert F. Rittie Vincent Walsh and James Lyons Families — Agnes M. Lyons TO HONOR Holy Mother Church — Dr. Luana Pesco Koplowitz St. John Henry Cardinal Newman - Canonization — Gerald Michael Schnabel The Priests of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Chattanooga — Ann Miller Gretchen Reese - Birthday— Don and Kitty Our special thanks to our Friends, Members, and to all our faithful monthly donors. May God bless each of you for your generosity. A Mass is said for all our donors each month.

We appreciate your prayers, and we remember you in ours.

Letters Good Shepherd Article Thank you for the delightful article on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (“A Deep Dive into the Divine…,” September, 2019).

I was privileged to be involved with the founding of Seton Academy, a Catholic Montessori school in Villa Park, IL, which last year celebrated its 40th Anniversary. From the beginning, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has been a central feature of the curriculum.

In taking the training for the catechesis, I experienced the same sense of quiet awe and deep spiritual joy that Dr. Seeley and Ms. Curphey so well describe.

Seton Academy was founded by parents primarily as a Catholic school, and simply chose the Montessori method as the most effective educational method, not as an end in itself. We decided from the beginning that we would welcome non-Catholic families, but would have a unified curriculum, where all students would be invited to the Atrium. When this was explained to parents, we were surprised how few non-Catholic parents demurred. Over the years we have been delighted that many of our parents have become converts or reverts.

Some Catholics who are minimally familiar with the Montessori method believe erroneously that it denies original sin or is undisciplined or is based on the philosophy of John Dewey. For those of your readers who may be interested, I recommend The Child in the Church, by E. M. Standing, which includes a chapter on “Montessori Principles and Scholastic Philosophy” that demonstrates how thoroughly in the mainstream of the Catholic educational tradition it is. It is also remarkably similar to the techniques described by St. John Bosco in The Preventive Method.

One of the first things that struck me about both the

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and the Montessori method itself is how liturgical they both are, teaching through the senses, and leading inductively from carefully chosen and prepared material objects and carefully scripted movements to a deep understanding of intellectual and religious truths.

— William G. White, Lombard, IL

Pilgrims Ad Deum Given the lack of support from most of the episcopate, I was glad to read (“Bishop Wall Introduces Regular ‘ad orientem’ Mass at Gallup Cathedral,” Adoremus Bulletin, Sept. 2019) that Bishop James Wall of Gallup, New Mexico, has recently joined the relatively small number of bishops who promote the celebration of the Ordinary Form Mass ad orientem.

In his letter to the diocese explaining his decision to introduce the practice at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bishop Wall states that the priest, when addressing God, “faces the same direction as the people, that is, toward God (ad Deum). He does so literally, to use a phrase dear to St. Augustine, by ‘turning toward the Lord’ present in the Blessed Sacrament.” Without wanting to split hairs here, and with all due respect to the bishop, I would argue that ad orientem worship is not about facing the Lord in the tabernacle, but about symbolizing the movement of the pilgrim Church toward the transcendent Father to whom we have access through Christ in the Holy Spirit. For this reason, ad orientem liturgy has its merits even in churches where the tabernacle is not in the sanctuary.

— Father Thomas M. Kocik, Fall River, MA

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2019

The Beer Option: A Generous Pour of Catholic Culture

New Book Shows How Beer Can Help Quench the World’s Thirst for the Truth The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday and Today by R. Jared Staudt. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2018. 264 pp. ISBN: 978-1621384144. $26 Hardcover; $17.95 Paperback.

By Joseph O’Brien

W

ithout the benefit of modern central heating, 13th century Norwegians probably had no trouble keeping their beer cold—and their water as well. Perhaps for this reason, Norway’s clergy had a hard time baptizing souls. “Look, Father Olaf!—the font’s frozen solid again!”

But whatever the reason, as R. Jared Staudt relates in his book The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday and Today, back in the day, Norway’s chilblained clergy had opted to baptize with beer instead of water. It was apparently just something one did in the Land of the Midnight Sun. That is, at least until warmer heads in Rome prevailed—and Pope Gregory IX put the pontifical kibosh on the whole suds-as-salvific idea. Quoting from Gregory’s official buzz-killing letter regarding the Norwegian innovation, Staudt writes: “‘Since according to the Gospel teaching, a man must be born again of water and the Holy Ghost,’ Gregory writes those are not to be considered validly baptized who have been baptized with beer.”

Acknowledging the dangers of this and other more earthly instances of beery excess, Staudt has written a sober book-length case for restoring to its proper Catholic context the frothy brew that made Milwaukee—and many a monastery—famous.

A Case for Beer But if Staudt comes armed with effective arguments, he disarms his reader by presenting his case as a love affair with one of God’s—and nature’s—greatest gifts to man: “For over twenty years I’ve been fascinated by beer’s role in Western culture,” he writes. “Beer opens a door to many elements of Catholic culture: its history, social and economic influences, and even its spirituality. Catholicism has a rich sacramental culture, which recognizes how physical things mediate spiritual realities.”

Staudt’s book finds its handle by taking beer as one of those things mediating “spiritual realities.” Thus, it’s easy to see how a paean to pilsner might make it into a publication dedicated to all things liturgical. Indeed, while beer may not be the last word on culture (yeasted, Catholic, or otherwise), Staudt’s work provides a refreshing finish to Adoremus’ year-long commemoration of Varietates Legitimae, the Instruction on “Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy,” which turned 25 this year.

Issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship on January 25, 1994, the Instruction sought to clarify how the Church adopts and adapts those things from human culture and repurposes them for the liturgy’s supernatural realities. The document notes that with the spread of the Gospel throughout the world, the Church witnessed the rise of Catholic liturgy in all its rich and varied forms “under the influence of different cultural traditions. Under the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit, discernment was exercised to distinguish those elements coming from ‘pagan’ cultures which were incompatible with Christianity from those which could be accepted in harmony with apostolic tradition and in fidelity to the Gospel of salvation.”

Of course, beer has no direct connection to the liturgy (as Norway discovered the hard way); nonetheless, Staudt insist, beer is among those elements that harmonize well with the Church’s vision of the world.

“Catholic culture is sacramental in the broad sense, finding meaning in every aspect of life and ordering it all to God’s glory,” he notes. “Catholic culture includes eating and drinking as signs of joy, fellowship, and even of the spiritual life.”

Our Lord said, “Man does not live by bread alone” and this teaching presumably includes even “liquid bread.” At the same time, just as ordinary bread rises to the occasion of extraordinary grace, so too, Staudt says, beer can ferment a rising culture that points us to God. “The Beer Option calls for a renewal of culture by finding God in the ordinary things of life and ordering them to Him, including beer,” he writes.

According to Staudt, the book presents three perspectives that place beer squarely in the Catholic worldview: “beer’s relation to Catholic cult or worship, its place in Catholic thought and history, and the way in which it enables us to be in touch with nature and the craft of production.”

That’s quite a tall order, but Staudt delivers a generous pour for each.

Beer and Cult(ure) With the help of Catholic historian Christopher Dawson,

Staudt provides a foundational understanding of culture – from which the reader can draw freely to understand the Catholic cultural significance of beer: Dawson “notes that there are four major elements of culture: a group of people, working in a particular natural environment, forming social institutions and economic practices, and guided by common beliefs and moral convictions. All of these elements are necessary as we shape both nature and human life as a community, but Dawson argued that religion is the very heart of culture, giving an organizing vision and the highest perspective to all its other elements.”

As one of these elements, Staudt contends, beer brings people together—even if one among them prefers a dark stout, another a crisp lager, and a third a nut-brown ale.

“Holiness embraces the wholeness of human life, our full flourishing, which requires the reintegration of what sin has torn asunder,” he writes. “In this vein, beer provides a small but concrete sign of restored Christian culture: it is fashioned from the goods of the earth, it fosters community, and when ordered to God it can help us catch a glimpse of the joy of heaven. The baptism of beer is a call to return to reality, to rediscover the simple but necessary elements of life.”

For this reason, as food, beer (like bread and wine) can be put to Catholic use—and enjoyed in a Catholic way— taking as its model the supernatural reality present in the ultimate object of consumption — the Eucharist.

“Just as faith builds upon nature, the Eucharist builds upon human culture,” Staudt writes. “Bread and wine are just two of the most important and fundamental works of culture. They do not just grow out of the earth, but we use our intelligence to form them from the fruits of the earth.

The matter of the Eucharist cannot be wheat and grapes, but the work of culture made from them. The sacrament transforms our works of culture into acts of cult (worship), making them supernatural and divine.”

So beer, as a kind of cultural sacrament, also points in a more limited way to this same reality.

“If beer has a place in Christian culture,” Staudt writes, “it must be understood in light of the essential drinking of Christ’s blood. The Eucharistic cup draws upon the work of human culture.”

Beer and History In his book, Staudt also traces the history of beer, from its first mention in the Bible to its contemporary rebirth as part of a larger project—the rejuvenation of monasticism.

“Beer’s role in the Bible all comes down to the meaning of the [Hebrew] word shekar,” he writes. “Scholars generally translate it ‘strong drink,’ leaving no word for beer in the Bible, a decision dating back to St. Jerome. Beer would be a surprising omission from the Bible considering that the Israelites lived between two beer-drinking cultures, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and lived in exile in both places.”

As the Gospel message spread throughout Europe so did beer, Staudt notes, pouring forth from those first institutions of concentrated Catholic culture.

“Beer, as we know it, comes from the monks,” Staudt writes, and it was the early monasteries, adopting the practices of northern European barbarians, which first formalized European beer production. But the Catholicity of beer turned stale and flat in the 16th century with the Protestant Revolt.

“The Reformation began the process of secularization in the modern world, by insisting on the essential interiority of faith,” Staudt notes. “For the reformers the Church became essentially invisible and the Christian life consisted of faith apart from reason, and grace divorced from nature…. This matters for our discussion of beer because of a fundamental shift in Catholic culture: isolating faith from the ordinary affairs of the world.”

Indeed, these “ordinary affairs of the world” were relegated to a univocal purpose. Beer was beer and faith was faith, and never would the two be associated in any substantial way again, as far as Protestantism was concerned.

But Catholic culture will out, Staudt maintains, and out it came—rejuvenated, ora et labora.

Beer and Being “In the midst of declining faithfulness to the Rule [of St. Benedict] and consequently in vocations to monastic life,” Staudt writes, “we have seen a conscious, return by some monasteries to a more traditional monastic life.” Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma and the Monastery of St. Bene-

dict in Norcia, Italy, are only two of the many examples Staudt cites of contemporary monasteries that “have all preserved or returned to the Rule’s directives for prayer, the daily schedule of monastic life, and more traditional Gregorian chant and liturgy.”

According to Staudt, these monasteries know that, as a cultural microcosm, the monastic way of life must be restored as a package deal. Where there’s prayer and work, there will be culture—and for many of these new or newly renewed monasteries, that culture includes beer.

“What is it about monks and beer?” Staudt asks. “Even after centuries of disruption, the two just can’t be kept apart! And as craft beer continues to rise in popularity in the United States, the holy craftsmen responsible for creating European brewing practices are reclaiming their own.”

The monastic efforts at spiritual excellence, therefore, spill over into other sorts of excellence, Staudt concludes.

“Why is it that those devoted to prayer develop the best beer?” he writes. “It is because the monks know how to rightly order it. And when beer is rightly ordered, it can promote a small foretaste of the joy and unity with others that we are meant to experience in heaven.”

Such an assertion implicitly acknowledges what Staudt states more clearly when he notes that this life ought to be a reflection of the next life — and that reflection includes a pint-sized bit of heaven that tastes great, is not necessarily less filling, and in its own humble way fulfills us with a kind of perfection here on earth.

“Beer brings us into contact with the fruits of the earth, the smell and taste of something real, and a cold glass in the hand, as we sit with friends and argue about reality,” Staudt notes. “Intuitively, it brings us to assent to the truth of the five senses: we recognize the world as it is and know that it is good.”

Beer and Pretzels To this end, Staudt contends, beer and spirituality pair as well as—well—beer and pretzels. (In fact, the author notes, medieval Benedictines may have developed the twisted breadstick as a meatless companion to a specially brewed Lenten beer. “Their shape also suggests hands folded in prayer, as well as three loops for the Trinity,” Staudt adds.)

But as those medieval Norwegians soon discovered, we must find the proper context for beer as part of that spirituality: “A proper spirituality of beer focuses not upon drawing beer into sacraments and sacramentals,” Staudt writes, “but rather on helping Christians draw drinking into a life rightly ordered to God. Beer finds its place in Catholic culture in light of the Eucharist, the spirituality of the monks, and the life of the saints.”

Beer is certainly not a direct channel to grace, Staudt cautions us, but it is, as the prayer for the blessing of beer found in the Roman Ritual notes, “a salutary remedy to the human race.”

“Salutary does not mean that beer leads us to salvation, but should bring us health, as part of our overall flourishing of body, mind, and soul…. This does not mean that drinking beer will automatically make us holy or healthy; actually we know that too much beer will do just the opposite!”

But, Staudt continues, “Health in body and peace in soul at the end of the prayer point us to the goal of our drinking. We want beer to contribute not just to any physical flourishing but to our whole lives.”

Beer and Conclusion Varietates Legitimae places a premium on the liturgy’s role in evangelizing; however, it also makes clear that such evangelization in cultures “marked by a disinterest or indifference to religion” must find “the most suitable means to reach spirits and hearts.”

This same desire to reach our current culture is one of the driving motivations behind The Beer Option. Calling for a “Brew Evangelization,” Staudt notes “beer draws people together for a good theological conversation and provides inspiration, which results from leisurely and thoughtful conversation.”

In other words, a healthy glass of hops and fellowship wets the whistle of today’s irreligious culture—thereby whetting this same culture’s appetite for the truth.

“Beer is a work of culture,“Staudt writes, “an act of perfecting God’s creation by drawing out its hidden possibilities. Its foundation is water: the source of life, needed to continually refresh us. To this we add barley, providing beer its nourishing power. Finally, yeast makes this barley water turn into something distinct, beer, with alcohol to lighten the heart and foster joy.”

With The Beer Option, R. Jared Staudt pours out a delightful yet sober blueprint for reclaiming the world for Christ—one beer at a time.