Adoremus Bulletin - January 2019 Issue

Adoremus Bulletin

JANUARY 2019

News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

Vol. XXIV, No. 5

Abel the Just, Abraham the Obedient, and Melchizedek the Mysterious:

How Old Testament Sacrifices Prefigure Catholic Liturgy

Mixed Reactions to Italian Bishops’ Proposed New Translation of Lord’s Prayer

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he Italian bishops have submitted for Pope Francis’s approval a proposed change to the words of the Our Father. According to a December 11 report by Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times, the Italian Episcopal Conference has changed the words “lead us not into temptation” to “abandon us not when in temptation” (emphasis added) and that the pope is “expected to approve” the new change to the ancient prayer.

The news that the pope may give his approval has prompted some Catholic writers to address the concerns the proposed translations—and the pope’s related comments—have raised.

“A year ago,” Richardson writes, “the pope brought the issue to the forefront when he described the petition widely used for centuries in many languages, including English and Italian, as ‘not a good translation.’”

Richardson was quoting comments Pope Francis made during a December 6, 2017, Italian television interview. Elise Harris quoted the full context of the pope’s words in a December 8, 2017, Catholic News Agency report: “I am the one who falls, it’s not (God) who pushes me toward temptation to see how I fall,” Francis said. “A father doesn’t do this, a father helps us to get up right away.”

“The Pope said that the one who leads people into temptation,” Harris writes, quoting the pope, “‘is Satan; that is the work of Satan.’ He said that the essence of that line in the prayer is like telling God: ‘when Satan leads me into temptation, please, give me your hand. Give me your hand.’”

Please see PRAYER on next page

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Christ's sacrifice—and ours—is foreshadowed by the three Old Testament figures who are mentioned by name in the first Eucharistic Prayer: Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek.

By Bruce D. Marshall

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priest friend now in his 70s observed recently that when he was growing up, Catholics regularly referred to their worship as “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” Now we just call it “Mass.”

This seemingly small point about the way we talk indicates an issue of deeper significance. At least in America, we Catholics no longer have much feel for the fact that the Mass is, at its heart, a sacrifice. It is not only a gift we receive from God, our own communion in the body and blood of Christ. It is that, of course.

But the Mass is also, and quite fundamentally, our offering to God of what we have received. The Mass is our offering to the Father of the most precious possible gift, the body and blood of his own Son. In just that sense the Mass is our supreme sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christians. If it is first of all God’s gift to us, it is also our gift to God. Best Kept Secret We might suppose that the sacrificial nature of the Mass has receded from the consciousness of Catholics because the Roman Canon, the first Eucharistic Prayer, is seldom used. However much we may regret the relative rarity with which priests turn to the Canon, it

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Adoremus Bulletin JANUARY 2019

seems unlikely that this is among the causes for the loss of a sense of sacrifice.

Prior to the liturgical changes introduced by Vatican II, the Canon was, after all, said sub secreto, in a voice audible only to the priest himself. We can easily get a sense of what this was like for generations of Catholics by

“ At least in America, we Catholics no longer have much feel for the fact that the Mass is, at its heart, a sacrifice.” participating in Mass according to the Extraordinary Form. If Catholics like my priest friend grew up with a more vivid awareness of the Eucharist as sacrifice than most of us now have, they must have brought it to the Mass, rather than learning it from the Mass.

It seems likely, then, that contemporary Catholics no longer think of the Mass as a sacrifice because they have never been taught—or better, invited—to do so. The problem is at root catechetical rather than liturgical.

At the same time, one way to address this catechetical deficit would be precisely to use the Roman Canon Liturgy with Heart Abel had it, Abraham had it—and so did Melchizedek. Bruce D. Marshall reveals how good old-fashioned sacrifice captures the pulse of the liturgy—and of its priestly participants….1 Inculcation of Inculturation The Vatican instruction Varietates Legitimae turns 25 this year—and Denis McNamara explains how it has helped teach liturgy and culture to play well together in the work of salvation..................................................... 6 Missa Vernacular Jeremy Priest’s brief and insightful linguistic history of the Mass in the West shows that,

much more often in the celebration of Mass. The celebrant now says the Eucharistic Prayer in full voice, with the aim that it be heard and understood by all. The language of sacrifice saturates the Canon, and a close reading of the content and logic of the Canon’s sacrificial utterances—far more than I can undertake here—would yield an exceedingly rich theology of the Eucharistic sacrifice, more than enough to give Catholics a profound sense of “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.”

To be sure, the Third Eucharistic Prayer is also deeply sacrificial, and the Second unmistakably, if briefly, so.

But the Canon gives us the clearest and broadest view of the Church’s ancient faith in the sacrificial nature of the Mass.

Consequential Prayer The Roman Canon is, of course, a prayer, or more exactly a sequence of prayers. We can find instruction on the sacrificial character of the Mass by attending to any one of these prayers.

Consider the following, which comes after the consecration, the mystery of faith, and the explicit recollection of the Lord’s passion, resurrection, and ascension. The prayers of the Canon have traditionally been known by the Latin phrase with which each begins; this is the prayer “Supra quae propitio”:

Please see SACRIFICE on page 4 whether in Latin or the vernacular, the Church’s greatest prayer speaks the lingua franca of salvation................................................... 8 Doing Is Believing…

And believing is doing, says Richard Budd in a review of Adam Cooper’s book about the bonds that worship forms between flesh and spirit —Holy Eros: A Liturgical Theology of the Body.............................................12

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

2 Continued from PRAYER, page 1 In a December 14, 2018, article for the National Catholic Register, Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin writes that many reports on the new translation see Pope Francis favorable to the changes because of his previous comments on a similar change made by French bishops in their recent retranslation of the prayer.

“It is thus likely that [Pope Francis] will (through the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments) approve the [Italian] translation,” Akin said, adding that the Italian initiative comes not in response to these comments on the French version but “after a 16-year study of the question” when “John Paul II was pope….” He also notes that the Spanish-speaking nations have already been praying the Lord’s Prayer according to a similar change in translation.

“As a native speaker of Spanish,” Akin writes, “Pope Francis is already used to a non-literal translation, again suggesting he’s likely to approve the Italian proposal.”

It is not improper “in principle” to use a nonliteral translation of the Lord’s Prayer, Akin continues.

“Languages do not map onto each other in a one-toone fashion, and translators sometimes must use nonliteral translations if they are to make the meaning of a statement clear.”

Yet Italian journalist Sandro Magister in a November 21, 2018, article for the Italian online journal L’Espresso sees the new translation violating a more important principle.

For, he writes, “to be strictly logical, if God cannot ‘lead’ us into temptation,” as the current translation states, “it is not clear why he should instead be allowed to ‘abandon us’ to it” in the new translation. “For two millennia, the Church has never dreamed of changing that difficult word of the Gospel, but has instead interpreted and explained it in its authentic meaning.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that the Greek word for “temptation” has two meanings which cannot be communicated by the use of a single English word: “the Greek means ‘do not allow us to enter into temptation’ and ‘do not let us yield to temptation.’” The Catechism also notes that “God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one” but rather “wants to set us free from evil.” For this reason, the Catechism says, Christ taught us to pray to God, to recognize that only in God’s divine grace can we free ourselves from the temptations to sin.

“God does not want to impose the good but wants free beings.... There is a certain usefulness to temptation,” the Catechism teaches. “No one but God knows what our soul has received from him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the good that temptation has revealed to us.”

Quoting in full an editorial in the Italian weekly Vita Nuova by Silvio Brachetta of the Institute of Religious Sciences in Trieste, Italy, Magister sees the desire to change the translation as a matter of “human presumption” by seeking to avoid teaching about this part of the Lord’s Prayer, as the Church fathers had taught, and rendering Church teachings on sin and damnation more friendly to modern sensibilities.

“Behind the negation of the evangelical ‘ne nos inducas’ (“lead us not”) is the presumptuous rejection of a scandal,” Brachetta says, “the scandal of the eternal perdition of the impious and the very fact that Christ could be a ‘stumbling block’ himself, in fact a ‘scandal.’”

In a January 30, 2018, article for Crisis online magazine, David Arias notes that St. Augustine and St. Thomas are both succinct in their explanation that when we ask God not to lead souls into temptation we are proclaiming that, without God, man is helpless in his struggle against sin.

Arias writes that in St. Augustine’s view, “we beg God for the divine aid we need against the inclination to sin (contra inclinantia in culpam). While this seems clear enough, we may still wonder about the precise formulation of this petition. Why say, ‘lead us not into temptation,’ as if to imply that God can and perhaps sometimes actually does lead us into temptation?”

“St. Thomas answers this very question in his Expositio in orationem dominicam,” Arias continues.

“He writes: ‘Is it possible for God to lead someone into evil, since [the Lord’s Prayer] says: “and lead us not into temptation”? I say that God is said to lead into evil through permitting it. This occurs when, because of many sins, God withdraws his grace from a man who then falls into sin after grace has been removed.’”

The new translation suggests, says Brachetta, that rather than rely on such wisdom of the Church fathers, an updated translation seeks to force an issue that the greatest minds only approach in humility.

“It is…true that the interpretation of these evangelical passages on the part of Saint Thomas or Saint Augustine may leave the reader dissatisfied,” Brachetta writes, “because the doctors know well

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

NEWS & VIEWS that ‘fides at ratio’ are in harmony but by no means coincident. Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine examine the mystery, but they do so in humility: at times they are able to satisfy fully and wisely a certain inquiry, but other times they can respond to or satisfy partially those who seek an explanation.”

As to whether the American bishops will seek to change the English formula of the prayer, Akin says it is not likely.

“For that to happen, the U.S. bishops would need to ask the Holy See for a change, and I don’t see that happening any time in the foreseeable future,” Akin writes. “The standard English version has been in use for a very long time, and it is deeply ingrained in Anglophone Catholic culture.”

“There would be a huge ruckus if the U.S. bishops proposed changes to the English version of the Lord’s Prayer,” Akin also writes, “and I don’t see them wanting to undertake such a challenge. They have more pressing issues to deal with (to say the least).”

Cardinal Müller: Spiritual Renewal Is Church’s Foremost Need Rome, Italy (CNA/EWTN News)—Cardinal Gerhard Müller said in a recent interview that the problem of clerical sex abuse must be countered primarily by spiritual renewal, prayer, and penance.

The prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a November 28 interview with Vatican Insider that “We need spiritual renewal, prayer and penance, drawing on the grace of the sacraments, reading and meditating on the Bible, entering into the spirit of Jesus Christ. We must be priests according to the heart of Jesus…. The priest is an alter Christus, not because of his skill or ability, but because he gives his heart for humankind. We must bear witness to this and in so doing restore the credibility of the Church so that people may encounter faith.”

He called canon law “a necessary aid to the Church,” in which “we have norms of divine law that we cannot change, but also norms of human, ecclesiastical law that we can change and update to better respond to the needs and circumstances to be faced. But, we, the Church, are a sacramental and spiritual reality and more important we are the dimensions of morality and faith: rules, norms, external discipline are not enough.”

Acknowledging that procedures “have been established to combat the [abuse] phenomenon,” he said, “spiritual renewal and conversion are more important. There are priests who never go to spiritual exercises, never approach the confessional, never pray the breviary. And when the spiritual life is empty, how can a priest act according to Christ? He risks becoming a ‘mercenary’, as we read in the Gospel of John.”

Cardinal Müller called for the “parties” in the Church to “work together to overcome this crisis that is hurting the credibility of the Church…. We are all united in the revealed faith, and not by the prejudices of political ideologies. We are not a political entity; the Church was instituted by Jesus Christ.”

Hartford Archbishop Blair Elected to Chair USCCB Committee on Divine Worship BALTIMORE—At the 2018 General Assembly in Baltimore this past November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) elected Archbishop Leonard P. Blair, Archdiocese of Hartford, CT, as chairman-elect of the Committee on Divine Worship in a 132 to 113 vote over Bishop David L. Ricken, Diocese of Green Bay, WI. Archbishop Blair was born in Detroit on April 12, 1949, and was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Detroit on June 26, 1976, after studies at Sacred Heart Seminary College, Detroit; the North

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American College, Rome; and the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. Archbishop Blair holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in History from Sacred Heart Seminary College; a Bachelor of Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) from the Pontifical Gregorian University; a Licentiate in Theology (S.T.L.) with a specialization in Patristics and the History of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University; and a Doctorate in Theology (S.T.D.) from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome.

He held various pastoral assignments for the Archdiocese of Detroit and various academic and curial assignments, including instructor of Church History and Patristics at St. John’s Provincial Seminary, Plymouth, MI, and Dean of studies and Assistant Professor of Theology at Sacred Heart in Detroit. He also served in Rome in the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See as secretary to Cardinal Edmund Szoka. He was ordained auxiliary bishop of Detroit on August 24, 1999; installed as seventh bishop of Toledo, OH on December 4, 2003; and installed as fifth archbishop of Hartford on December 6, 2013.

Eucharistic Procession in Hollywood Highlights Plight of Homeless Los Angeles, CA (CNA)—Hundreds of Catholics processed through Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in a special Eucharistic procession for the poor. The event was organized by the Beloved Movement, a forum that promotes discipleship and spiritual community.

An estimated 700 people attended the Hollywood Beloved Procession after Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church on November 17. As part of the event, volunteers on the walk sat and listened to some of the city’s homeless population on the boulevard.

Seminarians from St. John’s Seminary and Queen of the Angels led the procession. It was also attended by members of several religious orders, including the Friars and Sisters of the Poor Jesus and Daughters of St. Paul. The procession concluded in the church parking lot with adoration, praise and worship, and silent prayer.

Pope Francis Speaks to Importance of Sacred Music in Liturgy at Conference

By Hannah Brockhaus Vatican City (CNA/EWTN News)—Liturgical and sacred music can be a powerful instrument of evangelization, because it gives people a glimpse of the beauty of heaven, Pope Francis said November 24 at an international meeting of choirs.

“Your music and your song are a true instrument of evangelization insofar as you witness to the profoundness of the Word of God that touches the hearts of people, and allow a celebration of the sacraments, especially of the Holy Eucharist, which makes one sense the beauty of Paradise,” the pope said.

Pope Francis spoke in a meeting with over 8,000 singers and musicians from around the world, who attended an international meeting of choirs at the Vatican, November 23-25.

The pope encouraged musicians and singers to study and prepare so that they can accompany the liturgy well, and not be tempted to draw attention to themselves: “Please, do not be a ‘prima donna!’” he said.

Liturgical musicians, he said, should be “animators of the song of the whole assembly,” not replace it.

“Through these musical compositions and songs,” he said, “voice is also given to prayer and in this way a real international choir is formed, where in unison the praise and glory rises to the Father of all from his people.”

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Contents copyright © 2019 by ADOREMUS. All rights reserved.

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

Got Culture?

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By Christopher Carstens, Editor

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begin this issue’s editorial with a little litany I composed to seek the Lord’s help in understanding culture. On the face of it, culture shouldn’t be a difficult thing to comprehend. After all, culture is everywhere. We are born into a culture: a family, a society, an historical epoch. We school our children in order to “cultivate” their minds, habits, and skills. We bemoan the bad in the larger culture, and work (or at a minimum, wish) to increase its good. We positively swim in culture.

Yet what is culture?

Putting one’s finger on just what marks this or that culture—getting the pulse of a culture—presents a daunting task. What is modern culture? How does the newly-hired coach foster a winning culture in the locker-room of his new team? Even Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate, laments today’s “culture of zapping.” What do these “cultures” mean? What are their features?

Furthermore, and most importantly for our purposes here at Adoremus, what is the relationship between the Church and culture, especially in the liturgy?

January 25—the feast of St. Paul’s conversion, he who was sent as apostle to the Gentiles—marks the 25th anniversary of Varietates Legitimae, the Holy See’s instruction on “Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy.”

Inculturation, the document says, signifies “an intimate transformation of the authentic cultural values by their integration into Christianity and the implantation of Christianity into different human cultures.” But can one understand the meeting of cultures—the ecclesial and the secular—without having a firm hand on “culture” itself?

Indeed, the cultural question presents itself daily, both inside and outside of religious circles. Here are three reasons why both culture and inculturation should concern liturgically-minded Catholics—that is, all Catholics!

First, the Church works to redeem cultures.

Inculturation works much like the Incarnation. “God became man,” St. Athanasius wrote, “so that man might become God.” Similarly, the Mystical Body of Christ engages a secular culture so that the secular culture might be redeemed, transfigured, and divinized.

Inculturation describes “the incarnation of the Gospel

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Modern culture, postmodern culture.

O Lord, what does it mean?

Culture of life, culture of death.

O Lord, what does it mean?

Cult of personality and cult-following.

O Lord, what does it mean?

Culturally-significant cinema, novels, and music.

O Lord, what does it really mean?

Culture of secrecy, culture of transparency.

O Lord, let us make sense of it.

Culture of fear, culture of optimism.

O Lord, let us make sense of it.

Mexican culture, Canadian culture, American culture.

O Lord, can it make sense to us?

The culture of the family, the culture of the clergy.

O Lord, can it make any sense at all to us?

Not every culture—or at least every element of every culture—is capable of bearing the Mystery of God. Are the classical building and the modern orb here at the Vatican Museum equally capable of expressing the truths of the faith? On the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Cardinal Sarah observed that contrary to “the Gospel and revelation themselves [being] ‘reinterpreted’, ‘contextualized’ and adapted to decadent Western culture,” today’s faithful “desire to be initiated into the sacred language of God.” Varietates Legitimae gives the authentic norms for fruitful inculturation after the mind of the Church.

in autonomous cultures and at the same time the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church” (Varietates Legitimae, 4). By inculturation, the City of Man can come to resemble the City of God; the earthly Jerusalem (or its Chicago or Miami iterations) can become a sacrament of the heavenly Jerusalem. It is at the liturgy when the Church is most herself, most clearly manifesting the God-become-man and his divinizing power.

Second, knowledge of cultures and the dynamics of their meeting governs the mutual influence each should have on the other. Varietates Legitimae describes a “double movement” in inculturation, a shared enrichment. “On the one hand the penetration of the Gospel into a given sociocultural milieu ‘gives inner fruitfulness to the spiritual qualities and gifts proper to each people…, strengthens these qualities, perfects them and restores them in Christ.’ On the other hand, the Church assimilates these values, when they are compatible with the Gospel, ‘to deepen understanding of Christ’s message and give it more effective expression in the liturgy and in the many different aspects of the life of the community of believers’” (4).

But questions arise: in liturgical inculturation’s “double movement,” just how much of the liturgy should be adapted to the culture, and which of the culture’s values ought to be assimilated into sacramental celebrations? Indeed, not all cultural elements are “compatible with the true and authentic spirit of the liturgy” (VL, 2). The Extraordinary Form of the Mass, for example, may be accused of too little accommodation to varying circumstances, while the Ordinary Form of too much accommodation. A firm grasp of both culture and inculturation can clarify these difficult questions.

Third, since language is a key component of culture (perhaps its central element), liturgy’s language questions are also culture and inculturation questions.

Liturgiam Authenticam’s 2001 norms, in fact, “are to be substituted for all norms previously published on the matter, with the exception of the Instruction Varietates Legitimae, published by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments…in conjunction with which the norms in this present Instruction are to be understood” (Liturgiam Authenticam, 8). It is for this reason that Varietates Legitimae is especially important to our understanding of the liturgy. One cannot read and apply Liturgiam Authenticam’s principles authentically without knowledge of Varietates Legitimae. Ultimately, the “God who speaks,” as Benedict XVI writes in Verbum Domini, speaks like us so that we might speak like him (to adapt Athanasius’s dictum).

Because Varietates Legitimae has such wide and profound application to the liturgy, Adoremus Bulletin is devoting ample space in the year ahead to the topic of culture and inculturation. For starters, consider the following excerpt from Varietates Legitimae below, “The Process of Inculturation Throughout the History of Salvation,” as well as Denis McNamara’s introduction to the topic on page 6. Then look forward to entries in future issues by Father Cassian Folsom on monasticism’s counterculture, Father Thomas Baima on eastern cultures and ritual families, and Joseph O’Brien’s review of The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture, Yesterday & Today, by Jared Staudt.

Culture fundamentally refers to the fruits of meaningful human activity. Since liturgy is among man’s most meaningful activities, the cultural question is paramount to Adoremus. Particularly since our Catholic cult cultivates culture—worship makes our world—it is in the Church’s best interests to get it right.

O Lord, let us make sense of it.

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Excerpt from Varietates Legitimae: On the Process of Inculturation Throughout the History of Salvation By the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments Editor’s note: Varietates Legitimae, the Instruction on “Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy,” was issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on January 25, 1994. The document bears the subtitle, “Fourth Instruction for the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy” (Liturgicam Authenticam is the fifth such instruction, the last to date). In particular, Varietates Legitimae expands upon Sacrosanctum Concilium’s general norms on adapting the liturgy to various cultures. Paragraph 38 of the Constitution states, “Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations [legitimis varietatibus] and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics.”

Varietates Legitimae elaborates upon the Council’s general norms and provides detailed instructions for applying these principles in the future. In the section that follows, Varietates Legitimae describes the process of inculturation as it has occurred throughout the economy of salvation. The entire document is available at www. adoremus.org.

9. Light is shed upon the problems being posed about the inculturation of the Roman rite in the history of salvation. The process of inculturation was a process which developed in many ways.

The people of Israel throughout its history preserved the certain knowledge that it was the chosen people of God, the witness of his action and love in the midst of the nations. It took from neighboring peoples certain forms of worship, but its faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob subjected these borrowings to profound modifications, principally changes of significance but also often changes in the form, as it incorporated these elements into its religious practice in order to celebrate the memory of God’s wonderful deeds in its history.

The encounter between the Jewish world and Greek wisdom gave rise to a new form of inculturation: the translation of the Bible into Greek introduced the word of God into a world that had been closed to it and caused, under divine inspiration, an enrichment of the Scriptures.

10. “The law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms” (cf. Luke 24:27 and 44) was a preparation for the coming of the Son of God upon earth. The Old Please see DOCUMENT on page 9

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and following the example of St. Peter, the apostle St. Paul opened the doors of the Church, not keeping the Gospel within the restrictions of the Mosaic law but keeping what he himself had received of the tradition which came from the Lord.

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019 references to Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek, all of whom made sacrifices acceptable to God, are meant to help us on just this score.

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Abraham offered to God what was most precious to him, his own son, out of obedience to God and love for God. He thereby helps us to see clearly another element of the sacrifice of Christ: the way Jesus offers his sacrifice.

“ Once we seriously consider that God might not only accept our offering, but reject it, we urgently want to know how we can be An Acceptable Offering Before we get to Abel, Abraham, and confident, when we Melchizedek, we need to notice how the Supra quae propitio begins. Like most of participate in the Mass, the prayers that make up the Canon, it is personally addressed to God the Father, that he will in fact accept through Christ his Son and in memory of the Son, that is, by having his Son firmly the sacrifice we make.”

Eucharistic Prayer, as she has done for many centuries, will help us understand why what we do in the Mass is without doubt an offered sacrifice. More than that, invoking these three names will help us understand just what we are doing when we offer this sacrifice, and also what our own role (as priest and people) is in this sacrifice.

in mind. The whole Canon, after all, begins, “To you, therefore, most merciful

Ready and Abel “The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering” (Genesis 4:4). The text of Genesis does not tell us why God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s. It does point out, however, that what each offered was different. Cain offered “the fruit of the ground,” while Abel “brought the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions” (Genesis 4:3-4).

What Abel offered was, it seems, valuable to God in a way that what Cain offered was not. Abel offered what was the richest and best that could be offered. In just this way Abel’s offering anticipates, prefigures, the offering at the heart of the Paschal Mystery.

In the Upper Room Jesus offers to the Father his own body and blood, the human body and blood of the Father’s own eternal Son. What he offers is more

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Continued from SACRIFICE, page 1 Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as once you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.

If we are paying attention we will be struck, and perhaps puzzled, by the recollection here of three figures from the Old Testament, all from the book of Genesis. Following the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Abel was the first person to offer God an acceptable sacrifice, and was murdered by his older brother Cain, whose sacrifice was unacceptable to God (Genesis 4).

Abraham was willing to sacrifice his

Time and Time Again From the earliest times Christians have understood the figures and events of the Old Testament to point beyond themselves to Christ, and to us, his Church. This is already clear in the New Testament itself. Paul, for example, instructs the Corinthians that when the Israelites wandering in the desert “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them,” in truth “the Rock was Christ” (I Corinthians 10:4).

The Paschal Mystery, the once-forall event of Jesus’ passion, resurrection, and ascension, contains within it the whole reality of our salvation. As a single beam of light contains all the colors of the spectrum, so the Paschal Mystery contains “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). A prism spreads out the colors contained in a beam of light so that we can see them more clearly and distinguish them from one another.

In much the same way the Old Testament prepares beforehand for the Paschal Mystery. By way of anticipation it presents in discrete figures and episodes that which is concentrated in the person of Christ and his Paschal Mystery. So it is with the sacrifices of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek.

What Abel offered was, it seems, valuable to God in a way that what Cain offered was not. Abel offered what was the richest and best that could be offered. In just this way Abel’s offering anticipates, prefigures, the offering at the heart of the Paschal Mystery.

own son Isaac, the child of the promise, in obedience to God, though his hand was stayed and an animal provided

by God was offered up in Isaac’s stead (Genesis 22). Between these two figures from the Genesis narrative, but last in the Canon’s prayer, comes Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” who “brought out bread and wine” for an offering, blessed Abraham, and received from Abraham a tenth of all he had (Genesis 14).

In the midst of the Church’s holiest act, with the body and blood of the living Christ present before us on his altar, we call to mind these three figures from the Old Testament who lived long before Christ came. Reflecting on why the Church does this in the middle of the

Father, we make humble prayer and petition through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

So when the Canon addresses its prayer to “the Lord,” or, as here, simply to “you,” the Father is clearly the person of the triune Lord who is being addressed.

In this prayer the priest and the faithful ask the Father to accept our sacrifice. We plead with him, really. “Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them.” That we would pray to the Father in this way does not merely suggest, but clearly presupposes, that he might not accept our offering. He might reject it.

We may find this possibility hard to understand, or even to entertain. How could the Father not accept the gifts

offered by his creatures? Yet just to make us aware of this possibility, it seems, the Canon bids us to think of Abel when we go about making our offering to God in the Mass, and implores God to remember him, the first just man. That God can reject as well as accept our offerings is clearly the point of the story of Cain and Abel, of the first sacrifices offered by human creatures to God. “The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard” (Genesis 4:4-5).

Once we seriously consider that God might not only accept our offering, but reject it, we urgently want to know how we can be confident, when we participate in the Mass, that he will in fact accept the sacrifice we make. The Canon’s

valuable, dearer to God, than anything else God’s creatures could possibly offer him. Abel’s offering points to this, by drawing attention to what Abel gave to God, the good he offered. It helps us see clearly one element of the “fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2) Jesus makes in the Upper Room and consummates on the cross.

For the Love of God The sacrifice of Abraham (or “the binding of Isaac,” as it is known in Jewish tradition) Christians and Jews both see as one of the decisive episodes in the Bible.

In Christian eyes it is a multi-layered figure or type of Jesus Christ and his redemptive sacrifice. Not by accident is Genesis 22 one of the readings required

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019 by the Church for the Easter Vigil.

At one level the sacrifice of Abraham has much in common with Abel and his offering. Abraham is prepared to sacrifice to God what is most dear to him, his son Isaac. At this level Isaac himself, like the first-born of the flock offered by Abel, points us to Christ, to his body and blood offered in the Upper Room and on the cross.

At another level—and this is especially important for understanding the sacrifice of the Mass—Abraham too points us in his own way to Christ. Abraham offered to God what was most precious to him, his own son, out of obedience to God and love for God. He thereby helps us to see clearly another element of the sacrifice of Christ: the way Jesus offers his sacrifice.

Jesus not only offers what is most valuable—himself—but he offers it out of supreme love for his Father, out of loving obedience to the one who sent him. “By suffering out of love and obedience,” St. Thomas Aquinas observes, Christ offered to God more than was necessary to overcome all the sin and evil of humanity, above all “because of the greatness of the love with which he suffered,” the love of perfect charity for the Father and for us sinners (ST III, 48, 2).

Composition and Theme The offerings of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek present to us discrete elements of an acceptable sacrifice. In Abel’s case we have what is offered, in Abraham’s the way it is offered, and in the case of Melchizedek both who makes the offering and the signs under which it is offered. All of these come together and reach their highest pitch of perfection in the Paschal Mystery, the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As the sacrifices of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek were acceptable to God, each in its own way, so much the more is the sacrifice of Christ acceptable to God, truly “the perfect evening sacrifice.” So the Canon of the Mass encourages us to think.

What then of the question with which we began: how is the Mass itself a sacrifice, offered by us to God? Jesus offers a sacrifice, to be sure. He concentrates in his one act of self-giving all the figures and anticipations of the Old Testament, and so offers to his Father once and for all the supremely acceptable sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. What, though, of us, the humble gathering of priest and people present for Mass?

Where is our sacrifice, acceptable to God? Front and Center In his own unmistakable words at the center of each Mass, Jesus answers our question. “Do this in memory of me.”

We are to do, each time we gather for the Eucharist, exactly what he has done. And what he has done, in the Upper Room

“ The offerings of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek present to us discrete elements of an acceptable sacrifice.”

and on the cross, is offer sacrifice to the Father, the perfect evening sacrifice, the sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world.

In the Upper Room, under the sacramental signs of bread and wine, Jesus gives up his body to the Father for us and for our salvation, and offers his blood to the Father for the forgiveness of our sins. By what he does at the Last Supper, he offers to the Father his imminent passion and cross as a sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice variously foreshadowed by Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek.

“ To heed his command, ‘Do this,’ is not simply to be an observer, but a willing participant in the sacrifice that takes place here.”

Christ offers himself, in the words of our prayer from the Canon, as “a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.” And he commands us to do just this. We are to offer what he offered: his own body and blood, “a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.” When we, priest and people, simply do what he told us to do, we offer the perfect evening sacrifice, acceptable to the Father. How could it be otherwise?

For we offer the very sacrifice of Christ himself.

Notice, though. Our prayer from the Canon invoking Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek takes place after the priest has consecrated the gifts of bread and wine, making them in truth sacramental signs of Christ’s body given up for us and his blood poured out for us. The “holy sacrifice,” the “spotless victim,” is already present on the altar. Why then should we continue to plead so earnestly to the Father that he accept our sacrifice?

One Holy Sacrifice We plead with the Father to accept the body and blood of his own Son from our altar because we are not mere spectators of the sacrifice that takes place here.

What we offer is the most precious gift

we creatures can bring before God: the gift of his own Son. But the Church now joins herself to this offering. The lives of her faithful, the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering…. Christ’s sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering” (1368). We rightly hope that God will accept this gift from his Church when we offer it as his Son has commanded.

At the same time each of us is summoned to join actively in this offering, the priest in one way, the people in another way, no less earnest. Jesus has given into our own poor hands, the hands of his people, the precious gift of his body and blood that we may join him in offering that gift to the Father. To heed his command, “Do this,” is not simply to be an observer, but a willing participant, in the sacrifice that takes place here.

For this reason we ask with all our heart that the Father accept our offering.

As with Abel and Abraham, God will look not only upon the gift we offer (we have none better to give), but on the love, gratitude, and obedience with which we give it. This too we ask the Father to accept—not only the gift we give, but the love, poor though it may be, with which we give it.

The Church calls us to a “lively participation” in the Mass. We learn from Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek what this lively participation is: not only receiving but giving, sharing with love and devotion in the Church’s offering to God of the supreme sacrifice the creature can give.

Bruce Marshall is Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. For the 2018-19 academic year he is serving as Rev. Robert.

J. Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College, Providence, RI. He is the author of Trinity and Truth (2000) and Christology in Conflict (1987), and is presently at work on a book on the Trinity, faith, and reason in Aquinas and contemporary Catholic theology. He is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Theology.

AB/THE MEETING OF ABRAHAM AND MELCHIZEDEK, BY PETER PAUL RUBENS AT WIKIMEDIA

Mysterious Melchizedek Finally, the offering of Melchizedek, the third Old Testament figure mentioned in our prayer from the Canon, points to Christ in yet further ways. Melchizedek was a priest, that is, one appointed by “God Most High” to make acceptable offerings to him. As the Letter to the Hebrews emphasizes, the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, “without father or mother or genealogy” (Hebrews 7:3), points to Jesus Christ, the eternal high priest who is alone able to make the final and decisive offering for sin.

Jesus makes his once-for-all offering, so Christians have long believed, as the promised “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4), the great high priest for all humanity.

Melchizedek, moreover, brought a particular sort of gift for offering to God most high in a way that would bless Abraham: bread and wine. This helps us see clearly the way Jesus Christ, our great high priest, will offer his body and

blood to the Father in perfect charity for our salvation. He will make his offering sacramentally, that is, by way of signs. He does not, of course, offer bread and wine instead of his body and blood. He offers his body and blood in truth, by means of just these signs, and on the cross gives completely what he has offered.

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Melchizedek (depicted above on the right) was a priest, that is, one appointed by “God Most High” to make acceptable offerings to him. As the Letter to the Hebrews emphasizes, the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, “without father or mother or genealogy” points to Jesus Christ, the eternal high priest who is alone able to make the final and decisive offering for sin.

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Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

Varietates Legitimae: Twenty-Five Years Later

By Denis McNamara

Origins and Development In his 1951 encyclical Evangelii Praecones, Pius XII noted that missionaries do not “transplant European civilization and culture, and no other, to foreign soil” (60). Eight years later, John XXIII released Princeps Pastorum, making the bold claim that the Church “does not identify with any one culture, not even with European and Western civilization” (19). By contrast, he said, the Church recognizes “anything that redounds to the honor of the human mind and heart, whether or not it originates in parts of the world washed by the Mediterranean Sea” (19). Both popes referred to the lessons learned in mission lands around the time that they were writing, noting that genuine acceptance of the faith came when people understood that the Christian revelation does not come as a colonializing imposition, but as something which transforms and enlivens their existing culture.

So when Sacrosanctum Concilium included three short paragraphs entitled “Norms for Adapting the Liturgy to the Culture and Traditions of Peoples,” the Council fathers simply gave an extremely brief summary of the previous popes’ writings. Specifically, Vatican II noted that “even in the liturgy,” the Church does not wish to impose a rigid uniformity, but instead respects and fosters the genius and talents of various peoples.

As long as they were not “indissolubly bound up” with superstition and error, cultural traits of peoples could be preserved intact and even introduced to the liturgy itself, “so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit” (37). The directives given by the Council asked that in the future revision of the liturgical books, provisions be made for legitimate variations, that is, varietates legitimae, especially in mission lands, provided that the “substantial unity of the Roman Rite is preserved” (38).

Following the Council, a new area of theological development flowered around the concept of “inculturation” as something more than “adaptation,” as the Council called it. Diverse scholars from around the world began to define the term and develop inculturation’s theological rationale. Among the pioneers in this effort included Filipino Benedictine monk Anscar Chapungco, English missionary priest Aylward Shorter, and the Dutch Jesuit Ary Roest

AB/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

W

hen Sacrosanctum Concilium was released in 1963, attention was immediately drawn to its call for the active participation of the laity in the sacred liturgy. It was the first constitution released from the Second Vatican Council and much of its content grew from the vast research of the previous century, collectively known as the Liturgical Movement. But running parallel to the academic study of liturgical participation was the question of adaptation of the liturgy to the cultures outside of Europe. Missions in Asia and Africa were showing great promise, and both Pius XII and John XXIII wrote positively of welcoming the genius of cultures to which Christianity had been recently introduced.

This trend eventually solidified into what the Church now calls inculturation, embodied today by the Instruction Varietates Legitimae, released 25 years ago. But to better understand how a concern for the liturgy and a concern for missionary work dovetailed into inculturation, and how the principles of inculturation discussed in this 1994 document have since informed the Church’s actions in both its liturgy and cultural engagement, it is important to look back at how this vital concept first developed.

In his 1951 encyclical Evangelii Praecones, Pius XII noted that missionaries do not “transplant European civilization and culture, and no other, to foreign soil.” Eight years later, John XXIII released Princeps Pastorum, making the bold claim that the Church “does not identify with any one culture, not even with European and Western civilization.”

Norms for adapting the liturgy to the culture and traditions of peoples, from the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 37. Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.

38. Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics.

39. Within the limits set by the typical editions of the liturgical books, it shall be for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, to specify adaptations, especially in the case of the administration of the sacraments, the sacramentals, processions, liturgical language, sacred music, and the arts, but according to the fundamental norms laid down in this Constitution.

40. In some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed, and this entails greater difficulties.

Wherefore: 1) The competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, must, in this matter, carefully and prudently consider which elements from the traditions and culture of individual peoples might appropriately be admitted into divine worship. Adaptations which are judged to be useful or necessary should then be submitted to the Apostolic See, by whose consent they may be introduced.

2) To ensure that adaptations may be made with all the circumspection which they demand, the Apostolic See will grant power to this same territorial ecclesiastical authority to permit and to direct, as the case requires, the necessary preliminary experiments over a determined period of time among certain groups suited for the purpose.

3) Because liturgical laws often involve special difficulties with respect to adaptation, particularly in mission lands, men who are experts in these matters must be employed to formulate them.

Crollius, who edited the Inculturation Working Papers produced by the Centre “Cultures and Religions” at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. Even the noted theological luminary Karl Rahner mused on the possibilities that inculturation could bring to the Church’s newly realized global status.1 Perhaps the greatest proponent of inculturation was none other than Pope John Paul II. When commenting on the progress attained twenty-five years after Sacrosanctum Concilium, this pope saw ahead “the considerable task of continuing to implant the Liturgy in certain cultures, welcoming from them those expressions which are compatible with aspects of the true and authentic spirit of the Liturgy” (VQA, 16). In the same year, 1988, the International Theological Commission released Faith and Inculturation, which chronicled much of the official work on the topic, including that of the ordinary synods of 1974 and 1977 (3).

“ Perhaps the greatest proponent of inculturation was none other than Pope John Paul II.” “Only Correct Procedure” As is often the case with new ideas in the Church, broad principles regarding inculturation were laid out by the Council, then assessed by academic study and experimentation decades later. By 1994, at the request of Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued Varietates Legitimae, the fourth instruction on the right application of Sacrosanctum Concilium, specifically intended to establish norms which would provide “the only correct procedure” going forward on matters of inculturation (3).

While this may sound restrictive at first blush, the instruction was in no way dismissive of the importance of inculturation. It quoted many of John Paul’s positive comments, but also recognized that Sacrosanctum Concilium’s few broad principles needed new attention “in light of experience” (2). As with other similar instructions, it provided clarifications, definitions, and normative principles: “The norms for the adaptation of the liturgy to the temperament and conditions of different peoples, which were given in Articles 37-40 of the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium are here defined; certain principles expressed in general terms in those articles are explained more precisely; the directives are set out in a more appropriate way and the order to be followed is clearly set out…” (3).

Varietates Legitimae confesses the need for such clarification, admitting that “the theological principles relating to questions of faith and inculturation have still to be examined in depth” (3). Since Vatican II provided for the possibility of “more profound” adaption of the liturgy where pastorally necessary in certain cultures, Varietates Legitimae was intended to “make arrangements for putting it into effect in accordance with the law” (3). Indeed, the question of lawfulness remains at the heart of the instruction, as the title suggests: “legitimate” come from lex, the Latin word for law.

Defining The Word Interestingly, the Council documents themselves never used the word “inculturation.” As late as 1979 Pope John Paul II called it a “neologism”— that is, a new term added to the language slowly coming into common use.2 By 1994, Varietates Legitimae was ready to define the word more precisely as “the incarnation of the Gospel in autonomous cultures and at the same time the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church” (4).3 It further explained that genuine inculturation signifies “an intimate transformation of [a peoples’] authentic cultural values by their integrations into Christianity…” (4).

Properly speaking, then, inculturation involves the bringing of Christianity to a previously non-Christian culture, recognizably successful when the culture is animated and perfected by faith in Christ.

In common parlance, “inculturation” is a term often used for mere external adaptations, such as the use of familiar language, decorations, and songs for recently-arrived immigrant groups.

But the full definition remains quite clear because it operates much like the Incarnation: it brings Christ’s revelation to transform a culture and bring it to God through the Church. The hope, then, is when Christianity is recognizable through the language and cultural signs of a people, it will take root and flower according to that culture’s particular genius. People then see Christianity as their very own and not as a transient encounter, perhaps one brought by a colonizing foreign power; for such people, the results are genuine, lasting evangelization.

This process of inculturation includes the sacred liturgy, which the instruction says “must not be foreign to any country, people or individual,” while at the same time it must maintain “its identity through fidelity to the tradition which comes from the Lord.” Herein lies the crux of the matter in liturgical inculturation: how to make the Church’s liturgy both local and universal, that is, both inculturated and in unity with the Roman Rite.

Liturgy Given by Christ Varietates Legitimae makes it clear that the Church desires and welcomes

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Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

The 1891 Phat Diem cathedral in Vietnam uses local conventions to build a recognizably Catholic church. Tile rooves with upturned corners, popularly called the “pagoda style,” draw from the Sino-Vietnamese tradition, yet the massing and triumphal arch entry draw from Western classical conventions. Statues of Catholic saints using Asian stylistic traits combine with interior carvings of flora meaningful in the culture: chrysanthemums, bamboo, fir, and apricot trees. By using local conventions legible to the Vietnamese people---and topping the building with a cross—the cathedral inculturates Christianity into a local context without losing its Christian identity.

proper inculturation. However, in the pattern typical to Church documents, it commends what is good and cautions against exaggerations, all evaluated according to the nature of the Church and her liturgy. And so it begins its specific treatment of the principles for inculturation by addressing the nature of the liturgy itself. It reminds the reader of many of the prominent theological insights of Sacrosanctum Concilium: the liturgy is at once the action of Christ and his body; its goal is the glorification of God and the sanctification of his people; it is achieved through visible signs; and it is “not gathered by human decision, but is called by God in the Holy Spirit” (2122). It notes that because the Church is Catholic, that is, universal, “it overcomes the barriers which divide humanity (22), yet cautions that no matter what local changes are made, the liturgy “is always the celebration of the paschal mystery of Christ” and the Church is always nourished on the word of God in the Old and New Testaments (23-24).

So follows the balancing act which lawful variety requires. Since the Eucharist and the other sacraments were “given by Christ to his Church,” the instruction says, the Church “has the duty to transmit them carefully and faithfully to every generation” (25).

Even as the Church of Christ is “made present and signified in a given place and in a given time” by local churches, those churches have to be “united with the universal Church not only in belief and sacramentals, but also in those practices received through the Church as part of the uninterrupted apostolic tradition” (26). This explains the need for what it calls the “preceptive character” of liturgical legislation to “ensure the orthodoxy of worship,” not only to avoid error, but more importantly, to “pass on the faith in its integrity” (27).

General Principles After its introduction, Varietates Legitimae states clearly that the same concepts that justify the revision of the rites for active participation in paragraph 21 of Sacrosanctum Concilium also apply to inculturation: “texts and rites should be so drawn up that they express more

clearly the holy things they signify and so that the Christian people, as far as possible, may be able to understand them with ease and to take part in the rites fully, actively and as befits a community” (35). While this quote most often applies to the revision of the liturgical books within established Catholic cultures, the application to newly evangelized peoples grows from the same principle. Both are intended to encounter and draw grace from the liturgy.

One of the instruction’s most straightforward clarifications grows from the Council’s request that the substantial unity of the Roman Rite be preserved.

Varietates Legitimae not only recalls this directive, but also gives an explanation: “this unity is currently expressed in the typical editions of liturgical books, published by authority of the supreme pontiff and in the liturgical books approved by the episcopal conferences for their areas” (36). This clarification followed years of discussion by some who claimed inculturation was frequently inadequate for cultures not familiar with Roman conventions, and therefore entirely new rites were necessary.

Following the Council’s norms, Varietates Legitimae answers this claim, stating that “the work of inculturation does not foresee the introduction of new families of rites” (36).

In its final section, the document briefly addresses a series of particular questions in relation to inculturation, beginning with language. Without going into specific detail in matters of translation, it reminds the reader that the purpose of liturgical language is to “announce the good news of salvation and express the Church’s prayer to the Lord” (39). But more is necessary than legible texts; the direction is given that liturgical language expresses the “grandeur and holiness of the mysteries” being celebrated. So it follows that the “content of the texts of the Latin typical edition” of the missal is to be preserved, even as it respects the “religious language suitable for expressing prayer” that all peoples have (54). A gentle reminder is given that liturgical language has specific requirements beyond general religious speech: it is “impregnated by the Bible,” and maintains the use of Latin words

such as sacramentum and memoria.

Closely following upon language are music, gesture, and dance, each touched upon quite briefly. Music, it says, expresses the “soul of the people” and is to be promoted especially in the singing of liturgical texts themselves. Citing Sacrosanctum Concilium, the instruction notes that in mission lands music is often quite developed and can be “adapted according to their native genius” (40, citing SC, 119). In the typical “two step” method of instructional documents, after positive instruction comes the caution: musical forms must “accord with the dignity of the place of worship and truly contribute to the uplifting of the faithful” (40, citing SC, 129).

Similar things are said of liturgical posture. First it is mentioned as important, noting that each culture understands bodily postures differently.

Then the cautionary reminder: these postures must “express the attitude of humanity before God” and ought, if possible, to have a relationship to “the gestures and postures of the Bible” (41).

Lastly, dance is addressed in a similar manner. “Among some peoples,” it notes, “singing is instinctively accompanied by hand clapping, rhythmic swaying and dance movements.” This “external expression” can have a place in liturgical prayer, but the caution again is given: dance is admitted to the liturgy on the condition that it is “always the expression of true communal prayer of adoration, praise, offering and supplication, and not simply a performance” (42).

Quarter of a Century Varietates Legitimae turns 25 years old this year, and it has held up as a guide for the inculturation of the liturgy largely because its foundational theology accords deeply with the principles laid down in Sacrosanctum Concilium. By definition, inculturation requires innovation, as did the liturgical revisions after the Council. Varietates Legitimae clearly states that the same principles that apply to modification of the rites also apply to inculturation: “innovations should only be made when the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow

organically from forms already existing” (46, citing SC, 23).

Just as the revision of the Missal of 1962 did not create a new rite, so decisions regarding inculturation “do not envisage a transformation of the Roman rite, but are made within the context of the Roman rite” (63). In that sense, studying the principles of proper inculturation is enlightening to any student of the liturgy; diversity of liturgical expression within the unity of the Roman rite is meant to preserve the unity of the Church and protect the “integrity of the faith transmitted to the saints for all time” (70).

Dr. Denis McNamara is Associate Professor of Sacramental Aesthetics and Academic Director at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, a graduate program in liturgical studies in Mundelein, IL. He holds a BA in the History of Art from Yale University and a PhD in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, where he concentrated his research on the study of ecclesiastical architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has served on the Art and Architecture Commission of the Archdiocese of Chicago and works frequently with architects and pastors all over the United States in church renovations and new design.

Dr. McNamara is the author of Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2009), Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicago (Liturgy Training Publications, 2005), and How to Read Churches: A Crash Course in Ecclesiastical Architecture (Rizzoli, 2011). He is also a voice on The Liturgy Guys podcast, which won best Catholic podcast in 2017.

1. For more on the history of the term inculturation, see Doyle, Dennis M., “The Concept of Inculturation in Roman Catholicism: A Theological Consideration” (2012). Religious Studies Faculty Publications. Paper 102. http://ecommons.udayton.edu/rel_fac_pub/102, footnotes 12, 13.

2. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendi (1979), 53.

3. Varietates Legitimae here cites yet another document by Pope John Paul II, namely the 1985 encyclical Slavorum Apostoli and his January 17, 1987 address to the Pontifical Council for Culture plenary assembly.

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Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

Forbidden Translations?

Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805-1875) wrote in his opening volume of The Liturgical Year (1841): “In order to conform with the wishes of the Holy See, we do not give, in any of the volumes of our Liturgical Year, the literal translation of the Ordinary and Canon of the Mass.”

By Jeremy Priest

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t’s the ‘Cadillac’ of all hand missals,” my friend told me, as we rode the bus in the early hours of a cold Sunday morning in Milwaukee. This was my first foray into the “Latin Mass,” and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Yet, I had a sense of the beauty of the Latin and I was glad to have the trusty Father Lasance New Roman Missal to help me understand what lay behind the veil of the melodious Latin chant I would hear. Ever since that Sunday, I’ve always had a love for hand missals— helping to enter more deeply into the Mass, prayerfully meditating on the words and uniting myself to Christ’s sacrifice as Christ makes the Church manifest at each Mass.

All this is why these words from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s opening volume of The Liturgical Year puzzled me: “In order to conform with the wishes of the Holy See, we do not give, in any of the volumes of our Liturgical Year, the literal translation of the Ordinary and Canon of the Mass; and have in its place endeavored to give, to such of the laity as do not understand Latin, the means of uniting, in the closest possible manner, with everything that the priest says and does at the altar.”1

What on earth was this about? Wasn’t it a good thing to have translations of the Mass texts in the hands of the laity so they can unite with “everything that the priest says and does at the altar”? How did it come about that the Holy See restricted literal translations of the Ordinary and the Canon of the Mass, as Abbot Guéranger indicates? And why today is there not only an English translation provided in the missal for the Mass of 1962 (the Extraordinary Form) but the Mass in the ordinary form is almost exclusively celebrated around the world in the vernacular? For a solution to these puzzles, it is important to piece together some Church history.

Vernacular History It was in the face of the Protestant Reformation that the council fathers at Trent did not think the liturgy itself “should be celebrated in the vernacular indiscriminately” (DH 1749). Indeed, in the canons that followed the above statement in the decrees, the fathers of Trent went on to anathematize those Protestant Reformers who condemned the rubric of praying “part of the canon and the words of consecration…in a low voice” (DH 1759).

Luther himself was certainly in view here: “Would to God that [the priest] would shout [the words of institution] loudly so that all could hear them clearly, and, moreover, in the German language.”2 For Luther, the words of institution, or Verba Solemni, are essentially proclamatory and should therefore “be heard by everyone in the attending congregation, so he calls for these words to be sung.”3

Following upon Luther, the seventeenth-century Jansenist movement asserted that just “as the Bible ought to be intelligible to all, so too should the liturgy.

The Jansenists wished to supplement careful instruction

At the first Diocesan Synod of Baltimore held in November 1791, Bishop John Carroll (d.1815), allowed some use of English within liturgical celebrations: the Gospel was to be read in the vernacular on Sundays and feast days, followed by a sermon in English, and vernacular hymns and prayers were recommended.

“ While the fathers at Trent did not think it opportune to celebrate the liturgy ‘in the vernacular indiscriminately,’ they did not utterly condemn the practice in principle.” with at least a partial translation”4 and called for the use of “vernacular missals at Mass.”5 It is significant to note here that while the fathers at Trent did not think it opportune to celebrate the liturgy “in the vernacular indiscriminately” (DH 1749), they did not utterly condemn the practice in principle.

Rather, Trent recognized that so many of the Protestant Reformers asserted the illegitimate nature of celebrating the Sacraments in Latin.

Speaking from Within In the context of Trent and the centuries that followed, the insistence on the vernacular was most prominently tied to sentiments that were either anti-Papal or which denied Catholic teaching on the Sacraments and the Mass in particular. But in 1660, it was a wholly Catholic undertaking that made the first attempt within the Church to publish a vernacular form of the Mass. The Director of the Sorbonne, Joseph Voisin, “published a five-volume translation of the Missel romain, the text in Latin and French, with notes and commentary in French alone.”6 Though authorized by the vicars-general of Paris, the work was immediately condemned by the “the Assembly of the Clergy, the Sorbonne, and the Royal Council.”7 Indeed, Pope Alexander VII “joined in with an astonishing brief of 12 January 1661, not only censuring the ‘son of perdition’ who had made the translation, but also ‘rejecting, condemning and interdicting all translations that may be made of the book of the mass.’”8 Another attempt to vernacularize the Mass came with the rise of Jansenism, a Catholic theological movement that soon became tainted with a neoProtestant outlook, including a Calvinist view of man’s inherent depravity and an undue emphasis on predestination. Although Jansenism is most closely associated with its French proponents, the movement found its full flowering in the Italian region of Tuscany and, “chiefly owing to the anti-Papal policy of the Grand Duke Leopold, Jansenism became so strong [in this region] that the local Synod of Pistoia (1786) promulgated one of the most comprehensive statements of Jansenist positions that exist,”9 advocating among other things for “a vernacular liturgy, and the government of the Church by synods and national councils.”10 Nevertheless, even where this pseudoProtestant or anti-Catholic sentiment was lacking,

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A Brief History of How the Mass Came to Be Rendered in the Vernacular

“Understanding of prayer,” said Pope Paul VI in a November 26, 1969 address, “is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more—particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech.”

opportunities for the use of the vernacular were slowly adopted.

A Clear Mission Some opportunities for the use of the vernacular in relation to the liturgy opened up in mission lands. In 1615 the mission to China brought forth the permission of Pope Paul V “to celebrate mass in Chinese.”11 Indeed, in “1631, full vernacular privileges were granted to missionaries in Georgia for the celebration of Mass in either Georgian or Armenian. On the other side of the Atlantic in the region around modern-day Montreal, Jesuit missionaries received permission from the Holy See for use of the Iroquois language in the liturgy.

At the first Diocesan Synod of Baltimore held in November 1791, Bishop John Carroll (d.1815), allowed some use of English within liturgical celebrations: the Gospel was to be read in the vernacular on Sundays and feast days, followed by a sermon in English, and vernacular hymns and prayers were recommended, as well. In 1822, Bishop John England of Charleston, South Carolina, edited the first American edition of the Roman Missal in English.”12 Thus, Trent’s recognition that the “Mass contains much instruction for the faithful” and her concern that “the children beg for food but no one gives to them” (DH 1749), gained greater weight in mission lands, even as use of the vernacular in Europe remained contested. But even in Europe, the Church was warming to the idea of the vernacular in liturgy.

Particularly effective were the arguments of Archbishop Colbert of Rouen, “who taught in a pastoral that the ancient mode of celebrating Mass in the language of the people was the fittest means to prepare the minds of the congregation for participation in the sacrifice.”13 Colbert’s arguments were defended by Pope Benedict XIV, who “in 1757 authorized vernacular translations” of the Bible, “provided they were approved at Rome and contained explanations by orthodox scholars.”14 However, with the advent of the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia (1786) and the French Revolution (1789), a more cautious approach to the vernacular in relation to the liturgy came to the fore. Indeed, as “late as 1851 and again in 1857, the Holy See refused to allow liturgical translations in the vernacular, even as a tool for the laity in greater appreciation of the Mass.

Rite of Passage All of that changed exactly twenty years later when, in 1877, the same Pope Pius IX (1846–78), who forbade vernacular translations, completely reversed his decision, allowing any bishop to authorize a translation and the use of vernacular missals by the laity.15

Pope Leo XIII followed this by “silently [omitting] the ban on translation of the mass into the vernacular” with the 1897 “edition of the Index of Prohibited Books.”16 In this way, Leo XIII allowed hand missals to be published “on the ordinary imprimatur basis according to the judgment of each bishop.”17 It is at Please see VERNACULAR on page 9

9

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

Testament, comprising the life and culture of the people of Israel, is also the history of salvation.

On coming to the earth the Son of God, “born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4), associated himself with social and cultural conditions of the people of the alliance, with whom he lived and prayed.1 In becoming a man he became a member of a people, a country and an epoch “and in a certain way, he thereby united himself to the whole human race.”2 For “we are all one in Christ, and the common nature of our humanity takes life in him. It is for this that he was called the ‘new Adam.’”3 11. Christ, who wanted to share our human condition (cf. Hebrews 2:14), died for all in order to gather into unity the scattered children of God (cf. John 11:52). By his death he wanted to break down the wall of separation between mankind, to make Israel and the nations one people. By the power of his resurrection he drew all people to himself and created out of them a single new man (cf. Ephesians 2: 14-16; John 12:32).

In him a new world has been born (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:16-17), and everyone can become a new creature. In him, darkness has given place to light, promise became reality and all the religious aspirations of humanity found their fulfillment. By the offering that he made of his body, once for all (cf. Hebrews 10: 10), Christ Jesus brought about the fullness of worship in spirit and in truth in the renewal which he wished for his disciples (cf. John 4:23-24).

12. “In Christ…the fullness of divine worship has come to us.”4 In him we have the high priest, taken from among men (cf. Hebrews 5:15; 10: 19-21), put to death in the flesh but brought to life in the spirit (cf. 1 Peter 3:18). As Christ and Lord, he has made out of the new people “a kingdom of priests for God his Father” (cf. Revelation 1:6; 5:9 10).5 But before inaugurating by the shedding of his blood the paschal mystery,6 which constitutes the essential element of Christian worship,7 Christ wanted to institute the eucharist, the memorial of his death and resurrection, until he comes again. Here

Continued from VERNACULAR on page 8 this point that we can see a slow movement toward the proliferation of hand missals containing a translation of the Mass into the vernacular, including the Canon and Dominical words of the Mass.

As many in the Liturgical Movement pushed toward the use of the vernacular in relation to the liturgy, some insisted on not merely the use of vernacular missals, but “use of the vernacular” even “in the celebration of the august eucharistic sacrifice” (Mediator Dei, 59). However, since the situation confronted by Trent had changed and “since no Catholic would now deny a sacred rite celebrated in Latin to be legitimate and efficacious,”18 a way was opened for the Second Vatican Council to decree that “since the use of the mother tongue [i.e., the vernacular], whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36).

Several years later—on the eve of the move to the vernacular in the Novus Ordo—Pope Paul VI complemented the sentiments previously quoted from Dom Guéranger (above). Paul said, the understanding “of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more.”19 Vernacular Solus?

Having taken a cursory look at how the ban on vernacular translations of the Mass came about—and then evaporated—we are brought back to our original query: why was there a ban on vernacular translations of the Ordinary and Canon of the Mass? In the face of much post-Reformation catechesis and apologetics with regard to the nature of the Eucharist, why not have vernacular translations of the basic texts of the Mass?

After our current experience of fifty uninterrupted years of vernacular usage, let me speculate that perhaps

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Continued from DOCUMENT on page 3

The creation and the development of the forms of Christian celebration developed gradually according to local conditions in the great cultural areas where the good news was proclaimed. Thus were born distinct liturgical families of the Churches of the West and of the East. The Ethiopian rite, for example, features its own style of processional cross (pictured above), observes both Sabbath and Sunday, and is prayed in the Ge’ez language.

is to be found the fundamental principle of Christian liturgy and the kernel of its ritual expression.

13. At the moment of his going to his Father, the risen Christ assures his disciples of his presence and sends them to proclaim the Gospel to the whole of creation, to make disciples of all nations and baptize

them (cf. Matthew 28:15; Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8). On the

this reticence to give a literal translation of the Ordinary and the Canon was rooted in the good of both guarding and revealing the mystery. In 1978 and again in 1999, Joseph Ratzinger, “to the annoyance of many liturgists,” argued “that in no sense does the whole Canon always have to be said out loud.”

In contradistinction to Luther’s assertions above, Ratzinger writes, “It is no accident that in Jerusalem, from a very early time, parts of the Canon were prayed in silence and that in the West the silent Canon—overlaid in part with meditative singing—became the norm. To dismiss all this as the result of misunderstandings is just too easy. It really is not true that reciting the whole Eucharistic Prayer out loud and without interruptions is a prerequisite for the participation of everyone in this central act of the Mass.”20

day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit created a new community within the human race, uniting all in spite of the differences of language, which were a sign of division (cf. Acts 2:1-11). Henceforth the wonders of

God will be made known to people of every language and culture (cf. Acts 10:44-48). Those redeemed by the

all those years ago, I can all the more appreciate the gift and task of language and its limited ability to unite us to the mysteries celebrated in the liturgy.

Perhaps what was being fought for in limiting literal translations of the Canon and the words of institution into the vernacular was a deep reverence and awe for the mystery that lies beneath the words. But such a topic is itself perhaps best left in silence to be taken up for another occasion.

Jeremy J. Priest is the Director of the Office of Worship for the Catholic Diocese of Lansing, MI, as well as Content Editor for Adoremus. He holds an STL from the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL. He and his wife Genevieve have two children and live in Grand Ledge, MI.

“ In 1877, the same Pope Pius IX, who forbade vernacular translations, completely reversed his decision, allowing any bishop to authorize a translation and the use of vernacular missals by the laity.”

Indeed, Paul VI remarks—in the very same address on the eve of the implementation of the Novus Ordo—“the silences” in the Novus Ordo “will mark various deeper moments in the rite.”21 Ratzinger concludes this plea for silent participation in the Canon by an appeal to experience that goes beyond words:

“Anyone who has experienced a church united in the silent praying of the Canon will know what a really filled silence is. It is at once a loud and penetrating cry to God and a Spirit-filled act of prayer. Here everyone does pray the Canon together, albeit in a bond with the special task of the priestly ministry.

Here everyone is united, laid hold of

by Christ, and led by the Holy Spirit into that common prayer to the Father which is the true sacrifice—the love that reconciles and unites God and the world.”22

While I continue to appreciate the gift of that “Cadillac” of hand missals on that cold Sunday morning in Milwaukee

1. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Tr. L. Shepherd (Dublin: James Duffy & Sons, 1870), 13.

2. Martin Luther, “Sermon on the Worthy Reception of the Sacrament, 1521,” in Luther’s Works, Vol. 42: Devotional Writings I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 173.

3. Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications, ed. Paul Rorem, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 180.

4. John McManners, Church and Society in EighteenthCentury France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 429.

5. James Hitchcock, History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 333.

6. John McManners, Church and Society in EighteenthCentury France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 45.

7. John McManners, Church and Society in EighteenthCentury France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen

Please see DOCUMENT on page 10

Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 45.

8. John McManners, Church and Society in EighteenthCentury France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 45.

9. F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 867.

10. John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 665.

11. Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1994), 112.

12. Keith F. Pecklers, Liturgy: The Illustrated History (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012), 168.

13. William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary (New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 1887), 502.

14. John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, vol. 2, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press Inc., 1998), 200.

15. Keith F. Pecklers, Liturgy: The Illustrated History (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012), 168.

16. Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830– 1914, ed. Henry Chadwick and Owen Chadwick, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 361.

17. Keith F. Pecklers, Liturgy: The Illustrated History (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012), 168.

18. The Roman Missal: Renewed by Decree of the Most Holy Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, Promulgated by Authority of Pope Paul VI and Revised at the Direction of Pope John Paul II, Third Typical Edition. (Washington D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 22: GIRM §12.

19. “Address of Pope Paul VI to a General Assembly, November 26, 1969,” in James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead, The Pope, the Council, and the Mass: Answers to Questions the “Traditionalists” Have Asked, Revised Edition. (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2006), 337–338.

20. Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans.

John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 215.

21. “Address of Pope Paul VI to a General Assembly, November 26, 1969,” in James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead, The Pope, the Council, and the Mass: Answers to Questions the “Traditionalists” Have Asked, Revised Edition. (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2006), 338.

22. Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans.

John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 215–216.

10 Continued from DOCUMENT, page 9 blood of the Lamb and united in fraternal communion (cf. Acts 2:42) are called from “every tribe, language, people and nation” (cf. Revelation 5:9).

14. Faith in Christ offers to all nations the possibility of being beneficiaries of the promise and of sharing in the heritage of the people of the covenant (cf. Ephesians 3:6), without renouncing their culture. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, following the example of St. Peter (cf. Acts 10), St. Paul opened the doors of the Church, not keeping the Gospel within the restrictions of the Mosaic law but keeping what he himself had received of the tradition which came from the Lord (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:23).

Thus, from the beginning, the Church did not demand of converts who were uncircumcised “anything beyond what was necessary” according to the decision of the apostolic assembly of Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15:28).

15. In gathering together to break the bread on the first day of the week, which became the day of the Lord (cf. Acts 20:7; Revelation 1: 10), the first Christian communities followed the command of Jesus who, in the context of the memorial of the Jewish pasch, instituted the memorial of his passion. In continuity with the unique history of salvation, they spontaneously took the forms and texts of Jewish worship and adapted them to express the radical newness of Christian worship.8 Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, discernment was exercised between what could be kept and what was to be discarded of the Jewish heritage of worship.

16. The spread of the Gospel in the world gave rise to other types of ritual in the Churches coming from the gentiles, under the influence of different cultural traditions. Under the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit, discernment was exercised to distinguish those elements coming from “pagan” cultures which were incompatible with Christianity from those which could be accepted in harmony with apostolic tradition and in fidelity to the Gospel of salvation.

17. The creation and the development of the forms of Christian celebration developed gradually according to local conditions in the great cultural areas where the good news was proclaimed.

Thus were born distinct liturgical families of the Churches of the West and of the East. Their rich patrimony preserves faithfully the Christian tradition in its fullness.9 The Church of the West has sometimes drawn elements of its liturgy from the patrimony of the liturgical families of the East.10 The Church of Rome adopted in its liturgy the living language of the people, first Greek and then Latin, and, like other Latin Churches, accepted into its worship important events of social life and gave them a Christian significance. During the course of the centuries, the Roman rite has known how to integrate texts, chants, gestures and rites from various sources11 and to adapt itself in local cultures in mission territories,12 even if at certain periods a desire for liturgical uniformity obscured this fact.

18. In our own time, the Second Vatican Council recalled that the Church “fosters and assumes the ability, resources and customs of each people.

In assuming them, the Church purifies, strengthens and ennobles them….

Whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, it is not only saved from destruction but it is also cleansed, raised up and made perfect unto the glory of God, the confounding of the devil, and the happiness of mankind.”13 So the liturgy of the Church must not be foreign to any country, people or individual, and at the same time it should transcend the particularity of race and nation. It must be capable of expressing itself in every human culture, all the while maintaining its identity through fidelity to the tradition which comes to it from the Lord.14

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

THE RITE QUESTIONS

Q : Omitting the Gospel Acclamation?

When General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM) 63 states that “the Alleluia or the Verse before the Gospel, if not sung, may be omitted,” does this allowance imply that the Lectionary text ought to be omitted when it is not sung, or that it should be spoken in these cases?

A

: The GIRM’s instruction on the Alleluia and the Verse before the Gospel presents a number of variables for the carrying out of the rite, which take into account both the character of the liturgical season and the rank of the celebration. As a general rule, the Alleluia and its verse are sung outside of Lent, and during Lent only the verse given in the Lectionary is sung.1 When only one reading precedes the Gospel (as in weekday Masses) a Responsorial Psalm with the response “Alleluia” may directly precede the Gospel, otherwise the Alleluia or Verse before the Gospel may be omitted entirely.

As with almost every instruction given by the liturgical books, however, these options are never given without underlying reasons and principles that speak to the sacramental significance and inner meaning of the rites which should inform the decision made in practice. At the very least, these decisions should never merely be left to “private inclination or arbitrary choice.”2 First, in the description of the Alleluia and Verse before the Gospel in GIRM, 62, we find two important indications of the rite’s significance: 1) it is to be sung,3 and 2) the act of singing it “constitutes a rite or act in itself.” Unlike the Entrance Chant, Responsorial Psalm, and Communion Chant, where the antiphons given in the liturgical books should be recited when they are not sung, the Alleluia and Verse are among the texts that are “in principle meant to be sung,”4 and therefore may simply be

omitted when “it is not always necessary (e.g., in weekday Masses)” to sing them.5 In this ritual action “the faithful welcomes and greets the Lord who is about to speak to them in the Gospel and profess their faith by means of the chant” (See GIRM, 62). Therefore, its significance is found in the faithful coming face to face with the Lord for which an acclamation of praise is necessary. An insight on liturgical singing from Joseph Ratzinger comes to mind: “When man comes into contact with God, mere speech is not enough.

Areas of his existence are awakened that spontaneously turn into song.”6 The history of the Alleluia chant itself speaks to a kind of ritualized spontaneous song, as shown in the chant’s very form in the Graduale Romanum. While the various Alleluia chants found in the Graduale—as with the Tracts for Lent—are particularly florid pieces that highlight their musical character, each Alleluia melody concludes with a “iubilus”—a moment of pure melody on the final syllable of Alleluia which transcends the rational meaning of the word, ascending into a moment of pure musical praise and ecstasy. To merely recite the word “Alleluia” utterly fails to convey the significance of these chants.

It must be acknowledged also that traditional rubrics for the Roman Rite require the “Alleluia” or Gospel Verse (Tract) to be spoken when they are not sung, and so the GIRM also permits the possibility of mere recitation. But

“ The Church of Rome adopted in its liturgy the living language of the people, first Greek and then Latin, and, like other Latin Churches, accepted into its worship important events of social life and gave them a Christian significance.”

19. The liturgy, like the Gospel, must respect cultures, but at the same time invite them to purify and sanctify themselves.

In adhering to Christ by faith, the Jews remained faithful to the Old Testament, which led to Jesus, the Messiah of Israel; they knew that he had fulfilled the Mosaic alliance, as the mediator of the new and eternal covenant, sealed in his blood on the cross. They knew that, by his one perfect sacrifice, he is the authentic high priest and the definitive temple (cf. Hebrews 6-10), and the prescriptions of circumcision (cf. Galatians 5: 1-6), the Sabbath (cf.

Matthew 12:8 and similar),15 and the sacrifices of the temple (cf. Hebrews 10) became of only relative significance.

In a more radical way Christians coming from paganism had to renounce idols, myths, superstitions (cf. Acts 19: 18-19; 1 Corinthians 10: 14-22; 2: 2022; 1 John 5:21) when they adhered to Christ.

But whatever their ethnic or cultural origin, Christians have to recognize the promise, the prophecy and the history of their salvation in the history of Israel.

They must accept as the word of God

the books of the Old Testament as well as those of the New.16 They welcome the sacramental signs, which can only be understood fully in the context of Holy Scripture and the life of the Church.17 20. The challenge which faced the first Christians, whether they came from the chosen people or from a pagan background, was to reconcile the renunciations demanded by faith in Christ with fidelity to the culture and traditions of the people to which they belonged.

And so it will be for Christians of all times, as the words of St. Paul affirm: “We proclaim Christ crucified, scandal for the Jews, foolishness for the pagans” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

The discernment exercised during the course of the Church’s history remains necessary, so that through the liturgy the work of salvation accomplished by Christ may continue faithfully in the Church by the power of the Spirit in different countries and times and in different human cultures.

1. Cf. Vatican Council II, Ad Gentes, 10.

2. Gaudium et Spes, 22.

3. St. Cyril of Alexandria, In Ioannem, I 14: Patrologia Graeca, 73, 162C.

when this option is employed the entire text given should be recited, not merely the word “Alleluia.” In light of the importance of the chant before the Gospel, however, nothing prohibits singing it in an otherwise mostly recited Mass.

Finally, we should also note that GIRM 62 and 63 do not permit for the Alleluia or Verse to be omitted when there are two readings before the Gospel.

On Sundays and Solemnities when these readings are provided, the Acclamation before the Gospel—strictly speaking— must be sung in full. In this way it will best radiate its full significance as an act of sung praise and expression of faith offered to, and even through, the Logos— the Eternal Word of God who we come face to face with in the Gospel.

– Answered by Adam Bartlett, president and co-founder of the Source and Summit Institute, and president and editor of Illuminare Publications 1. A “Lenten Gospel Acclamation” (e.g., “Praise to you, Lord, Jesus Christ, King of endless glory”) is not required to be sung, but is only offered as a possibility in the Lectionary for Mass (See Introduction, 91). The normative form given by both the Lectionary and the Graduale Romanum is a single verse that is sung without an acclamation or refrain.

2. See GIRM 42.

3. A conviction underscored by the Introduction to the Lectionary 23: “The Alleluia or the verse before the Gospel must be sung, and during it all stand.”

4. See GIRM 40.

5. Ibid.

6. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 136.

4. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5.

5. Cf. Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, 10.

6. Cf. Roman Missal, Fifth Weekday of the Passion of the Lord, 5: Prayer One: “…per suum cruorem instituit paschale mysterium.”

7. Cf. Paul VI, apostolic letter Mysterii Paschalis, Feb. 14, 1969: AAS 61 (1969), 222-226.

8. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1096.

9. Cf. ibid., 1200-1203.

10. Cf. Vatican Council II, Unitatis Redintegratio, 14-15.

11. Texts: cf. the sources of the prayers, the prefaces and the eucharistic prayers of the Roman Missal; chants: for example the antiphons for Jan. 1, baptism of the Lord; Sept. 8, the Improperia of Good Friday, the hymns of the Liturgy of the Hours; gestures: for example the sprinkling of holy water, use of incense, genuflection, hands joined; rites: for example Palm Sunday procession, the adoration of the cross on Good Friday, the rogations.

12. Cf. in the past St. Gregory the Great, Letter to Mellitus: Reg. XI, 59: CCL 140A, 961-962; John VIII, bull Industriae Tuae, June 26, 880: Patrologia Latina, 126, 904; Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Instruction to the Apostolic Vicars of China and Indochina (1654): Collectanea S.C. de Propaganda Fide, I 1 Rome, 1907, No. 135; instruction Plane Compertum, Dec. 8, 1939: AAS 32 (1940), 2426.

13. Lumen Gentium, 17 also 13.

14. Cf. Catechesi Tradendae, 52-53; Redemptoris Missio, 53-54; Catechism of the Catholic Church 1204-1206.

15. Cf., also St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians, 9: Funk 1, 199: “We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the sabbath, and now order their lives by the Lord’s day instead.”

16. Cf. Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum, 14-16; Ordo Lectionum Missae ed. typica altera Praenotanda, 5: “It is the same mystery of Christ that the Church announces when she proclaims the Old and New Testament in the celebration of the liturgy. The New Testament is, indeed, hidden in the Old and, in the New the Old is revealed.

Because Christ is the center and fullness of all Scripture, as also of the whole liturgical celebration”; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 120123, 128- 130, 1093-1095.

17. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 10931096.

11

Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019

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Adoremus Bulletin, January 2019 12 Contextual Delight—Book Explores the Fruitful Marriage of Theology and Liturgy

By Richard Budd Holy Eros: A Liturgical Theology of the Body by Adam Cooper. Foreword by David Fagerberg. Kettering, Ohio: Angelico Press, 2014. 126 pp. ISBN: 978-1621380764. $14.95 paperback.

O

n October 20-21, 2018, Father Harrison Ayre, a priest of British Columbia, Canada, and co-host of the Clerically Speaking podcast, published a “tweet storm” on Twitter. In the span of over fifty tweets he declared his unease with what he called the “Missionary Discipleship Movement.” What he described in the series of tweets, and later, on the November 2nd episode of his podcast, was a deficiency in the movement because it lacked a sacramental understanding of creation and revelation.

Because the movement was far too focused on discipleship as the goal of Christian life, it missed the ancient Christian understanding that deification is, in fact, the goal of our relationship with Christ. The concept of discipleship expresses the idea of being a student: learning from a master and incorporating his teaching into one’s life.

Discipleship is certainly an essential aspect of the Christian life; however, if it is considered the ultimate goal of that life, it fails to fully grasp the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation and Paschal Mystery. Such programs often fail to grasp the fullness of what is offered to the Christian through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

This understanding of Christianity as oriented toward deification is founded on the philosophical worldview of the Christian, a worldview that holds that material things (bodies, food, words) not only symbolically point to spiritual things but that they also have the capacity to make present those spiritual realities as well; not a mere communication of the idea of something beyond itself, but the embodiment of that other reality and the power to transform into it.

This understanding of the created world is foundational to St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body—constitutively, the material world possesses the capacity to communicate and make present the immaterial.

It is within this concept of the sacramentality of the material world that Adam Cooper, a fellow at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, Australia, sets his Holy Eros: A Liturgical Theology of the Body (Angelico Press, 2014). From the first sentence of page one, Cooper makes reference to the value of John Paul II’s contribution to a theological anthropology. While not attempting to directly work from or expound on the saintly pope’s work, he explores John Paul’s nuptial structure of the human person as metaphysically gift-oriented toward an other, and then applies those insights to the nature and meaning of the liturgy.

Theology Goes to Church In developing a theology of the body for the liturgy, Cooper contextualizes his work within two general principles. The first is a definition of theology in the sense that the early Fathers understood theologia. Among the early Fathers, this “God speech” leant itself to the mystical, to the giving over of praise to God. According to Origen, theology is “to join in faith with Christ the Son in his mediating office and reconciling movement towards God the Father” (4).

And so, we find here an understanding of theologia as right worship of God through the participation in Christ’s own action as priest: “Thus in one, very profound sense, theology is fundamentally a doxological, liturgical, and thereby physical activity” (5).

This worship of the Father is accomplished through the physical reconciling mission of Christ. Liturgical theology is thus primary theology, for it is through the liturgy that we actively receive the Divine nature and are caught up into the kenotic perichoresis of the three persons of the Trinity.

The second principle he contextualizes

this liturgical theology of the body within is a dynamic he calls “‘performative nuptiality.’ This refers to the way in which the liturgy performs or enacts the spousal union between Christ and his bride” (6).

This is a key concept.

Speech can exist in two different modes.

The first mode is descriptive of pre-existing realities: “This is my car.” “These cookies have raisins in them.” “It is 32 degrees outside.” The second mode of speech is active and performative: it brings into existence what was once not there. We can think analogously of an umpire calling strikes or balls. Before he speaks, the reality of the count doesn’t exist. Once he declares a strike, the pitch exists as a strike.

God’s speech is performative in a different way, however. When he speaks, what he speaks comes into existence out of nothing (ex nihilo). The Hebrew dabar, which denotes both word and event, expresses this unique character of God’s speech. The liturgy, Cooper asserts, as the reconciling action of the Word of God, takes on this performative character: “the drama of the liturgy actually constitutes, as both ‘announcement’ and ‘cause,’ the spousal union between Christ and his bride” (7).

These two principles, taken together, form the foundation for his liturgical theology of the body. A physical theology of rites and gestures performed by the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, is a performative nuptiality. Through the speech of God enacted out in these rites, the spousal union of God and man takes place.

These principles being established, he divides his project into two main sections.

The first section sets forth the philosophical and theological principles by which he examines three modes of nuptiality in the liturgy: the priest and the people, the proclaimed word and prayer, and finally the sacrifice and sacrament.

Cooper is brilliant in his ability to write carefully-crafted and dense theology in a very concise manner. The book is deceptively thin. In its ninety-eight pages, thanks to Cooper’s succinct style, it contains the work of a text that in the hands of a less economical writer might have been expanded to five times its size. To give a summary of its content is far beyond the scope of this review, and so I will only be able to focus on a few of its key themes.

The Metaphysics of Receptivity To begin understanding the performative nuptiality of the liturgy, it is helpful to understand the subjects taking part in the dramatic action. To be created is to have received existence/being as gifts—an existence that is fundamentally receptive and ordered toward giving itself.

Additionally, since man was created from nothing, nothingness exists as a potential for him—he is an unnecessary being.

Therefore, the fact that he continues in being is so because of the relationship he has with God, the one necessary being. To exist is to be in relation to God who is being itself.

The very pattern of man’s existence, then, is to be in relationship and to be receptive.

And this is why God declares that it is not good for man to be alone—that he must live out his existence with and for another other than himself. It is only in this orientation of receiving and giving, this metaphysic of gift, that the individual can actualize his personhood.

We even see this structure of gift and receptivity within the very nature of the Trinity itself. The Son stands in a perpetual relation of receptivity to the Father, so much so that he declares that he and the Father are one. Thus, receptivity is not an indication of a lack in the person or of unfulfilled being, but rather receptivity is the way to perfection of being. There is no such thing as the self-made man or the self-sustaining man. To become who you are, you must live a life of gift which has woven into its very structure the posture of receptivity.

The initiator of the liturgical action is therefore God: “In every celebration of the liturgy,” Cooper writes, “...the hypostatic union is somehow made present and consummated anew” (24). We participate in the sacred liturgy primarily to be recipients of God’s performative presence in the world. Human beings do not contain within themselves the active principle for their existence and perfection since they have come into being out of nothing.

Taking into account all that has been described to this point about the essential relation to God and the fabric of personal fulfillment being receptivity, we can conclude, Cooper notes, that “only in Christian worship are the conditions for human life and perfection fulfilled” (24) because only in Christian worship does the human person receive the fullness of what they were made for—relationship with the Divine.

Therefore, Cooper concludes, “assimilation to God in the liturgy is not a matter of pure aesthetic or emotional experience, still less of mechanical cause and effect, but of voluntary integration of the sensory passions to the ‘noble pleasure’ of love for God, in response to Divine action” (25). The nuptial exchange of persons, Divine and human, takes place in its fullest dimension in the liturgy. It is an exchange of gift and of love, and being the actions of persons, takes on the full dimension of personal existence and expression.

The Liturgical Theodrama How then to understand the physical gestures and elements of the liturgical action itself?

This nuptiality takes flesh when the Church gathers for worship: Christ is acting in and through her even as she acts as him.

Cooper applies the words of St. John Paul II in speaking of spouses to the liturgical relationship of Christ and the Church: “Through love, the wife’s ‘I’ becomes, so to speak, the husband’s ‘I’” (29). It is through the Eucharist that the Church’s identity is fulfilled in becoming the identity of Christ.

Analogously, in the liturgy of matrimony, the husband and wife declare their consent and through this very speech-act the two become one, a single subject. But then the words must become flesh. The couple moves from the vows to conjugal intercourse where the words spoken are acted out in their reality. The marriage liturgical rite is thus a dramatic playing out of performative and prophetic speech which refers back to its institution by Christ and looks forward to physical consummation.

The eucharistic liturgy, Cooper says, also embodies these performative and prophetic dimensions “referring backwards to salvation history and its culmination in the pascha of Christ, and forward—with a sense of incompleteness and yearning— to the eschatological consummation at the resurrection” (34). Each eucharistic liturgy, then, takes up the entire drama of God’s interaction with mankind, from the foundations of creation until the end of time.

If the liturgy is the dramatic action, then the setting of that action, the stage, if you

will, is the church building and the various elements used during the liturgy. This ritual topography has, from the beginning of Christian thought, been considered of determinative significance. The Temple in Jerusalem, for instance, was considered to be representative of the entire cosmos, the garden of paradise in miniature—and within this context the priest stood between heaven and earth to offer sacrifice on behalf of the whole created order.

In giving value to the spatial and elemental aspects of the liturgy, Cooper writes, we can see the liturgy as “a progressive series of unfolding symbolic and theandric activities through which the eschatological union of the cosmos in and with God is manifested and realized in historic time” (36). Thus, “such matters as architecture, orientation, and ritual movement are by no means incidental to faithful liturgical enactment,” the author concludes. “The church building and the liturgy enacted therein have an appropriate body language: they are patterned on and meant effectually to embody true and transcendent realities. Not only the liturgy, but also the building, conveys certain meanings and ideas, and with this comes the possibility of falsification” (36).

Cooper goes on to explore various topics related to the topography of the liturgy such as the altar, the eastward orientation of the building and worship, the division of the church into sanctuary and nave, etc. Ultimately, Cooper makes the case that the Church is sanctified and sanctifies the world because she is situated in a defined space in the world and lives out, in performative ritual, the whole of salvation history and eschatology.

Sacramental Grounding In the decades following the Council and even, in some ways, leading up to the Council, there was a loss of the expression and perception of the sacramentality of the liturgy. In some places, it devolved into a mechanical performance of rites, in others, iconoclasm and a utilitarian concern dominated the topography of liturgical architecture, art, and expression. A certain Cartesian dualism also infected the landscape and within this division of spirit and matter, certain falsifications began to find expression.

By regrounding us within a metaphysics of receptivity, the performative drama of liturgical action, and the nuptial character of eucharistic deification, Adam Cooper has made a substantial contribution to the renewal of the liturgy in the 21st Century.

As stated earlier, the text is rich and dense.

It is academic, and it presupposes a certain amount of familiarity with metaphysics, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the work done by theologians such as Balthasar, Ratzinger, John Paul II, and others.

In my attempt to summarize a portion of the book’s contents, I had to leave much valuable material unrecognized.

However, much good would come from a careful study of its contents by parishes and chanceries in ongoing efforts to achieve the liturgical vision set forth in the 20th century’s Liturgical Movement and ultimately at the Second Vatican Council. Recovering a sacramental vision of creation and mission will do much for the efforts of the New Evangelization and will distinguish the unique character of Christian liturgical worship as the ultimate fulfillment of our nature.

Richard Budd lives in Grand Ledge, MI, with his wife and two children. He obtained a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Theology from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Washington, D.C., and worked, for a time, in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He has served as the Director of Marriage and Family Life for the Diocese of Lansing, MI, for the past four years. He directs the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program at his home parish, co-hosts a weekly podcast called The Armchair Catholic.