Adoremus Bulletin - September 2021 Issue

Adoremus Bulletin

SEPTEMBER 2021

News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

XXVII, No.2

Presence of Mind and Body

What are the Necessary Moral and Physical Criteria for True Participation in the Liturgy?

Theologians on Traditionis Custodes: True Unity Requires Liturgical Reform All Around

Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of the Tradition), his motu proprio curtailing the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Latin Rite liturgy, with the intended goal of bolstering Church unity.

To that end, the Holy Father reimposed restrictions that had been lifted only 13 years earlier by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in order to limit the influence of a traditionalist movement that he believes has bred dissent from the authority of the Second Vatican Council.

The move has been criticized in some corners of the Church as an unnecessary overreach, an instance of throwing the liturgical baby out with limited pockets of dissentious bath water. But Traditionis Custodes has also raised concerns that if genuine progress is to be made toward the Holy Father’s goal of unity and conformity to the teachings of Vatican II, the celebration of the “extraordinary form” of the Mass isn’t the only—or even the first—liturgical expression that should be reevaluated.

For instance, while first affirming the Holy Father’s insistence on “unconditional recognition of Vatican II,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller argued that such a stance necessitated renewal of the “ordinary form” of the Mass, which has suffered a bevy of abuses and distortions since its introduction in 1970, shortly after the conclusion of the Council.

“One may measure Pope Francis’

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By Jonathan Liedl National Catholic Register

How close—physically and/or morally—must one be to the liturgical action to be “present” and at Mass? Some beatification and canonization Masses (like this canonization Mass of St. Teresa of Calcutta on September 4, 2016) find the faithful so far removed from the main altar that they are no longer in Vatican City, but are in Italy—another country!

By Aaron Sanders

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n early October 2003, the Vatican announced that Mother Teresa was to be beatified later that month on October 19. I happened to be in Innsbruck, Austria, with fellow Notre Dame students on a year of study abroad. My American classmates, on October 18, floated the idea that we attend the beatification and, almost before I knew it, I was on the Via della Conciliazione outside St. Peter’s Square participating in the Mass. I have seen estimates that there were 250,000 people at that Mass, placing me near number 225,000. I could barely make out the whitish speck that was the pope at the altar, but thanks to the enormous video screens and speakers I was able to follow along.

And despite many forgotten details, I remember well the satisfaction of joining with all those people in a single act of prayer. For all the limitations of

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Adoremus Bulletin SEPTEMBER 2021

“ Yes, COVID did present unique challenges in the celebration of the liturgy, but, no, these challenges were not so unprecedented that the Church and her faithful could not—and cannot today—determine a prudent and principled course when it comes to celebrating the liturgy in times of duress.” praying in such a horde, I was there.

Or so I thought.

That’s not quite fair. I still do think I was at Mass with John Paul II; yet now, almost 20 years later, I also find it odd that my fellow worshipers and I took for granted that we were participat-

ing in the same Mass, celebrated so far ahead of us on the square. Remember: I was so far away from the altar that I was in a different country, beyond the borders of Vatican City and into Italy.

This adventure came back to mind as the Church in the United States groped its way through the coronavirus pandemic. Eucharistic celebrations made their way outside, priests and penitents pushed the maximum distance for effective absolution, and streaming became, for a while, a ubiquitous adjunct to Sunday liturgy. Creative solutions quickly allowed the faithful to see and hear the Church’s common prayer, but often these solutions seemed to stop short of asking how remote “participation” relates to the sort of participation required to fulfill one’s Sunday obligation or receive sacramental grace. And as some were content to rely on common sense and liturgical instinct to Please see PRESENCE on page 4

How Far Is Too Far? With recent COVID restrictions, improvisation seems to be the name of the game—but, as Aaron Sanders notes, the same moral and physical ground rules still apply to authentic participation......................................1

Ipse Dixit Adoremus reprints the full text of Pope Francis’s controversial motu proprio on the pre-conciliar liturgy, Traditionis Custodes, and his accompanying letter to the Church’s bishops.................................................................8

Keep Your Guard Up In the wake of Traditionis Custodes, Cardinal Robert Sarah reaffirms the Church’s liturgical tradition as the epicenter for charity, not a battleground for yet another round of liturgy wars......................................................................3

Take It to the House According to Alexis Kazimira Kutarna, in her review of Kendra Tierney’s The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion, Tierney brings home the importance of family prayer, year in and year out..............................................................12

Not a Household Name (Yet…) Father Thomas Kocik wants to make sure everyone knows who Eastern Orthodox priest and scholar Alexander Schmemann is: a liturgist with a vision for the entire Church—East and West....................................6

News & Views ....................................................1 The Rite Questions...........................................10

Continued from THEOLOGIANS, page 1 will to return to unity the deplored so-called ‘traditionalists’ (i.e., those opposed to the Missal of Paul VI) against the degree of his determination to put an end to the innumerable ‘progressivist’ abuses of the liturgy ([which was] renewed in accordance with Vatican II) that are tantamount to blasphemy,” wrote Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in his response to the motu proprio.

In fact, several theologians tell the Register that Traditionis Custodes, which calls for the celebration of the liturgy in conformity with the original intentions of the Second Vatican Council, contains within it an implicit call to bring the “ordinary form” of the Mass, which has suffered from abuses and distortions since its introduction in 1970, into greater continuity with the older “extraordinary form” from which it developed.

“If the principles the Holy Father invokes in Traditionis Custodes were taken seriously by every Catholic parish, the document would provoke a serious examination of conscience from the whole Church,” said Jesuit Father Tony Lusvardi, a professor of sacramental theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure that has been the effect.”

The priest, who is a Minnesota native, added that he is disturbed that those who choose to participate in the extraordinary form of the liturgy are often castigated as “scapegoats for disunity in the Church.” Such characterization, he said, does not serve the Holy Father’s larger purpose of fostering communion and denies the disunity fostered by irreverent celebrations of the ordinary form.

While Traditionis Custodes breaks from Summorum Pontificum in its practical prescriptions about the celebration of the extraordinary form, Father Lusvardi and others point out that Francis is explicit in his agreement with Benedict’s critique of the implementation of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

For instance, in a July 16 letter to his brother bishops accompanying Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis wrote that he is “saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides.”

“In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that ‘in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions,” the Holy Father wrote, quoting liberally from the letter his predecessor wrote accompanying his 2007 motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum.

Thus, when Pope Francis writes in Article 1 of Traditionis Custodes that “the liturgical books promulgated by St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite,” theologians say his emphasis on fidelity to the liturgical reforms of Vatican II should be read at least in part as a rebuke of wayward applications of the Mass of Paul VI that have taken place in the past 50 years.

Sown in the confusion following the Council’s aftermath, these abuses have been legion, something those who study the liturgy are familiar with not only in theory, but in experience.

Father Lusvardi, for instance, says he has been to parishes where words of the Creed have been altered to accommodate ideological agendas. Timothy O’Malley, the academic director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Liturgy, recalls a liturgy he attended where the presider “riffed off the Eucharistic Prayer,” to the point where others in attendance approached him afterward asking, “Was that even Mass?”

More broadly, however, O’Malley says “the bigger abuse is the banality of the liturgy as it’s often celebrated,” failing to integrate the different elements of the liturgy—from the posture of the priest during the Eucharist to the use of art and architecture in the parish church—with its central, sacred purpose.

“Equally important, do we even recognize why we go to Mass in the first place?” he asked. “The sacrifice of love that is being celebrated?”

If a 2019 Pew survey is any indication, the answer for most Catholics is probably “No.” According to the survey, only one-third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, implying a similar lack of belief that the lay faithful, through their baptismal priesthood, engage in “fully conscious and active participation” in Christ’s self-offering at the Mass, a central teaching of Vatican II’s constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Father Lusvardi finds this reality especially troubling, considering that the Eucharist is the sacramental means by which the Church is held together and reaffirmed as Christ’s Body.

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“There’s no scenario in which the Church finds any sort of unity without firm faith in the Real Presence,” he said, adding that he believes Pope Francis would see this as a problem, too, though Traditionis Custodes doesn’t offer any guidance on how to remedy it.

Some Catholics lay the blame for these kinds of heterodoxic trends on Vatican II’s principles of liturgical reform, citing the maxim lex orandi, lex credendi, which implies how one prays directly impacts what he or she ends up believing. But others say the problem isn’t the principles themselves, but the fact that they’ve rarely been implemented as the Council Fathers intended.

“I think that what [G.K.] Chesterton says of Christian living applies well here, too,” said Matthew Ramage, a theologian at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. “[It] has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

For instance, contrary to what most Catholics in the United States find in a typical Sunday Mass in their parish, the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium and subsequently reformed liturgical texts actually privilege many of the traditional elements contained in the usus antiquior. The use of Latin “is to be preserved,” says the Vatican II text, especially in those parts of the Mass that remain constant from week to week. Incense, chant and periods of silence are all encouraged. Ad orientem worship, in which the celebrant and the congregation all face “liturgical east,” is not disallowed. In fact, many of these elements were held up as consistent with the reform’s goal of fostering active participation of the laity, which implied not merely frenetic activity, but a full union of mind and body, soul and senses, to the liturgical action taking place.

“It is precisely the perceived lack of these exterior elements of reverence and beauty [in the ordinary form] that drive many to the extraordinary form of the Mass in search of them,” said Ramage.

Ramage says what’s especially saddening is that so many Catholics don’t know that these transcendent elements can be found in the Mass of St. Paul VI, something he experienced powerfully as a graduate student under Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, the founder of Ignatius Press and a former student of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—who, of course, would later be elected Pope Benedict XVI. According to Ramage, Father Fessio celebrated the Mass of Paul VI in a way that emphasized its continuity with the older form of the Mass, worshipping ad orientem, incorporating a schola, and praying in Latin—he even printed little missal booklets entitled “The Mass of Vatican II” with Latin and English texts of the liturgy side by side so everyone in the pews could participate

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in both word and understanding. He recalls these as “some of the most dignified and moving liturgies I’ve ever experienced.”

“The best-kept secret [of the liturgical reform] is precisely that these practices of beauty and reverence are equally native to the Novus Ordo [as to the extraordinary form],” he added.

Notre Dame’s O’Malley says that by shifting the focus back to the reformed rites of the 1970 Missal, Traditionis Custodes may allow the Church to more seriously consider “how we might celebrate the reformed Mass in a way that is attuned with the 1962 Missal,” suggesting that additional practices could be retrieved. For instance, he advocates for the reinstitution of Rogation Days, traditional days of prayer and fasting for the reparation of sin and in petition for a bountiful harvest, which he says would align well with the emphases of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on “Care for Our Common Home.”

Father Lusvardi says there are also opportunities to amend tendencies in the celebration of the ordinary form toward “minimalism”—doing the bare minimum to celebrate a valid liturgy, which, ironically, was a preconciliar characteristic of the celebration of the older form of the Mass that Vatican II sought to correct.

“It’s not a given that just because you’re celebrating the Novus Ordo, you’re being faithful to the Council’s intentions,” he said. Father Lusvardi, for instance, recommends reducing the usage of Eucharistic Prayer II, which he says “is used way too much for the simple reason—let’s be honest—that it’s the shortest.” He advocates for greater employment of the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) and Eucharistic Prayer IV, which are longer, but he says are more theologically, historically and spiritually rich.

He also encourages his brother priests to pray with the liturgical texts ahead of time to aid in more naturally praying with these texts during the Mass and cautions about overburdening the liturgy with parish announcements and other extraneous elements.

One of the potential positive outcomes of Traditionis Custodes, in Father Lusvardi’s opinion, is the possibility of people who have been nourished by the extraordinary form of the Mass sharing “some of their sensibilities, knowledge and passion with the larger Church.” He encourages them to “resist the temptation to discouragement” that they might be experiencing in the motu proprio’s aftermath and to bring their “sense of wonder, mystery and transcendence into the celebration of the Novus Ordo.”

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

Responding to Traditionis Custodes

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

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eeks have now passed since the July 16 release of Pope Francis’s motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, “On the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970.” Since then, anyone with access to Catholic media has had a chance to read or write reactions. Adoremus’s own initial reaction followed shortly after the motu proprio via our electronic monthly missive, AB Insight (and is reprinted on page 11). Now, after this initial period of reflection, what is to be done? How shall we respond?

Of course, individual Catholics, parishes, priests, and bishops will decide for themselves and those in their care on the best course to take, one filled with faith, motivated by the desire for sanctity, and in a spirit of humility and obedience. For our part, Adoremus sees itself squarely positioned to respond to one of the Holy Father’s mandates.

In his accompanying letter to Traditionis Custodes, for example, Pope Francis says he is “saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides.” He continues: “In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that ‘in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions.’” His sadness is ours—and that of many others.

Indeed, ignoring ritual instructions, unchecked liturgical abuse, and the continued distortion of the liturgy these abuses yield have all driven many souls to the relative place of stability offered in the usus antiquior.

In the same vein, Pope Francis goes on to encourage bishops “to be vigilant in ensuring that every liturgy be celebrated with decorum and fidelity to the liturgical books promulgated after Vatican Council II, without the eccentricities that can easily degenerate into abuses.”

Here, too, we could not agree more with the Holy Father. Adoremus will continue to inform, inspire, and promote the celebration of the Mass and sacraments in a way that is faithful to the tradition, the Second Vatican Council, its revised rites, and the needs of men and women today.

“I am saddened,” writes Pope Francis in his letter accompanying Traditionis Custodes, “by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides. In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that ‘in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions.’” Thus, one response to the Holy Father’s letter works to return to a faithful and intelligent celebration of the reformed rites.

Each priest and each Catholic, in fact, should have the same desire for a liturgy free of abuse and distortion if they wish to follow the direction of Pope Francis and his motu proprio. At bottom, the goal of the letter is to foster the unity of the Church. Consider the letter’s opening line: “Guardians of the tradition, the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome constitute the visible principle and foundation of the unity of their particular Churches.” From here, the Holy Father repeats the call to unity throughout the motu proprio. Any Catholic praying the postconciliar liturgy and who is interested

in implementing Traditionis Custodes in obedience to the Holy Father should work toward this same end. And the source of this unitive work begins with the liturgy.

Pope Francis—along with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II before him—sees that the first prescription for a beautiful liturgy, a healthy Church, and a holy life begins with faithful adherence to the liturgical books. Priests must, therefore, “resolve to celebrate faithfully and reverently, in accord with the Church’s tradition, the mysteries of Christ, especially the Sacrifice of the Eucharist” as they promised at their ordinations (Ordination of Priests, 124).

Liturgical ministers should “learn all matters concerning public divine worship and strive to grasp their inner spiritual meaning: in that way [they] will be able each day to offer [themselves] entirely to God, [and] be an example to all by [their] gravity and reverence in Church” (Pope Paul VI, Ministeria Quaedam, on those serving at the altar).

Musicians need to desire to “continue that [musical] tradition which has furnished the Church, in her divine worship, with a truly abundant heritage [and] examine the works of the past, their types and characteristics, but let them also pay careful attention to the new laws and requirements of the liturgy” (Musicam Sacram, 59).

Even the baptized must come to a familiarity with “the current liturgical texts and norms,” and especially “the great riches found in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Order of Readings for Mass” (Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 40).

“In order to promote the concord and unity of the Church,” Pope Francis has restricted the use of the usus antiquior and returned much of its oversight to the local bishop. But he also calls for the liturgy to be celebrated faithfully, by the books, which have been revised in accord with tradition. As he told the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2019, “The liturgy is not ‘the field of do-it-yourself,’ but the epiphany of ecclesial communion.” If more Catholics—clergy and laity—understood and followed Pope Francis’s words, then his claim in the letter accompanying the recent motu proprio may be true: “Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite.”

Thus, one response to Traditionis Custodes works to celebrate the postconciliar liturgy worthily, beautifully, humbly, intelligently, and faithful. Adoremus!

On the Credibility of the Catholic Church

By Cardinal Robert Sarah Editor’s note: The essay first appeared August 14 in the French-language newspaper Le Figaro. The English translation by the National Catholic Register is reprinted here with the permission of Cardinal Robert Sarah. It has been edited for style.

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oubt has taken hold of Western thought. Intellectuals and politicians alike describe the same impression of collapse. Faced with the breakdown of solidarity and the disintegration of identities, some turn to the Catholic Church. They ask her to give a reason to live together to individuals who have forgotten what unites them as one people. They beg her to provide a little more soul to make the cold harshness of consumer society bearable. When a priest is murdered, everyone is touched and many feel stricken to the core.

But is the Church capable of responding to these calls? Certainly, she has already played this role of guardian and transmitter of civilization. At the twilight of the Roman Empire, she knew how to pass on the flame that the barbarians were threatening to extinguish. But does she still have the means and the will to do so today?

At the foundation of a civilization, there can only be one reality that surpasses it: a sacred invariant. Malraux [André Malraux (1901-1976) served as minister of cultural affairs in France under President Charles de Gaulle] noted this with realism: “The nature of a civilization is what gathers around a religion. Our civilization is incapable of building a temple or a tomb. It will either be forced to find its fundamental value, or it will decay.”

Without a sacred foundation, protective and insuperable boundaries are abolished. An entirely profane world becomes a vast expanse of quicksand. Everything is sadly open to the winds of arbitrariness. In the absence of the stability of a foundation that escapes man, peace and joy—the signs of a long-lasting civilization—

If the Church wishes to lead the men and women of today to encounter Christ, she will do so not only through the truth of faith and the soundness of her moral teaching, but also in the privileged place of the liturgy. Writes Cardinal Robert Sarah, pictured here, elevating the host, "Moral and dogmatic teaching, as well as mystical and liturgical patrimony, are the setting and the means of this fundamental and sacred encounter. Christian civilization is born of this encounter. Beauty and culture are its fruits.”

are constantly swallowed up by a sense of precariousness. The anguish of imminent danger is the seal of barbaric times. Without a sacred foundation, every bond becomes fragile and fickle.

Some ask the Catholic Church to play this solid foundation role. They would like to see her assume a social function, namely to be a coherent system of values, a cultural and aesthetic matrix. But the Church has no other sacred reality to offer than her faith in Jesus,

God made man. Her sole goal is to make possible the encounter of men with the person of Jesus. Moral and dogmatic teaching, as well as mystical and liturgical patrimony, are the setting and the means of this fundamental and sacred encounter. Christian civilization is born of this encounter. Beauty and culture are its fruits.

In order to respond to the world’s expectations, the Church must therefore find the way back to herself and Please see CREDIBILITY on page 11

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Live streamed Masses were already on offer before the pandemic, and they proliferated quickly as bishops stopped public celebrations. Various means of broadcasting the Mass certainly do allow one to unite in spirit with prayer conducted elsewhere, but whatever benefit is derived from that spiritual union, those too physically remote to form a moral union with the priest at the altar should not be said to participate in the full sense expected of Catholics each Sunday and holyday. This judgment is reinforced by the fact that Catholics unable to be present in a church are not canonically bound to view a Mass online in substitution for physical attendance.

Continued from PRESENCE, page 1 solve “unprecedented” problems, did anyone really believe the questions posed by this pandemic were entirely new or sui generis?

The answer, in short, is yes and no. Yes, COVID did present unique challenges in the celebration of the liturgy, but, no, these challenges were not so unprecedented that the Church and her faithful could not—and cannot today—determine a prudent and principled course when it comes to celebrating the liturgy in times of duress.

Granted, we have no patristic treatise on how sacramental signification works via Zoom or Facetime, but certainly some weighty theologians in past centuries had addressed the fundamental question of what is required for an individual, body and soul, to be united to the liturgy and thus to participate fully in its graces.

If we could identify a consensus from which to branch out into debates still unsettled, we could ensure that our present reasoning was organically developed from the previous tradition.

Traditional manuals of moral theology provide just such a resource from which to gain perspectives on liturgy in the information age. Such resources have, of course, their limits. The manuals are not exhaustive; they are not magisterial; they do not account for more recent discussions in theology. And yet despite all this, the orientations sketched out by the manuals invite us into conversation with the broader tradition. By taking our bearings from past thinkers we can chart the safest paths for future endeavors. Eschewing the temptation to stake out definitively proscriptive “no”s in understanding the proper celebration of the liturgy, we can consider what would be best to pursue with our “yes” in such matters. Because liturgy is vast and space is limited, I will focus on participation in Mass, first summarizing traditional requirements for participation, then evaluating modern experiments in that light.

Ligourian Measure How do we know, from a physical standpoint, whether we’re actually participating in a Mass or other liturgical action? Do we measure this question in terms of physical distance? What about when there are obstacles to our viewing the liturgy? These and similar questions are the same which many priests and bishops have had to grapple with in the past two years of pandemic.

In responding to the basic question of participation, St. Alphonsus Liguori1 constitutes the touchpoint for all other authors examined here. Since the Sacred Penitentiary declared all his moral opinions safe to follow, it is no surprise that Gury,2 Lehmkuhl,3 Slater,4 Prümmer,5 and Jone6 do not venture too far afield from Ligouri’s distillation of our subject. This question was treated under moral theology because it dealt with a grave canonical obligation, namely that, in the current wording, “the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass” (Canon 1247), or to “assist” at Mass (Canon 1248) on Sundays and holydays. Neither of those verbs can be accomplished by the faithful unless they are somehow present.

But that raises another question: since we as composite beings may be present to a liturgy in more than one

mode, which of these modes are necessary for full participation?

We might say that a Catholic is spiritually united to a liturgical action. This spiritual union can admit of various degrees but is arguably operative in the plenary indulgence (Handbook of Indulgences, particular grant §4) offered “to the faithful who devoutly receive” the pope’s blessing urbi et orbi “even if, because of reasonable circumstances, they are unable to be present physically at the sacred rite, provided that they follow it devoutly as it is broadcast live.” One might also consider providing an “offering to apply the Mass for a specific intention” (Canon 945) or appointing a proxy to contract marriage (Canon 1105) as types of spiritual union. (Though two parties must be present together to contract marriage, the exceptionally legal nature of matrimony allows a bride or groom to empower someone else to express consent on his or her behalf.) Yet the sense operative in the manuals’ discussions of the Sunday obligation is far closer to that of the urbi et orbi example. It consists of being able to direct one’s attention to the ceremonies and follow their progress.

Consequently, taking up a seat beside the altar would not matter if one then spent the Mass asleep, or painting, or teaching (Liguori §312). But this attention must always be tied to physical (i.e., bodily) presence at the rite being celebrated in order to fulfill the obligation to participate in Mass. “One would not hear Mass so as to satisfy the precept if he were stationed apart at a considerable distance from the place where it was being celebrated, even though he might be able to see and hear what was being done. He must be morally present so as to form one of those who are together hearing and offering up the Holy Sacrifice” (Slater, 171). This moral union with the liturgy demands that someone be physically “present in the place where the sacred action is taking place in such a way that he can be called one of those who are assisting and offering the sacrifice” (Gury, 341). In other words, moral presence combines with other criteria of physical proximity “such that one may be reckoned among the attendants at divine service” (Jone, 197).

Bodily nearness can, nonetheless, cover many deficiencies in a participant’s ability to perceive the flow of Mass directly. “For it suffices to hear Mass in the choir behind the altar, or through a window which leads into the church, even if one cannot make out the priest, provided that by means of the others assisting at Mass one can direct one’s attention to what is taking place”

“ Where attendees were connected to the sacred action by nothing but electronic means, it would seem the parish had not found a way to welcome them to Mass but had welcomed them instead to a place where they could view a livestream.” ­­

(Liguori). “Similarly, someone can assist at Mass from everywhere inside a church, provided that he can discern in some manner what is being done at the altar” (Lehmkuhl, 335); the building unites its occupants despite any space between them. “Even those who stand outside the church close to the door (even if it is shut) or who are in some neighbouring building” participate if they can follow the action through their own senses or through observation of others (Prümmer, 422).

But once outside the church, distance from other worshipers is far more likely to break their moral unity.

Liguori, Gury, and Lehmkuhl posit at least 30 paces from the church or crowd without severing one’s bond with the liturgy, whereas a street or square might break the bond sooner (Slater), and a busy street more so than an empty one (Lehmkuhl). Jone’s more rigorous allowance of 60 feet is still generous for the onlooker who can see or hear through a door or window, though he also explicitly rules out radio as one’s means of perceiving the ceremonies. But a large crowd or army can unite one to the altar (Slater) thus ignoring limitations imposed by empty space.

Altogether, then, by requiring that the faithful be “physically and morally present” to participate in the Mass, the moralists are demanding that we be 1) bodily stationed within a certain range of the liturgy (physically present) but that we are also 2) attentive to the sacred action as 3) a reasonably identifiable part of the group physically present around that altar (morally present).

COVID Test Ultimately, these considerations of physical and moral presence are trying to determine the limits of our ability to be “participants in a human mode” (Lehmkuhl). This human mode will not rest exclusively upon the powers of body or soul but will encompass the whole of the embodied spirit who is the human person. And with that as our goal we can examine various responses to pandemic conditions to test how well they manage to provide opportunities for full participation in body and soul.

“ Ultimately, these considerations of physical and moral presence are trying to determine the limits of our ability to be ‘participants in a human mode.’” ­­ Live streamed Masses were already on offer before the pandemic, and they proliferated quickly as bishops stopped public celebrations. As attempts to remain connected to the Church at large or even one’s parish church, various means of broadcasting the Mass certainly do allow one to unite in spirit with prayer conducted elsewhere. But whatever benefit is derived from that spiritual union, those too physically remote to form a moral union with the priest at the altar should not be said to participate in the full sense expected of Catholics each Sunday and holyday. This judgment is reinforced by the fact that Catholics unable to be present in a church are not canonically bound to view a Mass online in substitution for physical attendance.

And if completely remote viewing is insufficient to merely participate in a Eucharistic liturgy, we ought to consider it insufficient to remotely perform a ministry at Mass. Just as some clerics allowed designated godparents to speak their parts via phone or Skype, some tried to increase diversity of ministries and participation at Mass by patching in remote readers or musicians. Though better than a recording because at least synchronic with the sacred action, it is hard to see how someone could serve the liturgical assembly without assembling in the same place.

For instance, if the second reading or the Sanctus is entrusted to a non-participant, it seems that those who are physically and morally present are deprived of the opportunity to participate fully, for the parts that have been phoned in are in some sense lacking from the celebration. It would have been better to have a liturgical act clearly unified and complete than to prioritize diverse forms of union in a potentially incomplete set of diffuse actions.

Alert, perhaps, to the need to gather physically, others offered the creative solution of Mass in a parking lot or field. At its most cautious, this sort of celebration meant all attendees remained within their vehicles, windows up, to limit contagion. Worshipers might listen on an FM frequency or even follow a stream on electronic devices. This meant they were able to meet the benchmark of following the sacred action, even when perhaps none but the first row had a direct view of Mass. Yet Jone’s dismissal of radio aligns with my own suspicion that

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How do we know whether we’re actually participating in a Mass or other liturgical action? Do we measure this question in terms of physical distance? What about when there are obstacles to our viewing the liturgy? What kind of remote participation suffices? These and similar questions are the same which many priests and bishops have had to grapple with in the past two years of pandemic. In responding to the basic question of participation, the moral theologian St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) lays down reliable principles when looking for new answers.

to be discounted if the alternative is not assembling at all. Yet would it not be a more human form of gathering, and more in line with traditional views on participation, to sacrifice some audibility or visibility for the sake of maintaining a continuous congregation that extends from sanctuary to last worshiper?

The Church doubtless wants us to see and hear the liturgy. All the same, before worrying about the best vantage or following each prayer as the celebrant offers it, the Church requires that we gather, bodily, around an altar and join with all those standing round in offering ourselves with Christ.

We should, then, prioritize physical gathering over

technologically mediated perception. But standing “together” begins to lose its own plausibility after a certain point, even if our perception of Mass through our neighbors’ actions is assisted by microphones and screens. To return to my experience of Mother Teresa’s beatification, it seems that 250,000 people would constitute a large army. Recording-breaking papal crowds, on the other hand, estimated at 6 or 7 million, exceed worldwide American forces in the early years of World War II. At that point the criteria devised for the scale of a parish church simply break down. To reduce to the absurd, a congregation of 6 million spaced at 3-foot intervals in single file could begin at an altar in Paris and stretch most of the way to Moscow, with each person in line able to “follow” the flow of Mass as it rippled down the line. Yet checking off traditional criteria of moral and physical presence would not prevent credible participation from failing well before crossing the Rhine. Eventually a giant crowd loses its ability to unite in a single action in a way that we as tiny, limited creatures can truly soak in the significance of a liturgy through body and soul.

Keep It Together Though I cannot challenge a pope’s judgment that a crowd of millions has fulfilled its obligation to attend Mass, I can question whether such large gatherings are the best way to promote fully human interaction with the liturgy and with one another.

As we set our sights past the pandemic we ought to keep this goal of human connection in mind so that our physical and moral presence is neither merely notional nor minimal but allows each of us to know, quite clearly, that we have gone to the altar of God. Aaron Sanders is Director of the Office for Worship in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, MI. He holds a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame and lives in Grand Rapids with his wife and seven children.

1. de Ligouri, Alphonsus. Theologia moralis, rev. ed. Turin: Hyacinth Marietti, 1879.

2. Gury, Jean Pierre. Compendium theologiae moralis, 8th ed. expanded

by Antonio Ballerini. Rome: Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 1884.

3. Lehmkuhl, August. Theologia moralis. 5th ed. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1888.

4. Slater, Thomas. A Manual of Moral Theology, 5th ed. London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1925.

5. Prümmer, Dominic M. Handbook of Moral Theology, 5th ed. Transl.

Gerald W. Shelton. Cork: Mercier, 1956.

6. Jone, Heribert. Moral Theology, 18th ed. Translated by Urban Adelman. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1962.

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Alone Together When worship moved back indoors from the parking lots, many dioceses capped attendance at a certain percent of usual capacity within a church building. While some parishes added Sunday Masses to welcome all comers despite restrictions, others sought to accommodate more attendees in auxiliary or “overflow” locations, allowing the faithful to sit as a group and watch a live broadcast of the Mass.

Sometimes these auxiliary locations were immediately connected to the main body of the church and the audio/video feeds only made it easier to follow what one could have, with greater difficulty, perceived without them. For instance, people seated in a narthex could have heard the organ and seen when to stand, sit, or kneel, so the technology helped them unite more intentionally to an action in which even our traditional criteria would have said they were already participating.

But in other cases the overflow seating was in a completely separate section of the parish complex, like a parish hall or gym, sometimes even across the street from the church itself. In those cases, where attendees were connected to the sacred action by nothing but electronic means, it would seem the parish had not found a way to welcome them to Mass but had welcomed them instead to a place where they could view a livestream.

The ability to gather even for this opportunity is not

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electronically mediated perception is not sufficient to connect us to the liturgy in a human mode—fully engaging body and spirit—without further elements to knit us into an assembly.

For example, someone sitting in the back seat of a car in the last row of the parking lot might have no direct means of perception and, with everyone sealed in separate vehicles, others’ reactions (such as bowing the head or making the sign of the cross) as the Mass progresses will also be unseen. Indeed, with so many steps to separate the congregation, the moral component of the physical assembly is undermined, perhaps irreparably. The effort to organize and attend parking lot Masses of this most extreme sort was certainly salutary, and an opportunity to receive Communion is no mean benefit.

But wherever possible it would seem better to invite attendees to worship, distanced, outside their cars. This would degrade, perhaps, the ability to follow by electronic means. Still, by increasing the ability to perceive Mass through other participants’ actions, this alternative form of parking-lot worship would engender greater confidence that worshipers were truly gathered together, morally present with a group stretching to the altar.

Continued from NEWS & VIEWS, page 2

the end result of all of this could be that more Catholics experience the full splendor of the Church’s liturgy,” says the Jesuit priest.

Ramage agrees and says that while Traditionis Custodes “has given rise to quite understandable feelings of sadness and confusion among those of us who have benefited from our experience of the Church’s traditional liturgy,” he hopes that the motu proprio will result in a greater incorporation of the liturgical treasures of the usus antiquior into the celebration of the Novus Ordo, “while at the same time proving to seekers of beauty and reverence that they do not need to seek out the extraordinary form to get what they can find in the ordinary form.”

O’Malley acknowledges that some adherents of the extraordinary form are suspicious of the reformed Mass itself and believe that no amount of incorporating elements of the older form of the liturgy will ever make the Mass of Paul VI acceptable.

“But I think this is wrongheaded,” he said. “Celebrate the reformed liturgy with reverence, and saints will arise.”

Liturgical Institute Announces First “Liturgy Week” Conference The Liturgical Institute of Mundelein, IL, is offering its first Liturgy Week Conference, November 29– December 2. Co-sponsored by Adoremus, this inaugural conference will focus on Sacramental Preparation for Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA), and will teach directors how to build a robust RCIA program with a solid foundation in Sacramental Theology.

Each full day of the conference will consist of a short course made up of five one-hour lectures as well as sung liturgies. See more information at the Liturgical Institute’s conference website, https://learn. liturgicalinstitute.org/liturgy-weeks/.

The conference will feature a trio of experts on the RCIA process: Dr. William Keimig, assistant director of the Catechetical Institute at Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH, who will speak on the liturgical, catechetical, and pastoral dimensions of the RCIA process in his presentation, “Sacramental Preparation.”

Father Randy Stice, director of the Office of Worship and Liturgy for the Diocese of Knoxville, TN, will speak

on the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation, and First Communion) in his presentation “Day of Initiation.”

Dr. Timothy O’Malley, academic director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, South Bend, IN, will speak on the importance of post-baptismal formation in parishes in his presentation, “Mystagogical Formation.”

The Liturgical Institute took its cue to inaugurate the Liturgical Week Conference series from a similar venture undertaken in the mid-20th century by members of the Liturgical Movement, which sought since its founding in 19th-century France to renew the Catholic faithful in their love for and understanding of the sacred liturgy of the Church. Members of this movement invited priests and Catholic liturgists from around the world to come learn and discuss topics of sacramental importance. The first of these conferences was held in Chicago in 1940.

“It is our hope to reignite this tradition in the same place that it started over eighty years ago,” announced the conference organizers at its website.

Please see NEWS & VIEWS page 11

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

In the Name of Liturgy and Theology and Piety: The Integrated Liturgical Vision of Alexander Schmemann

By Father Thomas Kocik

S

A Liturgist’s World Alexander Schmemann was born in 1921 in Estonia into a Russian family, with Baltic German ancestors on his father’s side. When he was a young child, the Russian Revolution forced his family to leave home. They eventually settled in Paris, at that time home to tens of thousands of Russian emigrants. Young Alexander received his primary education at a Russian military school in Versailles and then transferred to a gymnaziya (high school). Not wanting to remain in isolation from the surrounding culture, he completed his education at a French lycée and at the University of Paris.

From his teenage years Schmemann was involved in Paris’s St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, where he served as an altar boy and subdeacon. During the Second World War he studied at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris (1940-45). It was there that Schmemann’s worldview was essentially shaped.1 In 1943 he married the German-born Juliana Ossorguine (1923-2017), a student at the Sorbonne whose family, like his, were emigrant Russians.2 Upon graduation he remained at St. Sergius to teach Church history and was ordained a priest in 1946.

In 1951 Father Alexander accepted an invitation to join the faculty of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, which at that time was ensconced in a few modest apartments in Manhattan. Soon he became recognized as a leading authority on Orthodox liturgical theology. Having maintained ties in Paris, he earned a doctorate from St. Sergius in 1959. When St. Vladimir’s relocated to the Crestwood section of Yonkers, New York, in 1962, Schmemann accepted the post as dean, which he held until his death from cancer on December 13, 1983.

Many activities occupied Schmemann’s time in America: family life, teaching, seminary administration, ecclesiastical politics,3 weekly sermon broadcasts in Russian on Radio Liberty (which gained a broad audience in the Soviet Union, including the famous dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn), speaking engagements at pan-Orthodox and ecumenical gatherings, and, of course, writing numerous articles and books. His major liturgical studies are: Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966), For the Life of the World (1973), Of Water and the Spirit (1974), and The Eucharist (posthumous, 1988), all published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

As time moved on, Schmemann became less and less interested in academic theology, preferring instead “to write for the people, not for theologians.”4 The memoirs of his last ten years, published in 2000, are scattered with comments about how pleased he was when ordinary people complimented his writings.

Visionary Look at Prayer Liturgical theology, as the term is generally understood, has its roots in the collaboration and mutual influence of Russian and Western (especially French) scholars in the 20th century. The Orthodox theologians who settled in “Russian Paris,” including Schmemann, engaged with the great Catholic figures of Ressourcement, a theological movement of the 1930s to 1950s that set the stage for the Second Vatican Council. Its principal exponents, many of them noted Dominicans and Jesuits, sought to breathe new life into the soul of Catholic theology by returning to its sources, particularly the Church Fathers, both Western and Eastern.5 At that same time, another movement of renewal, the Liturgical Movement, was underway in the West.6 Its members mobilized Ressourcement concepts, drawing from old, significant wells long forgotten. “It was from

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eptember 13, 2021, marks the centennial of the birth of Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann. If you have never heard of him, it is probably because he inhabited a world little known to people in the West, including the religiously observant; yet, this individual and his world have much to offer us in an understanding of God and his Kingdom.

Schmemann was a Russian Orthodox priest and theologian who turned the conventional approach to liturgical study inside out. His work spawned a great deal of liturgical and pastoral renewal in the Orthodox Church, especially in North America. This article will give a brief account of his life and sketch out the basic features of his vision of the liturgy. It will become plain that, although Schmemann deals with the Byzantine Rite, his key insights remain significant for Christians of all traditions.

September 13, 2021, marks the centennial of the birth of Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann. If you have never heard of him, it is probably because he inhabited a world little known to people in the West, including the religiously observant; yet, this individual and his world have much to offer us in an understanding of God and his Kingdom.

that existing milieu,” writes John Meyendorff (Schmemann’s successor as dean of St. Vladimir’s), “that Father Schmemann really learned ‘liturgical theology,’ a ‘philosophy of time’ and the true meaning of the ‘paschal mystery.’”7 Until the mid-20th century, the study of the liturgy in Orthodox religious schools was largely focused on liturgical rubrics. The case was not very different in the Catholic Church: liturgical studies were assigned to moral theology, canon law, and, for the history of the liturgical rites themselves, Church history. With the impact of the Liturgical Movement, the liturgy became a specific area of theological studies. Schmemann perceived a danger in this. He thought it bad enough that theology had become confined to academia and thus cut off from both worship and piety, but now the liturgy becomes just one among many objects to evaluate or resources to mine. Liturgical theology, as Schmemann conceives it, is neither liturgiology—the study of the development of liturgical rites, usually liturgical books—nor a theology of liturgy. Rather it is theology that springs directly from the liturgy, that is implicit in the Church’s liturgical experience.8 Its practitioners, the real “liturgists,” are not academic theologians in their studies but ordinary people in the pews, as personified by Aidan Kavanagh’s “Mrs. Murphy.”9

“ The liturgy, to Schmemann’s mind, is the very condition for theology; it is what makes ‘talk about God’ possible. That is because God reveals himself and acts in the liturgy.”

This notion of liturgical theology as a true method of doing theology, rather than one branch of theology among others, did not originate with Schmemann.10 It was Schmemann, however, who contributed most to working out the concept and spreading it beyond the Orthodox world. Few, if any, liturgical scholars in Schmemann’s time (or now) would have disputed that the liturgy is a main source of theology, indeed theology’s source par excellence, but for Schmemann even that is not saying enough. The liturgy, to his mind, is the very condition for theology; it is what makes “talk about God” possible. That is because God reveals himself and acts in the liturgy.11 Useful though it may be, say, to compare the Greek and Slavic ways of celebrating the Eucharist, or to trace the evolution of initiation rites, hymnography, liturgical feasts, etc., Schmemann’s concern goes deeper: What can these things teach us about a proper worship of God, about what it means to give thanks, to bless, to lament, to consecrate, to offer sacrifice? Hence his definition of liturgical theology

as “the elucidation of the meaning of worship.”12 From this perspective, it becomes clear that the object of liturgical theology is not any particular liturgical rite or liturgy in general but theology, that is, the revelation of Christ as believed and understood in the Church, in the actual practice of her worship, where Scripture and Tradition come alive.13 Because its ultimate concern is with what lies behind the words, forms, gestures, and symbols (both old and new), liturgical theology has its place even beyond the historically “liturgical churches.”14 Sacramentally Real Schmemann had what is sometimes called a sacramental imagination. One sees this in his running polemic against “religion,” meaning “one part of life, one sacred compartment as opposed to all the rest considered as profane.”15 In this respect we might call him a mystic, ever attuned to the spiritual realities that underlie the commonplace. This way of looking at the world, of seeing the “natural” infused with the “supernatural”—or better: all reality “charged with the presence and promise of Christ”16 —formed Schmemann’s challenge to contemporary secularism.17 It also explains why his liturgical theology has been succinctly described as “a lived eschatology.”18 It is always focused on the future Kingdom of God that is already experienced in this world. Schmemann defines the Church as the “place of the revelation of the Kingdom” and “the Kingdom19 of God among and inside us.”20 The Christian experience of the Kingdom should foster the goal of liturgical theology as Schmemann describes it: to reintegrate theology, liturgy, and piety within one fundamental vision.21 David Fagerberg deftly lays bare what is at stake: “Separate liturgy from theology and piety, and we get human ritual; separate theology from liturgy and piety, and we get a religious philosophy; separate piety from liturgy and theology and we get idiosyncratic religiosity.”22 The most concrete manifestation or “epiphany” of the Church as the Kingdom is the celebration of the Eucharist, in which we experience a foretaste of the Messianic banquet that awaits us with the fulfillment of all things in Christ. In this fashion, Schmemann calls the Eucharist the “sacrament of the Kingdom,” a relationship signified by the opening proclamation of the Divine Liturgy: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.”23 Expanding on this point, he bemoans the longstanding neglect in sacramental theology of the eschatological dimension of the Eucharist, that is to say, the Eucharist seen as “the Church’s entrance into heaven, fulfillment at the table of Christ, in his Kingdom.”24 Another aspect of Schmemann’s liturgical theology is derived in part from the work of St. Sergius’s Nicholas Afanasiev, namely, eucharistic ecclesiology.25 This model of the Church unites into a single concept two definitions of the body of Christ as found in the teaching of St. Paul. On the one hand, the body of Christ is the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, partaken by the faithful, thus uniting them into one ecclesial body (1 Corinthians 10:16-17); on the other hand, the body of Christ is the Church (1 Corinthians 12:27-28). The Fathers of the Church were particularly occupied with the relationship between the eucharistic body and the mystical body of Christ, with how the Eucharist makes the Church. In the transition from patristic to scholastic theology in the early medieval period, attention shifted to the question of how Christ becomes really present in the sacrament through the action of the priest, that is, how the Church makes the Eucharist.26 In consequence, as Schmemann notes with regret, both the “ecclesiological meaning of the Eucharist” and the “eucharistic dimension of ecclesiology” fell into general oblivion.27 Ecclesial Trinity Eucharist, Church, and Kingdom are inseparable, indeed triune. In keeping with his distaste for “religion” (as opposed to a real Church and a real liturgy), Schmemann criticizes the “‘sacralization’ of Christian worship” whereby the Eucharist “was celebrated on behalf of the people, for their sanctification—but the Sacrament ceased to be experienced as the very actualization of the Church.”28 Furthermore, he writes, “The whole history of the Church has been marked by pious attempts to reduce the Eucharist, to make it ‘safe,’ to dilute it in piety, to reduce it to fasting and preparation, to tear it away from the church (ecclesiology), from the

“ The Fathers of the Church were particularly occupied with the relationship between the eucharistic body and the mystical body of Christ, with how the Eucharist makes the Church.”

Reform vs. Rediscovery For all his efforts to highlight the deeper themes of the liturgy which had suffered eclipse, Schmemann does not advocate broad ritual reform. On the contrary, he repudiates the view of other scholars who interpret him as preparing the grounds for a liturgical reform that would restore the “essence” of the liturgy: “Yes, our liturgy, to be sure, carries with it many non-essential elements, many ‘archaeological’ remnants. But rather than denouncing them in the name of liturgical purity we must strive to discover and to help others discover the lex orandi, which none of these accidental ingredients has managed to obscure. The time thus is not for external liturgical reform but for a theology and piety drinking again from the eternal and unchanging sources of liturgical tradition.”35 Here we may pause to note a significant difference between the application of liturgical theology in the Western and Eastern Churches. In the West, ideas that scholars conceived in their studies have had a direct influence on the liturgy, notably with the reform of the Roman Rite after Vatican II. Old rites were abandoned and replaced by new, revised rites. The experience of the East has been different: the manner of liturgical celebration has changed—the music is often simpler and less intrusive, the “secret” prayers are sometimes said audibly (this was Schmemann’s practice), the laity receive the Eucharist more often than in the past—but the prayers and ceremonial remain largely untouched. Liturgy is still thought of as received from tradition rather than planned and imposed from above.

The Liturgical Movement impressed Schmemann with its attention to the liturgy as a real participation in the Paschal Mystery, prefigured in the Old Testament and accomplished in Christ’s life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. This is possible because the Incarnation of the divine Son brought eternity into time, thereby transcending time and giving it new meaning.

Schmemann speaks of the liturgical experience of time as “time that is eschatologically transparent.”36 As the sacrament of the Kingdom, the Eucharist manifests the Church “as the new aeon; it is participation in the Kingdom as the parousia, as the presence of the Resurrected and Resurrecting Lord.”37

Eucharistic Heart This real entrance into the Kingdom or life in the coming age should inspire the faithful to share in the work of God here and now. Schmemann speaks of a “movement of ascension” intrinsic to the liturgy that draws us up to the throne of God in his Kingdom, as well as a “movement of return” that transforms the Church into

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world (cosmology, history), from the Kingdom (eschatology).”29 Thus he expresses his vocation as a liturgical theologian in terms of a “fight for the Eucharist” against the reductionist assaults of clericalism and secularism.30 The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Church and therefore of the Kingdom, not “one of the means of sanctification”31 subject to clerical gatekeeping, on the one hand, or, on the other, to “such principles as the famous ‘relevance,’ or ‘urgent needs of modern society,’ ‘the celebration of life,’ ‘social justice.’”32 This intuition led Schmemann to strive to improve the standard of liturgical celebration at the parochial level: “The liturgy is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole ‘beauty’ of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.”33 The bane of Christian worship has been minimalism in its various forms, whether by doing the bare minimum necessary for a “valid” sacrament (an idea inherited from the “theology of liturgy”), or by reducing the liturgy’s essentially corporate nature to private family events. Schmemann deplores the “liturgical decadence” whereby, for example, “today it takes some fifteen minutes to perform [Baptism] in a dark corner of a church, with one ‘psaltist’ giving the responses, an act in which the Fathers saw and acclaimed the greatest solemnity of the Church….”34

Alexander Schmemann’s major liturgical studies are: Introduction to Liturgical Theology (1966), For the Life of the World (1973), Of Water and the Spirit (1974), and The Eucharist (posthumous, 1988), all published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. As time moved on, Schmemann became less and less interested in academic theology, preferring instead “to write for the people, not for theologians.”

mission, a mission of service to the world, drawing the world into the Kingdom: “The Eucharist is always the End, the sacrament of the parousia, and yet it is always the beginning, the starting point: now mission begins.”38 Even if until now you had never heard of Father Alexander Schmemann, the odds are very good that you would have heard that the word “Eucharist” derives from the Greek word for thanksgiving. With respect to Schmemann’s liturgical contribution, a Byzantine Catholic priest writes, “We are made to feel that we truly do want to worship.”39 Higher praise for a liturgical scholar is hard to imagine, and Schmemann himself tells us why: “The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.”40 Father Thomas Kocik is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, MA. In residence at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Hyannis, he serves as chaplain to Cape Cod Hospital and to the Latin Mass Apostolate of Cape Cod. He is a member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and former editor of its journal, Antiphon. Among his many published works are The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate (Ignatius Press, 2003) and Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement (Chorabooks, 2019).

A complete bibliography is available at https://thomaskocik.academia.edu.

1. John Meyendorff, Afterword to The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983, trans. Juliana Schmemann (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 347.

2. Their marriage bore the fruit of three children. Juliana would have a long career teaching in New York girls’ schools.

3. One of Schmemann’s proudest achievements was helping to secure autocephaly, or self-governance, for the Orthodox Church in America, which until 1970 had been part of the Moscow Patriarchate.

4. Schmemann, Journals, 93.

5. Ressourcement (loosely, a “re-sourcing”) was a reaction against traditional Neo-scholasticism, perceived as a distortion of the legitimate method of St. Thomas Aquinas, characterized by a narrow intellectualism that diminishes the glory and mystery of revelation to rationalistic categories. A good introduction is Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed.

Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). At the same time, Orthodox theology was undergoing its own version of ressourcement called the “neo-patristic synthesis.”

6. See Thomas M. Kocik, Singing His Song: A Short History of the Liturgical Movement, Revised and Expanded Edition (Hong Kong: Chorabooks, 2019).

7. Meyendorff, Afterword to Journals, 347.

8. An analogy can be made between the liturgical theologian and the religious poet. The religious poet is not a poet who treats of religious matters only (a poet of religion), but one who treats the whole subject of poetry in a religious spirit.

9. Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology (New York: Pueblo, 1984).

10. See Job Getcha, “From Master to Disciple: The Notion of ‘Liturgical Theology’ in Fr. Kiprian Kern and Fr. Alexander Schmemann,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 53, nos. 2-3 (2009): 251-72. Kern was Schmemann’s mentor and spiritual father at St. Sergius. Among Catholic theologians of the Liturgical Movement, the Italo-German priest Romano Guardini (d. 1968) had argued as early as 1921 that liturgical science is ultimately theology and not, as previously thought, merely a study of rubrics or of the liturgy’s historical development.

11. See David W. Fagerberg, “The Pioneering Work of Alexander Schmemann” (Chapter 3) in Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? 2nd Edition (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2004).

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“The whole history of the Church,” laments Alexander Schmemann, “has been marked by pious attempts to reduce the Eucharist, to make it ‘safe,’ to dilute it in piety, to reduce it to fasting and preparation, to tear it away from the church (ecclesiology), from the world (cosmology, history), from the Kingdom (eschatology).” Thus he expresses his vocation as a liturgical theologian in terms of a “fight for the Eucharist” against the reductionist assaults of clericalism and secularism.

12. Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, trans. Asheleigh E. Moorhouse (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1966), 14.

13. Schmemann, “Liturgical Theology, Theology of Liturgy, and Liturgical Reform,” in Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections of Alexander Schmemann, ed. Thomas Fisch (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 40.

14. See, for example, the contributions from scholars of non-liturgical or low-church backgrounds in We Give Our Thanks Unto Thee: Essays in Memory of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, ed. Porter C. Taylor (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019).

15. Thomas Hopko, “Two ‘Nos’ and One ‘Yes,’” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1984): 45-48, at 46.

16. Richard John Neuhaus, “Alexander Schmemann: A Man in Full,” First Things 109 (2001): 57-63, at 57.

17. The problem with secularism, as Schmemann sees it, is that it has stolen what rightly belonged to God through claiming the natural world as its own and then circumscribing the spiritual life to a small subset of our experience. His book, For the Life of the World (first published in 1963), is an invitation to recover this holistic vision of the world as opposed to “a disincarnate and dualistic ‘spirituality’” that characterizes modern Christianity (p. 8). This and subsequent references are to the second, revised and expanded edition: For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973).

18. Robert Slesinski, “Alexander Schmemann on the Divine Liturgy as an Epiphany of the Kingdom: A Liturgical Apriori,” Communio: International Catholic Review 34, no. 1 (2007): 76-82, at 77.

19. Schmemann, Journals, 9.

20. Ibid., 19.

21. Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 12. He repeats this in several other works.

22. https://www.svots.edu/blog/copernican-revolution-liturgical-theology (accessed June 10, 2021).

23. Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 40.

24. Ibid., 27.

25. See Nicholas Afanasiev (d. 1966), The Church of the Holy Spirit, ed.

Michael Plekon, trans. Vitaly Permiakov (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). The recovery of eucharistic ecclesiology in the West is at one with the name of Henri de Lubac, SJ (later Cardinal; d. 1991), who memorably said, “the Eucharist builds the Church, and the Church makes the Eucharist.” The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 134. Here is another example of the ecumenical cross-pollination between Catholic ressourcement and Orthodox theology in its post1917 émigré period.

26. Eucharistic controversy, particularly surrounding the views of Berengar of Tours (d. 1088), played a crucial role in the shift. The underlying problem, says Schmemann, is a false opposition in post-patristic theology between the “symbolic” and the “real.” The Fathers knew no such distinction; for them, the symbol (mysterion) manifests and communicates what is manifested. See “Sacrament and Symbol” (Appendix 2) in For the Life of the World; also The Eucharist, 38.

27. Schmemann, The Eucharist, 12.

28. Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 99.

29. Schmemann, Journals, 310.

30. S chmemann’s image of clericalism is the priest as “a ‘master of all sacrality’ separated from the faithful, dispensing grace as he sees fit” (Journals, 311). This separation, he notes, accounts for the opposition by some clergy to frequent reception of Holy Communion by the laity. See also For the Life of the World, 92-93.

31. Schmemann, Journals, 311.

32. Fisch (ed.), Liturgy and Tradition, 46.

33. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 29-30.

34. Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, 11.

35. Fisch (ed.), Liturgy and Tradition, 29.

36. Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 56.

37. Ibid., 57.

38. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission: Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 214-15.

39. Slesinski, “Alexander Schmemann,” 76-77.

40. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 18.

8

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

APOSTOLIC LETTER ISSUED “MOTU PROPRIO” BY THE SUPREME PONTIFF FRANCIS

“TRADITIONIS CUSTODES” ON THE USE OF THE ROMAN LITURGY PRIOR TO THE REFORM OF 1970

G

uardians of the tradition, the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome constitute the visible principle and foundation of the unity of their particular Churches.1 Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through the proclamation of the Gospel and by means of the celebration of the Eucharist, they govern the particular Churches entrusted to them.2 In order to promote the concord and unity of the Church, with paternal solicitude towards those who in any region adhere to liturgical forms antecedent to the reform willed by the Vatican Council II, my Venerable Predecessors, Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI, granted and regulated the faculty to use the Roman Missal edited by John XXIII in 1962.3 In this way they intended “to facilitate the ecclesial communion of those Catholics who feel attached to some earlier liturgical forms” and not to others.4 In line with the initiative of my Venerable Predecessor Benedict XVI to invite the bishops to assess the application of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum three years after its publication, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith carried out a detailed consultation of the bishops in 2020. The results have been carefully considered in the light of experience that has matured during these years.

At this time, having considered the wishes expressed by the episcopate and having heard the opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I now desire, with this Apostolic Letter, to press on ever more in the constant search for ecclesial communion. Therefore, I have considered it appropriate to establish the following: rt. 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul A VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite. rt. 2. It belongs to the diocesan bishop, as moderaA tor, promoter, and guardian of the whole liturgical life of the particular Church entrusted to him,5 to regulate the liturgical celebrations of his diocese.6 Therefore, it is his exclusive competence to authorize the use of the 1962 Roman Missal in his diocese, according to the guidelines of the Apostolic See. rt. 3. The bishop of the diocese in which until now A there exist one or more groups that celebrate according to the Missal antecedent to the reform of 1970: § 1. is to determine that these groups do not deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform,

dictated by Vatican Council II and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs;

gregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies for Apostolic Life.

§ 2. is to designate one or more locations where the faithful adherents of these groups may gather for the eucharistic celebration (not however in the parochial churches and without the erection of new personal parishes);

rt. 7. The Congregation for Divine Worship and A the Discipline of the Sacraments and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, for matters of their particular competence, exercise the authority of the Holy See with respect to the observance of these provisions.

§ 3. to establish at the designated locations the days on which eucharistic celebrations are permitted using the Roman Missal promulgated by Saint John XXIII in 1962.7 In these celebrations the readings are proclaimed in the vernacular language, using translations of the Sacred Scripture approved for liturgical use by the respective Episcopal Conferences; § 4. to appoint a priest who, as delegate of the bishop, is entrusted with these celebrations and with the pastoral care of these groups of the faithful. This priest should be suited for this responsibility, skilled in the use of the Missale Romanum antecedent to the reform of 1970, possess a knowledge of the Latin language sufficient for a thorough comprehension of the rubrics and liturgical texts, and be animated by a lively pastoral charity and by a sense of ecclesial communion. This priest should have at heart not only the correct celebration of the liturgy, but also the pastoral and spiritual care of the faithful; § 5. to proceed suitably to verify that the parishes canonically erected for the benefit of these faithful are effective for their spiritual growth, and to determine whether or not to retain them; § 6. to take care not to authorize the establishment of new groups. rt. 4. Priests ordained after the publication of the A present Motu Proprio, who wish to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, should submit a formal request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before granting this authorization. rt. 5. Priests who already celebrate according to the A Missale Romanum of 1962 should request from the diocesan Bishop the authorization to continue to enjoy this faculty. rt. 6. Institutes of consecrated life and Societies of A apostolic life, erected by the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, fall under the competence of the Con-

rt. 8. Previous norms, instructions, permissions, A and customs that do not conform to the provisions of the present Motu Proprio are abrogated.

Everything that I have declared in this Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu Proprio, I order to be observed in all its parts, anything else to the contrary notwithstanding, even if worthy of particular mention, and I establish that it be promulgated by way of publication in L’Osservatore Romano, entering immediately in force and, subsequently, that it be published in the official Commentary of the Holy See, Acta Apostolicæ Sedis.

Given at Rome, at Saint John Lateran, on 16 July 2021, the liturgical Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the ninth year of Our Pontificate.

FRANCIS Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione— Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 23 AAS 57 (1965) 27.

2. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 27: AAS 57 (1965) 32; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church Christus Dominus, 28 October 1965, n.

11: AAS 58 (1966) 677-678; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 833.

3. C f. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, 2 July 1988: AAS 80 (1988) 1495-1498; Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 777781; Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio Ecclesiæ unitatem, 2 July 2009: AAS 101 (2009) 710-711.

4. J ohn Paul II, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, 2 July 1988, n. 5: AAS 80 (1988) 1498.

5. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 41: AAS 56 (1964) 111; Caeremoniale Episcoporum, n. 9; Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction on Certain Matters to Be Observed or to Be Avoided Regarding the Most Holy Eucharist Redemptionis Sacramentum, 25 March 2004, nn. 19-25: AAS 96 (2004) 555-557.

6. Cf. CIC, can. 375, § 1; can. 392.

7. C f. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decree Quo magis Approving Seven Eucharistic Prefaces for the forma extraordinaria of the Roman Rite, 22 February 2020, and Decree Cum sanctissima on the Liturgical Celebration in Honor of Saints in the forma extraordinaria of the Roman Rite, 22 February 2020: L’Osservatore Romano, 26 March 2020, p. 6.

LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO THE BISHOPS OF THE WHOLE WORLD, THAT ACCOMPANIES THE APOSTOLIC LETTER MOTU PROPRIO DATA “TRADITIONIS CUSTODES” Rome, 16 July 2021 Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, Just as my Predecessor Benedict XVI did with Summorum Pontificum, I wish to accompany the Motu proprio Traditionis custodes with a letter explaining the motives that prompted my decision. I turn to you with trust and parresia, in the name of that shared “solicitude for the whole Church, that contributes supremely to the good of the Universal Church” as Vatican Council II reminds us.1 Most people understand the motives that prompted St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to allow the use of the Roman Missal, promulgated by St. Pius V and edited by St. John XXIII in 1962, for the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The faculty—granted by the indult of the Congregation for Divine Worship in 19842 and confirmed by St. John Paul II in the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei in 19883 —was above all motivated by the desire to foster the healing of the schism with the movement of Mons. Lefebvre. With the ecclesial

intention of restoring the unity of the Church, the Bishops were thus asked to accept with generosity the “just aspirations” of the faithful who requested the use of that Missal.

Many in the Church came to regard this faculty as an opportunity to adopt freely the Roman Missal promulgated by St. Pius V and use it in a manner parallel to the Roman Missal promulgated by St. Paul VI. In order to regulate this situation at the distance of many years, Benedict XVI intervened to address this state of affairs in the Church. Many priests and communities had “used with gratitude the possibility offered by the Motu proprio” of St. John Paul II. Underscoring that this development was not foreseeable in 1988, the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007 intended to introduce “a clearer juridical regulation” in this area. In order to allow access to those, including young people, who when “they discover this liturgical form, feel attracted to it and find in it a form, particularly suited to them, to

encounter the mystery of the most holy Eucharist”,5 Benedict XVI declared “the Missal promulgated by St. Pius V and newly edited by Blessed John XXIII, as an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi,” granting a “more ample possibility for the use of the 1962 Missal.”6 In making their decision they were confident that such a provision would not place in doubt one of the key measures of Vatican Council II or minimize in this way its authority: the Motu proprio recognized that, in its own right, “the Missal promulgated by Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite”.7 The recognition of the Missal promulgated by St. Pius V “as an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi” did not in any way underrate the liturgical reform, but was decreed with the desire to acknowledge the “insistent prayers of these faithful,” allowing them “to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass according to the editio typica of the Roman Missal promulgated by

9

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021 Blessed John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as the extraordinary form of the Liturgy of the Church.”8 It comforted Benedict XVI in his discernment that many desired “to find the form of the sacred Liturgy dear to them,” “clearly accepted the binding character of Vatican Council II and were faithful to the Pope and to the Bishops.”9 What is more, he declared to be unfounded the fear of division in parish communities, because “the two forms of the use of the Roman Rite would enrich one another.”10 Thus, he invited the Bishops to set aside their doubts and fears, and to welcome the norms, “attentive that everything would proceed in peace and serenity,” with the promise that “it would be possible to find resolutions” in the event that “serious difficulties came to light” in the implementation of the norms “once the Motu proprio came into effect.”11 With the passage of thirteen years, I instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to circulate a questionnaire to the Bishops regarding the implementation of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene. Regrettably, the pastoral objective of my Predecessors, who had intended “to do everything possible to ensure that all those who truly possessed the desire for unity would find it possible to remain in this unity or to rediscover it anew,”12 has often been seriously disregarded. An opportunity offered by St. John Paul II and, with even greater magnanimity, by Benedict XVI, intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities, was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.

At the same time, I am saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides. In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that “in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions.”13 But I am nonetheless saddened that the instrumental use of Missale Romanum of 1962 is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the “true Church.” The path of the Church must be seen within the dynamic of Tradition “which originates from the Apostles and progresses in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit” (DV 8). A recent stage of this dynamic was constituted by Vatican Council II where the Catholic episcopate came together to listen and to discern the path for the Church indicated by the Holy Spirit. To doubt the Council is to doubt the intentions of those very Fathers who exercised their collegial power in a solemn manner cum Petro et sub Petro in an ecumenical council,14 and, in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church.

The objective of the modification of the permission granted by my Predecessors is highlighted by the Second Vatican Council itself. From the vota submitted by the Bishops there emerged a great insistence on the full, conscious and active participation of the whole People of God in the liturgy,15 along lines already indicated by Pius XII in the encyclical Mediator Dei on the renewal of the liturgy.16 The constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium confirmed this appeal, by seeking “the renewal and advancement of the liturgy,”17 and by indicating the principles that should guide the reform.18 In particular, it established that these principles concerned the Roman Rite, and other legitimate rites where applicable, and asked that “the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet present-day circumstances and needs.”19 On the basis of these principles a reform of the liturgy was undertaken, with its highest expression in the Roman Missal, published in editio typica by St. Paul VI20 and revised by St. John Paul II.21 It must therefore be maintained that the Roman Rite, adapted many times over the course of the centuries according to the needs of the day, not only be preserved but renewed “in faithful observance of the Tradition.”22 Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite, in particular the Roman Canon which constitutes one of its more distinctive elements.

A final reason for my decision is this: ever more plain in the words and attitudes of many is the close connection between the choice of celebrations according to the liturgical books prior to Vatican Council II and the rejection of the Church and her

institutions in the name of what is called the “true Church.” One is dealing here with comportment that contradicts communion and nurtures the divisive tendency—“I belong to Paul; I belong instead to Apollo; I belong to Cephas; I belong to Christ”— against which the Apostle Paul so vigorously reacted.23 In defense of the unity of the Body of Christ, I am constrained to revoke the faculty granted by my Predecessors. The distorted use that has been made of this faculty is contrary to the intentions that led to granting the freedom to celebrate the Mass with the Missale Romanum of 1962. Because “liturgical celebrations are not private actions, but celebrations of the Church, which is the sacrament of unity,”24 they must be carried out in communion with the Church.

Vatican Council II, while it reaffirmed the external bonds of incorporation in the Church—the profession of faith, the sacraments, of communion—affirmed with St. Augustine that to remain in the Church not only “with the body” but also “with the heart” is a condition for salvation.25 Dear brothers in the Episcopate, Sacrosanctum Concilium explained that the Church, the “sacrament of unity,” is such because it is “the holy People gathered and governed under the authority of the Bishops.”26 Lumen gentium, while recalling that the Bishop of Rome is “the permanent and visible principle and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the multitude of the faithful,” states that you the Bishops are “the visible principle and foundation of the unity of your local Churches, in which and through which exists the one and only Catholic Church.”27 Responding to your requests, I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite. I take comfort in this decision from the fact that, after the Council of Trent, St. Pius V also abrogated all the rites that could not claim a proven antiquity, establishing for the whole Latin Church a single Missale Romanum. For four centuries this Missale Romanum, promulgated by St. Pius V was thus the principal expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, and functioned to maintain the unity of the Church. Without denying the dignity and grandeur of this Rite, the Bishops gathered in ecumenical council asked that it be reformed; their intention was that “the faithful would not assist as strangers and silent spectators in the mystery of faith, but, with a full understanding of the rites and prayers, would participate in the sacred action consciously, piously, and actively.”28 St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity.29 This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

Vatican Council II, when it described the catholicity of the People of God, recalled that “within the ecclesial communion” there exist the particular Churches which enjoy their proper traditions, without prejudice to the primacy of the Chair of Peter who presides over the universal communion of charity, guarantees the legitimate diversity and together ensures that the particular not only does not injure the universal but above all serves it.”30 While, in the exercise of my ministry in service of unity, I take the decision to suspend the faculty granted by my Predecessors, I ask you to share with me this burden as a form of participation in the solicitude for the whole Church proper to the Bishops. In the Motu proprio I have desired to affirm that it is up to the Bishop, as moderator, promoter, and guardian of the liturgical life of the Church of which he is the principle of unity, to regulate the liturgical celebrations. It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.

Indications about how to proceed in your dioceses are chiefly dictated by two principles: on the one hand, to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II, and, on the other hand, to discontinue the erection of new personal parishes tied

more to the desire and wishes of individual priests than to the real need of the “holy People of God.” At the same time, I ask you to be vigilant in ensuring that every liturgy be celebrated with decorum and fidelity to the liturgical books promulgated after Vatican Council II, without the eccentricities that can easily degenerate into abuses. Seminarians and new priests should be formed in the faithful observance of the prescriptions of the Missal and liturgical books, in which is reflected the liturgical reform willed by Vatican Council II. Upon you I invoke the Spirit of the risen Lord, that he may make you strong and firm in your service to the People of God entrusted to you by the Lord, so that your care and vigilance express communion even in the unity of one, single Rite, in which is preserved the great richness of the Roman liturgical tradition. I pray for you. You pray for me.

FRANCIS Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione —Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church “Lumen Gentium”, 21 November 1964, n. 23 AAS 57 (1965) 27.

2. C f. Congregation for Divine Worship, Letter to the Presidents of the Conferences of Bishops “Quattuor abhinc annos”, 3 October 1984: AAS 76 (1984) 1088-1089.

3. J ohn Paul II, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio “Ecclesia Dei”, 2 July 1988: AAS 80 (1998) 1495-1498.

4. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 796.

5. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 796.

6. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 797.

7. B enedict XVI, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 779.

8. B enedict XVI, Apostolic Letter given Motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 779.

9. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 796.

10. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 797.

11. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 798.

12. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 797-798.

13. B enedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of the Apostolic Letter “Motu proprio data” Summorum Pontificum on the use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, 7 July 2007: AAS 99 (2007) 796.

14. Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 23: AAS 57 (1965) 27.

15. Cf. Acta et Documenta Concilio Œcumenico Vaticano II apparando, Series I, Volumen II, 1960.

16. P ius XII, Encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy Mediator Dei, 20 November 1947: AAS 39 (1949) 521-595.

17. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, nn. 1, 14: AAS 56 (1964) 97.104.

18. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 3: AAS 56 (1964) 98.

19. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 4: AAS 56 (1964) 98.

20. Missale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum, editio typica, 1970.

21. M issale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum Ioannis Pauli PP. II cura recognitum, editio typica altera, 1975; editio typica tertia, 2002; (reimpressio emendata 2008).

22. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 3: AAS 56 (1964) 98.

23. 1 Cor 1, 12-13.

24. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 26: AAS 56 (1964) 107.

25. Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 14: AAS 57 (1965) 19.

26. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 6: AAS 56 (1964) 100.

27. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 23: AAS 57 (1965) 27.

28. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963, n. 48: AAS 56 (1964) 113.

29. P aul VI, Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum on the New Roman Missal, 3 April 1969, AAS 61 (1969) 222.

30. C f. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, n. 13: AAS 57 (1965) 18.

10

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

Editor’s note: At some point, we pray, pandemic-inspired precautions will no longer be necessary in the Mass.

The many adjustments meant to protect the health of participants will give way again to the normative form of worship described in the Roman Missal and other related instructions. Perhaps some readers would be glad to see many of the COVID omissions remain in place: no sign of peace, no music, no extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, etc. The more probable scenario will see the return of each. But when these elements do reappear, priests and liturgical leaders should do all in their power to see that these elements are reinstated according to the mens ecclesiae, the mind of the Church, truly serving the goal of a liturgical excellence that divinizes man unto the greater glory of God. The following “Rite Questions” seek to help pastors achieve this goal.

Q A

: How should my

parish reintroduce singing at Mass?

: The pandemic hit the liturgy hard, especially in the area of music. Many parishes either reduced congregational singing or discontinued congregational singing altogether. For some, having Mass with no music was a great trial. Others reveled in the experience of the quiet Mass. Why does the Church assert—and the history of the Church bear out—the integral nature of singing for the celebration of the liturgy?

Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) tells us that when parts of the liturgy are sung it “confers greater solemnity upon the sacred rites” (SC, 112) and conveys “to the faithful a sense of the solemnity of the celebration” (Liturgiam Authenticam (LA), 61; see also LA, 108). Yet, the Church does not say this principally regarding singing at the liturgy. Rather, the main place is to be given to “singing the liturgical text” itself (Varietates Legitimae, 40). Indeed, liturgical music is truly “an integral part of the solemn liturgy” because it unites “sacred song…to the words” of the liturgy in such a way that they are integrated into a unified reality, a single thing (SC, 112). Indeed, liturgical music, by its nature, is music that has been “created for the celebration of divine worship” (Musicam Sacram (MS), 4) and therefore not just with the texts of the liturgy in mind, but primarily for the liturgical text. Sacred music is therefore the servant of the liturgy, not vice versa (see Tra le Sollecitudini (TLS), 22–23). Pope St. Pius X’s motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le Sollecitudini, makes clear that the “principal office” of sacred music is to “clothe with suitable melody the liturgical text proposed for the understanding of the faithful” (TLS, 1). Thus, the perennial principles of the Church teach us that the role of music in the liturgy is primarily to “add greater efficacy to the [liturgical] text” in order to foster the participation of the faithful in the liturgical action (TLS, 1).

In terms of prioritizing what should be sung, “preference is to be given…especially to those which are to be sung by the Priest or the Deacon or a reader, with the people replying, or by the Priest and people together” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 40, cf. MS, 7). Specifically, Musicam Sacram names as most important the greeting of the priest followed by the people’s response in the introductory rites, the Collect, the acclamations at the Gospel, “the prayer over the offerings; the preface with its dialogue and the Sanctus; the final doxology of the Canon, the Lord’s prayer with its introduction and embolism; the Pax Domini; the prayer after the Communion; the formulas of dismissal” (MS, 29). The next category consists mainly in the ordinary parts of the Mass: the Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei, the Creed, and the prayers of the faithful (see MS, 30). Lastly are those parts of the Mass that are proper or unique to the Mass of the day: the songs at the Entrance and Communion processions; the responsorial psalm and the Alleluia before the Gospel; the song at the Offertory; and finally, the readings of Sacred Scripture (see MS, 31).

These priorities clearly express that the Mass is essentially a sung prayer. Indeed, the Church gives us these musical priorities so that the emphasis is on singing those liturgical texts that are most easily sung and gradually moving toward those that are more difficult to sing. What should immediately be striking in terms of these priorities laid down by the Church is that almost every parish reverses these priorities, singing hymns that substitute for the proper texts of the Mass, then singing the ordinary parts of the Mass, and lastly—and rarely—singing the dialogues. The current time affords us the opportunity to reboot our priorities of what is sung at Mass according to the mind of the Church.

THE RITE QUESTIONS :H ow should my

Q A

parish reintroduce communion from the chalice?

: Of all the liturgical practices that went away with the onset of the pandemic, the reception of Holy Communion from the chalice will likely take the longest to make a return. Whether one thinks drinking from the same cup is an extremely high-risk occasion of contagion or a low-risk activity, the optics on such reception do not favor its return during the days of the Delta variant of COVID-19. Regardless, the pandemic gives those of us in this country, who with little exception could previously receive Holy Communion under both species at most Sunday Masses, an opportunity to contemplate the nature of the reception of Holy Communion from the chalice and to review what the universal law has to say about “the reception on occasion of Communion under both kinds” (GIRM, 14).

In general, Holy Communion under both kinds is permitted “for Priests who are not able to celebrate or concelebrate Mass…, [for] the Deacon and others who perform some duty at the Mass…, [and for] members of communities at the Conventual Mass or the ‘community’ Mass, along with seminarians, and all those engaged in a retreat or taking part in a spiritual or pastoral gathering” (GIRM, 283). In addition to these general occasions, the GIRM gives the diocesan bishop “the faculty to permit Communion under both kinds whenever it may seem appropriate to the Priest to whom a community has been entrusted” (GIRM, 283). These opportunities for the reception of Holy Communion under both kinds are augmented on the occasion of different sacraments and sacramentals. For example, at the nuptial Mass the “bride and bridegroom, their parents, witnesses, and relatives may receive Communion under both kinds” (Order of Celebrating Matrimony, 76).

The Third Edition of the GIRM makes clear that in the reception of Holy Communion under both kinds “the sign of the Eucharistic banquet is more clearly evident…as also [is] the connection between the Eucharistic banquet and the eschatological banquet in the Kingdom of the Father” (281). As one liturgical scholar points out, a new feature of the 2002 GIRM permits the priest to hold the particle of the host “slightly raised above the…chalice” while inviting the faithful to “Behold the Lamb of God…” (GIRM, 157), suggesting that in the invitation to Holy Communion both species are

Q

A

held forth to the faithful as the sign of the Lord’s body and blood. Nevertheless, the Church continues to insist that the reception of Holy Communion under the form of bread alone suffices, by the principle of concomitance, to communicate Christ’s entire presence, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in each and every particle of the Sacred Host. On this point, the Norms for the Distribution and Reception of Holy Communion Under Both Kinds in the Dioceses of the United States of America notes a possible reason for limiting occasions for the reception of Holy Communion under both kinds: “In practice, the need to avoid obscuring the role of the Priest and the Deacon as the ordinary ministers of Holy Communion by an excessive use of extraordinary minister might in some circumstances constitute a reason either for limiting the distribution of Holy Communion under both species or for using intinction instead of distributing the Precious Blood from the chalice” (24). The continued context of COVID-19 may invite use to contemplate more deeply the reception of the entire Christ in the reception of the Host alone.

The hiatus in reception from the chalice provides another important occasion for catechizing the parish.

In the above-mentioned Norms for Distribution and Reception, the bishops detail the contents of instruction that ought to precede the reception of the Precious Blood. “When Communion under both kinds is first introduced by the Diocesan Bishop and also whenever the opportunity for instruction is present”—such as during a pandemic-induced pause—“the faithful should be properly catechized on the following matters in the light of the teaching and directives of the General Instruction: a. t he ecclesial nature of the Eucharist as the common possession of the whole Church; b. t he Eucharist as the memorial of Christ’s sacrifice, his death and resurrection, and as the sacred banquet; c. t he real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements, whole and entire—in each element of consecrated bread and wine (the doctrine of concomitance); d. t he kinds of reverence due at all times to the sacrament, whether within the eucharistic Liturgy or outside the celebration; and e. t he role that ordinary and, if necessary, extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist are assigned in the eucharistic assembly.”

There is, then, a great deal of pastoral work that ought to take place before the chalice is offered again to the people. Now is truly a precious opportunity!

:H ow should my parish reintroduce the sign of peace at Mass?

: In 2005, years before the onset of the current pandemic, the bishops celebrating the Synod XI and the conclusion of the Year of the Eucharist expressed concerns over the present practice of the exchange of peace at Mass. Pope Benedict XVI summed these up in his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (SaC). He relates that, even though the sign is a “valuable” and “eloquent” expression of the peace of Christ, “during the Synod of Bishops there was discussion about the appropriateness of greater restraint in this gesture, which can be exaggerated and cause a certain distraction in the assembly just before the reception of Communion” (SaC, 49). The suspension of the exchange of the sign of peace in many places over recent months offers the chance to review and revive the gesture so that its full spiritual content can again become available to the faithful.

A first step prior to reintroducing the gesture consists in reminding all that it, like every other liturgical sign or symbol, makes possible an encounter with Christ.

Peace surrounds Christ’s saving work. Prior to his passion, in the Upper Room, Christ says to the apostles, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27).

At his first appearance to them following his passion, he says once again, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19-23).

In the Mass, too, the exchange of peace surrounds the re-presentation of the Paschal Sacrifice of Jesus made present upon the altar. While some Eastern traditions place the exchange of peace at the end of the Liturgy of the Word, observing Christ’s exhortation that “if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24), the Roman tradition associates the exchange of peace

with Christ’s Paschal Mystery. Seen in this way, the sign of peace draws participants more fully into the sacrifice of Jesus and prepares them to receive the peace that only his saving work can bring.

Second, and relatedly, the sign of peace should be seen in the larger context of the Communion Rite, as well as the events surrounding Christ’s Passion. The first prayer for peace comes during the “embolism” after the Lord’s Prayer: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days….” The last petition for peace comes at the end of the Agnus Dei: “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.” Between these two petitions, the Church observes the ritual exchange of peace, introduced by the priest’s words: “Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles: Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.” The exchange of peace, then, is an integral part of the larger communion rite.

Finally, and given that sign is an encounter with Christ and a preparation to receive him in communion, the actual gesture should, as the Synod of Bishops and Pope Benedict desired, be a true revelation of Christ and not a distraction from him. For this reason, the GIRM goes so far to describe the exchange in these restrained terms: “According to what is decided by the Conference of Bishops, all express to one another peace, communion, and charity. While the Sign of Peace is being given [among the faithful], it is permissible to say, The peace of the Lord be with you always, to which the reply is Amen.” Whether or not the exchange of peace has ever been offered along these lines in a parish, it is clear that if the sign of peace is reintroduced, “it is appropriate that each person, in a sober manner, offer the sign of peace only to those who are nearest” (GIRM, 82).

11

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

A

doremus was founded in 1995 with the mission to promote authentic reform of the liturgy of the Roman Rite. To alleviate any confusion as to what the promotion of “authentic reform” meant, its charter of founding principles explained that Adoremus “fully and unreservedly accepts the Second Vatican Council as an act of the Church’s supreme Magisterium (teaching authority) guided by the Holy Spirit, and regards its documents as an expression, in our time, of the word of Christ Himself for His Bride, the Church.”

At the same time, Adoremus founders indicated that “we do not oppose those who are seeking a liturgy more in harmony with the Church’s tradition provided they legitimately make use of the present discipline which permits the pre-conciliar liturgy under certain conditions. Indeed, we look forward to mutual collaboration and a fruitful exchange of ideas.” In 2007, with Pope Benedict’s accommodation of the usus antiquior, this principle was updated to say that Adoremus “does not oppose the use of the Extraordinary Form according to the discipline begun with Summorum Pontificum.”

While the recent Traditionis Custodes may bring new changes and challenges to our longstanding mission, much remains the same. Adoremus will continue to implement the teaching and liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, and it will continue to pursue “mutual collaboration and a fruitful exchange of ideas” with those who Continued from NEWS & VIEWS, page 5

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. IMAGE BY DIANELOS GEORGOUDIS (CC BY-SA 3.0), CROPPED.

Guardians of the Tradition

celebrate and participate in the Mass according to the Missal of Pope John XXIII. In the 27 years since our inception, the coexistence of the two Missals has supported our apostolate, for the traditional elements of the Mass—which Adoremus seeks to guard and promote—have been almost exclusively preserved in celebrations of the 1962 Missal.

Their absence from most celebrations according to the Missal renewed by the Second Vatican Council represents a great loss of tradition and an absence from the

spiritual and liturgical lives of most Catholics. This loss, in fact, has led some Catholics to seek the stability and mystery in the usus antiquior.

After the example of the celebrations according to 1962 Missal, and based on the teaching of the Council Fathers and the legitimate options of the present liturgical books, Adoremus will continue to assist bishops, priests, and laity as “guardians of tradition.” We will continue to promote the use of Latin and sacred vernacular, as do Sacrosanctum Concilium (36, 54, 101) and the tradition. We will continue to encourage the use of Gregorian Chant and sacred polyphony, as do Sacrosanctum Concilium (116) and the tradition. We will continue to form liturgical ministers to serve and act according to “the traditional practice of the Roman Rite,” as the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) directs (see GIRM, 42). We will continue to demonstrate the need for beautiful, heavenly sacred art and architecture, as do Sacrosanctum Concilium (122) and our liturgical tradition. We will continue to teach about legitimate, longstanding liturgical options, such as praying the Eucharistic Prayer ad orientem, as offered by the current Missal (see, for example, Order of Mass, 29, 127, 132).

As the Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI itself says, “the two Roman Missals [i.e., following the Council of Trent and following the Second Vatican Council], although four centuries have intervened, embrace one and the same tradition” (GIRM, 6). For all who give witness to the tradition and show fidelity to the Church, we are grateful. May we all continue to be guardians of this sacred tradition in the years ahead.

Englewood, CO — Source & Summit is a new Catholic software company that publishes missals, hymnals, and other musical and liturgical resources to help parishes everywhere elevate the liturgy by placing the Mass and authentic liturgical prayer upon what its founders call “the mountaintop of Catholic life.” On August 2, the company announced its official launch.

Through software and online tools, liturgy and music resources, and training programs, Source & Summit, says its founder and CEO, Adam Bartlett, seeks to equip parishes for success as part of the New Evangelization called for by Pope John Paul II, by offering customers both its Missal and a digital platform, both offering the typical components of an annual Catholic missal. In addition, the publication also provides a generous selection of sacred music for parishes to incorporate into their weekly liturgy.

“Every page of the Source & Summit Missal is meticulously designed to help parishes elevate the liturgy, while presenting the standard offerings of a missal, such as the Sunday readings and antiphons, daily Mass propers, and an Order of Mass,” Bartlett said. “The heart of the missal, however, is its immense repertoire of antiphon settings as well as an expansive hymn library above and beyond the familiar hymns of past decades.”

According to Bartlett, the tools which his organization offer to pastors and others will help them respond to current confusion about the purpose and meaning of the liturgy. “Even with all of the right intentions, Mass can often turn into an evangelical, devotional, or catechetical event,” Bartlett said. “Source & Summit recognizes the power of music for both personal devotion and for evangelization.

The liturgy, however, transcends these realms and is meant

to put Catholics in contact with heaven so as to be poured out as a font into the world to evangelize, disciple, teach, and give witness.”

Bartlett said that Source & Summit was also a response to the flight from the pews occurring in the Church today—especially among the younger generations of Catholics. “Our primary focus today has to be on mission,” he said. “The liturgy is the source and the summit of the Church’s life and mission. That means that we need to celebrate it and participate in it as fully and fruitfully as possible so that we can be as invigorated as possible for the monumental task that lies before us.”

Part of that task, Bartlett noted, is facing the challenges posed by COVID and its aftermath as many pastors, music directors, and parish administrators begin to reevaluate their liturgical practices. “The Church is in a place of great vulnerability in which the status quo will no longer carry us forward,” states Bartlett. “It is also a time for great hope!

Right now there is an opportunity for deep and lasting renewal that begins with each of us working together to elevate the liturgy in our parishes and in our lives. This new missal and digital platform are launching points further fueled by the National Eucharistic Revival recently called for by the USCCB.” While the mission to make the liturgy a daily part of every Catholic’s life is more urgent than ever, Bartlett acknowledged that the task isn’t easy. For that reason, he explained, Source & Summit also offers parishes a series of training programs to help them onboard the publication more easily and more effectively. As part of the launch of the new missal, Source & Summit is offering webinars and training events this fall as a resource to Offices of Worship, pastors, and parish musicians.

“After more than a year of minimal or even in some cases no music at Mass at all,” Bartlett said, “there is a great

opportunity for deeper formation and to consider different approaches to parish liturgy and music programs.”

According to Curtis Martin, founder of Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), Source & Summit supplies a great demand in the Church today. “In the liturgy, we encounter God in the flesh through all of our senses, and from there, we are enabled to go and make disciples of all nations,” he said. “Source & Summit is helping the Church fulfill its mission by supporting parishes to celebrate the liturgy beautifully and faithfully, especially through music.”

The Source & Summit missal is currently available for pre-order. According to Bartlett, during the month of August, the digital platform will be offered for free for those who take early advantage of the missal “in an effort to help parishes be good stewards of their financial resources during this tumultuous period of recovery.”

For more information about Source & Summit and its resources, visit its website: www.sourceandsummit.com, or call 888-462-7780.

Continued from CREDIBILITY, page 3 take up the words of Saint Paul: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and Jesus crucified.” She must stop thinking of herself as a substitute for humanism or ecology. These realities, although good and just, are for her but consequences of her unique treasure: faith in Jesus Christ.

What is sacred for the Church, then, is the unbroken chain that links her with certainty to Jesus. A chain of faith without rupture or contradiction, a chain of prayer and liturgy without breakage or disavowal. Without this radical continuity, what credibility could the Church still claim? In her, there is no turning back, but an organic and continuous development that we call the living tradition. The sacred cannot be decreed, it is received from God and passed on.

This is undoubtedly the reason for which Benedict XVI could authoritatively affirm: “In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture.

What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”

At a time when some theologians are seeking to reopen the liturgy wars by pitting the missal revised by the Council of Trent against the one in use since 1970, it is urgent to recall this. If the Church is not capable of preserving the peaceful continuity of her link with Christ, she will be unable to offer the world “the sacred which unites souls,” according to the words of Goethe.

Beyond the quarrel over rites, the credibility of the Church is at stake. If she affirms the continuity between what is commonly called the Mass of St. Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, then the Church must be able to organize their peaceful cohabitation and their mutual enrichment. If one were to radically exclude one in favor of the other, if one were to declare them irreconcilable, one would implicitly recognize a rupture and a change of orientation. But then the Church could no longer offer the world that sacred continuity, which alone can give her peace. By keeping alive a liturgical war within herself, the Church loses her credibility and becomes deaf to the call of men. Liturgical peace is the sign of the peace that the Church can bring to the world.

What is at stake is therefore much more serious than a simple question of discipline. If she were to claim a reversal of her faith or of her liturgy, in what name would the Church dare address the world? Her only legitimacy

is her consistency in her continuity.

Moreover, if the bishops, who are in charge of the cohabitation and mutual enrichment of the two liturgical forms, do not exercise their authority to this effect, they run the risk of no longer appearing as shepherds, guardians of the faith they have received and of the sheep entrusted to them, but as political leaders: commissars of the ideology of the moment rather than guardians of the perennial tradition. They risk losing the trust of men of good will.

A father cannot introduce mistrust and division among his faithful children. He cannot humiliate some by setting them against others. He cannot ostracize some of his priests. The peace and unity that the Church claims to offer to the world must first be lived within the Church.

In liturgical matters, neither pastoral violence nor partisan ideology has ever produced fruits of unity.

The suffering of the faithful and the expectations of the world are too great to engage in these dead-end paths.

Everyone has a place in the Church of God!

Source and Summit Launches New Missal to Elevate Liturgy

MEMORIAL FOR

Deacon Peter Flatley from Janet Flatley Deacon Harold and Mary Leppert from Lt. and Mrs. Louis Leppert Francis and Ann Nolen Anonymous

TO HONOR

Reverend John Deken from Janet Deken

Cardinal Robert Sarah is prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

12

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2021

A Devotional Blueprint for the Domestic Church

The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion by Kendra Tierney. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2021. 400 pp.

ISBN: 978-1621644255. $19.25 paperback.

encourages the reader to explore. The devotional life, as more individual and personal, is open to different expressions of prayer and pious exercises, flowing from and leading to that great celebration of the one Church in the Liturgy.

By Alexis Kazimira Kutarna

K

endra Tierney delivers another excellent resource for the domestic church with a book of devotions and prayers to deepen the family’s connection to the liturgical year.

As a companion book to her Catholic All Year Compendium, Tierney describes the Prayer Companion as a collection of “Bible passages, prayers, songs, and devotions” that her family uses throughout the year to root itself more deeply to the rhythms of the Church’s prayer. The traditions and stories behind these various prayers are found in the Compendium, while this book contains over 300 pages of prayer texts for the various days and seasons in the Church’s life.

Civilization of Love Popular piety and devotion are an immense source of richness for the Christian life. This “living reality in and of the Church”1 is undergoing a revitalization and rediscovery in the domestic church. “Its source is the constant presence of the Spirit of God in the ecclesial community; the mystery of Christ Our Savior is its reference point, the glory of God and the salvation of man its object, its historical moment ‘the joyous encounter of the work of evangelization and culture.’”2 The Magisterium values and encourages the incorporation of various devotions and pious exercises in the Christian life because of their “innate sense of the sacred and the transcendent,” as popular piety “manifests a genuine thirst for God.”3 The value of family prayer is often repeated in the familiar phrase, “the family that prays together stays together.”

The domestic church, as an image of the Universal Church, is the first teacher of prayer for its members, building them into a “civilization of love.” Pope John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Families that prayer “by the family, for the family, and with the family” is capable of increasing “the strength and spiritual unity of the family, helping the family to partake of God’s own strength.”4 Kendra Tierney’s Prayer Companion opens with a section on the domestic church in practice. As she rightly points out, the hectic activity of family life never really calms down, so, often the focus on family prayer is easy to put aside or kicked further down the road. The centrality of prayer in family life can easily be forgotten, or at least undervalued, with all of the other things that need to get done. Tierney gives encouragement simply to begin rather than waiting for the right time or the perfect prayer to come along.

She encourages the family to take up the practice of liturgical living to address the urgency of family prayer with short and specific devotions or vocal prayers for each day. The term “liturgical living” is used to describe a daily habit of devotional prayer that is centered around the liturgical calendar. This includes meal prayers, litanies, and novenas, but also other elements of home life with children such as crafts, recipes, and song.

The prayer texts in the Companion include collects from the Roman Missal, excerpts from the scriptures of the day, and other devotions associated with each saint or season. Other texts come from the Collectio Rituum, the Manual for Indulgences, and Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, all reprinted with permission from the publishers. With this variety, the interwoven temporal and sanctoral cycles are both incorporated into the prayer of the home.

Rightly so, Holy Week takes up a large section in the center of the book. Good Friday contains the Passion according to St. John, and Holy Saturday features the complete text of the Exsultet. Tierney includes prayers for each of the liturgical seasons, and for specific days on the calendar: solemnities, feasts, and memorials, as well as some days designated as “historical” which are not included on the universal calendar but are nonetheless noteworthy because of their traditions, such as the observance of “Saints Adam and Eve” on December 24. Each chapter covers one month, and the appendices include prayers appropriate to daily use or special occasions, such as the prayers of the Rosary, prayers for work or study, and special times of life.

Blessings for Liturgical Living Chief among the sacramentals incorporated into liturgical living are blessings. Tierney offers a quick

primer on who can bless and why, and explains the difference between constitutive and invocative blessings. As this book is intended for use by the layperson, it is important for the reader to understand the context in which he or she may invoke God’s blessings. She outlines the theological understanding of authority: “All rightful authority begins with God, and Jesus Christ himself is the founder and head of the Catholic Church.”5 This authority, passed on through the apostles, is exercised by the Pope, the bishops, pastors, and the heads of families, according to their own office within the Church.

In the home, the head of the family (often the father) has the authority to ask for God’s blessings on the things within the sphere of domestic life: the food, home, and people for whom he is responsible. While he cannot create a sacramental, and it is preferable that a priest bless certain objects even within the home, it is possible for him to ask God’s blessing.

Tierney makes careful note of the details here, as well as the indication of gestures (i.e., a layperson does not make the sign of the cross in the air over an object or person). Parents or godparents can always bless their children and godchildren, and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead. This is a beautiful gesture that can be incorporated into a family’s night prayer before bed.

Mary, Litanies, and More Also included in the Prayer Companion are a few other prayer types that are described for those new to liturgical living. Approved litanies, the criteria for indulgences, novenas, and consecrations are all included to broaden the depth of this resource. The emphasis Tierney places on the family Rosary is encouraging: she describes the frequent difficulty of praying an entire Rosary with the family, but also the beautiful results. It is a most powerful weapon, and she makes good use of the appendix to include the mysteries and prayers for the reader.

Devotion to Mary is highly encouraged by the Church, who calls the Rosary “one of the most excellent prayers to the Mother of God” because of its spiritual value and efficacy. “The Church exhorts all the faithful—sacred minister, religious and laity—to develop a personal and community devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary through the use of approved and recommended pious exercises.”6 In addition to the Rosary, the Companion includes other devotions and consecrations. It also includes some prayers in both Latin and in their English translation. Quoting from both St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, Tierney prompts the reader to see the value in handing on the more common prayers in Latin. In fact, the faithful are encouraged to learn the more common prayers in the language of the Church. Among these are the seasonal Marian Antiphons and hymns like the Stabat Mater. Tierney’s advice to the reader is that “different devotions will appeal to people of different temperaments or in different circumstances,” and she

Liturgy of the Hours With all of these excellent connections, the prayers contained in this Companion are beautiful and strengthen the family’s connection to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There is, however, one important omission: the encouragement to participate in the Liturgy of the Hours. While Tierney emphasizes liturgical living and makes so many connections to the liturgy in the choices of prayers that flow from and lead to the Mass, she misses this crucial point.

The Divine Office is one way in which the family can fully enter into the liturgy of the Church within the home, and it can be done every day. While this is not the focus of the book, any book on liturgical living should mention this important liturgical prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours is how the Church “prays without ceasing,” seven times throughout the day and night. It is the singular way the family can actually participate in the “eternal love song of Christ to the Father” from the home. Perhaps this omission is due to the daunting task ahead of the average Catholic who has not been exposed to the Liturgy of the Hours: the layout of the four-volume set of the breviary, keeping track of which week of the four-week psalter, using the various ribbons, and the challenge of how to approach different memorials can involve a steep learning curve.

I would argue that it is worth it for the laity to take up this prayer of the whole Church! Children can easily learn to participate in Compline. A welcome addition would be a chapter, or even a paragraph, dedicated to introducing her readers to the singlevolume books such as Christian Prayer or the many online resources that are available (as she does for recordings of various songs and chants). For those that prefer the permanence and solidity of a dignified book, and who are interested in trying their hand at some chanting, I would recommend a resource like the Mundelein Psalter. In our home, we have an eightbook set for when we have dinner guests, and, yes, we’ll ask you to sing for your supper!

The Domestic Church and the Liturgical Year Within the scope of discipleship and the devotional life of the Christian, this collection serves as a wonderful compilation of prayers from several sources. It is effective in its presentation of short, easy to use prayers, accessible to the family wishing to deepen its connection to the liturgical year. Even though its primary use is devotional, it is also a valuable teaching tool appropriate to the Ecclesia domestica: “a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity.”

The Prayer Companion makes a home for itself on the bookshelf next to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, near the dining room table, ready to be incorporated into our liturgical living, and directing us towards that “summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed...and the fount from which all her power flows.”7 Alexis Kazimira Kutarna earned a Master of Arts in Liturgy at The Liturgical Institute at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, IL. She holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree in music, as well as a Performer’s Certificate. She is a PhD Candidate in Liturgical Studies with a concentration in Church Music at the University of Vienna. Alexis has worked with singers of all ages, having served as a parish music and liturgy director, and as the Director of Music at St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston, TX. She teaches courses on the liturgy and liturgical music at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX, the summer chant course for the St. Basil School of Gregorian Chant, and is currently music director and an assistant principal at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School in Houston. Most important is her vocation as wife and mother to two little girls.

1. Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, 61.

2. Ibid., 61.

3. Ibid., 61.

4. Letter to Families, 4.

5. Prayer Companion, 29.

6. Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, 183.

7. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 7.