Adoremus Bulletin - November 2018 Issue

Adoremus Bulletin

NOVEMBER 2018

Special Report: Synod of Bishops Provides Youth Renewed Focus on the Liturgy

T

he Synod of Bishops held at the Vatican, October 3-28, focused on how to better encourage young people to embrace their Catholic faith and to discern their vocation in life. The deliberations included a number of interventions by bishops that spoke of the Catholic liturgy.

As part of the synod process, each of the synod fathers had been invited to offer an “intervention,” an instructional or clarifying statement lasting about 5 minutes.

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Mea Culpa On the second day of the synod, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia, offered an apology to young people in the Church. In an October 4 story for the National Catholic Register, Edward Pentin writes that Archbishop Fisher “issued a comprehensive mea culpa for all the ways in which bishops, priests, religious and lay people have failed young people.”

At the top of the archbishop’s list, Pentin reports, Archbishop Fisher acknowledged the “shameful deeds of some priests, religious and lay people” have committed against young people and the “terrible damage that has done.”

The archbishop also apologized on behalf of the bishops, Pentin writes, “for ‘unbeautiful and unwelcoming liturgies’ that have failed to inspire, for being denied the Church’s Please see YOUTH on next page

Vol. XXIV, No. 4

By Neither Word Nor Bread Alone: The Order of Logos and Ethos in the Liturgy A Centenary of Romano Guardini’s Spirit of the Liturgy, Part VII

By Father Emery de Gaál

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n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the onlybegotten Son from the Father” (John 1:1,14). In the concluding chapter of The Spirit of Liturgy, Romano Guardini thrusts the reader into the dilemma of the highly learned scholar Faust in the quintessentially German play Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): does the Word or the Deed enjoy pride of place? That is, which is more fundamental in the Christian life: knowledge and truth (Logos) or will and action (Ethos)?

After pondering this question, Faust, in the manner of a usurper and revolutionary, “corrects” the prologue to John’s gospel and writes “not ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ but ‘In the beginning was the Deed.’”1 The Spirit of the Liturgy was first published in 1918, republished 25 times in German, and is now available in not less than ten languages. Today the book continues to challenge us to offer a Christian response to Faust.2 To understand how the liturgy provides such a response, guiding the will according to truth, it is important to visit the Faustian tension that Guardini draws our attention to in this final chapter—“The Primacy of the Logos over the Ethos,” that is, the Word over the Deed. In order to understand this distinction, in turn, we take a helpful trip back to Germany with a man who would be pope.

German Interlude After his years as provincial of the Argentinian Jesuits, Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio (b.1936) came to Germany to earn a doctorate in sacred theology (STD) at the Jesuit philosophical-theological college of St. Georgen, Frankfurt am Main, under the direction of Father Michael Sievernich, S.J. The topic should have been “Polar opposition as Structure of Daily Thought and Christian Proclamation”—also on the primacy of Logos over Ethos, inspired by the

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News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s character, Faust, “corrects” the prologue to John’s gospel and writes “not ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ but ‘In the beginning was the Deed.’”

title of the final chapter of Guardini’s classic and by Father Sievernich’s philosophical text Der Gegensatz (The Opposition).3 It seems Pope Francis joins other thinkers like Guardini in opposing Hegelian dialectics (where a resolution replaces two opposites) in favor of a Catholic “maintaining tensions”—as it was put succinctly by Blessed John Henry Newman (180190). Both Francis and Newman favor reconciling theological tension in a way that does not resolve friction in favor of one pole or eliminate polarities altogether. In this final chapter of his The Spirit of the Liturgy, Guardini holds the following positions: 1. It is only with the eyes of God,

from the perspective of the Blessed Trinity, that everything in this world receives its proper valence and dignity.

2. Created in the image of God, but in a postlapsarian state, the human person must continually make the ethical effort to behold the world as divinely willed; and therefore 3. The Christian is obligated to not only resist, but also combat, all forms of self-enamored immanentism (i.e., God’s exclusive abiding in the world).

This final accord as it applies to questions of the liturgy is translated in the book’s last chapter head as “The Primacy of Logos over Ethos.”

Like Guardini, Bergoglio the doctoral candidate seems to perceive an Please see GUARDINI on page 4

Word Indeed!

Father Emery de Gaál shows how Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy provides the right balance of word and deed for a world too busy to ultimately understand what it’s doing.......................................................... 1

Now That’s Dedication!

A church building isn’t finished until the bishop says it is—and to understand why, Father Michael J. Flynn offers a walk-through of the newly-translated rite of dedication ..................... 6

Liturgical Primer In this classic and timeless Adoremus reprint, our founder and first editor, the late Helen Hull Hitchcock, reminds us of the root causes and fruitful results of the liturgical reform................. 3 Carry On Monsignor Marc Caron digs into the Roman Missal to find it firmly in the the hermeneutic of continuity, in this first of a new Adoremus series on Church tradition and the liturgy......... 5

Your Own Last Supper As Father Ryan Rojo explains, Viaticum— or the sacrament of Holy Communion for the dying—still plays a vital role for souls about to take their final earthly journey in the life of faith..................................................... 8

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

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NEWS & VIEWS

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“There is a natural stance that flows from a spirituality that is embedded in the belief in the real presence.”

Young people pray for the synod on young people, faith, and vocational discernment during Eucharistic adoration at the Centro San Lorenzo in Rome on Oct. 11, 2018.

Continued from YOUTH, page 1 treasury of reconciliation, adoration and other devotions, and for ‘poor preaching, catechesis or spiritual direction that fails to convert.’”

Saving Beauty On October 9 at the synod, Bishop Robert Barron also spoke about the Catholic liturgy as a keystone to renewing and maintaining the faith among young people, and, like Archbishop Fisher, he sees the beauty of the liturgy as the perfect entrée for young people to embrace the faith. Bishop Barron is auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and founder of the multimedia Catholic apologetics endeavor, Word on Fire.

In his intervention, posted online on October 9 by the Catholic World Report, Bishop Barron noted that the beauty of the liturgy is a powerful draw to Catholics, young and old alike, and “part of the genius of Catholicism is that we have so consistently embraced the beautiful—in song, poetry, architecture, painting, sculpture, and liturgy. All of this provides a powerful matrix for evangelization.”

Bishop Frank J. Caggiano of Bridgeport, CT, also pointed to the liturgy’s beauty as a powerful way to bring youth to Christ. In an October 14 interview with Bishop Caggiano, J.D. Flynn of the Catholic News Agency writes that Bridgeport’s bishop sees beauty as “an important way to evangelize contemporary young people who ‘wonder whether or not they are lovable or loved.’”

According to Bishop Caggiano, Flynn writes, the Church is a treasure house of beauty—“in liturgy, art, music, poetry, and in new forms and mediums offered by digital technology” and that such beauty “captures hearts.”

“Try to imagine the first time you fell in love,” Caggiano said, quoted by Flynn. “The two immediate responses to falling in love are ‘I want to know about this person,’ and ‘I want to spend time with this person.’”

Similarly, in his remarks at the Synod, the Bishop urged that the liturgy be offered “as a celebration of the beautiful, the transcendent, with an engagement of the affective senses.”

Revised and Renewed One of the prime locations of this encounter with Christ, Bishop Caggiano said, is the Catholic liturgy.

To better facilitate this encounter in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Flynn reports, Bishop Caggiano has begun “revising…sacramental norms and liturgical policies in the diocese, with careful attention to the importance of beauty.” According to Flynn, a document reflecting these revisions is to be released later in 2018.

Flynn reports that Bishop Caggiano sees an intimate connection between how prayer informs respect for the liturgy. The bishop told CNA that “‘how we conduct ourselves at the liturgy can reveal’ something about what priests and other ministers believe about the importance of worship.”

For priests of Bridgeport, Flynn writes, Bishop Caggiano plans next month to formally launch the Confraternity of St. John Vianney, “an association of priests, including [Bishop Caggiano], who will commit to celebrating Mass daily, regular public and private participation in adoration of the Eucharist, and regular sacramental confession.”

The confraternity will serve as a school for priests, according to Bishop Caggiano, and each lesson will be taught through the sacraments.

“We are going to sit before the Lord and let him be our teacher,” Bishop Caggiano said, quoted by Flynn.

Eastern Voices Two archbishops from Eastern Europe, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk, Belarus, and Archbishop Zbignevs Stankevics of Riga, Latvia, added their synodal voices to the call for greater appreciation of the Catholic liturgy among young people.

Archbishop Kondrusiewicz spoke at the synod on October 10, according to Andrea Gagliarducci in an October 12 report for CNA. “In his prepared intervention,” Gagliarducci writes, “Archbishop Kondrusiewicz asked the Synod fathers to emphasize the importance and centrality of the Eucharist in the final document.”

Gagliarducci reports that the archbishop said that the Instrumentum Laboris (the synod’s working document) has “great pastoral value,” but the archbishop also criticized the text for only mentioning the Eucharist twice and the sacraments only eight times.

“Archbishop Kondrusiewicz also remarked on the need to give more value to spiritual things in the final document,” Gagliarducci writes, “and backed those who raised the issue of the importance of liturgy.”

Intoning the Church’s perennial teaching on the liturgy, the archbishop sees the liturgy at the heart of the Church’s mission. “We should always remember that liturgy is the source and climax of Christian life,” he said, quoted by Gagliarducci, “and at the same time we must recognize that we lost this truth, and celebrations of Eucharist are turned into theater.”

According to Gagliarducci, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz said, “our duty, as shepherds, is to revive the true spirit and beauty of liturgy.”

Gagliarducci writes that the archbishop “voiced his support for the proposal that the Congregation for the Divine Worship and Discipline of Sacraments draft a new document on the importance of adherence to liturgical norms.”

Our Fathers In Archbishop Stankevics’s intervention, the Latvian prelate spoke on the importance of fathers in passing on the faith to their children. (“Though his intervention received much consensus,” Gagliarducci writes, “the issue was not included in the minor circles reports.”)

Although Archbishop Stankevics does not mention the liturgy specifically, he said in Gagliarducci’s report that “it is the father’s task to care for his family’s relationship with God and encourage (his) wife and children in practicing the faith.”

According to Gagliarducci, the archbishop said, “Data show that when a father is seriously involved in faith issue, there is a 75 percent probability that (his) children will follow him, while when only the mother is involved in the faith, there is just a 15 percent chance that (her) children will follow,” and “when a mother converts, the family converts after her in 17 percent of cases, while when a father converts, the family will convert in 93 percent of cases.”

Converting Hearts On October 16, Archbishop Jose Gomez of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles also spoke about the importance of conversion in the faith life of young people.

According to a CNA report filed that same day, “Gomez emphasized that calling young people to ‘conversion and new life in Christ’ should be a priority in the synod’s final conclusions, and that the Church is called to serve and accompany young people on that journey.”

The CNA reports that Archbishop Gomez said this journey should above all be taken in prayer and, through prayer, in service on Christ’s behalf to the world.

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In Archbishop Gomez’s estimation, it is the Church’s work, the CNA report states, to set “an example of how to pray, helping young people meet the Lord in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Confession, encouraging them to perform works of mercy for the poor, and cultivating a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

Catholics in U.S.—and Canada—Pray Rosary in Nationwide Campaign for Life and Liberty North, south, east, and west—all around North America—Catholics took to their beads to form a human chain on the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

“Rosary Coast to Coast” took place on October 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary. Faithful recited this venerable devotion of the Church “from Maine to California, from the northern border of Minnesota to the southern tip of Texas…on Pro-life Sunday to pray for America,” states an October 8 report by Zenit.

According to Rosary Coast to Coast’s website, the event was more than a gathering of the faithful—it was a mobilization of an army to fight for the dignity and inherent value of human life.

“We are at war,” the website said. “A war without borders, where no man is exempt but where most haven’t recognized, let alone been trained, to fight.

Casualties often go unseen, but very few are left unwounded. The Enemies encamped against us seek to rob us of our Dignity—the essential Dignity of the Human Person, being made in the Image and Likeness of God.” Organizers of the countrywide rosary, Zenit said, were inspired by similar national rosary campaigns that took place in Poland and Ireland last year.

“In 2017, the Church in Poland gathered around the borders of their country to light a spiritual flame,” the organizers said in a statement at their website, “a flame that quickly engulfed the nation in prayer and reparation. Shortly after, the sparks from this conflagration of the Holy Spirit spread, to Ireland, the British Isles and now, the United States. This is a worldwide effort to combat the Powers of Darkness— the Powers that seek to stifle the Light.”

The event also takes its lead from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2013 document, “Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage and Religious Liberty.”

“The intent of Call to Prayer is to invite Catholics in their parishes and dioceses to pray and sacrifice for rebuilding a culture favorable to life and marriage and for increased protections of religious liberty,” the organizers said, noting that Rosary Coast to Coast sought to synchronize these efforts under the aegis of the rosary.

The Detroit News reported on the day of the event that about a thousand rallies were planned around the nation, including a rally at the U.S.-Canadian border.

“Catholics on both sides of the Detroit River border with Canada waved flags, sang songs and prayed the Rosary at exactly 4 p.m. Sunday,” the report states.

“Participants on both sides of the international border flew the flag of their neighboring country, and waved to each across the river.”

The Detroit News report noted that one of the organizers for the Detroit rally, Michelle St. Pierre of the World Apostolate of Fatima’s Detroit Archdiocese Division, spoke to “several hundred people gathered” for the event.

The Catholics in Canada across the Detroit River are “going to see us, and we’re going to see them, and then we’re going to pray together in unison,” said St. Pierre, quoted by The Detroit News.

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Contents copyright © 2018 by ADOREMUS. All rights reserved.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

I

n November 2018, citizens across the United States cast votes for local, state, and federal representatives.

In every month and every year—at all times—denizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem voice their votes via the Church’s living tradition. They have voted early, and continue to vote often.

G.K. Chesterton called voting from the grave the “democracy of the dead,” or simply “tradition.” As he describes it, “Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.

It is the democracy of the dead.

Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father” (Orthodoxy, 1908).

It’s a fitting coincidence, then, that our country’s democratic elections happen during the Church’s month of the dead. November begins with All Saint’s Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2—occasions for the living faithful here on earth to honor and intercede for those who have gone before us. At month’s end we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, only to be followed by Advent’s warning of “people dying of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world” (Luke 21:26, the Gospel from the 1st Sunday of Advent in 2018). Collectively, November reminds us to hear the voices of the dead and dying.

These departed members of the

Mystical Body don’t cease to exist.

As the Church’s Funeral Mass puts it, for them “life is changed, not ended” (Preface I for Mass for the Dead). Since the living dead abide, it is appropriate that their vote still counts today. But how, practically, do the dead influence today’s choices?

One way the Church expresses this democracy of the departed is with the term “hermeneutic of reform and renewal.” Pope Benedict XVI, in his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia, noted two “contrary hermeneutics [that] came face to face and quarreled with each other” following the Second Vatican Council. The one, he said, “caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.”

The “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” interpreted the Council and its documents as departures “between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.” On the other hand, a “hermeneutic of reform and renewal” took the long view and saw “continuity of the one subjectChurch which the Lord has given to us.

She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.” The “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” leads to anarchy; the “hermeneutic of reform and renewal” is corporate and democratic.

While the jury is still out (and the ballots yet to be counted, so to speak) on the recently-concluded Youth Synod, stumping for a “Democracy for the Dead” party was evidenced.

Bishop Robert Barron, for instance, lamented a recent Pew survey indicating that, “among the major religions, Catholicism was second to last in passing on its traditions.” The Bishop went on to ask: “Why has it been the case, over the past several

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“We will have the dead at our councils,” remarked G.K. Chesterton. “The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.”

decades, that young people in our own Catholic secondary schools have read Shakespeare in literature class, [Virgil] in Latin class, Einstein in physics class, but, far too often, superficial texts in religion? The army of our young who claim that religion is irrational is a bitter fruit of this failure in education” (Catholic World Report, October 9, 2018). Tradition—the hermeneutic of renewal and the democracy of the dead—is an ingredient for a healthy spiritual diet, and one more appealing than lifeless, bitter fruit.

Another Synod delegate, Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Bishop Frank Caggiano, also took up democracy’s cause, speaking of his parents and their passing along the faith through beauty and tradition. Beauty “was the engagement of the heart in faith. It was the piety. It was the gentility. It was— the house itself—you knew the seasons of the Church’s year in my house. It was the ritual. It was the traditions that we had” (Catholic News Agency, October 14, 2018). Literally and etymologically,

tradition “gives across” (from dare and trans), hands-over the collective wisdom of the ages.

Tradition, democracy of the dead, and the hermeneutic of reform and renewal constitute essential elements for today’s liturgical celebrations.

Authentic celebrations appreciate tradition. Fruitful liturgies value history.

Open-minded perception honors the Church’s liturgical life in all its historical phases, refusing to discriminate against particular centuries, places, and cultures, even while recognizing strengths and weaknesses in each.

Robust rites respect the dead of the distant past, even while their participants anticipate being among the dead in the relative near future.

If, as the saying goes, “All are Welcome,” then today’s liturgies must account for our grandfather’s wisdom and our grandchildren’s needs. The liturgical long-view, November reminds us, is the only living and lasting one worthy of our vote—in campaign season and out.

Why the Liturgical Reform? Or, “What if we just say no to any liturgical change?”

by Helen Hull Hitchcock Reprinted from Adoremus Bulletin, September 2011

W

hy was there a need for the reform of the liturgy? Can you summarize it for me? Some say that the Council intended a radical break with the past to make the liturgy relevant; others claim that the Council’s reform of the liturgy was the nefarious work of a few people determined to destroy the Church!”

This question, from a serious and well-informed Catholic, is representative of many similar questions we’ve encountered recently. It is a different question from “why do we need a new translation”—though it is not entirely unrelated to this significant change in the language of worship we are about to encounter.

More likely, such questions arise in the context of the recent change that permits the old form (vetus ordo) of the Mass to be celebrated side-by-side with the new (novus ordo). People who never experienced the pre-conciliar liturgy, and who have only known a wholly vernacular Mass that may vary widely from parish to parish—and especially those who are attracted to the solemnity and reverence characteristic of the “extraordinary form” of the Mass—are curious about why there ever should have been a liturgical reform.

If Pope Benedict, in issuing Summorum Pontificum in 2007, intended to permit wider use of the “extraordinary form” alongside the “ordinary form,” doesn’t this suggest that the liturgical reform was not needed?

We, too, have read the extreme views of the liturgical reform that the letter-writer mentions. Though they reach polar opposite conclusions, both views have in common one basic assumption: that the Council’s liturgical reforms represent a rupture, or “discontinuity” with the entire history of the Catholic Church’s liturgy—

and both views are equally and very seriously mistaken, as Pope Benedict has stressed repeatedly. The liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council are, truly, in continuity with the Church’s history. And a liturgical reform was needed—and still is.

Here’s an attempt to pack an eventful century into a very short space.

The Pre-conciliar Liturgical Reform At the beginning of the 20th century, Pope Pius X initiated what would become known as the “liturgical movement” with his 1903 document on sacred music, “Tra le sollecitudini.” Building on an initiative that had begun in the early 19th century to recover the Church’s nearly lost patrimony of Gregorian Chant, and responding to the dominance of theatrical-style music performed at Mass, which left the congregation as a passive audience, the pope called for a restoration of sacredness to music—and for the “active participation” (actuosa participatio) of the entire congregation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

The “liturgical movement” had many variations in Europe and America; but the principles that Pope Pius X first expressed were repeated by subsequent popes.

Pope Pius XI’s 1929 encyclical on the Liturgy and music, Divini Cultus, also underscored the importance of truly sacred music in worship.

In the 1950s, Pope Pius XII reformed the celebration of Holy Week—and new vernacular translations of the Bible were undertaken. The pope issued key encyclicals on the liturgy: Mediator Dei (1947) and Musicae Sacrae (1955), in which he reaffirmed the active participation of the people, the members of the Mystical Body of Christ, and approved recent historical research, while he also cautioned against errors and innovations advocated by some liturgical reformers that were

inconsistent with the Church’s liturgical heritage and tradition.

During the decade or so before the Second Vatican Council the “dialogue Mass” appeared, in which the congregation made the appropriate responses in Latin—formerly made only by the altar boys— although this did not become standard practice.

Ordinary Mass-goers were encouraged to follow the Mass in bilingual hand missals in order that they could more fully understand what was taking place in the sanctuary, even though they could not actually hear the priest’s words. But the use of hand missals, too, was the exception rather than the norm.

At the time of the Council, the liturgical movement had made some progress in the effort to increase the understanding of ordinary Catholics and to draw every Catholic believer more closely into the sacred action of the Mass—the “source and summit” of the Catholic faith—and thereby to become more deeply and spiritually connected to the heart of the Church, the Mass.

However, this goal still remained distant. The usual parish Mass was still almost entirely inaudible to the worshippers (except for the sermon), impossible to follow (except for the bell at the consecration), and the congregation mostly knelt silently and said the Rosary or other prayers during the entire celebration of Mass, except when they actually received Holy Communion.

At the same time, some of those who were actively involved in the liturgical movement were veering perilously from the Church’s liturgical tradition, often in pursuit of their own interpretation of the liturgies of the “early Church.” Liturgical mistakes were made, as Pope Pius XII had observed and censured in Mediator Dei. Please see REFORM on page 12

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With the help of German thinkers Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche, “the practical will is everywhere the decisive factor,” Guardini writes, “and the Ethos has complete precedence over the Logos, the active side of life over the contemplative.”

Continued from GUARDINI, page 1 underlying tension between these two key terms. Unfortunately, Bergoglio’s doctoral project never materialized.

On the occasion of The Spirit of the Liturgy’s centenary, though, it is fitting to reconsider Guardini’s closing argument.

Not only may it shed some light on the thinking of Pope Francis, who also approaches matters of faith, and especially of the liturgy, with a tensionfilled polarity of dialectics, but such a study will also illuminate the essence— the spirit—of the liturgy, our principal goal.

Come Together Guardini begins the chapter by registering the regret many express for Catholic liturgy’s apparent unrelatedness to current affairs and practical matters of daily life. (When using the term “liturgy,” Guardini consistently means the Eucharist, the Catholic Holy Mass.)

Indeed, he emphasizes, liturgy resists being translated into action. These wellintended critiques are the occasion for him to develop the danger of allowing “outcomes” to determine the nature and purpose of liturgy. While not dwelling on the eminently doxological nature of the human person and the cosmos, he reminds his readers that “liturgy… is primarily occupied in forming the fundamental Christian temper.”4 He does not deny that worship impacts the moral order. However, this is a necessary secondary consequence, not its purpose.

To establish the proper frame of reference for the tension between Logos and Ethos, Guardini points out that in the Christian Middle Ages primacy was given to the Logos vis-à-vis Ethos. The human will and its attendant activities were perceived during the Middle Ages as formed by and, therefore, the natural outgrowths of the Logos. Not only does the Logos chronologically precede all human activities, it also ontologically undergirds human action—and liturgical action.

Provocatively, the “truth is truth because it is truth,”5 irrespective of what the will may interject, and therefore serves as the basis for Ethos. To this end, Guardini sees the rich devotional lives of Catholics, such as praying the rosary, meditations, processions, etc. as felicitous appropriations and incorporations of the Logos into the concrete and personal lives of the faithful. (Guardini would pen precious meditations on the Stations of the Cross in 1921.)6 Holding Logos as the foundation for Ethos granted medieval society a historically unparalleled and singular cohesion and solidarity, enabling it to be more than a pragmatic commonwealth, but one of a shared meaning and thus shared destiny. The foundational Logos spelled out the nature of Gemeinschaft (community) versus merely Gesellschaft (society), and was expressed in a lasting manner in works of art. For instance, this position found visible expression in Italy’s medieval municipal Signorias (city halls) adorned with saints and making

“ As a result of this shifting emphasis from Logos to Ethos, from truth to action, our age is ‘a powerful, restlessly productive, laboring community.’” no distinction between sacred and secular realms, just as today, of course, this shared meaning becomes ever again present in the liturgy: the Eucharist as the Thou of God in Jesus Christ— divinity appearing in the common accidents of bread and wine. (Guardini further develops this dimension on a broad canvas in The Lord years later.)7 We’re Breaking Up But following the Middle Ages, as the positive sciences ascended from the Renaissance onward, “the fulcrum of the spiritual life gradually shifts from knowledge [of the Divine] to the [human being’s subjectively formed] will,”8 now perceived as autonomous and at best defined exclusively by verifiable, empirical criteria. As a result of this shifting emphasis from Logos to Ethos, from truth to action, our age is “a powerful, restlessly productive, laboring community.”9 Modernity has lost sight of a vital component of existence: listening to and obeying the inner order of being.

“Contemplation of God or love of Him”10 is no longer deemed foundational to minds formed in primarily practical matters. Guardini thinks here not only of the large, dehumanizing factories, such as those found in the grand modern metropolises of Berlin, Paris, or London, that result in massified individuals. He is also thinking of the ideas that generated these inhuman work centers, especially those of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power.11 Guardini considered the work puerile, if not pathological and benighted— although today, tellingly, it is much read by the Western intelligentsia. Guardini asserts already for this age and time that “the Ethos has obtained the primacy over the Logos.”12

Will and Kant But we need to take a step even further back in the history of German philosophy to understand how this usurpation of the primacy given to Logos

by Ethos was prepared decades earlier than Nietzsche by German philosopher Immanuel Kant. His philosophy of epistemological reticence (i.e., elevating human willing over knowing) is the logical conclusion of Lutheran 16th century anthropology, which grants human nature per se nothing positive in the order of salvation. For Luther and Kant were in agreement that truth can no longer be perceived as of value apart from criteria distilled wholly from the immanent order. For Luther and Kant, too, faith thus becomes the

The personal Logos, Jesus Christ, establishes a harmony that does not eliminate Ethos but provides its sure grounding in the order of being. “In the liturgy the Logos has been assigned its fitting precedence over the will,” Guardini states.

child of the will, and no longer resting on knowledge of truth. After all, Kant sees dogma as incapable of informing what human nature is. Indeed, for Kant, dogma is a superstitious position that must gradually retreat into the dustbins of history as human reason irresistibly expands our horizon of possible knowledge. Then, invariably we come to worship success. Yet, the content of success is defined independently from the Creator. Such is the “New World.”

“The practical will is everywhere the decisive factor,” Guardini writes, “and the Ethos has complete precedence over the Logos, the active side of life over the contemplative.”13 Even liturgy in the modern world becomes a practical, results-based activity.

Catholicism’s position in this regard must be always diametrically opposed to such a worldview, as the Church is the vessel containing divine revelation, thus illuminating to man both his and the world’s purpose. To this end, Guardini calls for a return to a Christcentered understanding of reality—a Logos-centered view—one which can only benefit the liturgy and souls encountering Christ in the liturgy.

Indeed, the Second Vatican Council spells out Guardini’s Christocentrism with a celebrated line in Gaudium et Spes 22: “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.” Were the Council Fathers then mindful of Guardini’s observations? If they weren’t, it was at least clear that Guardini expresses and even anticipates the conciliar mind of the Church on this matter.

As stated, Guardini sees Protestantism as catalyst and representative of the posture that prioritizes Ethos over Logos.

This posture stands in stark relief to the Church’s more inclusive view of Logos and Ethos as a tension held, especially in the liturgy, in proper order. Guardini’s contemporary Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), the premier Protestant theologian of the day, had drafted Kaiser Wilhelm II’s declaration of war in 1914.

Did this bring into prominent focus for Guardini the foundational weakness of Protestant theology? Guardini sees Kant rightly “called [Protestant theology’s] philosopher.” Guardini writes that the Kantian spirit “has step

by step abandoned objective religious truth, and has increasingly tended to make conviction a matter of personal judgment, feeling and experience. ...The relation with the supertemporal and eternal order is thereby broken.”14 Consequently, in the Kantian and Lutheran line of thought, scripture, dogmatizations, and liturgy are not inspired products of salvation history flowing from the decisive moment of Christ’s death and resurrection and giving expression to eternal truth; rather, these elements in the life of faith are entirely immanent events, subject to revision. Here the Faustian temptation to make the Deed the first word of salvation becomes a frightening realty.

Bargaining Souls But even World War I was only a prelude to the twentieth-century fascination with this temptation. Hardly twenty years after the end of this first war to end all wars, the Ethos became all-dominant during the ugly works and days of the Nazi Third Reich. In reaction to this ugliness, the world heralded a 1960 German film version of Goethe’s Faust. The critics reserved special praise for the German actor Gustav Gründgens’s stellar performance of Mephisto, the demon tempter and beguiling protagonist who urges Faust (and, the German audience might say, Hitler) to embrace the primacy of Ethos.

Shortly after the film was released, however, Gründgens died— possibly by suicide. The irony would not have been lost on either Goethe or Guardini: the human being is utterly unable to live a life “unrestrained” by the Logos.15 Guardini argues positively that the rejection of the Catholic, magisterial claim to the primacy of Logos leads to “the position of a blind person groping his way in the dark, because the fundamental force upon which it has based life—the will—is [now] blind. The will can function and produce, but cannot see. From this is derived the restlessness which nowhere finds tranquility.”16 As we will see, this restlessness finds rest in a will guided through prayer in the liturgy.

This situation is also intensified in postmodernity, wherein the individual constantly and breathlessly performs and consumes and knows of no home.

He seeks in temporality a transcendental Please see GUARDINI, page 5

5

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018 Continued from GUARDINI, page 4 meaning, which must remain elusive, but for this reason postmodernity offers incentives to invent more consumer goods. Both performance and free time are placed under the dictatorship of the Ethos. Leisure, a cousin of the liturgy, becomes a frightful perspective that needs to be avoided at all costs, lest one need confront the truth of being, the Logos. In the ductus of Guardini’s The Spirit of Liturgy, Josef Pieper (190497) writes Leisure, the Basis for Culture (1948)17 and Hugo Rahner (1900-68) pens Man at Play (1952).18 Do both Pieper and Hugo Rahner feel inspired especially by this last chapter of The Spirit of Liturgy? Human contemplation is but a retracing of a truth contained in things, which is a cognitive retracing of God’s thoughts.

Life in a Word Logos, the Word, is apprehended as one constantly effected by God and not a merely impersonal process. The things in this world bear its meaning and message. The primacy of the Logos allows for spontaneity both on God’s side and on our side. Influenced by Bonaventure and with numerous fellow thinkers, Guardini shares skepticism as regards rigid systems and theoretic presentations. But Guardini is doing nothing more than the Church has always done. Catholicism has always resisted the temptation to reduce metaphysics, truth, and dogma to ethical conceptions and to be guided by moral or pragmatic considerations divorced from a grounding in the divine. Cultic worship is similarly far more than education of the individual to be a good citizen à la the Enlightenment. We may become better citizens for going to Mass, but that’s not the primary purpose of the divine liturgy. In this context Guardini reminds the reader that even God as the Blessed Trinity, far from being impersonal or cerebral, is never merely an absolute will “but, at the same time, truth and goodness.”19 In this way, the Trinity is also the perfect model for the liturgy. The triune God is a constant living out of personal relationships of mutual commitment in love.

With Augustine, Guardini understands this charity as the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Blessed Trinity is perceived as the template for human beings and society.

Is this “Augustinian interiority” what Pope Francis intended to demonstrate in his dissertation project? A community grounded in the incarnate God formed for Guardini the basis for the antiNazi activists Hans and Sophie Scholl’s sacrifice of life in 1943. Guardini honors the witness of this community when he writes that it “lived in the radiance of Christ’s sacrifice…issuing forth from the creative origin of eternal love.”20 The incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ, is the enabler of human charity and participation in divine vivacity.

And even as this divine love was a harmonizing principle of word and act for the Scholls, so too it will always be in the case, and more so, in the Catholic liturgy.

Word and Deed The epochal process of depersonalization that the 21st century countenances may be seen as the consequence of giving Ethos priority over and against Logos. But it would be incorrect to assume action is of inferior value to that contemplation.

It is the Logos that dignifies action, i.e., transforms all action into Ethos beyond compare.

Therefore, Logos and Ethos are not two entities that must be inexorably cancelled out in an immanent process for a higher third to emerge (à la Hegel’s dialectical understanding of history). Neither can the claim be made that knowledge is more important than life. Rather, Guardini writes, “[i]t is partly a question of disposition; the tone of man’s life will accentuate either knowledge or action; and the one type of disposition is worth as much as the other…; in life as a whole, precedence does not belong to action, but to existence. What ultimately matters is not activity, but development”21—a reflected and deliberate growth towards eternity, a growth that is at once human and informed by the divine life of grace.

At this point the question arises: what kind of thing is Logos? Does “truth insist upon love or upon frigid majesty?”

Guardini asks.22 Ethos on its own subjugates us to an impersonal, Kantian “obligation of the law” as defined by Kant’s The Postulates of Practical Reason; but Guardini responds that Logos evokes “the obligation of creative love.”23 But this is not a complete answer to the question either. Rather, with the Johannine Christ he argues the “good tidings”24

announce nothing less than that love is the greatest. The personal truth of the Thou of God “shall make you free” (John 8: 32) from the burden to justify human existence via tangible, human criteria.

Jesus Christ shines forth not as the final arbiter between Logos and Ethos, but as that singular reality that provides the proper equilibrium between the two, an equilibrium fully displayed in the harmony of the Logos and Ethos of the liturgy.

“In dogma, the fact of absolute truth, inflexible and eternal, entirely independent of a basis of practicality,” Guardini writes, “we possess something which is inexpressibly great. When the soul becomes aware of it, it is overcome by a sensation as of having touched the mystic guarantee of universal sanity; it perceives dogma as the guardian of all existence, actually and really the rock upon which the universe rests.

‘In the beginning was the Word’— the Logos.…”25 In this way, Guardini responds to Goethe’s Mephisto and suggests a restoration of the balance that the modern has lost.

Because that “guarantee of universal sanity” is so necessary for human existence, Guardini considers contemplation indispensable to genuine freedom. There is the call for the human being to ponder eternity to comprehend the eternal nature of his soul. “It is peaceful,” Guardini writes, “it has that interior restraint which is a victory over life” for the sake of life.26 For this reason the Catholic faith, he notes, cannot “join in the furious pursuit of the unchained will, torn from its fixed and eternal order.”27 Rather, the personal Logos, Jesus Christ, establishes a harmony that does not eliminate Ethos but provides its sure grounding in the order of being. “In the liturgy the Logos has been assigned its fitting precedence over the will,” Guardini states. In the accompanying footnote he adds: “Because it reposes upon existence, upon the essential, and even upon existence in love….”28 Human existence’s purpose is contemplation, adoration, and glorification of divine truth. “The liturgy has something in itself reminiscent of the stars, of their eternally fixed and even course, of their inflexible order, of their profound silence, and of the infinite space in which they are poised.” 29In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Guardini thankfully provides a map to these stars, poised between the word and the deed, the Logos and the Ethos.

Father Emery de Gaál was born in Chicago but spent most of his life in Hungary and Bavaria. A priest of the Diocese of Eichstätt, Germany, Father de Gaál served in parishes and taught theology before the late Cardinal Francis George, OMI, called him to teach dogmatic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

His areas of concentration are Medieval thought and Ressourcement theology; especially Anselm studies (The Art of Equanimity, 2000), Ratzinger studies (The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, 2010; O Lord, I Seek Your Countenance, 2018) and Mariology. Father de Gaál has published in five languages and regularly delivers papers at international theological or philosophical conferences.

1. Romano Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy. Readings in Liturgical Renewal, trans. by Ada Lane, foreword by Joanne M. Pierce (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004); first English edition 1930, p. 90.

2. Romano Guardini, Vom Geist der Liturgie (Mainz, Ostfildern: Grünewald/Schöningh, 2013), pp. 89f.

3. www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article114452124/ Bergoglio-studierte-einst-in-Frankfurt-am-Main.html accessed 10.12.2017. Romano Guardini, Der Gegensatz.

Versuche zu einer Philosophie des lebendig Konkreten (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1991), originally 1955.

4. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 86.

5. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 91.

6. Romano Guardini, Der Kreuzweg unsres Herrn und Heilandes, (Matthias Grünewald: Mainz, 1921).

7. Romano Guardini, The Lord (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2002) orginally published in 1937.

8. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 87.

9. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 87.

10. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 86, footnote 2.

11. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, volumes I and II, (Boston, MA: Digireads, 2010) originally published posthumously 1901.

12. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 88.

13. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 89.

14. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 90.

15. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 90.

16. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 91.

17. Josef Pieper, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009).

18. Hugo Rahner, Man at Play (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972).

19. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 91, footnote 5.

20. Romano Guardini, Die Waage des Daseins (Tübingen/Stuttgart: Wunderlich, 1946) p. 18: “obedience vis-à-vis the interior call.”

21. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 92.

22. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 93.

23. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 93.

24. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 93.

25. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, pp. 93f.

26. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 94.

27. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 94.

28. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 94 and footnote 9.

Emphasis added.

29. Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy, p. 95.

The New Old Liturgy: Celebrating the Received Tradition of the Roman Rite Editor’s note: It was during the 40th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council that Pope Benedict XVI first spoke of quarrelling “hermeneutics,” or interpretations, following the Council.

On the one hand is the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that “risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.”

On the other hand is the “hermeneutic of reform” which he describes as a “renewal in the continuity of the one subjectChurch which the Lord has given to us.

She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.” If reading the Council and understanding the Church today requires the proper hermeneutic, does the same hold true for appreciating and celebrating her liturgy? Is there a split between the pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar books and their use? Monsignor Marc Caron, Professor of Sacred Liturgy at St. John Seminary in Boston, believes no such rupture exists, even while differences appear between pre-Conciliar and postConciliar practice. Monsignor Caron introduces here a new series for Adoremus, “Liturgical Traditions” one that situates

the Novus Ordo rites amidst the received liturgical observances, thereby helping us to understand today’s rites in their proper “hermeneutic of reform.” Future entries will appear in the print edition of the Bulletin and on the Adoremus website, www.adoremus.org.

O

ver the years, many priests and deacons directly involved in promoting the liturgical renewal launched by the Second Vatican Council have been left perplexed at how few indications the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM) gives as to how one actually does anything during the course of Mass. For example, how does the deacon hold his hands while he reads the Gospel? Or, how is a priest meant to use a censer when incensing a free-standing altar? Whenever questions of this kind were raised with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments since the promulgation of the first edition of the GIRM in 1970, the answer given often did not answer the question!

Circular Spin Over and over again, the official journal of the Congregation, Notitiae, directed readers back to the liturgical documents

AB/JAMES BRADLEY ON FLIKCR

By Monsignor Marc Caron

Missale Romanum, yesterday and today.

in force at the time, the same documents which had given rise to the questions.

Responses to dubia submitted to the congregation routinely asserted that no rubrics, no practices, no customs from the previous Order for Mass and its ritus servandus could now be assumed to be illustrative or determinative in settling questions about the manner in which the new Order for Mass was to be celebrated.

This attitude effectively cut the celebration of Mass off from its past, and provided no context for understanding or implementing the gestures required by the revised General Instruction.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs has tended to create a situation in the Church where there are as many ways of enacting a particular gesture of the liturgy as there are celebrants. Or, no single gesture is carried out in the same

way by the same celebrant in successive Masses. Or, it can easily lead to the conviction that “these details don’t really matter.” All of these scenarios weaken the celebration of the Eucharist, which depends, like all ritual does, on the elements of stability of form, predictability, and repetition. These are precisely the elements which the traditional practice of the Roman rite can bring to the Novus Ordo. Therefore, it would seem that the optimal approach to the ars celebrandi of the revised Order for Mass demands a recourse to the tradition, so as to give the Novus Ordo these necessary qualities of stability of form, predictability, and repetition.

Tradition Lends a Hand Thanks to the promulgation of the third typical edition of the Roman Missal in 2002, it is now indeed legitimate for celebrants of the Novus Ordo to refer to the broad liturgical tradition which preceded it when looking for direction on how to perform this or that gesture at Mass. This change of attitude was signaled by a few words now found in GIRM no. 42 in one line which has no precedent in the previous editions of the General Instruction. Regarding the Please see ROMAN RITE, page 10

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AB/ DEACON PATRICK MURPHY-RACEY, STEPHANIE RICHER, STEPHEN GOLDER/THE EAST TENNESSEE CATHOLIC

ENTER HIS COURTS WITH SONGS OF PRAISE: A Walk-through of the Revised Liturgy for a Church Dedication

According to the newly-translated Order for the Dedication of a Church, those involved in the church’s construction “hand over the building to the Bishop” by offering documents, keys, or plans.

Here, cathedral architect Kelly L. Headden of BarberMcMurry Architects, Bruce Bosse of cathedral builder Merit Construction, and lead architect James McCrery of McCrery Architects, LLC, give the key of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville (TN) Richard Stika during the Cathedral’s March 3, 2018 dedication.

By Father Michael J. Flynn

T

here are few events in the life of a parish community more important or more festive than the dedication of a newly-constructed church building. Typically, this defining moment is the culmination of a long process—often lasting years—of discernment, planning, fund raising, and building on the part of the parish membership and its leaders. As is the case with many other seminal moments in the lives of the church community and its individual members, the Church provides a significant liturgical celebration to mark the dedication of a new church, known formally today as The Order of the Dedication of a Church and an Altar.

“Beloved brothers and sisters,” begins the bishop’s announcement before entering the new church, “we have gathered with joy to dedicate a new church by celebrating the Lord’s sacrifice. Let us take part in these sacred rites with loving devotion, listening to the Word of God with faith, so that our community, reborn from the one font of Baptism and nourished at the same table, may grow to a spiritual temple and, brought together at one altar, may advance in the love from on high” (The Order of the Dedication of a Church, 30).

With these words usually spoken outside the building, the presiding bishop summarizes what is about to take place. This suggested but optional text encapsulates the main elements of church dedication as well as its theological underpinning: the Mass itself is the principle act leading to the dedication of the church building; the reading of Sacred Scripture will be prominent; the whole community of the faithful have a role to play in what is about to take place; the sacrament of Baptism, the Eucharist, and other sacraments and sacred rites which will henceforth be celebrated in this new church and upon its altar will form and define the Christian community which gathers within.

Importantly, as even this brief introductory text makes clear, it is ultimately the faithful who are being transformed into the Church’s “living stones” (1 Peter 2:4-5, “Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and, like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”). These solemn and festive rites serve to remind the faithful that they themselves form the Church, with Christ as its head, and that the new church building being dedicated will play a vital part in this endeavor.

On May 21, 2018, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, issued a formal Decree of Publication for a revised translation of this ritual text.

This decree allows for the publication of this newly-revised text, and stipulates that this is the officially approved text.

This new English text is presently available from USCCB Communications and its use is mandatory beginning November 9, 2018—appropriately, on the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. The purpose of this article is to explore what has and has not changed with this new translation, and to introduce some of the distinctive features of this important rite.

“ It is ultimately the faithful who are being transformed into the Church’s ‛living stones.’”

Text in Context Interestingly, this new text is the first official English translation of the Latin typical edition of the 1977 Ordo Dedicationis Ecclesiæ et Altaris permanently approved for use in the dioceses of the United States. The English translation which had been in use since 1978 was approved ad

interim by the Holy See, apparently with the expectation that a final version would be submitted for permanent approval within a few years. For reasons not entirely clear, a final text was not submitted to the Holy See until this revised translation was canonically approved by the US bishops in November 2014 and submitted to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for its necessary confirmation. The confirmatio was finally granted on November 9, 2017.

Both the old and new versions are contrasting translations of the same Latin typical edition promulgated by the Holy See in 1977. It has undergone no changes or adaptations to the rite itself for US dioceses. Only the translation itself has been modified to be in conformity with the 2001 instruction Liturgiam Authenticam, and texts derived from the Missal are in complete continuity with Roman Missal, 3rd Edition of 2011. Given the preference for a more literal treatment of the original Latin texts called for in Liturgiam Authenticam, a few of the new English texts depart noticeably from those which have been in use since 1978. A portion of the important Dedicatory Prayer (n.

62 in The Order of the Dedication of a Church) intoned or said by the presiding Bishop will serve to illustrate the transformation: 1978 Provisional text: Father in heaven, source of holiness and true purpose, it is right that we praise and glorify your name.

For today we come before you to dedicate to your lasting service this house of prayer, this temple of worship, this home in which we are nourished by your word and your sacraments.

New 2018 text: O God, sanctifier and ruler of your Church, it is right for us to celebrate your name in joyful proclamation; for today your faithful people desire

to dedicate to you, solemnly and for all time, this house of prayer, where they worship you devoutly, are instructed by the word, and are nourished by the Sacraments.

One internal feature which has undergone significant improvement in the newly revised ordo is the careful setting of numerous antiphons, Psalm texts, dedicatory prayers, and dialogues in chant notation. The musical settings of these various elements are based on the original musical settings of the Latin text provided in the typical edition.

Although considerable reworking of the original melodies is required to translate from Latin text to English text, nonetheless the settings provided in the new English translation bear a close kinship to the Latin originals.

While the use of these settings is not mandatory, their quality and their convenient presence in the ritual text itself should provide a new and valuable musical treasury for celebrants, cantors, choirs, and assemblies at future church dedications.

It is also important to note that the Order of the Dedication of a Church and an Altar contains various other rites pertaining to the construction and use of new churches and chapels in addition to the dedication itself.

Besides the solemn church dedication, the text also includes the Order of Laying a Foundation Stone (or the Commencement of Work on the Building of a Church), the Order of the Dedication of an Altar alone, as well as rites for the blessing of a church or an altar. Whether a church or altar is dedicated or blessed is a question of permanence. Church buildings and altars are dedicated when they are set aside permanently for use in the celebration of the sacred mysteries.

However, sometimes a space can only be set aside temporarily for worship, such as in the case of a school or hospital chapel or other institutional setting which might undergo change in the foreseeable future. These spaces are often blessed rather than dedicated.

Additionally, moveable altars may be blessed rather than dedicated.

Although the first Mass celebrated in any new church should be the Mass of Dedication, in some situations communities must begin using their new church before it has been solemnly dedicated. In light of this pastoral reality, the text also contains an Order of the Dedication of a Church in which Sacred Celebrations are Already Taking Place.

The dedication of churches or altars is the responsibility of the bishop. He can, however, in exceptional circumstances delegate the privilege to a priest. While it would be of great interest to compare and contrast all these rites, space allows only an overview of the formal dedication of a church.

During the recent dedication of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville (TN), Bishop Richard Stika deposits the relics of Pope St. John Paul II, the Pope who founded the Diocese of Knoxville in 1988 and is its patron. If relics are deposited beneath a new altar, they are to be recognizable as parts of human bodies, authentic, and placed beneath the table of the altar.

“ One internal feature which has undergone significant improvement in the newly revised ordo is the careful setting of numerous antiphons, Psalm texts, dedicatory prayers, and dialogues in chant notation.”

building, or the keys, or the plan of the building, or the book in which the course of the work is described and in which the names of those in charge of it and of the workers are recorded.”

A representative may then address the bishop and the community.

The rite provides no set words for this, but instead leaves the details of this moment to the needs and circumstances of individual communities and projects. As a result, no two of these ceremonies at the door will be exactly the same. This early point in the dedication liturgy

AB/ DEACON PATRICK MURPHY-RACEY, STEPHANIE RICHER, STEPHEN GOLDER/THE EAST TENNESSEE CATHOLIC

Entrée to the Feast The unique features of the entrance into the new church serve to remind everyone present that they indeed are living stones constituting the Church.

The rite itself provides considerable flexibility in the details of how this will unfold in various pastoral situations. If the older church building is still present within a reasonable distance from the new building, the clergy and lay faithful may gather in the old building from which they will process, together with any relics to be placed under the altar, to the closed door of the new church. Such a procession would embody the parish’s respect and veneration for the old church as it now moves on to the new.

All are participants, not just by their movement toward the exterior door, but also by the singing of the antiphon or another appropriate hymn.

A procession from the old church to the new, if it is possible, not only frames the beauty and dignity of the created work itself in a liturgical context, but it can also symbolize the spiritual progress and the journey of the local

Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville (TN) prepares to anoint the altar of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at its dedication on March 3, 2018. After being sprinkled with holy water, but before it “receives the Body of Christ” (Dedication of an Altar, 23), the altar is anointed with sacred chrism, confirming its identity with Christ. After its anointing, the walls of the church are similarly chrismated in four or twelve places around the building.

community that is about to enter it. If such a procession is not feasible, then the faithful simply assemble at the doors of the new church. The rite even foresees the possibility that, in some situations, it may not be desirable to gather outside the closed doors of the new church, if for example the church is in a busy urban area with heavy traffic and little room to gather safely, or even if there is inclement weather on the day of the dedication. In this case, the faithful may be seated within the new church.

Once the clergy and the rest of the community have gathered outside the doors of the new church, the bishop

greets all present and addresses the people using the text mentioned at the beginning of this article, or words of his own choosing. Then a ceremonial presentation of the new church building to the bishop takes place. As the rubrics indicate (n. 40), this presentation can take a variety of forms: “Then representatives of those who have been involved in the building of the church (the faithful of the parish or of the diocese, donors, architects, workers) hand over the building to the Bishop, offering him, according to place and circumstances, either the legal documents for possession of the

brings the visible human realities of planning, financing, participation, and work into prominence. When all this has taken place, the pastor, at the bishop’s invitation, opens the door of the new church from the outside, and the bishop invites all to enter. The clergy and lay faithful then enter the new building. No incense is used for this procession, nor are the altar candles lighted.

High Water Mark Once the procession to the sanctuary has concluded, a vessel of water is brought to the bishop, which he blesses to be sprinkled on the people as a sign of repentance and as a reminder of their

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Baptism. It is significant that this same water is used to bless both the assembled faithful as well as the walls and altar.

This gesture is a further reminder of the close connection of the new building with the people themselves. The people are present to be blessed along with the building.

Once the water has been blessed, the bishop moves through the church sprinkling both walls and people; when he returns to the sanctuary, he sprinkles the altar which has not yet been covered or decorated in any way. Then the celebration continues with the singing of the Gloria and the praying of the Collect.

A Word that Will Rouse Them Not surprisingly, the inaugural Liturgy of the Word in the new church unfolds in a distinctive way. Two lectors, one of whom is carrying the Lectionary for Mass, and the minister assigned to intone the Responsorial Psalm approach the bishop. The bishop then takes the Lectionary from the lector, shows it to the people, saying, “May the word of God resound always in this building, to open for you the mystery of Christ and to bring about your salvation in the Church,” to which all reply, “Amen.” The bishop then hands the Lectionary to the first reader, and the lectors and psalmist proceed to the ambo carrying the Lectionary for all to see, where the readings are proclaimed and the Responsorial Psalm is intoned.

Curiously, the rite assumes that the Gospel is also proclaimed by a deacon from the same Lectionary, rather than from The Book of the Gospels.

Stone, Oil, and Charcoal Following his homily and the community’s recitation of the Creed, the bishop invites the assembly to join in the Litany of Saints. This, appropriately, is followed by the placement of the relics of a martyr or other saint beneath the altar. Although encouraged, it should be noted that the presence of relics is no longer strictly required. If there are to be relics enshrined, the rubrics even call for a stonemason to be present to seal up the aperture where the relics are placed by the bishop. Once this has been done, the bishop then intones or says the long Prayer of Dedication. This prayer is rich with scriptural imagery and allusions to the Paschal Mystery which will be remembered and celebrated for years to come in this new building and upon the new altar.

Please see DEDICATION on page 11

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

Last but not Least: A Liturgical Look at Holy Communion as The Sacrament of the Dying

By Father Ryan Rojo

Holy Housecalls Viaticum (also commonly called a person’s last communion) is the sacrament that should be associated with the faithful on their deathbed.

How many times, however, has even the most seasoned priest given Viaticum to the faithful? It could be contended that the great majority of priests—even those who are most zealous for the Lord—do not associate sick calls with the Eucharist, but opt for the Anointing of the Sick as the spiritual alternative.

The practical, on-the-ground situation that priests encounter might explain this discrepancy (unconscious people, for example), but countless souls have been deprived of this spiritual food because of unfortunate misunderstandings.

To the chagrin of many, the Anointing of the Sick is not ordinarily associated with those who are quickly approaching death. It is only in the last of the four chapters of the Pastoral Care of the Sick that anointing is found in the rites for exceptional circumstances, namely the Continuous Rite of Penance, Anointing, and Viaticum.

This rite is specified as being proper to those extraordinary situations such as a sudden illness or accident.3 This ritual envisions, however, a more “developed celebration of these rites,” but the Church makes an exception for particular circumstances.4 The exception, however, has become the rule. To remedy this misconception, it is advantageous to first consider the form of the ritual that accompanies Viaticum.

What are those signs and symbols, so essential to rituals of Catholics, that accompany the last sacrament? A fuller understand of the ritual might assist

AB/BY ALEXEY VENETSIANOV (D.1874) AT WIKIMEDIA

I

t is not an uncommon experience for a priest to be summoned to a dying person’s bedside for the administration of the sacraments. The Church’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, is unapologetic in relating the sacraments to man’s sanctification, and the sacraments of the dying are no exception: “The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify people, to build up the body of Christ, and, finally, to worship God. Because they are signs they also belong in the realm of instruction.”1 Even at death’s door, the sacraments fulfill these ends in that they bring not only emotional comfort, but spiritual and catechetical benefit to those who witness them. We must, however, define what is meant by the “last sacrament of the Christian life.” It is probable that many reading this article will associate the “last sacrament” with the Anointing of the Sick. This might be in keeping with the tales and experience of priests and faithful who work in the Church’s ministry to the dying. The Pastoral Care of the Sick, however, is unapologetic in correcting this common misconception: “The celebration of the eucharist as Viaticum, food for the passage through death to eternal life, is the sacrament proper to the dying Christian.

It is the completion and crown of the Christian life on this earth, signifying that the Christian follows the Lord to eternal glory and the banquet of the heavenly kingdom. The sacrament of the anointing of the sick should be celebrated at the beginning of a serious illness. Viaticum, celebrated when death is close, will then be better understood as the last sacrament of the Christian life.”2

“The celebration of the eucharist as Viaticum, food for the passage through death to eternal life, is the sacrament proper to the dying Christian. It is the completion and crown of the Christian life on this earth, signifying that the Christian follows the Lord to eternal glory and the banquet of the heavenly kingdom” (Pastoral Care of the Sick).

priests in discerning those circumstances that warrant Viaticum.

Water of Life in Death The ritual of Viaticum Outside of Mass begins with a usual greeting. This may be followed by the sprinkling of holy water, which is accompanied by the words, “Let this water call to mind our baptism into Christ, who by his death and resurrection has redeemed us.”5 This formula, alongside the use of Holy Water, relates the reality of dying to the mystery of Baptism. St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, “Are you not aware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Through baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life” (Romans 6:3-5).

The waters of Baptism are a sign of our newness in Christ. The experience of death, however, has the potential to bring forward another dimension of the baptismal mystery: resurrection.

In the first moments of Viaticum, the faithful are reminded of Jesus’ own resurrection, and the resurrection of our Lord foreshadows the hope of our own resurrection on the last day.

Viaticum is the beginning of a new stage in life which will find its completion in the promise of the Creed, “I believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Life of the World to Come. Amen.”

Jesus’ salvific work has initiated this process, and children of the new age look forward to their own fulfillment in resurrection.

Pardon and Reprieve The apostolic pardon is oftentimes another misunderstood dimension of the ritual for Viaticum. The apostolic pardon is a formula of plenary indulgence. Indulgences themselves are “the remission in the eyes of God of

the temporal punishment due to sins whose culpable element has already been taken away.”6 The sins of the faithful, alongside the culpable quality, are ordinarily remedied by Sacramental Penance (or Confession). Even after sacramental absolution, however, a disordered attachment to sin and its consequences, what is called “temporal punishment,” may remain. This “temporal punishment” can be remitted after death in Purgatory, or it can be satisfied by indulgences in this life.

Indulgences are, therefore, acts of mercy that aid the facilitation of our reclaiming holiness. The Church makes a further distinction in its understanding of indulgences: partial and plenary. Partial indulgences free a person form some of the temporal punishment due to sin, while plenary indulgences free a person from all punishment due to sin.7 The administration of indulgences, and by extension the apostolic pardon, are governed by the norms and laws surrounding the Church’s ordinary dispensation of indulgences. The Code of Canon law reminds the faithful that the efficacy of an indulgence hinges on that person being in a state of grace.8 In the ritual of Viaticum, the apostolic pardon follows a penitential rite that can take the form of individual, sacramental Confession.9 In this context, the apostolic pardon avoids any semblance of being a one-way ticket to heaven. Many well-intentioned priests have admitted to using the apostolic pardon in their administration of the Anointing of the Sick, not Viaticum.

It should be seen, rather, in its proper context: a gift of mercy from God that remits the temporal punishment due to sin. If a priest cannot be present, the Church grants the indulgence, in artuculo mortis, as individuals approach death, provided that they regularly prayed in some way.10

Baptism Revisited A distinctive feature of the ritual for Viaticum is the renewal of the baptismal profession of faith by the dying person. The introductory chapters to Viaticum read, “Through the baptismal profession at the end of earthly life, the one who is dying uses the language of his or her initial commitment, which is renewed each Easter and on other occasions in the Christian life. In the context of Viaticum, it is a renewal and fulfillment of initiation into the Christian mysteries, baptism leading into Eucharist.”11 The Eucharist is the culmination of a person’s initiation into the Church. In a similar way, Viaticum is the culmination of a person’s life into the heavenly mysteries. In the world to come, the hope of the sacraments will find their fulfillment in the presence of the lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:12). In the baptismal profession of faith, the dying profess with their lips what they hope to experience in the immediate future. The genius of the profession, however, is related intimately to the last stanza of the text: “Do you believe in…the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?” The use of holy water, along with the profession of faith, focuses not only on the individual’s particular judgement, but on his ultimate end: resurrection.12 Last Supper The reception of Viaticum is the culmination of the ritual. The invitation to receive communion takes on a particular and unique form that communicates the Church’s understanding of the last sacrament: “Jesus Christ is the food for our journey; he calls us to the heavenly table.”13 In this consoling call, the Church affirms Viaticum as the last Sacrament, but she also directs the spiritual gaze of the recipient to the heavenly banquet.

Please see VIATICUM on page 9

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

LETTERS Dear Mr. Carstens, I have several questions concerning the liturgy. Some priests do not want to listen to a lay person concerning the liturgy, since it is their province. However, you are liturgy experts and your answers will help me in speaking to them.

Thank you for your time and knowledge.

Yours, Gail Jacobelli Sun City, CA Ms. Jacobelli’s questions follow with responses from Adoremus: Question 1 – Eucharistic Prayer: It appears the Eucharistic Prayer can be sung/chanted, including the words of consecration. Can the priest stop chanting after “Do this in memory of me”? If he chants, should he chant all of the Eucharistic Prayer? Can a musical instrument (piano, organ, guitar, etc.) accompany him in any way? (Such as ripples of notes on the piano at various times.)

Adoremus responds: The Roman Missal includes chant notation for each of the four Eucharistic Prayers in their entirety, but

Continued from VIATICUM on page 8 The ritual instructs the minister to add, following the reception of communion to the sick, “May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life.”14 A variation of the private prayer of the priest in Mass (at one time part of the ordinary formula for receiving Holy Communion), the line readies the soul for its spiritual journey initiated by death.

Steps Toward Recovery The ritual that accompanies Viaticum is rich in symbolism, but its infrequency should leave us flabbergasted. As mentioned before, the on-the-ground reality oftentimes makes Viaticum an impossibility for those who are called to the bedside of the faithful. What are, therefore, the possibilities for this venerable sacrament in the future practice of the Church?

Potential for the Precious Blood The Church’s doctrine of concomitance assures us that the fullness of Christ is contained in both the consecrated host and wine.15 The common circumstance cited for forgoing Viaticum is that the faithful are oftentimes incapacitated and unable to receive the consecrated host.

Could the dying, however, conceivably receive the Blood of Christ as Viaticum?

The Church ordinarily forbids the reservation of the Precious Blood in the Tabernacle.16 In an ideal world with optimal conditions, a priest could celebrate Mass in the home or hospital of the sick persons while bringing the Precious Blood immediately for their consumption. Even the smallest perceptible drop of our Lord’s blood could suffice as food for the spiritual

there are no supplementary instructions in the Missal or in any other document on their use. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) does, however, give broader guidelines that are applicable here, namely, that “in the choosing of the parts actually to be sung, preference is to be given to those that are of greater importance” (GIRM, 40). The Eucharistic Prayer is “the center and high point of the entire celebration” (GIRM 78), and the words of institution form the core of the Eucharistic Prayer. These consecratory formulas, then, may rightly be sung when other parts of the Eucharistic Prayer are recited.

Additionally, the principle of “progressive solemnity” suggests that the Eucharistic Prayer, in whole or in part, ought to be sung on more solemn occasions. Progressive solemnity directs that “between the solemn, fuller form of liturgical celebration, in which everything that demands singing is in fact sung, and the simplest form, in which singing is not used, there can be various degrees according to the greater or lesser place allotted to singing” (See Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship, 111; Musicam Sacram, 7). Hence, the more important elements of the Mass and of the Eucharistic Prayer can be sung to amplify the significance of the occasion.

Apart from the priest’s chanting of the Eucharistic Prayer, “‘there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent,’ except for the people’s acclamations…”

(Redemptionis Sacramentum, 53; GIRM, 32). And again, “The Eucharistic Prayer requires that everybody listens to it with reverence and in silence” (GIRM, 78).

Question 2 – Penitential Act: If the form used is “I confess to Almighty God and to you…,” does “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” need to

journey. Experience shows, however, that this scenario is oftentimes impractical.

The Pastoral Care of the Sick mentions an exception to the Church’s prohibition of reserving the Blessed Sacrament: “The minister should choose the manner of giving communion under both kinds which is suitable in the particular case. If the wine is consecrated at a Mass not celebrated in the presence of the sick person, the blood of the Lord is kept in a properly covered vessel and is placed in the tabernacle after communion. The precious blood should be carried to the sick person in a vessel which is closed in such a way as to eliminate all danger of spilling. If some of the precious blood remains after communion, it should be consumed by the minister, who should also see to it that the vessel is properly purified.”17 The introduction to the celebration of Viaticum assures that a person can indeed receive under the form of wine alone. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal lends itself to the practical possibilities of distributing the precious blood: “The Blood of the Lord may be received either by drinking from the chalice directly, or by intinction, or by means of a tube or a spoon.”18 It seems, therefore, that the possibility of Viaticum in the form of the precious blood is simply impeded by the lack of appropriate vessels that can be sealed. Is there perhaps, therefore, an invitation for the Church to commission such instruments to aid with the distribution of the precious blood? These are certainly outside the experience of most priests serving in their parishes.

The Minister The Pastoral Care of the Sick reminds the Church that all have a responsibility

follow? In the missalette, it shows it as needing to be said by the people. Can the priest choose to not say the “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” if he uses the “I confess to Almighty God” form?

Adoremus responds: The “Lord, have mercy” or “Kyrie, eleison” is said or sung when the Confiteor is used at Mass, as the rubric in the Missal directs: “The Kyrie, eleison (Lord, have mercy) invocations follow, unless they have just occurred in a formula of the Penitential Act” (7).

Question 3 – After communion: Who can repose the Blessed Sacrament after communion is finished? I thought only a priest or deacon could do this after communion has been distributed at Mass.

Adoremus responds: While many documents give detailed instructions on certain parts of the Mass, the relevant documents say little on returning the Blessed Sacrament to the tabernacle following communion. The one instance in the Missal where it mentions returning the sacrament to the tabernacle concerns the priest: “When the distribution of Communion is over, the Priest himself immediately and completely consumes at the altar any consecrated wine that happens to remain; as for any consecrated hosts that are left, he either consumes them at the altar or carries them to the place designated for the reservation of the Eucharist” (163). Nowhere does the GIRM mention either the deacon or instituted acolyte returning the remaining hosts to the tabernacle. The priest, unlike any other liturgical minister, has special care of the Blessed Sacrament, and this instruction signifies his duty.

in ministering to the sick and dying amongst our ranks. The ritual affirms that “parish priests (pastor) and parochial vicars, chaplains, and, for all staying in the house, the superior in clerical religious institutes or societies of apostolic life”19 are the ordinary ministers of Viaticum. Circumstances might necessitate, however, that deacons and duly appointed layministers preside at the rite. How many of our deacons, alongside with our Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, are conscious of the ritual for Viaticum?

As demonstrated above, the ritual is filled with signs and symbols that aid the dying in their pursuit of heaven. The Church must equip all ministers with the tools to discern particular situations that might warrant the distribution of communion as Viaticum.

Alpha to Omega The Church’s sacramental depository has been a source of consolation of countless souls throughout the history of the Church’s life. The reception of Holy Communion as Viaticum, moreover, is no exception. The signs and symbols employed by the Church in its ritual for Viaticum, themselves vehicles for grace, contribute to the consolation willed by our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church must, therefore, explore possibilities for making Viaticum an ordinary experience in the minds of the faithful. This desire on the part of the faithful will only foster in their hearts a deeper love and appreciation for our Lord’s Body and Blood. May the Church be brave in her reflection, and may she keep her obligations to sanctifying the

9 On the one hand, it seems reasonable that especially a deacon, or even an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, could return hosts to the tabernacle, particularly if the tabernacle were outside the sanctuary and would require the priest-celebrant to leave it. If a layperson were permitted to distribute communion, it seems in keeping with that role that he or she could return hosts to the tabernacle.

On the other hand, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion are not permitted to purify vessels, even though they can distribute communion from them. Among other reasons, there is an ecclesiological principle guiding the types and roles of liturgical ministers.

Redemptionis Sacramentum, invoking the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and Sacrosanctum Concilium, explains that “All, ‘whether ordained ministers or lay faithful, in exercising their own office or ministry should do exclusively and fully that which pertains to them.’ In the liturgical celebration itself as well as in its preparation, [liturgical participants] should do what is necessary so that the Church’s Liturgy will be carried out worthily and appropriately. To be avoided is the danger of obscuring the complementary relationship between the action of clerics and that of laypersons, in such a way that the ministry of laypersons undergoes what might be called a certain ‘clericalization’…”

(44-45). Liturgical ministers, by their presence and action properly carried out, manifest the Church.

So: can laypersons repose the Blessed Sacrament? In the absence of anything definitive, and applying the Church’s liturgical principles to his particular parish, the appropriate pastoral authority should decide.

More letters on page 10

masses in the forefront of her mind: in both life and death.

Fr. Ryan Rojo, S.T.L., was ordained a priest for the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas on May 30, 2015. He currently serves as the Parochial Vicar of St. Ann’s Church in Midland, TX, and he is an active member of both the Southwest Liturgical Conference and the Society for Catholic Liturgy.

1. Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium [Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] in The Basic Sixteen Documents: Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations. Flannery, Austin, ed. Northport, NY: Costello Publishing, 1996.

2. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, trans., Pastoral Care of the Sick, (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 2004), 175. Emphasis mine.

3. Ibid., 232. See Huels, John M., “Ministers and Rites for the Sick and Dying” in Recovering the Riches of Anointing. Ed. Genevieve Glen. (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 83—112.

4. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 314.

5. Ibid., 198.

6. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, tans., Handbook of Indulgences, (New York, NY: Catholic Book Publishing, 1973, 19.

7. Ibid., 19.

8. Code of Canon Law, c. 996, sec. 1, in Code of Canon Law: Latin English Edition (Washington D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1999), 318.

9. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 199.

10. Handbook of Indulgences, 57.

11. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 179.

12. See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 989.

13. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 207.

14. Ibid.

15. See: Council of Trent, Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist in Denzinger, Heinrich. Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus Fidei et morum: Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, Ed.

by Peter Huenermann. 43rd edition, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 1653.

16. See: Pope John Paul II, Inestimabile Donum, 14.

17. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 181.

18. General Instruction of the Roman Missal (Washington D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2010), 245.

19. ICEL, Pastoral Care, 29.

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

LETTERS Treasured Thanks Thank you for your wonderful Liturgical enrichment!

—B rother Cyril Ochab Clinton Township, Michigan

Care and Prayer Dear Editor, I am enclosing a donation for the Adoremus Bulletin.

My husband and I live in a Care Center and appreciate being able to receive it. Thanks for the work you do so we can be informed.

Sincerely, Mrs. Rose Marie Gouin Duluth, Minnesota

Words of Profit I have very little money but read your newsletter with serious attention and much profit.

Thank you.

— F ather Wm. Virtue, Retired Batavia, Illinois

Blessed Communion The discussion whether there is a deacon’s first blessing in the May Bulletin reminded me of the blessings that are given individually during Mass to non-Catholics or baptized Catholics who have not yet received their First Holy Communion. With forearms crossed over their chest, they approach the person distributing Holy Communion for a blessing with others who are approaching to receive the Sacrament. Can you comment on this practice and the propriety of extraordinary Eucharistic ministers giving this blessing? And in general, can any Catholic lay person impart a blessing on another person?

Thank you.

— Th omas Valli, via email Adoremus: A common question, one that Adoremus is pleased to have answered by Father Daren Zehnle, Director of the Office for Divine Worship and the Catechumenate in the Diocese of Springfield (IL). See next column.

Continued from ROMAN RITE, page 5

gestures and postures of the people and ministers, GIRM no. 42 reads in part: “Therefore, attention should be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and the traditional practice of the Roman Rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice.”

[Emphasis added.]

This tiny phrase, it seems to me, heralded a new approach to understanding the revised Order for Mass. That new approach to a more authentic implementation of the Order

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Q

A

THE RITE QUESTIONS : Should Blessings Be Given During the Communion Procession?

: It often happens that persons present themselves, or are presented by others, to receive a blessing at the time others approach to receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. While the beginning of this practice is a bit hard to pin down, it seems to have begun in the United States in the late 1980s or early 1990s out of a desire to help those feel included who cannot receive Holy Communion for one reason or another. To be sure, inclusion is often a noble concern and Jesus came to gather the nations into the peace of his kingdom, but such a practice often neglects to reveal an important aspect of his kingdom: everyone is welcome in this kingdom and all are called to receive the Eucharist if certain prerequisites are met. The requirements are neither burdensome nor unreasonable: a person must have received the grace of Baptism, attained the use of reason sufficient to distinguish the Body and Blood of the Lord from ordinary bread and wine, and strive to live a life according to Christian morals and make use of sacramental confession to maintain communion with the Church.

Some months ago, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki wrote to the priests and deacons serving in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, to explain his practice when someone approaches him for a blessing in the procession reserved for those who will receive Holy Communion: “I do not give any blessings during the time for Holy Communion. Everyone at Mass receives a liturgical blessing from the celebrant at the conclusion of the Mass, just a few moments after the distribution of Holy Communion and immediately before the dismissal.

I do not touch anyone, pat them on the head, or make a sign of the cross on their forehead or over their forehead. I make no gesture at all toward them with my hand. If someone above the age of reason approaches me in the Communion with their arms folded indicating that they do not actually wish to receive Holy Communion, I invite them to make a spiritual communion by saying, ‘Receive Christ spiritually in your heart.’

“As I say this, I bow my head slightly toward the person while I hold the Host in my hand for the next person who wishes to receive. I do nothing with babies or children being held in the arms of an adult, since a child below the age of reason presumably would not understand the concept of spiritual communion. I do happily and readily give individual blessings to babies, children and anyone else who so wishes after the recessional as I shake hands and greet people as they exit church.”

In the same communication, Bishop Paprocki expressed his desire that “the ordinary and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion in our diocese would emulate my personal pastoral practice.”

The Holy See has been studying this issue for several years now and, while no decision has been made regarding this practice, several principles ought to be borne in mind.

First, each liturgical procession has a purpose. The procession at the beginning of the Holy Mass moves the celebrant and the ministers from the sacristy or from the door of the church to their places in the sanctuary and it is not envisioned that others take part in this procession. The procession during the Gospel acclamation moves the one proclaiming the Gospel, together with the servers and the Book of the Gospels to the ambo. Here, again, it is not envisioned that others take part in this procession. In a similar manner, the Communion procession moves the communicants from their places in the nave of the church to the steps of the sanctuary. Again, it is not envisioned that others take part in the procession.

Certainly no one would suggest that infants or young children be left on their own in the pews; parents or those watching them bring them forward because it would be unwise to leave them behind. Young children were carried or walked in the Communion procession for centuries and, to my knowledge, no child felt left out or neglected because a blessing was not given. I remember frequently accompanying my great aunt in the Communion procession and the fact that I could not yet receive Holy

Communion deepened a desire within me to receive the Holy Eucharist.

A second observation pertains to blessings given by Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, those who have been deputed to assist the priests and deacons in moments of necessity. The Book of Blessings reminds us that the lay faithful, in virtue of their respective office in the Church (such as parents to their children) or in fulfilling a particular ministry, may impart blessings, but they are not to do so while a priest or deacon is present.

The reason for this is simple: priests and deacons are ordained to minister in the name of the Church and in the person of Christ. Consequently, an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion should not give a blessing to anyone in the Communion procession because there is always a priest present at that moment.

This leads us to a third consideration to keep in mind, a consideration seen during periods of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. When the Eucharistic Host is placed in the monstrance for the faithful to adore, a priest does not give blessings to the faithful in the church because he is in the presence of one who is greater than himself. During Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the priest or deacon wears a humeral veil in which he enfolds his hands as he holds the monstrance to show the blessing does not come from him, but from Christ.

Each of these reasons helps to explain Bishop Paprocki’s practice, a practice that is in harmony with the current liturgical norms and the tradition of the Church. It is good to invite those who cannot receive Holy Communion to ask the Lord for the grace of a spiritual Communion by which they seek to draw closer to him.

As their hearts yearn to receive him, let us pray they will be led to request full communion with his Church and so receive the Eucharistic Lord himself.

for Mass was seconded by the emphasis in the post synodal exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (2007) on the value of recovering a proper ars celebrandi of the Mass in conveying the beauty and the holiness of the liturgical action taking place. Similarly, this approach has been bolstered by the hope expressed in Summorum Pontificum (2007) that the two forms of the Roman Rite might mutually enrich each other over time.

for Mass, and relying on the previous liturgical tradition to fill in what may be either unspecified now, or simply assumed, could this principle help the Church to better understand how one goes about celebrating the Novus Ordo?

Rather than starting from scratch in trying to figure out how to celebrate Mass, why not start with what has been most foundational and most reliable in the existing liturgical tradition regarding the gestures and postures at Mass?

Over the next series of entries, I will show how one might interpret the provisions of the GIRM in the light of the “received tradition of the Roman Rite.” It is possible, I believe, to do so while at the same time preserving the distinction between the two forms of the Roman Rite which Summorum Pontificum demands. The main inspirations for this series are the two best commentaries on the revised Order for Mass, the very well-known Ceremonies of the Roman Rite by Bishop Peter Elliot (Ignatius, 1995), and the less well-known Cérémonial de la Sainte Messe by André Mutel and Peter Freeman (Artège, 2012).

With these as our guides, I will offer a description of the ars celebrandi of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite which draws upon the practical and spiritual wisdom found in the long tradition of the Roman Rite. In so doing, I hope that the beauty and grace of our celebrations may inspire more and more men and women of our time to seek with their whole hearts the One who is Beauty itself.

Thought Experiment What might our celebration of the Eucharist look like if the prescriptions of the latest edition of the GIRM were to be implemented according to the “received tradition of the Roman Rite?”

What would this approach demand of the priest celebrant, concelebrants, deacons, other ministers, and of the assembled faithful themselves? As GIRM no. 42 suggests, this exercise would be limited to the movements and postures of the Novus Ordo, not to other elements of the celebration of Mass.

But starting from the directives found in the GIRM and in the Order

— Answered by Father Daren Zehnle, Diocese of Springfield (IL). (Reprinted with permssion of the Catholic Times, Diocese of Springfield).

Monsignor Marc Caron is Professor of Liturgy at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts. He is a priest of the Diocese of Portland, Maine, having served there as a pastor and as director of the Office for Worship. He received his licentiate degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Illinois. At St. John’s, he also serves as Director of Liturgy and as a formation advisor. He is the author of a number of articles which have appeared in The Jurist, Worship, Catechumenate, and in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

Adoremus Thanks Sustaining ($200+) Deacon W. Patrick Cunningham San Antonio, Texas Mrs. Roger J. Madsen Denton, Texas Mr. Joseph Marrantino Wappingers Falls, New York Deacon Joseph Reid Palm Harbor, Florida Mrs. Luitgard Wild Shirley, British Columbia Anonymous Patron ($100+) Mr. & Mrs. George Baier Delta, Colorado Mr. Chester F. Betliskey Cleveland, Ohio Mrs. Jo Ann Brady Petersburg, Illinois Fr. John C. Deken New Haven, Missouri Mr. & Mrs. B. Anthony Delserone Wexford, Pennsylvania Mr. Stephen J. Dreher Gorham, Maine Fr. Martin E. Flum Brandywine, Maryland Miss Margaret Gerke Lexington, Kentucky

Continued from DEDICATION on page 7

The bishop then anoints the bare altar by pouring Holy Chrism both in the middle of the altar and on each of its four corners. The luxurious aroma of chrism usually fills the entire church! Then the walls themselves are anointed at twelve locations, as is the venerable custom, or if circumstances suggest, at only four points. The places where the walls are anointed are marked in perpetuity by crosses and candles mounted on the walls. The anointing of the altar renders the altar itself as a powerful symbol of Christ, which means “Anointed One,” who on the altar of his body offered the sacrifice of his life for the salvation of all. The anointing of the walls of the church with the same chrism is an act of consecration, not unlike the anointing of a priest’s hands at his ordination. The anointing of the church’s walls indicates that it has been set aside permanently for Christian worship.

A brazier for the burning of incense is then placed on the altar. Alternately a heap of incense may be stacked directly onto the surface of the altar.

The bishop then adds incense to the hot coals in the brazier, or he lights the heap of incense stacked on the altar itself. While the incense is burning on the altar, the bishop then places incense in a number of thuribles and incenses the altar with one of them.

Afterwards, several ministers move throughout the church incensing both the people and the walls. As the rite’s Introduction indicates (n.

16b), the incense burned on the altar actually signifies the sacrifice

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of Christ “ascending to God as a pleasing fragrance.” It is also a sign of the prayers of the people rising up to the throne of God. “Moreover,” the Instruction continues, “the incensation of the main body of the church indicates that the dedication makes it a house of prayer; but the People of

“ The anointing of the walls of the church with the same Chrism is an act of consecration, not unlike the anointing of a priest’s hands at his ordination.

The anointing of the church’s walls indicates that it has been set aside permanently for Christian worship.”

God are incensed first, for they are the living temple in which each faithful member is a spiritual altar.”

Following this very dramatic, memorable, and fragrant moment, the altar is at last dressed with the appropriate coverings, for it has now become the Lord’s table, and it is to be adorned as the table of a sacrificial banquet and adorned as for a festive occasion. Other items necessary for the celebration of Mass, including unlighted candles, are now arranged on or near the altar. Then the bishop directs the altar candles and those

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throughout the church to be lighted with these words (70): “Let the light of Christ shine brightly in the Church, that all nations may attain the fullness of truth.” This new building and its altar have been blessed with water, dedicated to liturgical service, anointed with Chrism, and further blessed with large amounts of incense. The Word of God has already resounded within its walls for the first time. Now the light of Christ at last illuminates this space, forever set aside as a particular community’s place of worship.

At That First Thanksgiving From this point, the celebration of the Eucharist enters more familiar territory, except for two noteworthy departures. The first takes place after the deacons have prepared the altar with the gifts of bread and wine and the necessary vessels. Since the undedicated altar was not venerated with the usual kiss following the initial procession into the sanctuary, the bishop now approaches the newly dedicated altar and kisses it for the first time.

The second special element occurs if the Blessed Sacrament is to be reserved in a separate chapel. If this is the case, following the distribution of Communion, the remaining Hosts are placed in a ciborium and left on the altar. After the bishop says or intones the Prayer after Communion, he returns to the altar, kneels, and incenses the Blessed Sacrament. The Blessed Sacrament is then carried in procession through the main body of the church to the chapel of reservation, where the Blessed Sacrament is placed

in the tabernacle for the first time.

Now and Forever This brief article hardly does justice to the luxuriant symbolism, potent prayer, and festive pageantry of the dedication of a church. Some of the most ancient buildings still in use today are churches, so for many, the dedication of a new church might be a once in a lifetime event. How fitting that a building which provides a sacred place for activities which will touch so many lives for years to come should begin its use with such an engaging and festive liturgy.

Father Michael J. Flynn is a native of Birmingham, AL, and holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. Father Flynn graduated from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans in 1994 and was ordained that year a priest of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. Father Flynn has developed and taught seminary courses on liturgical history, theology, and praxis. He has given workshops in dioceses around the country on topics pertaining to the liturgy. He began work with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in March, 2014, and assumed the responsibilities of Executive Director of the Secretariat of Divine Worship on July 1 of the same year, until his return to the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in January 2016. Father Flynn is presently the Director of the Secretariat for Sacraments and Worship for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in addition to his duties as Parochial Vicar at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Pensacola.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, Pope Pius X initiated what would become known as the “liturgical movement” with his 1903 document on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini.

Continued from REFORM on page 3

The Second Vatican Council’s Reform Recognizing the fundamental importance of the Mass in every Catholic believer’s life—a goal of the pre-conciliar liturgical movement that had remained elusive—the fathers of the Second Vatican Council made their first work the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963).

The Constitution reaffirmed the central and indispensable role of the liturgy in Catholic life, and in this document the Council fathers called for a liturgical reform—stressing again the active participation of the laity, precisely in order that the liturgy would become the center of every faithful Catholic’s life. This was the true objective of the liturgical reform, as it had been for many years.

The Constitution’s directives were by no means extreme, and essentially reaffirmed the earlier papal documents on the liturgy. While they authorized more use of the vernacular in the liturgy, along with Latin, the Council fathers could not and did not foresee the rapid disappearance of all Latin from the Mass; nor could they ever have imagined the radical departure from the Church’s traditional liturgical practice that would take place with alarming and confusing speed during the 1960s and 1970s.

“ The Constitution’s directives were by no means extreme, and essentially reaffirmed the earlier papal documents on the liturgy.”

A New Liturgical Movement The Council’s reform was genuinely needed. But the errors resulting from misinterpretation of the Council were very serious, indeed, and these errors led to divisions within the Church.

Correction was clearly necessary.

Thus Pope John Paul II called for a new reform of the liturgy in Vicesimus Quintus Annus, his letter on the 25th anniversary of the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy. The letter describes both the positive and negative effects of the post-conciliar liturgical renewal, and concludes: “The time has come to renew that spirit which inspired the Church at the moment when the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium was prepared, discussed, voted upon and promulgated, and when the first steps were taken to apply it” (§23).

Pope John Paul thus set in motion a plan to get the liturgy back on course—a

In the 1950s, Pope Pius XII reformed the celebration of Holy Week, and new vernacular translations of the Bible were undertaken. The pope issued key encyclicals on the liturgy: Mediator Dei (1947) and Musicae Sacrae (1955).

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2018

“The difficulties and even the occasional abuses which were noted,” wrote Pope Benedict XVI, “cannot overshadow the benefits and the validity of the liturgical renewal, whose riches are yet to be fully explored.”

“ A renewal of liturgical awareness, a liturgical reconciliation that again recognizes the unity of the history of the liturgy and that understands Vatican II, not as a breach, but as a stage of development: these things are urgently needed for the life of the Church.”

— Pope Benedict XVI new liturgical reform.

The phrase “new liturgical movement” was used by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his 1997 memoir, Milestones. Here is the relevant section, in which we can hear echoes of the criticisms by earlier popes of the failures of the liturgical reform to achieve its real purpose: “There is no doubt that this new Missal [after Vatican II] in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something ‘made’, not something given in advance but something lying within our own power of decision. From this it also follows that we are not to recognize the scholars and the central authority alone as decision makers, but that in the end each and every ‘community’ must provide itself with its own liturgy. When liturgy is selfmade, however, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own product but rather our origin and the source of our life. A renewal of liturgical awareness, a liturgical reconciliation that again recognizes the unity of the history of the liturgy and that understands Vatican II, not as a breach, but as a stage of development: these things are urgently needed for the life of the Church. [Emphasis added.]

“I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur [Lit., as if God is not given], in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God exists and whether or not He speaks to us and hears us. But when the community of faith, the worldwide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And because the ecclesial community cannot

have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds—partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart.

“This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council” [Emphasis added] (Milestones – Memoirs 1927-1977 (1997, English edition, 1998, Ignatius Press, p 148-149).

“ The Council’s reform was genuinely needed.

But the errors resulting from misinterpretation of the Council were very serious.”

Rupture or Reform and Renewal?

Pope Benedict XVI, in his nowfamous address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, forty years after the Second Vatican Council ended, reflected on the way the Council had been received and interpreted. “What has been the result of the Council?” the new pope asked. “Was it well received? What, in the acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken?… Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?”

The answer, he explains, lies in the correct interpretation and application of the Council—“on its proper hermeneutics.”

“On the one hand,’ Benedict says, “there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture;’ it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology.

On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God. “The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-

conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless.… In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit.”

But this shows a basic misunderstanding of the very nature of a Council, he says. “The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform…. It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists.”

Pope Benedict again recalls the serious problem of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” in interpreting the Council in Sacramentum Caritatis, his apostolic exhortation following the Synod on the Eucharist (February 22, 2007). He also emphasized that the “riches” of the liturgical renewal “are yet to be fully explored”: “The difficulties and even the occasional abuses which were noted, it was affirmed, cannot overshadow the benefits and the validity of the liturgical renewal, whose riches are yet to be fully explored. Concretely, the changes which the Council called for need to be understood within the overall unity of the historical development of the rite itself, without the introduction of artificial discontinuities” (§3 [Emphasis added]).

This authentic liturgical reform— overcoming “discontinuities” and “ruptures” in the Church’s history, and renewing and restoring the “spiritual essence” of the Mass, the heart and font of our faith—is what we are now experiencing, more than 100 years after Pope Pius X’s initial actions, and nearly half a century after the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy.

Helen Hull Hitchcock (1939-2014) was editor of the Adoremus Bulletin, which she co-founded. She was also the founding director of Women for Faith & Family and editor of its quarterly journal, Voices. She published many articles and essays in a wide range of Catholic journals, and authored and edited The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God (Ignatius Press 1992), a collection of essays on issues involved in translation.

She contributed essays to several books, including Spiritual Journeys, a book of “conversion stories” (Daughters of St. Paul). Helen lectured in the US and abroad, and appeared frequently on radio and television, representing Catholic teaching on issues affecting Catholic women, families, and Catholic faith and worship.