Adoremus Bulletin - November 2023

Adoremus Bulletin

NOVEMBER 2023

New Study: Almost Two-thirds of US Catholics Believe in Real Presence

By Joe Bukuras

CNA—A new study shows that almost two-thirds of adult Catholics in the United States believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, a significantly different result from the often-cited 2019 Pew Research study that suggested only one-third of adult Catholics in the U.S. believe in the Church’s teaching on the Blessed Sacrament.

The study, which also points to a high correlation between weekly and monthly Mass attendance and belief in the Real Presence, comes amid the second year of the U.S. bishops’ Eucharistic revival, which was launched in part because of the Pew Research poll.

The new report—published by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) and commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life—challenges the methodology and results of the Pew survey but still demonstrates that a large number of Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the “source and summit” of the faith.

Zachary Keith, assistant director on the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, told CNA on September 28 that it is important to look at how questions relating to belief in the Eucharist are phrased, citing the difference

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XXIX, No. 3

Intimations of God: Toward a Catholic Integration of Rite, Culture, and the Contemporary Person

By Andrew TJ Kaethler

O “

ur age is not just an external path that we tread; it is ourselves.

Our age is our own blood, our own soul. We relate to it as to ourselves.

We love it and hate it at one and the same time.”1 Man struggles to live in the present. He either hides in a glorious past or projects himself into a fulfilled future. Our age is difficult to love but it is our age, and, as Guardini suggests, it is ourselves. We are cultured creatures; we do not live in a vacuum. Hence, there is a sense of responsibility, and this is key for Romano Guardini’s evaluation of the modern world, and it should shape our engagement with it. It means that we need to be personally invested in facing the present difficulties. Here I am specifically referring to the technological paradigm, our Weltanschauung, and the immense difficulties of worshiping in the age of technology. The difficulty arises because it is not simply the context we live in but it is “our own soul.”

Over 60 years ago the Canadian political philosopher George P. Grant was ringing the alarm bells about the danger of technology. He went so far as to say that it is changing our very ontology (our very being), and the result is that eventually we will no longer be able to discern intimations of the Good. Is this possible? Is modern man incapable of divine receptivity and thereby incapable of worship? Certainly those of us who worship regularly in the Mass respond with a “no.” The fact that we continue to go to Mass evidences this “no.” Thus, perhaps the more appropriate question is: Is our liturgical capacity severely limited because of the age we live in? If the answer is in the affirmative, then we must ask: in what ways are we limited, and how should we respond? Furthermore, is it possible that our liturgical capacity could continue to decrease until it is lost altogether?

In his famous 1964 letter to the Mainz liturgical conference,2 Guardini highlighted the problem of the liturgical act. He claimed that the typical man of the 19th century was not capable of it. “Religious conduct was to him an individual inward matter which in the ‘liturgy’ took on the character of an official, public ceremonial. But the sense of the liturgical action was

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Adoremus Bulletin NOVEMBER 2023

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News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

“Our age is not just an external path that we tread,” writes Romano Guardini: “it is ourselves. Our age is our own blood, our own soul. We relate to it as to ourselves. We love it and hate it at one and the same time.” And insofar as our liturgy (cult) is bound to our culture, our liturgical capacity bears the same ambivalence.

thereby lost. The faithful did not perform a proper liturgical act at all, it was simply a private and inward act, surrounded by ceremonial and not infrequently accompanied by a feeling that the ceremonial was really a disturbing factor.” The liturgical act will be incomprehensible to those “whose inclinations are individualistic, rationalistic, and, above all, attached to traditions.” He rhetorically asks, “Would it not be better to admit that man in this industrial and scientific age, with its

“ We are cultured creatures; we do not live in a vacuum.” new sociological structure, is no longer capable of a liturgical act?” He concludes on a positive note, highlighting that the rise of the liturgical movement coincided with a new awareness of the Church and of an understanding of the human person whose body and spirit form an integrated whole. It is this confluence that I want to focus on and that will provide a response to the aforementioned questions.

Before moving on I need to clear the

A Real Feast We modern people are starved with too much technology and hunger for a more substantial reality—one we can find in the liturgy, says Andrew TJ Kaethler, both now and forever...... 1 Church Restoration Whether from top-down or bottom-up, any attempt to restore a Christian culture today, according to Dom Virgil Michel in this Adoremus reprint, must begin with a firm foundation in Christ...................................................... 5 A Common Concern This November, Pius X’s Tra le Sollecitudini turns 120 and Sacrosanctum Concilium turns 60, and both documents, explains Father Kurt Belsole,

ground. The liturgy is a fundamental act that not only forms reality but reveals reality. Getting the words, actions, smells, and bells of liturgy correct is important but not enough. The liturgy is not a magical formula. We must, as Guardini and Joseph Ratzinger maintain, understand the spirit of the liturgy—a difficult task. The pendulum too often swings between radical traditionalism and ordo libertarianism: both of which fail to understand the spirit of the liturgy. Louis Bouyer refers to these extreme positions in terms of christological heresies: Monophysitism and Nestorianism. The former sees the liturgy and the sacraments as sui generis, as absolutely set apart from the world, and “a fierce opposition is maintained to everything that could emphasize what the sacred rites have in common with simple human actions.”3 The latter sees the liturgy as decorative human invention, as absolutely worldly and profane. Both fail to see aright because both lack a proper understanding of the Incarnation or, more broadly speaking, a sacramental vision, and therefore they lack an awareness of the Church and of

Please see CONTEMPORARY on page 4

shed light on the liturgy for our times................ 7

The Big(gest) Book of Saints The story of the Church is told through its saints. Father Thomas Kocik’s brief history of the Church’s official saint directory, the Roman Martyrology, helps us understand why.............. 8 The Rite Way Joseph O’Brien’s review of The Forgotten Language shows how its author, Father Michael Rennier, finds the Mass a mysterious yet accessible love poem from God to humanity...........12 News & Views......................................................... 1 Editorial................................................................... 3 Rite Questions......................................................11

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NEWS & VIEWS

Continued from NEWS & VIEWS in wording of both studies as a “large part of the reason for the discrepancy.”

Additionally, Keith said that the CARA study shows that those who believe in the Real Presence “do not know how to articulate it as well as I think the Pew study might have implied.”

The revival culminates at its National Eucharistic Congress, which will be held next July and is expected to draw 80,000 Catholics to worship the Blessed Sacrament at Lucas Oil Stadium, home to the Indianapolis Colts.

Tim Glemkowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress, told CNA: “What the recent study shows is the deep need for a true Eucharistic revival, one that pushes past mere notional assent and awareness of the Church’s teaching but is about providing an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, leading to a lived relationship of discipleship.”

CARA’s report takes issue with the phraseology of the questioning in the Pew Research study, calling it problematic. The methodology in CARA’s study “used a different approach to try to be as clear as possible,” the report said.

In order to determine the percentage of U.S. adult Catholics who believe in the Real Presence, respondents in CARA’s study were asked a variety of different questions.

The report stated that after an examination of “each respondent’s answers collectively,” 64% of those surveyed “provided responses that indicate they believe in the Real Presence.”

The question answered by respondents in CARA’s study “more accurately reflects the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist” as opposed to the question answered in the Pew Research survey, the report said.

The report said there was a “problem” with the question used in the Pew survey, which asked: “Regardless of the official teaching of the Catholic Church, what do you personally believe about the bread and wine used for Communion?”

A few options shown below were given for answers.

“During Catholic Mass, the bread and wine...

1. Actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ 2. Are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ 3. No answer” The problem with the question, the report said, is that respondents could choose both 1 and 2 and still be correct, citing the U.S. bishops’ conference, which said: “The transformed bread and wine are truly the Body and Blood of Christ and are not merely symbols.”

The Eucharist is “substance and symbol,” the CARA report said.

Respondents in the CARA study were also surveyed on a host of other questions, including Mass attendance and where they learned about the Eucharist.

The study said that 95% of weekly Mass attendees and 80% who attend at least once a month believe in the Real Presence Seventeen percent of adult Catholics attend Mass at least once a week, the report said. Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, 24% of Catholics attended Mass weekly, it said.

Almost 20% of adult Catholics attend Mass at least once a month and 26% attend a few times a year, the report said. Thirty-five percent rarely or never attend.

Those who entered the Church as adults or served in parish ministry polled at higher levels for belief in the Real Presence. Those who attended Catholic schools at any level were more likely than those who never attended to believe in the Real Presence.

The survey also asked respondents where they learned about the Eucharist, leading to their belief or

unbelief in the Real Presence.

Fifty-three percent said they learned from their parents, while 44% said they learned through sacramental preparation or religious education. Just over 40% said they learned at Mass, and 37% said they learned at Catholic school.

For those who said they learned from their parents, 67% believe in the Real Presence. Seventy-three percent of those who learned from parish programs believe, while 75% who learned their information in Catholic schools believe.

Sixty percent of those who learned information about the Eucharist from the internet believe in the Real Presence.

“With these methods we hope that we have come to a better understanding of what Catholics believe the Church teaches and what they personally believe about the Eucharist themselves,” the report said.

Pope Francis Issues Apostolic Letter on St. Thérèse of Lisieux

By Hannah Brockhaus

CNA—Pope Francis has commended the “little greatness” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in a new message focusing on the 19th-century Carmelite’s relevance for the Church today.

St. Thérèse’s “genius consists in leading us to what is central, essential, and indispensable,” the pope wrote in an apostolic letter published October 15.

The young saint, whose life and writings focused on love and following a “little way” of holiness, “shows that, while it is true that all the Church’s teachings and rules have their importance, their value, their clarity, some are more urgent and more foundational for the Christian life,” he said.

“From heaven to earth, the timely witness of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face endures in all the grandeur of her little way,” Pope Francis wrote.

The pope’s latest in-depth reflection on a saint takes its title, “C’est la Confiance,” or “It is Trust,” from a quotation in one of Thérèse’s letters: “It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also called St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face or “The Little Flower,” was a French Carmelite nun who died in 1897 from tuberculosis at the age of 24.

One of the Catholic Church’s most beloved saints, in 1997 she was proclaimed a doctor of the Church, an honor to this day granted to only 37 saints.

In her autobiography Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse recounted her “little way” of holiness and her desire to spend heaven “doing good on earth.” She is a patron saint of missionaries and her liturgical feast is October 1.

“A century and a half after her birth, Thérèse is more alive than ever in the pilgrim Church, in the heart of God’s people,” the pope wrote.

“She accompanies us on our pilgrim way, doing good on earth, as she had so greatly desired,” he continued.

“The most lovely signs of her spiritual vitality are the innumerable ‘roses’ that Thérèse continues to strew: the graces God grants us through her loving intercession in order to sustain us on our journey through life.”

“Dear St. Thérèse, the Church needs to radiate the

brightness, the fragrance, and the joy of the Gospel,” he wrote. “Send us your roses!”

The pope’s letter on St. Thérèse is punctuated by frequent citations of the saint’s own words as written in letters and in Story of a Soul.

Though 2023 marks 150 years since Thérèse’s birth and 100 years since her beatification, the message was published on the liturgical feast of the Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Ávila.

Pope Francis said he did not want to publish a letter about St. Thérèse of Lisieux on one of her own anniversaries because the significance of her message goes beyond these dates.

“Its publication on the liturgical memorial of St. Teresa of Avila is a way of presenting St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face as the mature fruit of the reform of the Carmel and of the spirituality of the great Spanish saint,” he wrote.

“From St. Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse inherited a great love for the Church and was able to plumb the depths of this mystery,” he wrote.

Pope Francis said St. Thérèse also invites us to greater missionary outreach.

About her missionary focus, despite being a cloistered nun from the age of 15 until her death at 24, Francis said, “she wrote that she entered Carmel ‘to save souls.’”

“In a word, she did not view her consecration to God apart from the pursuit of the good of her brothers and sisters,” the pope wrote. “She shared the merciful love of the Father for his sinful sons and the love of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who were lost, astray, and wounded. For this reason, Thérèse is the patroness of the missions and a model of evangelization.” […]

Pope Francis’ letter also emphasized the Carmelite saint’s humility and her spiritual revelation that her “vocation is Love.”

“This heart was not that of a triumphalistic Church but of a loving, humble, and merciful Church,” he wrote. “Thérèse never set herself above others, but took the lowest place together with the Son of God, who for our sake became a slave and humbled himself, becoming obedient, even to death on a cross.”

“This discovery of the heart of the Church is also a great source of light for us today,” the pope said. “It preserves us from being scandalized by the limitations and weaknesses of the ecclesiastical institution with its shadows and sins, and enables us to enter into the Church’s ‘heart burning with love,’ which burst into flame at Pentecost thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

“It is that heart,” he continued, “whose fire is rekindled with each of our acts of charity. ‘I shall be love.’ This was the radical option of Thérèse, her definitive synthesis and her deepest spiritual identity.”

Pointing out the saint’s enduring relevance, Francis wrote that “in an age that urges us to focus on ourselves and our own interests, Thérèse shows us the beauty of making our lives a gift. At a time when the most superficial needs and desires are glorified, she testifies to the radicalism of the Gospel. In an age of individualism, she makes us discover the value of a love that becomes intercession for others.”

“At a time when human beings are obsessed with grandeur and new forms of power, she points out to us the little way,” he continued. “In an age that casts aside so many of our brothers and sisters, she teaches us the beauty of concern and responsibility for one another.”

“At a time of great complexity, she can help us rediscover the importance of simplicity, the absolute primacy of love, trust, and abandonment, and thus move beyond a legalistic or moralistic mindset that would fill the Christian life with rules and regulations, and cause the joy of the Gospel to grow cold.”

Please see NEWS & VIEWS page 3

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

How Liturgical Leaven Gives Rise to Culture

by means of sensible signs, symbols, words, and actions—thus our bodies are important. But beneath these external signs Christ carries out his priestly work, to which our souls are actively joined and in which our whole being actively participates.

But there’s another concept put forward by Pius X’s TLS—and again by the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium—that ought to be recalled at this time, namely, that active participation in the liturgy adds living leaven to our surrounding culture. As Pius X writes in TLS, his motivation for promoting active participation is his “most ardent desire to see the true Christian spirit flourish in every respect and be preserved by all the faithful” (emphasis added). Certainly, our participation in the saving work of Christ is the goal of Christian life, a kind of end in itself. But there are ripple effects arising from our heart’s union with God’s—new life emanates (or can emanate) from a life joined to God in worship.

“Active participation” was therefore an essential ingredient to Pius X’s larger papal plan, reflected in his papal motto: “To restore all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). Pope Pius X lived amid a European culture on the brink of war—and its combatants

were believers in Christ. How could this happen?

The causes were many, but each was reducible to the death of the Christian spirit among…Christians.

His solution was to restore the Christian spirit, principally from the font of the sacred liturgy.

The logic of Pius X’s thinking—(1) actively participate in the liturgy; (2) bring the Christian spirit to life within its participants; (3) restore the world to God—continued to live among the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. They wrote that active participation in the sacred liturgy “is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit.” In more general terms, cult—what the ancients defined as man’s relationship with the gods—stands at the heart of our culture. Get our relationship with God correct, and our culture comes to life. Or, to put it another way, actively participate in the life of God, and God becomes the active agent—the yeast—in our culture.

The present issue of Adoremus Bulletin explores the relationship between cult and culture in greater detail. In “Intimations of God: Toward a Catholic Integration of Rite, Culture, and the Contemporary Person,” Andrew Kaethler examines how our contemporary culture’s faults inhibit our liturgical worship. Dom Virgil Michel interprets Pius X’s call to renew the culture from the sacred liturgy in his 1939 essay “Christian Culture.” Father Thomas Kocik looks toward the saints—extraordinarily active participants in Christ’s life who now enjoy the ultimate cultural experience in the heavenly Jerusalem—and their official codification in the Roman Martyrology.

I suspect there are few who would call Western culture vibrant and life giving. If not an outright “culture of death,” as Pope John Paul II spoke of, much of our current culture could use a little— or a lot—of leaven. Such leaven comes from our active and intelligent participation in a liturgy well celebrated. If it seems that Pius X’s 120-year-old prescription for reviving the true Christian spirit hasn’t worked (see World War I, World War II, etc.), the problem may not be the diagnosis and treatment, but a refusal to take one’s medicine. As G.K. Chesterton once remarked, it’s not that the Christian ideal “has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” If you are a practicing Catholic—keep practicing! Go back to that font of culture and life, the active participation in the sacred liturgy. Your new life in Christ will rise even to the heavens.

“I don’t want to ‘ambush’ them with the Lord,” Father Schmitz admitted. “Most people will not have any idea what we’re doing.”

But, upon further reflection, he said, “I think it’s what we need to do.” He said he is reminded of Jesus carrying his cross during his passion—at the time, Jesus was “unnoticed, misunderstood, or hated” by almost everyone who saw him.

Father Schmitz said the Eucharistic procession is an opportunity to glorify Jesus in a “hidden” form that

most observers will not understand. And, perhaps, “someone will look up, glance over, and see the friends of Jesus and ask, ‘Who is that?’”

“Let this procession be your choice to say ‘God, I want you to recognize me in your glory. So I’m going to cling to you when you’re hidden…. I want to be known as your friend when you come in triumph. So let me be your friend now,’” Father Schmitz said.

The solemn procession, with Bishop Whalen carrying the monstrance, began immediately after Mass.

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

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he Church teaches, guides, and governs in a variety of ways and through different kinds of documents, such as constitutions, encyclicals, exhortations, declarations, and motu proprios. These latter—motu proprios, letters written on the pope’s own initiative—seem to have significant impact on liturgical matters: Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum and Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes are obvious examples. But even more significant than these recent documents is Pope Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (TLS).

Promulgated November 22, 1903—120 years ago this month—TLS was the first major document from Pope Pius X, who had been elected to the papacy on August 4, 1903, and it set the tone for much of Pius’s papacy.

Perhaps TLS’s greatest claim to fame is found in the document’s introduction, which uses the term “active participation” for the first time in an ecclesiastical communication: “We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this [Christian]spirit from its foremost and indispensable font, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church.” When the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the schema of Sacrosanctum Concilium on November 22, 1963— exactly 60 years to the day of TLS’s promulgation, and 60 years ago this month—it would name “this full and active participation by all the people…the aim to be considered before all else” (14).

For the past 60 years, consequently, attentive Catholics have heard frequently of the Church’s desire for their active participation. Too often, unfortunately, Pius X’s term—amplified by the Second Vatican Council—was interpreted to mean “something external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action” (Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001), 171). Pius X would no doubt be rolling over in his tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica to find what his beloved “active participation” had become!

Rather than external and superficial busyness, the core of actual, active participation is the joining of one’s entire self to the paschal action of Christ. To be sure, Christ’s saving work manifests itself to us today

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Pope Pius X used the famous phrase “active participation” for the first time in an ecclesial document 120 years ago this month in his 1903 motu proprio, Tra le Sollecitudini: “We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this [Christian] spirit from its foremost and indispensable font, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church.”

Continued from NEWS & VIEWS, page 2

Eucharistic Procession at the Core of the Big Apple CNA—A procession bringing Jesus in the Eucharist through the heart of the largest city in the U.S. attracted hundreds of participants on the evening of October 10.

Participants marched reverently as the Body of Christ, housed in a golden monstrance, was carried aloft through the busy streets of Manhattan, passing right in front of the storied Radio City Music Hall as some bystanders looked on with interest and others dropped to their knees.

The public procession, sponsored by the Catholic leadership organization Napa Institute, was part of the group’s 2023 Principled Entrepreneurship Conference, held October 10-11 at The Metropolitan Club in New York.

Father Mike Schmitz, a priest of the Diocese of Duluth, MN, and a popular Catholic speaker and podcaster, celebrated Mass before the start of the procession at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of New York. He was joined by dozens of priests from around the country as well as Bishop Edmund Whalen, auxiliary bishop of New York.

The priest admitted that he “felt like Jonah” when he was asked to celebrate the Mass before the procession.

Father Schmitz said he sometimes is wary of the idea of processing the Eucharist outside in public spaces, where many onlookers may react with misunderstanding, indifference, or even hatred.

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By Jonah McKeown

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

Continued from CONTEMPORARY, page 1 the integrated person—an ecclesial anthropology goes hand in hand with the liturgical act.

If a gift requires reception, then God would not gift us with himself in the Eucharistic celebration unless we are capable of receiving him. Man is a gift, is a receiver, is thereby one who can worship. Alexander Schmemann potently notes, “‘Homo sapiens’, ‘homo faber’ [man the creator]… yes, but, first of all, ‘homo adorans.’ The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest.”7 At the core of his being, man is homo adorans. Worship is not an accidental feature that man adds to his life; rather, worship is at the very core of his human identity.

With this in mind, we can say that it is impossible to completely lose the ability to enter into the liturgical act.

Nevertheless, thinking anthropologically, it remains a possibility that to some degree our capability to worship can be reduced. Albeit, we are never beyond redemption and worship. In his theology of the body, John Paul II highlights the interiority of the human person, what he calls original solitude. That is, man is more (not less) than his exteriority; he is not moved but moves. As a

“ In a strange way there is something hopeful about the broken division of our age.”

The liturgy is a fundamental act that not only forms reality but reveals reality. Getting the words, actions, smells, and bells of liturgy correct is important but not enough.

The liturgy is not a magical formula. We must, as Romano Guardini and Joseph Ratzinger maintain, understand the spirit of the liturgy, a difficult task.

self-determining creature we make choices and like our primordial parents we constantly stand before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The choices we selfdetermine make us more fully ourselves or less ourselves.

In Schmemann’s terminology, we fulfill our royal priesthood, or we move toward idolatry and become more like what we worship than ourselves (and let us not forget that each one of us is meant to become an alter Christus). Is modern man more at risk of reducing himself than he was in previous epochs? Are we less capable of the liturgical act than we were at other times in history?

Technocrats and the Liturgical Act The technological age clearly places obstacles in our way.

Yet, returning to the Guardini quotation that I began with, “our age is our own blood,” and thus every age is broken; every age is wrought with impediments, for every man is broken. Therefore, the better question is, what is modern man’s (or technological man’s) particular brokenness? To paint with broad strokes, modern man is divided in two. Let me highlight two aspects of this.

Modern man is a divided creature bifurcated by gnosticism and materialism. On one hand, he denies the importance of the body and seeks to overcome it. Three examples immediately come to mind: virtual reality, AB/VITRUVIAN MAN, 1521, BY CESARE CESARIANO, AT PICRYL

“ On the one hand, modern man denies the importance of the body and seeks to overcome it. On the other hand, the modern person is a materialist.”

AB/IGNATIUS PRESS

Receptive Gift In apprehending who we are—ecclesial persons—not only will we better understand the spirit of the liturgy, but we will also better comprehend the world and, along with the world, our own liturgical capabilities. It is not mere coincidence but providence that the Second Vatican Council began with the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and also produced what is probably the most often utilized quotation in regard to theological anthropology: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). Providence continued with St. John Paul II’s profound Wednesday addresses that were eventually compiled as Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. In this compilation, working out the insights of Gaudiem et Spes 22, he writes, “Every creature bears within itself the sign of the original and fundamental gift. Yet, at the same time, the concept of ‘giving’ cannot refer to nothing. It indicates the one who gives and the one who receives the gift, as well as the relation established between them.

Now, this relation emerges in the creation account at the very moment of the creation of man.”4 Every creature is a gift. We do not simply give ourselves to others—laying down our lives—but we are gifts. The verb (action) and noun (being) go hand in hand. This is why there is peace, joy, and an experience of fulfilment when we give ourselves away. By gifting ourselves we are being true to our selves. The other side of this ontological reality (we are gifts) is receptivity. We are creatures who receive. God cannot gift something if there is not someone to receive. In trinitarian theology we can say that God is gift because the Father gifts himself to the Son, and the Son, through the Spirit, gifts himself back to the Father. Writing about the Apostles preparing the upper room for the last supper, Pope Francis asserts that “every gift, to be gift, must have someone disposed to receive it.”5 Here we see the connection between receptivity and rite, but it is important that we add to what Pope Francis set out. Namely, it is not someone in the singular that must receive it. It was not St. Peter alone but he and the other eleven Apostles who received the Eucharistic foretaste of what was to come. As Ratzinger writes, “it is impossible to start a conversation with Christ alone, cutting out the Church. A christological form of prayer which excludes the Church also excludes the Spirit and the human being himself.”6 The human being images God in his relationality, and that is why, in part, excluding the Church is also the exclusion of the human person. We are beings in relation. Ratzinger uses the following compound German words to highlight this: “Sein-mit-anderen” (Being-with-others) and “Seinfür-die-Anderen” (Being-for-the-others). As relational creatures, both our receiving and our offering of thanksgiving (Eucharist) occurs in the ecclesial “we.”

integrated? The divided person is unhappy and cynical.

While divided between gnosticism and materialism one cannot fully grasp the liturgical act, but one can feel its pull, its movement toward integration. John Paul II’s theology of the body, in a way, is the new evangelization that leads into the liturgical act. Here the exterior and interior of the human person is integrated and leads one into the otherness of relationship, what he refers to as the spousal meaning of the body. As the Australian theologian Adam Cooper puts it, “it means that the fact of sexual difference and affective reciprocity stands as a created sign pointing to the even greater fact that we are created for communion with God.”8 Modern man is primed, so to speak, for the sacramental integration of the liturgy.

Man is by nature both a gift and a receiver: he is thereby one who can worship. Alexander Schmemann potently notes, “‘Homo sapiens’, ‘homo faber’ [man the creator]… yes, but, first of all, ‘homo adorans.’ The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest.”

birth control, and transgenderism (gender and sex are social constructs). On the other hand, the modern person is a materialist. Scientism, committing a selfrefuting logical fallacy, explains away all non-material reality and reduces everything to biology.

The second division is between individualism and mass culture. On one hand, the Western world is deeply informed by American individualism. Individual choice is elevated as the ultimate right (e.g., pro-choice). On the other hand, the unique genius of the Romantic era no longer exists. We live in the midst of Critical Race Theory in which there is no unique “I.” There is only an aggregate: we are only our race, our culture, our class.

In a strange way there is something hopeful about the broken division of our age. What thoughtful person does not feel the inner tug of war? Who does not long to be

Individualism is a heresy; like all heresies it is a truth gone too far. Each human person is worthy of dignity and is not an anonymous “they.” Each person matters.

Yet, a person is one in relation. I am a husband, a father, a brother, a friend, a mentor, a teacher, and so forth. I am uniquely me because of my relationships with others, and I know my uniqueness only by being in relation.

The modern person may not understand this, but he feels the tension. He wants meaningful relationships but does not want to be absorbed and lost. At the same time, mass culture consumes him and he wants to be part of something bigger than himself; yet, subconsciously he feels the loss of self. Again, does this not open modern man to the Church and her liturgy, to that which is the very manifestation of redemption: the coming together of God and man, and men with each other—a coming together that elevates each person?

Threads of History History does not lie outside of God’s purview—just the opposite. History is the story of God’s love for the world.

We are not redeemed from time but through time. This theme runs throughout Ratzinger’s/Benedict XVI’s work and was brought home to me again in reading Guardini’s End of the Modern World. Our age, like every age, reflects our human brokenness, but we are not meant to accept this brokenness, lie down, and play dead. We are not dogs but self-determining persons whose identity as royal priests cannot be erased. Guardini writes that, in terms of our modern era, man “is to take responsibility.

In appropriate activity we now have to penetrate the new thing so as to gain mastery over it. We have to become lords of the unleashed forces and shape them into a new order that relates to humanity.”9 This emphasis on responsibility is key to the questions raised in this essay.

Priests, religious, and laity alike must, each in our own way, take responsibility not just for ourselves but for our age, and enter into the fray of history, reweaving the divided threads of modern man, drawing him into an ecclesial existence and into the liturgical act.

Andrew TJ Kaethler, PhD, is Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College, Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Kaethler specializes in theological anthropology, particularly in the work of Joseph Ratzinger and Alexander Schmemann. He has published in various journals including Modern Theology, New Blackfriars, Pontificia Academia Theologica, and Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture. With Sotiris Mitralexis he has co-edited two edited volumes; the latest is titled Mapping the Una Sancta: Eastern and Western Ecclesiology in the Twenty-First Century (2023). His most recent monograph The Eschatological Person: Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue was published with Cascade Books in 2022.

Kaethler lives in Langley with his wife and six kids.

1. Romano Guardini, Letters From Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 81.

2. R omano Guardini, 1964 Letter to the Mainz liturgical conference: https://www. ccwatershed.org/2013/09/05/1964-letter-romano-guardini/ 3. L ouis Bouyer, Rite and Man: Natural Sacredness and Christian Liturgy (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), 6.

4. J ohn Paul II, Man and Woman: He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.

Michael Waldstein (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 180.

5. F rancis, Desiderio Desideravi. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ apost_letters/documents/20220629-lettera-ap-desiderio-desideravi.html, 3.

6. J oseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 30.

7. A lexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 15.

8. A dam Cooper, Holy Eros: A Liturgical Theology of the Body (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2014), 2.

9. R omano Guardini, The End of the Modern World (Wilmington, Del: ISI Books, 1998), 82.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

Christian Culture

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By Dom Virgil Michel Reprinted from Orate Fratres 1939, 13:296-304

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Wherever the word culture is used, it refers to something that has to do with human endeavor, and generally effort as spent by man in the adjustment of his environment to his needs or desires. We call a field in which weeds and other plants are allowed to grow in natural wildness and irregular array uncultivated. When human effort is expended to develop better crops by orderly and intelligent cultivation of the field, we speak of agriculture (field-culture).

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here is much confusion in our thought as to the true meaning and nature of human culture.

We speak at times of the culture of our own day [1939], and at times refer rather to the absence of culture in our civilization. Or again, attention is called to the unchristian culture of the bourgeois era, or the new unchristian culture of nationalistic fascism, and a plea is made for the safeguarding of Christian culture in our world, or again for its revival.

Wherever the word culture is used, it refers to something that has to do with human endeavor, and generally effort as spent by man in the adjustment of his environment to his needs or desires. We call a field in which weeds and other plants are allowed to grow in natural wildness and irregular array uncultivated. When human effort is expended to develop better crops by orderly and intelligent cultivation of the field, we speak of agriculture (field-culture). The latter is a human art by which man endeavors through his intelligent industry to realize the best possibilities of plant growing. Culture everywhere refers to ordered human endeavor made for the purpose of producing better results or realizing as fully as can be the possibilities of development latent in things and not realized by the haphazard methods of nature. Culture definitely implies human improvement of nature, but for the purpose of greater realization of the possibilities of nature.

Culture in reference to man should then mean the application of human endeavor and of reason to the natural abilities of man for the development of the best that is in him. Human culture would have reference first of all to man himself, to his own abilities of understanding and will, of knowledge and creation, and then to his entire environment insofar as this is intimately connected with human life. The whole field of human culture in its widest sense embraces all the activities and abilities of man, all the aspirations and inspirations of his nature, the entire field of human existence. It would include the mental or intellectual realm as well as the material, and the individual as well as the social aspects of life.

“ Culture everywhere refers to ordered human endeavor made for the purpose of producing better results or realizing as fully as can be the possibilities of development latent in things and not realized by the haphazard methods of nature.”

Culture vs. Civilization Not infrequently the terms culture and civilization are used convertibly, yet the two should be kept distinct for the better understanding of each. Insofar as man under all circumstances endeavors to turn his environment to his own uses and improves on the ways of nature in the attempt, the term culture can be applied to the ways of living of all peoples, even those who are definitely classed as uncivilized. There is then of course a wide range of degrees of culture between that of the primitive man whose creative products of mind in general are at a minimum and that of the most highly developed peoples of our day. A people is spoken of as civilized, on the other hand, when its social life is established on moral principles making for peace and common cooperation, these principles being generally accepted and embodied in an official code of law and custom, to which appeal is made for redress whenever violations occur. Whether such a code is put down in writing or handed on by oral tradition is quite secondary.

While there is always some interrelation between the culture and the civilization of a people, the coordination is not necessarily a fixed one. It is possible for a well civilized people to remain on a relatively low stage of culture, and likewise for a people in a highly developed stage of culture to remain relatively uncivilized, or perhaps better to relapse back into barbarian ways of life. For the products of cultural advance, especially the material developments, may be used not only for the promotion of social peace and justice, but also for their more successful violation. Our own age has witnessed a frightful world war [1914-1918] in which not only the

“Our own age,” writes Virgil Michel in 1939, “has witnessed a frightful world war in which not only the high achievements of scientific and technical advance [that is, ‘culture’] were used for the greatest possible slaughter of lives, but in which there was also a general breakdown of commonly accepted ethical laws and traditions [that is, ‘civilization’].”

high achievements of scientific and technical advance were used for the greatest possible slaughter of lives, but in which there was also a general breakdown of commonly accepted ethical laws and traditions. Again the gigantic racketeering of our century, made possible by the rapid methods of transportation and communication, and the like, are an outstanding example of the products of culture put to definitely anti-civilized, barbaric use.

The whole trend of human life under the inspiration of the bourgeois spirit has been in this same direction.

This spirit has undoubtedly promoted the immense advances we have been making in material culture. But it has likewise brought about the disintegrating effects upon our civilization which result on the one hand from the ruthless general economic competition of individualism and on the other from the equally ruthless suppression of individuals, and the wholesale legal murders, of totalitarianism, together with its suppression or discouragement of many forms of cultural achievement in the field of human thought….

Reformation: Deformation The cultural heritage of our day and age is the product of the anti-Christian trend that was given to human affairs in Europe and America through the great apostasy of the Reformation. For a long time, elements of Christian

culture persisted and some persist even to our day, yet the dominant cultural attitude has been that of the bourgeois this-worldliness and materialism and naturalism. This distinct cultural trend of what is termed the modern period of human history has been divided into three stages by a vigorous Catholic thinker and student.

Jacques Maritain describes these stages as those of a Christian naturalism, which was the classical period of the Renaissance; this was followed by the rational optimism of the bourgeois enlightenment, in which the supernatural as well as the spiritual was rejected and increasingly ejected out of human life; and finally we have the stage of materialistic pessimism, which is the new trend of disillusionment with man and is called the revolutionary period of the post-Victorian era.

This third contemporary stage is marked by a reaction against the empty hopes of the previous stage and as well against the Christian culture rejected by its bourgeois predecessor. But whereas the contemporary cultural radical knows well the bourgeois culture, which he rejects for the very reason that he knows it so well, he is really totally ignorant of the traditional Christian culture. His rejection of it is purely an inheritance of the preceding bourgeois stage, and he knows Christian culture and ideals only in the caricatures of it that his progenitors of the enlightenment and their successors had handed down Please see CULTURE, page 6

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023 and that in all the fields of human interest and endeavor, theological, philosophical, historical, social, political, economic, literary, artistic, ethical. It would be truly catholic in its scope and thus realize the ardent desire of Pius X that the true Christian spirit flourish again in every manner and that Christ be formed in all.

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“ Most Catholics of our day have no definite conception of their true Christian cultural heritage.”

“The truly cultured man must be cultured also in heart and soul, not only in intellect and manners. His culture must be of the whole man, soul and body, person and environment; it must permeate him entirely and give a proper balance to all the elements that go to make up his being and his life, producing in him harmony between his inner soul and his outer actions, between reason and the emotions, between the individual in him and his social relationships, the natural and the supernatural. In all this, the liturgy is not only his guide but his first school of experience.” –Dom Virgil Michel, 1939

Liturgy and Culture The Christian liturgy is instinct with the love of Christ for man and with the love of man for God and for his fellow-men. The essential act of liturgical worship is also eminently an act of love for God as well as for one’s neighbor, it is the worship of all souls united intimately in the charity of Christ. The Christian cannot enter actively into the liturgical worship of the Church without receiving therefrom the inspiration to extend the expression of his love and service of God and neighbor also into the daily actions of his life, for anything but such an effect of one’s participation in the liturgy would brand that participation as merely external and insincere instead of being the wholehearted communion with God and the members of Christ that it should be. Whatever the Christian does

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Continued from CULTURE, page 5 to him. Even most Catholics of our day have no definite conception of their true Christian cultural heritage.

They have indeed imbibed the principles of it, but at the same time they have been living for generations in the atmosphere of the prevalent unchristian naturalism and materialism, they have been inhabiting the world wrought by this unchristian thing, and in many ways they have not remained entirely uncontaminated.

It is no wonder then that the culture of our day is characterized as being at the very opposite pole of any genuine Catholic culture. Its general aim is material prosperity through the amassing of material wealth.

Only that is good which furthers this aim, all is bad that hinders it, and ethics has no say in the matter. The bold glorification of material progress has been accompanied by a denial of the spiritual, so that all joys and pleasures were sought on the level of the material. The denial of the supernatural was accompanied by the reduction of religion to a man-made myth. The supremacy of the irrational, of impulse, emotion, passion replaced that of reason and all permanent truths, eternal principles were laughed out of existence together with spiritual values of every kind. Hence the social conditions of human life “Western civilization today is threatened with the loss of its freedom and its humanity,” writes Christopher Dawson (1889which result from this, the open fostering of injustice 1970). “It is in danger of substituting dead mechanism for living culture. Hedonism cannot help, nor yet rationalism. It can be rather than equity, of selfishness and oppression, even the saved only by a renewal of life. And this is impossible without love, for love is the source of life, both physically and spiritually.” exaltation of ignorance, vulgarity and venality. Instead of the Christian virtues of love, fellowship, compassion and the liturgy he will feel inspired to transfer also to his sympathy, it has engendered fear, cruelty, hatred. “ It is a new spirit that modern culture indaily life. That is why active participation in it could be called the primary and indispensable source of the true needs so sadly, the age-old inspiring In Christ Renewed Christian spirit, that is, of the spirit of Christ that will bear The task of the Christian today is not, however, to turn and unifying spirit of Christian love, fruit in every way in the lives of the faithful. his back on the entire culture of today. That would but The development of a true culture, i.e., the realizing be an admission of cowardice and defeat, and would play rather than any literal return to any of the best possibilities in human nature, is essentially entirely into the hands of the anti-Christ whose spirit has Christian cultures of the past.” a social phenomenon, as we have seen. Now the liturgy been dominant since the public rejection of the Church presents us with the divinely established model of social of Christ. What is needed is to imbue our civilization and intercourse between men under the guidance of Christ. culture with a renewed Christian spirit, and thus give to While it safeguards all the values of human personality, elements, even the latest developments, of human culture, it the vitality it is seeking and save it from the destruction it uses the energies of God Himself for sloughing off only that she will also purge these of what is unchristian to which it seems to be tending in quick time. “Western all the excrescences of individualism, thus elevating all in them and then assume the positive elements into the civilization today is threatened with the loss of its that is good in man above the narrowness of individual supernatural scheme of the Christian life. Being truly freedom and its humanity,” writes Christopher Dawson. selfishness, of snobbery, or of extreme love-blind Catholic, the Church is opposed to no particular traits “It is in danger of substituting dead mechanism for living nationalism, into the catholic sympathy of Christ for all culture. Hedonism cannot help, nor yet rationalism. It can of culture such as are peculiar to an individual nation men, for all things human, for all that is good in God’s or an individual period of history. She has room for all, be saved only by a renewal of life. And this is impossible world. The rich variety found in the various liturgies and no amount of them can exhaust the expression of without love, for love is the source of life, both physically of the Church and in particular also within the Roman the spirit of Christ in her. Being a society of members and spiritually.” liturgy, the adjustment of liturgical requirements to all living here on earth, an intimate fellowship in Christ and It is a new spirit that modern culture needs so sadly, the needs of man, the sameness of fundamental principles the age-old inspiring and unifying spirit of Christian love, not an atomistic assembly of antagonistic or unrelated and eternal verities on which it is based in spite of its individuals, she can take up the positive elements of any rather than any literal return to any Christian cultures richness and variety, when properly understood, will be a culture and elevate them by transfusing them with the of the past. The Church of Christ is catholic in regard to strong safeguard against the deadening legalistic attitude Spirit of Christ even as she does the elements of nature in human culture. There is nothing human that is foreign or mechanical externality which is the sworn enemy of all general. This process of elevation is always also a process to her, provided only the human is put into proper true culture as it is of the true Christian spirit. of purging for Christ in accordance with the essential law alignment with the superhuman. In a sense the Church is Any culture has to do greatly with the material things of Christian life, purgation for elevation, the putting off supra-cultural in the same way as she is supernatural. She of creation, and a wholesome Christian culture will of the old man and the putting on of Christ, but it is the needs the natural as an integral element of her being, but depend very much on the proper position of the material putting on by way of drawing all creation into the life and in the entire Christian scheme of life. According to the she elevates it and Christianizes it by purging it of what love of Christ. is unchristian and transfusing it with Christian ideals latter, the whole material world was created to be an This Catholic culture, if true to its inheritance, would and values. In the same way the Christian spirit needs instrument and as it were an extension of man. Contact include the sound concepts and traditions of all times, to be expressed in an entire culture in order to exercise with the material should for man always be an expression the best developments of human progress of all ages, its life properly. Ordinarily the Church can absorb all Please see CULTURE, page 7

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

Tra le Sollecitudini at 120: Its Contributions to Today’s Liturgy

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By Father Kurt Belsole, O.S.B

The True Christian Spirit With this background, one must also take into account the fact that Pius X is dealing with a Latin liturgy whose liturgical books derive from the liturgical reform of the Council of Trent. So given that fact, what do we find in Tra le Sollecitudini that remains as a constant for both his time and ours?

Both Tra le Sollecitudini (originally written in Italian) and Sacrosanctum Concilium are concerned with the faithful acquiring the true Christian spirit. In the introduction to Tra le Sollecitudini, Pius X states that Continued from CULTURE, page 6 of his spirit and soul made after the image of God. Proper use of the material in human life needs knowledge of the dispensation of God; its use must be connected up with a proper discipline of mind and will, of morals as rooted in ethics and religion. In all of this the liturgy is again the model as well as the source of true inspiration. Just as a material Weltanschauung necessarily makes material progress an end in itself, so the Christian spirit drawn from the liturgy will necessarily use material things as the means or instruments they are in the design of God. The average living out of this spirit in daily life will thus result in a Christian culture, according to which all material progress will be put into the service of man for the better development of his higher abilities and will enter also through man into the service which the Christian renders to God in his daily life. The primacy of the spiritual will be assured in human life and culture under inspiration of the liturgy, but in conjunction with the full employment and rightful enjoyment of all the material goods God has placed at the disposal of man. Even the recreational activities of man will reflect this same proper alignment and thus again become truly cultural, instead of being the means, as they are in our bourgeois civilization, of the further despiritualization of man and of the exploitation of his passions for the sake of private profit.

Since in the resultant Christian culture the material is always the sign and the instrument of spirit, since proper relationship between the material and the spiritual means also proportion and harmony, there should be also a revival of Christian art, to replace the ugliness and mechanical artificiality of so much of our contemporary life. Here as elsewhere it is impossible to serve two masters, and he who is not with Christ is against Him. Christian culture aligns all the elements of life with Christ even as does the liturgy in a concentrated manner. It is safe to say that once the liturgical spirit results in the rebirth of a Christian culture there will also be a great revival of Christian art, in which the beauty of spirit will receive widest expression in all the material artifacts of

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ope St. Pius X issued the motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini on the feast of St. Cecilia, November 22, 1903, and the Council Fathers of Vatican II voted on the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, on the same date 60 years later. This year, November 22nd gives us the opportunity to revisit Tra le Sollecitudini, 60 years after the Council Fathers voted on Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Pius X wrote Tra le Sollecitudini,1 (“Among the concerns”) as a motu proprio, i.e., something done on his own initiative and not in response to something else; in doing so, Pius X signaled to the Church that the sacred liturgy and sacred music were of special interest to him. In fact, the liturgy was something that he was already concerned about when he was the Patriarch of Venice and before he was elected pastor of the Universal Church.

From our perspective of 120 years, looking back on Tra le Sollecitudini, what can we glean from it that is apropos to our own time? First of all, this document is not essentially focused on liturgical music, although it is often described as such. Rather, Pius X sees liturgical music as a contributing element to attaining to what he calls “the true Christian spirit,”2 and he sees the goal of the liturgy itself as being “the glory of God and the sanctification and edification of the faithful.”3 Liturgical music contributes to both of these, and for that reason he considers it to be important. It is essential to keep things in perspective, for Tra le Sollecitudini, the sacred liturgy, and therefore liturgical music serve the purpose of attaining the true Christian spirit and are vital to the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful in the sacramental life of the Church.

“Engaged participation” might be a more appropriate translation of “partecipazione attiva” and one that is certainly justifiable when considering the Latin expression “participatio actuosa,” for it takes into account the reflective listening to the readings, gospels, and homilies; contemplation; as well as the self-offering that is expected of those participating in the sacred liturgy.

he has a most ardent desire to see the true Christian spirit flourish in every respect and to be preserved by all the faithful. Sacrosanctum Concilium 14 is even more direct as to how the faithful derive the true Christian spirit. That document states that the sacred liturgy is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive this true Christian spirit.

Further on in the introduction to Tra le Sollecitudini, we find the expression “partipazione attiva” (active participation), used for what seems to be the first time in papal teaching in reference to the participation of the faithful in the sacred liturgy. In Tra le Sollecitudini, Pius X states that by “partecipazione attiva” in the public and solemn liturgy of the Church, the Christian faithful drink in the true Christian spirit from its primary and indispensable source. Unfortunately,

however, in the text of Tra le Sollecitudini, Pius X never describes exactly what he means by “partecipazione attiva.” Nonetheless, the expression was fostered by the liturgical pioneers of the first half of the 20th century and became an essential element of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. That lack of clarity becomes even more obvious in the Latin version of Tra le Sollecitudini that was published with the Italian original in the same volume of the Acta Sanctae Sedis. It is interesting that the Latin text of Tra le Sollecitudini does not use the Italian expression “partecipazione attiva” or the Latin phrase “actuosa participatio” which appears in Sacrosanctum Concilium. It speaks only of the faithful’s “participatio divinorum mysteriorum” (participation in the divine mysteries).4 The Italian original is the official text, Please see PIUS X, page 10

man, and it will be an art that is not esoteric and hidden to the many, but a means of social enjoyment and of the ennobling of communal life.

mystical body, a brother of Christ, an adopted child of God, whose work it is at all times to be about his Father’s business, and to be a positive mediator between the Creator and all His creation. As such, and as a sharer in the general priesthood of Christ and an apostle of the word of God before all the world, he will show forth the truth and beauty of God in all his actions, in all his contacts. Through him the material surroundings will be elevated to the dignity of a fitting environment of the child of God, a higher expression of the beauty and truth of God Himself. In his daily life he will give fullest expression to the spirit of the liturgy which despises no goods of body and of earth, but uses them as gifts come from God for the greater service of God in daily life. From it he will take the inspiration of constant growth in Christ and, never resting satisfied with what has been attained, will strive ever to give greater expression to the being of God as revealed through the beauties of the created world.

Thus the liturgy will be for him as it was for the early Christian a universal school of divine service, therefore also a school of discipline and instruction whose lessons will find expression in a growing Christianization of human culture. As all the elements of life are in the liturgy elevated to the service of God, so he will learn to imitate the liturgy in his daily life, and will learn to see again the divine value of all the elements of human life when set in proper relation to the spiritual and to God. Where the liturgical spirit flourishes in the hearts of men, it will not be satisfied to remain hidden there, but will needs burst forth openly in the world into the most abundant fruits of human endeavor or into a true Christian culture for the glory of God and the greater sanctification of men.

“ Christian culture aligns all the elements of life with Christ even as does the liturgy in a concentrated manner.”

Culture of the Whole Man The liturgy is the ordinary school of the development of the true Christian, and the very qualities and outlook it develops in him are also those that make for the best realization of a genuine Christian culture. The truly cultured man must be cultured also in heart and soul, not only in intellect and manners. His culture must be of the whole man, soul and body, person and environment; it must permeate him entirely and give a proper balance to all the elements that go to make up his being and his life, producing in him harmony between his inner soul and his outer actions, between reason and the emotions, between the individual in him and his social relationships, the natural and the supernatural. In all this, the liturgy is not only his guide but his first school of experience. It is the liturgy which will give him a sense of the divine purposiveness of all his actions, of the sense of sociability with his fellowman, of the symbolical character of his external environment as the expression of his higher ideals. It will help him to recognize what is good in every aspect of life and will inspire him to develop it in every way, to the avoidance only of what is contrary to the true values of body and soul from the standpoint of their divine destiny and dignity.

It gives him the noblest concept of the dignity and privileged responsibility of man as a member of the

The above article appeared in 1939 in Orate Fratres (13:296-304) and is reprinted with the permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. Dom Virgil Michel, O.S.B., 1890-1938, was a monk of St. John Abbey in Collegeville, MN, and considered the Father of the American liturgical movement.

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

Bound for Glory: A History of the Roman Martyrology

By Father Thomas Kocik

Pre-History The word “martyr” derives from the Greek martus, “witness.”1 In the Christian context, a martyrology was originally a list of those who were put to death willingly for bearing witness to Jesus Christ.2 From very early times the Church kept written records of the martyrs as they fell. Pope St. Clement in the last years of the first century appointed notaries to provide for this need.3 During the Decian persecution in the mid-third century, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in Roman Africa, instructed his clergy to note carefully the day of a martyr’s death. (Cyprian himself was martyred in 258.) The early Christians commemorated the martyrs by gathering at their tombs to celebrate the Eucharist on the anniversary of their death (their dies natalis, that is, their “birthday” into heaven).4 In the course of time, each local Church developed its own martyrology. These local martyrologies were little more than annotated calendars, lists of martyrs arranged in the order of their anniversaries, sometimes including the location of their bodies and how they died. Little by little these local lists were enriched by the names of martyrs from neighboring Churches; thus the Church at Rome celebrated the anniversary of the Carthaginian martyrs Perpetua and Felicity on March 7, and that of the aforementioned Bishop Cyprian on September 14. Gradually the martyrologies came to include, besides the “red” martyrs who shed their blood in imitation of Christ’s own Passion and Death, the “white” martyrs who exhibited heroic virtue, endured many trials and made great sacrifices, yet died a natural death.

Anniversaries of dedications of churches and of various other occasions also gained a place in the local martyrologies.

The “general” martyrology was a compilation of these local martyrologies, whether few or many, sometimes with borrowings from extraneous sources.

Among the general martyrologies the best known is the Hieronymian, so called because it was, albeit falsely, attributed to St. Jerome (347-420). Compiled in northern Italy in the mid-fifth century and revised in Gaul around 600, the Hieronymian Martyrology as it has reached us combines a list of martyrs and popes venerated at Rome (dating to 354), a series of local martyrologies of Gaul, some literary sources such as Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History (early fourth century), and general martyrologies of Italy, Africa, and the Eastern Churches. It consists of some ten thousand saints, in most cases with no further information than the place where they were commemorated.

As the period of the early persecutions grew more distant, such brief notices did not satisfy the popular desire for more information, and so there appeared a new type of martyrology called the “historical.” The historical martyrologies included brief biographies or eulogies (elogia, in Latin) of the saints. St. Bede the Venerable (672-735) compiled the first of this kind; in

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friend of mine has recently taken to using his digital calendar to remind him to pray for people on the anniversaries of their death. If he lives long enough, every day of the year will have at least one soul for him to commend to the mercy of God. The natural human instinct to commemorate the dead has been baptized, so to speak, by the theology of the communion of saints, that fellowship of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Blessed as we are to be “surrounded by a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 1:12), we pilgrim faithful on earth honor the saints in heaven by keeping their feast days and soliciting their prayers, while also praying for the souls in purgatory who are being fitted for glory.

The Catholic Church, being much older than my friend, has for a very long time been calling to mind daily lists of men and women whom she numbers among the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. What enables this recollection is a sort of memory-bank called the Roman Martyrology (Martyrologium Romanum, to give its Latin name), a catalog of the saints arranged according to their feast days as found in the Church’s liturgical calendar. It is one of the official liturgical books of the Roman Rite, and this article is a basic introduction to its origins, contents, and use in the liturgy.

A martyrology was originally a list of those who were put to death willingly for bearing witness to Jesus Christ. From very early times the Church kept written records of the martyrs as they fell. Today, the Martyrology is the last Roman liturgical book to be revised after Vatican II. Not until 2001 did the first Latin “typical edition” appear. A revised edition was issued in 2004 and still awaits an approved English translation.

his own words, he had diligently striven “to set down all whom I could find and not only on what day, but also by what manner of contest and under what judge they overcame the world.”5 His sources were chiefly the Hieronymian Martyrology, 50 acts or “passions” of martyrs, and various patristic and ecclesiastical authors.

Bede was followed by other martyrologists (all of the ninth century) who utilized his work more or less, but “without always following his learned caution in leaving a day blank when there was nothing to place against it.”6 Three of these are of particular relevance: Florus, deacon of Lyons, who considerably added to Bede’s entries and furnished valuable historical and topographical notes; the monk St. Ado (later archbishop of Vienne), who appears to have made fraudulent use of Florus’s work;7 and Usuard, a contemporary of Ado and a monk of Saint-Germaindes-Prés at Paris, who relied directly on Ado and on the other sources previously mentioned. It is the line of development from Bede to Usuard that leads to the Roman Martyrology.

From Trent to the Present Of all the medieval martyrologies, Usuard’s was the most widely circulated. By the 16th century it had displaced the earlier books in most churches and monasteries. As part of the general reform of the liturgy after the Council of Trent (1545-63), Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 appointed a small commission (7-10 members) under the learned Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto to make one martyrology that would embrace and supersede all others. The result of their work was the Martyrologium Romanum published in 1584 and made obligatory for the Latin Church.8 The book rests mainly on Usuard, completed by various writings of the Church Fathers, especially the Dialogues of Pope St. Gregory the Great (sixth century), and various Italian martyrologies; for the saints of the Greek Church it uses an ancient menology9 translated into Latin by Cardinal Sirleto.

The Roman Martyrology has undergone many revisions and updates since 1584.10 By the turn of the 20th century, generations of scholars had been keenly aware that the book suffered from the errors of its original sources—legendary accretions, incorrect dates and places, confusions of names of persons with those of places, etc.11 Mistakes were made not only by the compilers of the old martyrologies but by their revisers later on. Accordingly, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) decreed in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: “The accounts of martyrdom or the lives of the saints are to accord with the facts of history.”12 The application of critical history to the existing Roman Martyrology would require much work over a long period of time. This is why the Martyrology was the last Roman liturgical book to be revised after Vatican II. Not until 2001 did the first Latin “typical

edition” appear. A revised edition was issued in 2004 and still awaits an approved English translation.13 The 2004 Martyrologium Romanum is an 845page hardbound volume listing some 7,000 saints and blesseds. It is organized as follows (page numbers in brackets): • The “Praenotanda” giving a theological and pastoral introduction [9-22]; • An explanation of the lunar day [23-26];14 • The Orders of Reading of the Martyrology (I) within and (II) outside the Liturgy of the Hours [27-32]; • The notices for the movable feasts [33-38]; • Short optional biblical readings (Proper of Time, Proper of Saints, and Commons) [39-60]; • Orations (collects) [61-68]; • Chant settings for the daily notices and for the Proclamation of the Lord’s Nativity [69-74]; • The Martyrology proper, arranged from January through December [75-696]; • Alphabetical index of names [697-844];15 • General index [845].

The new Roman Martyrology maintains the characteristic elements of its predecessors. The saints are arranged by the date on which they are commemorated, with (in most cases) a short notice (eulogy) of their life and death.16 Each day has a heading with the Roman date and a table that gives

AB/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. ST. CHRISTOPHER, FROM THE WESTMINSTER PSALTER, C.1250.

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In the postconciliar revision, many saints from the old Martyrology were expunged whose accounts are regarded as more legend than fact, or whose very existence is uncertain. In other cases the “questionable” saints were not deleted, but their eulogies were cautiously rewritten.

It may surprise some to learn that St. Valentine (February 14) and St. Christopher (July 25) remain in the Martyrology, even though they were famously removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969.

the status of the lunar cycle.17 A large number of saints from the old Martyrology were expunged whose accounts are regarded as more legend than fact, or whose very existence is uncertain. In other cases the “questionable” saints were not deleted, but their eulogies were cautiously rewritten.18 It may surprise some to learn that St. Valentine (February 14)19 and St. Christopher (July 25)20 remain in the Martyrology, even though they were famously removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969.21 It is worth mentioning the presence of Old Testament saints in both the old and new editions of the Martyrology: Abraham (October 9), Moses (September 4), David (December 29), the prophets, and “all the holy ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Adam” (December 24). The Church is directly in continuity with the Jews of old who confessed Jesus of Nazareth as Israel’s Messiah, and so is rooted in the biblical patriarchs and prophets.22

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023 Noteworthy, too, is the inclusion of several nonCatholic saints, such as the 10th-century Armenian mystic Gregory of Narek (February 27), who in 2015 was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church, and two 14th-century Russian Orthodox saints: the missionary-bishop Stephen of Perm (April 26) and the monastic reformer Sergius of Radonezh (September 25).23 In May 2023, Pope Francis inserted into the Martyrology the 21 Coptic Orthodox martyrs who on February 15, 2015, were beheaded on a beach in Libya

by Islamic State terrorists.

Obviously the number of saints venerated by the Church grows with each new canonization—and there have been several hundreds since the Roman Martyrology was last published.24 The eulogies for newly beatified and newly canonized persons are prepared by the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and are usually published in the official acts of the Holy See, Acta Apostolicæ Sedis (available online at www.vatican.va).

The Roman Martyrology in the Liturgy The liturgical use of martyrologies throughout the Latin Church dates to at least to the ninth century.25 Following the pre-modern convention that the day begins not at midnight but at the previous sunset, the saints’ names were read out on the day before their feast day in choir at the office of Prime, the first of the canonical hours of the Divine Office. Although Prime was abolished at Vatican II,26 the Martyrology retains a place in the modern Roman Rite: it may be read either on its own or as part of the Liturgy of the Hours, preferably after the concluding prayer at Lauds (morning prayer).27 In keeping with traditional practice, the entire portion of the Martyrology assigned for a particular day is always read on the previous day;28 the sole exception to this rule being Easter Sunday.29 Celebration in choir is recommended, but it has been the custom in many seminaries and religious houses to read the Martyrology in the refectory before or after the evening meal.

The Order of Reading of the Martyrology begins with the reader announcing the (coming) day of the month and, optionally, the day of the moon in the lunar cycle. Then is read or sung the eulogies of the saints; if, however, the day coincides with a movable feast, the notice of the feast comes first. The reading is followed by the versicle and response: “Precious in the sight of the Lord: Is the death of his Saints” (Psalm 116:15). A short Scripture reading may follow, with the usual acclamation and response: “The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.” Next, the one who presides (ordinarily a priest or deacon) prays the oration or collect.30 The celebration concludes with the blessing and dismissal,31 but with the novel feature of a prayer for the faithful departed inserted between the two.32 Generally, when a saint’s feast falls on a Sunday, the Mass and Office of the saint is not celebrated.33 But this does not mean the saint’s feast has been “canceled.” By means of the Martyrology, the feast is in fact liturgically celebrated, albeit in an attenuated way. On ferial days and on days that admit celebration of the optional memorial of a saint, one may celebrate the Office and Mass of any saint ascribed to that day in the Martyrology.34 Open and Marvel…

Almost a quarter of a century after its publication, the new(ish) Roman Martyrology has not secured a foothold in the liturgical life of the Church. This is regrettable but unsurprising, given the virtual disappearance (except where the pre-conciliar rites are celebrated) of Prime, the Martyrology’s age-old companion, and the dearth of vernacular translations.

For most of the Catholic faithful, the one opportunity of experiencing the Martyrology is at church on late Christmas Eve: the Proclamation of the Lord’s Nativity, which is the first of the Martyrology entries for December 25, may be sung or recited before the Mass during the Night.35 As delightful as it is to hear that Proclamation sung well, this is merely to touch the binding of the Church’s “book of life” (if I may so appropriate a biblical metaphor): Christ being the bond uniting the saints to himself and one another. To open its pages is to marvel at the myriad ways of glorifying Christ in our bodies, whether by life or by death (see Philippians 1:20-21).

Father Thomas Kocik is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, MA. He has served as a parish priest, hospital chaplain, theology instructor and, most recently, chaplain to the Latin Mass Apostolate of Cape Cod. He is a member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and former editor of its journal, Antiphon. Among his many published works are The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate (Ignatius Press, 2003) and Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement (Chorabooks, 2019). A complete bibliography is available at https://thomaskocik. academia.edu.

1. It was not until the Christian literature of the mid-second century that martus signified dying for a cause. “When it finally assumed that sense, its meaning of ‘witness’ began to slip away, so that the word ‘martyr’ in Greek and the same word borrowed in Latin came more and more to mean what it means today.”

G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.

2. While “martyrology” is the most frequent word in use in the Latin Church, other terms such as “legendaries” and “passionaries” are also found. In the Eastern Churches one has the “menology” and “synaxary.”

3. As recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, a collection of papal biographies from St. Peter onward. This book was begun anonymously in the sixth century and was continuously (though intermittently) amended, enlarged, and abridged until the late Middle Ages.

4. The commemoration of St. Polycarp, for example, was instituted at Smyrna immediately after his death in 155. Having collected the martyred bishop’s bones, says the account, “We laid them in a place befitting them. May the Lord grant us to meet again there, when in gladness and joy we can celebrate the anniversary day of his martyrdom…” Lancelot C. Sheppard, The Liturgical Books (vol. 109 of The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism) (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1962), 55.

5. Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, book 5, chap. 24; quoted in Sheppard, The Liturgical Books, 59.

6. Sheppard, The Liturgical Books, 59.

7. As demonstrated in Henri Quentin, Les Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre: J. Gabalda, 1908). In the preface to his “Little Roman Martyrology” (known to posterity as the Parvum Romanum), Ado claims as his source a very ancient martyrology, sent in former times by one of the popes to a bishop of Aquileia, which being lent to him during a visit to Ravenna, he hastily transcribed. The Parvum Romanum is in fact a bastardization of Florus’s work, with drastically altered dates and “the addition of details of all sorts, embellishments that seem to have been added to improve the story and to make his Martyrology outstanding and successful.”

Sheppard, The Liturgical Books, 61. Although Ado has been vilified as a forger, at least one author is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt: “The Frankish cleric Ado was probably deceived by some wily Italian.” Frederick G. Holweck, A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints: With a General Introduction on Hagiology (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1924), x.

8. Martyrologium Romanum ad novam kalendarii rationem et ecclesiasticæ historiæ veritatem restitutum Gregorii XIII iussu editum. The full title refers to the new Gregorian calendar adopted in 1582.

9. From the Greek mēnologion (mēn, month + logos, account), a menology corresponds to the Latin martyrology.

10. In 1586 the Martyrologium Romanum was republished under Sixtus V with annotations and a learned treatise by the Oratorian priest (later Cardinal) Cesare Baronio, the leading light of Gregory XIII’s commission. New typical editions appeared under Urban VIII (1630), Benedict XIV (1749), and St. Pius X (1914). The fourth edition post typicam (of 1914), published in 1956, is the last Vatican edition issued before the Second Vatican Council.

11. The 1584 Martyrologium Romanum was itself an attempt to review and correct the martyrological tradition popularized by Usuard. In the 17th century a group of Belgian Jesuits known as the Bollandists (after Fr. Jean van Bolland, 1596-1665) began applying the then-new methods of historical criticism to hagiography, combing the lives of the saints to separate fact from fiction. (Their scientific approach was not without controversy. When, for example, they challenged the Carmelite Order’s claim to have been founded by the prophet Elijah, they attracted the attention of the Spanish Inquisition.) The Bollandists continued their research until the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. With the Jesuits reconstituted in 1837, the work of the Bollandist Society continues to this day. A problem that had long baffled the hagiographers was the fact that in the sources the same saints often appeared on different days, or on the same day under different names. The publication in 1866 of a recently discovered Eastern general martyrology known as the Syriac (written in 411) furnished a key for interpreting the Hieronymian Martyrology, for the sake of reaching the authentic originals embedded in that great collection of source materials. Several names that occur as a pair or a group in the Syriac Martyrology are separated in the Hieronymian, sometimes even being entered on different days or as belonging to different places. Often an entry is repeated on the day before and/or the day after the right day (e.g., in the Syriac Martyrology we find on Jan. 30, “In the city of Antioch, Hippolytus”; in the Hieronymian he is commemorated on Jan. 29, 30 and 31). Other saints appear more than once on the same day, with variants (e.g., on May 23 the Syriac Martyrology gives, “In Lystra, Zoilus the confessor”; in the Hieronymian we find on the following day the threefold entry “In Istria Zoili,” “In Siria Zoeli,” and “Item Zoili Striae”). Owing to these and numerous other difficulties, the Hieronymian Martyrology had ceased to be regarded as a trustworthy authority by the 1870s. A few decades afterwards, Ado’s Parvum Romanum would be entirely discredited.

12. Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), no. 92/c.

13. Martyrologium Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum, Editio altera (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 2004). This edition corrects a number of typographical errors and includes the 117 people canonized or beatified since 2001, as well as many saints who had not been listed in the Martyrology but who are much venerated, especially in southern Italy. The official Italian translation was issued the same year. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) has been working for several years to prepare an English translation of the book, and in 2022 a first draft was distributed to its “member” conferences of bishops for review. Upon completion of the final draft, conferences can vote their approval, and with the confirmation of the Holy See it can be published.

14. The lunar calendar dates from pre-agricultural times, while a solar calendar marking the seasons suited agricultural civilizations. Vestiges of older calendar systems were often taken up into newer systems. The Greek lunar cycle of 19 years instituted in 432 BC was superseded by the solar Julian calendar, which retained the 12 months derived from the lunar calendar but adjusted the number of days in each. Although the Julian calendar was adopted throughout the Roman Empire, the Romans continued to count the days of the month backward from the Kalends (or new moon), the Ides (full moon) and the Nones (first quarter) respectively. Before the seventh century BC, the Hebrew calendar began in the autumn and followed the agricultural year, yet the dates of significant festivals were ascertained by reference to lunar phases. A parallel development might be perceived in the Christian calendar, originally confined to a weekly celebration of the Resurrection on Sunday—a short rhythm of worship linked to a roughly lunar pattern. The gradual accrual of martyrs’ anniversaries and annual Incarnation-related feasts on fixed days (such as Epiphany and Christmas) illustrates the ascendancy of the solar year without the loss of lunar significance. In resolving the Quartodeciman controversy, which debated the legitimacy of aligning the

9 date of Easter celebration with the Jewish Passover, the traditional lunar element was taken up into the by-then normative solar time structure.

15. Th e addition of the year of death, or at least of the century in which the saint lived, is a significant innovation presented by the index in the new Martyrology.

16. H ere, for example, is the first entry (of seven) for January 23: “At Caesarea in Mauretania, the holy martyrs Severian and his wife Aquila, who were consumed by fire.”

17. E ach month contains three reference dates: the Kalends, Nones, and Ides.

The Kalends is always the first day of the month. Nones and Ides are on the fifth and 13th except in March, May, July, and October, when they fall on the seventh and 15th. For example, on July 4 the Roman date (as styled since medieval times) is “Quarto Nonas Iulii” or “Four Days before the Nones of July.” (The Roman custom is to count inclusively, so July 4 is considered four days before July 7.)

18. Perhaps too cautiously in some cases. An interesting example is that of St. Rosalia. The older version reads: “At Palermo, the finding of the body of St. Rosalia, virgin of that city. Miraculously discovered in the time of Pope Urban VIII, it delivered Sicily from the plague in the year of the Jubilee.” The new version deletes reference to the finding of her body (and therefore transfers the eulogy from July 15, the day of the supposed finding, to Sept. 4, the day she died), the epidemic, and the pope, and instead speaks only of an alleged solitary life: “At Palermo in Sicily, St. Rosalia, virgin, who on Mount Pellegrino is believed to have led a solitary life.”

19. Th e old Martyrology lists two Valentines for Feb. 14: the first, a Roman priest whose story dates to around 270; the second, the bishop of Terni in Umbria, whose story takes place nearly 70 years later. Both gave heroic testimonies of faith, both performed miraculous healings, and both were beheaded on the Via Flaminia in Rome. In the new Martyrology for Feb. 14 we find only one Valentine and it is not clear to whom it refers: “At Rome on the Via Flaminia near the Milvian bridge, St. Valentine, martyr.” The martyr associated with St. Valentine’s Day is Valentine of Terni. The Benedictine Order, which maintained the Church of St. Valentine in Terni during the Middle Ages, spread the cult of Valentine’s Day in their monasteries in England and France.

The tradition of his being patron saint of lovers originated in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “Parliament of Fowls” (ca. 1381), which tells of birds choosing their mates on “seynt Volantynys day.”

20. S t. Christopher, the patron of travelers, is said to have carried the Christ Child on his shoulders across a river. He was martyred in the third century in Lycia, a region of modern-day Turkey. Whereas the old Martyrology tells of his being beaten with rods, cast into fire (from which he was miraculously saved), pierced with arrows and finally beheaded, the new Martyrology reads simply: “In Lycia, St. Christopher, martyr.”

21. I nseparable from the Roman Martyrology is the Roman Calendar, which indicates the date and rank of the celebrations in honor of the saints (optional or obligatory memorial; feast; solemnity). Many of the deletions made in the post-Vatican II reform of the Martyrology resulted from the publication of the Roman Calendar of 1969. In keeping with the Council’s emphasis on historical reliability, more than 300 saints (plus unknown companions) were removed from the Calendar. But this was not the only reason why saints disappeared. In establishing the new Roman Calendar it was the Church’s goal to include only those “saints of a truly universal importance” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 111), leaving other saints to the particular calendars of a given nation, region, diocese or religious community. The fact that St. Valentine and St. Christopher “survived the cut” (as far as the Martyrology goes) serves as a good reminder that only a small fraction of saints commemorated daily by the Church are in the General Roman Calendar.

22. M ost notably, Job (May 10) and Jonah (Sept. 21), who are often considered to be Hebrew literary creations, retain their feasts.

23. I t is not always easy to draw the line between Catholic and non-Catholic saints. When the Churches of Rome and Constantinople “split” over liturgical and theological differences in 1054, the result was not the immediate formation of separate Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Intercommunion continued on a local level for many years, even after the Fourth Crusade and the brutal rupture of Latin-Byzantine communion in 1204. That some unity did exist is shown by the fact that 30 post-schism Russians are venerated as Catholic saints, one of whom, Abraham of Smolensk (d. 1222), was canonized

by Pope Paul III in 1549.

24. 4 82 were added during the pontificate of St. John Paul II alone (19782005). On a single day in 2013 Pope Francis canonized the 813 inhabitants of Otranto in southern Italy who were all beheaded on Aug. 14, 1480, for refusing to convert to Islam after the city had fallen to the Ottomans.

25. A lready the practice in some monasteries in the mid-eighth century, it was extended to the secular clergy by the Synod of Aachen of 817.

26. Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 89/d.

27. Martyrologium Romanum (2004), Ordo Lectionis Martyrologii intra Liturgiam Horarum, no. 1: “In choro lectio fit de more ad Laudes matutinas, post orationem conclusivam Horæ” (p. 29). Alternatively, the reading may follow the concluding prayer of the Minor Hours of Terce, Sext, and None (no. 6).

28. Th e tradition of reading the following day’s saints served as preparation for Vespers that evening, which began the new liturgical day and hence the observance of those saints. Historically all feasts of any rank (as opposed to vigils and ferial days) began with Vespers the previous evening; it was “Second” Vespers that was the oddity—a festal appendage made to extend Sunday and the higher ranked feasts into the next liturgical day by superseding the Vespers of the following day. The 1955 reform of the Roman Calendar and Breviary recast most liturgical days according to modern clock convention (midnight to midnight), removing the original (and once only) Vespers from all feasts except Sundays and Doubles of the first and second class. (The various liturgical ranks were reclassified in 1960 and again in 1969.)

29. B ecause the Martyrology is never read during the Paschal Triduum, the notices for Easter Sunday are read on Easter Sunday and precede the reading of Easter Monday’s notices.

30. ( Without the usual invitation “Let us pray.”) The traditional collect (the only one in the old Martyrology) reads: “May holy Mary and all the Saints intercede for us with the Lord, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns forever and ever.” The postconciliar edition has this and 36 alternative collects for use ad libitum.

31. A ccording to the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours, if Lauds or Vespers is led by an ordained minister, the blessing and dismissal follows the pattern used at Mass (“The Lord be with you,” and so on), and the minister dismisses the people with the words “Go in peace” (to which they respond, “Thanks be to God”). A layperson who presides in the absence of an ordained minister makes the Sign of the Cross while saying, “May the Lord bless us, protect us from evil, and bring us to everlasting life.” The new Martyrology does not make this distinction: the blessing “May the Lord bless us…” and the dismissal “Go in peace” are said whether or not the one who presides is ordained.

32. Th e prayer Et fidelium animae (“And may the souls…”). This prayer is not part of the conclusion of any hour in the Liturgy of the Hours, nor is it in the traditional Martyrology. It is used in the daily capitular office of monastic origin—a set of prayers and readings (including the Martyrology) said in the “chapter room” of the monastery immediately after Prime.

33. Except when a Solemnity occurs on a Sunday of Ordinary Time or a Sunday of Christmas, in which case the Solemnity is celebrated in place of the Sunday.

34. Martyrologium Romanum (2004), Praenotanda, no. 30, citing the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 355b, and the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, no. 244.

35. Th e Christmas Proclamation from the Roman Martyrology is located in Appendix I of the third edition (2010) of The Roman Missal. According to the rubrics, this Proclamation may take place immediately before the beginning of Christmas Mass during the Night. It may also be proclaimed at Evening Prayer on Dec. 24, in which case “it follows the introduction and precedes the hymn,” or else in “the Office of Readings just before the Te Deum.”

Proclamations for Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2011), vi.

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023 encourages new compositions, the liturgy during his time also had ritual music (e.g., the 18 Mass ordinaries, the Asperges me, the Veni, Creator Spiritus, and the Te Deum—or Holy God, We Praise Thy Name if one prefers the English vernacular). Ritual music is not just music that is used in liturgical rituals. Ritual music is music that is used again and again in those

AB

“ In the introduction to Tra le Sollecitudini, we find the expression ‘partipazione attiva’ (active participation) used for what seems to be the first time in papal teaching.”

Pope Pius X called for liturgical music to be sacred, true art, universal, and excluding all profanity, elements that he says are found in the highest degree in Gregorian chant, which he calls the chant proper to the Roman Church. This expression regarding Gregorian chant as being “the chant proper to the Roman Church” has been used as well in various other documents including: Sacrosanctum Concilium 116, Musicam Sacram 50a, Sacramentum Caritatis 42, and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal 41.

Continued from PIUS X, page 7

but the Latin translation is listed as a Versio fidelis, a faithful translation of the Italian original. The fact that the Latin version does not speak of “participatio actuosa” seems to indicate that the Latin translator did not think that the participation of the faithful needed to be more active than their participation in the divine mysteries already was at that time for those who were regularly present at Mass. But the Italian expression “participazione attiva” also begs the question: since the liturgy in 1903 was in Latin and since one’s actions in it were very much determined by the rubrics of the Missale Romanum of those days, what sort of more active participation could the assembly of the faithful have engaged in?

It is important to understand the “partecipazione attiva” of Pius X in the context in which he was writing, i.e., when the modern liturgical movement was still in its infancy and not unconsciously thinking of it in the context of the more participatory liturgy that has developed since Vatican II. In 1903, it was still common to speak of attending Mass or hearing Mass, e.g., did you attend Mass today or did you hear Mass today? Mass was going on and people attended it even if they were not involved in it, and to the extent that the Mass was a High Mass or Solemn High Mass, they would have heard Mass or at least parts of it from the choir. Also, if they went to a Low Mass, they were at Mass, even if they would not have heard anything (i.e., they attended Mass even if they might have been praying their rosary the whole time). But attendance at Mass was certainly sufficient to fulfill one’s Sunday obligation. Perhaps Pius X, in Tra le Sollecitudini, was referring to the “Missal Movement,” i.e., people using hand missals in order to follow along in the vernacular what the priest was saying in Latin at the altar. Although the Missal Movement was still in its early stages, there already existed Gérard van Caloen’s Missel des Fidèles which was first published in French in 1882 and Anselm Schott’s hand missal that was first published in German in 1884.5

“ It is worth asking ourselves if the music used in the sacred liturgy is such that it truly raises the heart and mind to God in prayer.”

Although a more profound consideration of this issue would go beyond the scope of the present article, it is this author’s contention that active participation is not a good translation of “actuosa partipatio,” which we find in Sacrosanctum Concilium 146 and many subsequent documents on the sacred liturgy. I would maintain that engaged participation might be a more appropriate translation and one that is certainly justifiable when considering the Latin expression “participatio actuosa.” The Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes the word active as being characterized “by action rather than contemplation,” something that “produces or involves action or

movement,” and which describes “one who is marked by vigorous activity.”7 That understanding of active participation hardly takes into account the reflective listening to the readings, gospels, and homilies, as well as the self-offering, that is expected of those participating in the sacred liturgy. It also neglects the contemplative dimension of the sacred liturgy that is so essential to it, or as Pope Pius XII writes in Mediator Dei 23-24: “The worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior…. [B]ut the chief element of divine worship must be interior.”8

“ Tra le Sollecitudini also forms an important part of the collection of writings on the liturgy that contributed to the formation of Sacrosanctum Concilium.”

Gregorian Chant When considering liturgical music in particular, Pope Pius X called for it to be sacred, true art, universal, and excluding all profanity, elements that he says are found in the highest degree in Gregorian chant, which he calls the chant proper to the Roman Church.

This expression regarding Gregorian chant as being “the chant proper to the Roman Church” has been used as well in various other documents including: Sacrosanctum Concilium 116, Musicam Sacram 50a, Sacramentum Caritatis 42, and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal 41.9 Pius X wanted Gregorian chant to be restored to public worship. At the same time, he wrote that it is permitted for every nation to admit into its ecclesiastical compositions special forms that may constitute its native music.

Although we live in a much different liturgical world than did Pius X, it is worth asking ourselves if the music used in the sacred liturgy is such that it truly raises the heart and mind to God in prayer as one celebrates Christ in his mysteries. Is it, in other words, what Pius X calls sacred and true art? As one archbishop and musicologist wrote in 2009 regarding the music used in the Catholic liturgy: “I am afraid that most of the music composed for the liturgy over the last decades, unlike the music composed in previous centuries going back as far as the Gregorian chant, will be consigned to oblivion.”10 For example, we have largely forgotten that there is traditional Catholic funeral music and, therefore, that even the English translations of the entrance antiphon Requiem aeternam and the communion antiphon Lux aeterna hardly find any place in Catholic funerals in our day.

A challenge that we have today, one that was not so much a challenge for Pius X, is the issue of ritual music—that is, music that is repeated, music that is used again and again, music that is used in certain settings and which one can count on being used, e.g., at Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, at Benediction, at the various celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours.

While Tra le Sollecitudini certainly allows for and

characteristic liturgical settings, so much so that people have come to count on it being there. They know it, and in this sense, they “own” it. It belongs to them, just as does the rest of the liturgy. I recall that when Jesuit Father Robert Taft was asked a number of years ago at a meeting of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, what can the Western Church learn from the East, he responded that Latin Catholics need to get over their “allergy to repetition,” and he emphasized that repetition is at the very heart of ritual.

Blueprint for True Reform While our world, including our liturgical world, is quite different from that of Pius X, there is still much that we could ponder from Tra le Sollecitudini, a writing that in a very real sense authorized the liturgical movement to move ahead in the decades before Vatican II. The text of Pius X also forms an important part of the collection of writings on the liturgy that contributed to the formation of Sacrosanctum Concilium. The historical-critical method of interpreting sacred scripture teaches us that one must consider the historical, literary, social, and theological contexts that contribute to the composition of a scriptural text. The same is true of a conciliar constitution such as Sacrosanctum Concilium. To truly understand it, one must study the texts that contributed to the formation of the document. It is radically insufficient to study only the texts that came after it. For that reason, Tra le Sollecitudini remains relevant for all those who wish to understand how to acquire the true Christian spirit, how important is one’s engaged participation in the sacred liturgy, and how one may learn to appreciate and appropriate the chant proper to the Roman liturgy.

Father Kurt Belsole, OSB, is a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey and Coordinator of Liturgical Formation at the Pontifical North American College, Vatican City State, Rome. He earned a license from the Patristic Institute “Augustinianum” in Rome while also pursuing studies at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute.

Subsequently, he earned a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome. His liturgical interests focus principally on the theological foundation for Sacrosanctum Concilium and the authors whose contributions have laid the groundwork for the liturgical reform of Vatican II. 1. P ius X, Tra le Sollecitudini, November 22, 1903, Acta Sanctae Sedis (1903-4) 36: 329-339. For the English translation, accessed July 20, 2023, https://adoremus. org/1903/11/tra-le-sollecitudini.

2. P ius X, Tra le Sollecitudini, Introduction, November 22, 1903, Acta Sanctae Sedis (1903-4) 36: 331.

3. P ius X, Tra le Sollecitudini 1, November 22, 1903, Acta Sanctae Sedis (1903-4) 36: 332.

4. P ius X, Tra le Sollecitudini 1, November 22, 1903, Acta Sanctae Sedis (1903-4) 36: 388.

5. S tefan K. Langenbahn, 23. April 1896 ‒ Anselm Schott in Maria Laach verstorben, accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.maria-laach.de/aktuelles/ nachrichten/125.-todestag-von-p.-anselm-schott.html. So significant was Schott’s work and his multiple editions of his people’s missal, that his name has become synonymous with the hand missal used by the people at Mass. It is simply known as a Schott.

6. Sacrosanctum Concilium uses the same expression in the following numbers as well: 19, 21, 27, 30, 41, 50, 79, 114, 121, and 124. Sacrosanctum Concilium, Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1964) 56: 105-132.

7. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “active,” accessed July 20, 2023, https:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/active.

8. Pius XII, Mediator Dei 23-24, accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.vatican.va/ content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/document/hf_p-xii_enc_20111947_mediatordei.html.

9. P ius X, Tra le Sollecitudini 3, November 22, 1903, Acta Sanctae Sedis (1903-4) 36: 332; Sacrosanctum Concilium 116, Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1964) 56: 129; Musicam sacram 50a, Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1967) 59: 314; General Instruction of the Roman Missal 41, accessed July 20, 2023, https://www,vatican.va/ roman­_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ ordinamento-messale_en.html.

10. R embert Weakland, OSB, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans), 119.

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Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

Q

A

: What is the protocol if a host is dropped or if precious blood is spilled?

: Each national bishops’ conference may publish norms on the distribution of communion under both forms (see General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 283); in the United States, these directives bear the lengthy title “Norms for the Distribution and Reception of Holy Communion under Both Kinds in the Dioceses of the United States of America” (“Norms” hereafter). The U.S. bishops state, “All ministers of Holy Communion should show the greatest reverence for the Most Holy Eucharist by their demeanor, their attire, and the manner in which they handle the consecrated bread or wine” (29). They then cite the GIRM about any mishaps: “If a host or any particle should fall, it is to be picked up reverently; and if any of the Precious Blood is spilled, the area where the spill occurred should be washed with water, and this water should then be poured into the sacrarium in the sacristy” (280).

Q

A

: Who can be dispensed

from the Sunday obligation to attend Mass—and when?

: The Sunday obligation is articulated in Canon 1246 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law where we read that “Sunday, on which by apostolic tradition the paschal mystery is celebrated, must be observed in the universal Church as the primordial holy day of obligation.” Canon 1247 specifies an essential way that this day of obligation must be observed: “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.”

This obligation is not, however, understood in an absolute way. The Code of Canon Law (CIC) itself foresees that “participation in the eucharistic celebration” might be “impossible because of the absence of a sacred minister or for another grave cause” (CIC 1248, §2).

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), examples of such “serious reasons” are “illness” and the “care of infants” (CCC, 2181). As John Meinert and Emily Stimpson put it, if “you’re seriously ill, wounded, or contagious with a communicable virus (such as the stomach flu), you’re not deliberately missing Mass.

Likewise, if you’re caring for someone who is seriously ill or injured and who needs constant attention, and there is no one available to relieve you, you’re also not deliberately missing Mass. The same goes for not having transportation or any possible means of getting to Mass” (Christ Alive in Us, 49).

Also foreseen are possibilities where though it might not be “impossible” to attend Mass on Sunday, an individual might be dispensed “from the obligation of observing a feast day” by his pastor for a “just cause” (CIC 1245). A “just cause” is distinguished from a “grave cause” and is generally understood as being low-bar canon-law-speak for some good reason or “reasonable cause.” It is left to the pastor’s discretion to judge what constitutes a “just cause.” However, the pastor cannot simply declare that no one in his parish has to observe the Sunday obligation for a given week. The pastor’s power to dispense is restricted to “individual cases,” which refer not only to single instances, but might also refer to individual situations that are ongoing, e.g., a firefighter who needs to be at work one Sunday each month during the times of all Sunday Masses. Perhaps a farmer might be in desperate need to harvest a crop and so requests a dispensation from his pastor. The pastor considers the spiritual good of the parishioner and weighs the cause being put forward for the dispensation. The law also gives the pastor the ability to commute the obligation to another pious work (CIC 1245). For example, during the height of the Covid pandemic, a couple with severe health issues were concerned about going to Mass in a crowded church. The pastor could have dispensed them from the Sunday obligation, but after discussing the situation with the couple he commuted the obligation to the attendance at another, less-crowded Mass during the week.

RITE QUESTIONS : Can a deacon (or extraor-

Q

dinary minister of Holy Communion) distribute Holy Communion via intinction?

A

: The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) permits the distribution of Holy Communion by intinction and describes how this distribution takes place: “If Communion from the chalice is carried out by intinction, each communicant, holding a Communion-plate under the mouth, approaches the Priest [sacerdotem] who holds a vessel with the sacred particles, with a minister standing at his side and holding the chalice. The Priest [sacerdos] takes a host, intincts it partly in the chalice and, showing it, says, The Body and Blood of Christ. The communicant replies, Amen, receives the Sacrament in the mouth from the Priest [sacerdote], and then withdraws” (287).

Note that only the priest is specified by the GIRM to distribute Holy Communion by intinction. The GIRM typically uses specific terms with regard to the minister when limiting who can perform a specific action, as in the sacerdos giving the homily on Holy Thursday and Good Friday (see Proper of Seasons for Mass of the Lord’s Supper, 9, and Good Friday, 10). Also noteworthy is that in GIRM 286–287 the text shifts from speaking generally about the “minister” of Holy Communion in 286 to the more specific “sacerdos” distributing by intinction in 287.

When “The Norms for the Distribution of Holy Communion Under Both Kinds in the Dioceses of the

United States of America” (hereafter, “Norms”) deals with the subject of distributing Holy Communion by means of intinction, the U.S. bishops quote verbatim from GIRM 287 (see n. 48 in the “Norms”), without offering a clarification that one might expect if deacons were to be included in this action. Further, when the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments’ Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum speaks of the distribution of Holy Communion by intinction, it speaks with similar specificity: “the communicant should receive the Sacrament from the Priest [sacerdote]” (103, emphasis added). Both the previous Sacramentary and the proposed translation of the Sacramentary (which was put forward for approval in 1998, but never approved by the then-Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments) repeat the same language, specifying that the priest distributes Holy Communion by intinction.

There remains some ambiguity because there is not a text that specifically excludes the deacon. However, because the liturgy usually legislates by specifying what should be done, such norms and rubrics ought to be taken as normative. Even without a text that specifically excludes the deacon from this way of distributing, the consistent and specific reference to the priest in the three instructional texts which speak to this action is compelling. The GIRM, Redemptionis Sacramentum, and “Norms” all specify that intinction be performed by the priest.

—Answered by the Editors

TAKE THE READERS’ QUIZ ON THE SEASONS OF ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS! You think answering liturgical questions is easy?

You think answering liturgical questions is easy?

If so, test your own knowledge on the various aspects If so, test your own knowledge on the various aspects of of the forthcoming Advent and Christmas seasons online at: the forthcoming Advent and christmas seasons online at: www.adoremus.org/2021/11/readers-quiz-the-seasonshttps://adoremus.org/christmasquiz/ of-advent-and-christmas/.

Will you know the answers to these questions?

1. W hat is the principal reason that Christmas is celebrated on December 25?

2. W hy does the beginning of Advent change each year?

3. I s it correct to describe the Advent season as a kind of “mini-Lent”?

4. W hy are there no readings or prayers for Saturday of the Third Week of Advent?

5. W hat are the restrictions (if any) on playing the organ and other instruments during Advent?

6. D o the liturgical books give any direction on the placing of the Nativity scene in the church building?

7. W hat Holy Days of Obligation occur during the Advent and Christmas seasons?

8. H ow many Mass settings are there for the Solemnity of the Nativity?

9. W hich Advent or Christmas liturgy mentions “the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad”?

10. When does the Christmas season conclude?

Do you know the answers to these liturgical questions?

Find out at https://adoremus.org/christmasquiz/

MEMORIAL FOR

Simon Peter v.d. Helm - My Dad from Yvonne Youngblood Readers in Australia and New Zealand can request additional copies of Adoremus Bulletin at no cost by contacting orders@parousiamedia.com.

Msgr. Salvatore Polizzi from Paula and James Cantwell Fr. John Sohm from Adoremus staff

12

Adoremus Bulletin, November 2023

The Liturgy as Poem

The Forgotten Language: How Recovering the Poetics of the Mass Will Change Our Lives by The Rev. Michael Rennier. Manchester, NH: The Sophia Institute Press, 2022. 198 pp. ISBN: 978-1-64413-658-4. $16.59 Paperback.

The 20th-century poet William Carlos Williams says in one of his poems, “It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there” (“Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”).

And what is found there? That is the task, from a liturgical standpoint, that Father Michael Rennier has set himself in his new book The Forgotten Language: How Recovering the Poetics of the Mass Will Change Our Lives.

To understand what Rennier means by “recovering the poetics,” though, the reader must first understand how he undertakes the recovery mission in the first place. The book is not, strictly speaking, a scholarly work on the liturgy nor is it a work of apologetics (not in the usual sense, anyway). At times, Rennier’s book is more intuitive than discursive and operates in a mode very similar to a poem insofar as it tends to leave to suggestion what might otherwise be stated outright; at other times, it speaks directly to and through the teachings of the Church on the liturgy. Rennier balances these two approaches in his book for one purpose: to show the importance of beauty in the liturgy. But, as Rennier says on several occasions throughout his book, beauty is never easy to comprehend fully, but it is truly worth the attempt—and The Forgotten Language is no exception.

Pensive Pen In many ways, Rennier’s book can be compared to Blaise Paschal’s Pensées, the best-known work of this 17th-century Catholic theologian and scientist—it is in this work that Paschal formulates his famous “Wager” argument for belief in God. In an essay on Paschal, the poet T.S. Eliot notes about the Pensées, “He who reads this book will observe at once its fragmentary nature; but only after some study will perceive that the fragmentariness lies in the expression more than in the thought. The ‘thoughts’ cannot be detached from each other and quoted as if each were complete in itself. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point [The heart has reasons which reason does not know], how often one has heard that quoted, and quoted often to the wrong purpose! For this is by no means an exaltation of the ‘heart’ over the ‘head,’ a defense of unreason. The heart, in Paschal’s terminology, is itself truly rational if it is truly the heart. For him, in theological matters which seem to him much larger, more difficult, and more important than scientific matters, the whole personality is involved.”

Another French writer, St. Francis de Sales, helps elucidate what Eliot means by “the whole personality.”

In his magnum opus, Treatise on the Love of God—a sort of sequel to his more well-known Introduction to the Devout Life—de Sales writes, “We say that the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue speaks, the understanding reasons, the memory remembers, the will loves: but still we know well that it is the man, to speak properly, who by divers faculties and different organs works all this variety of operations.” In other words, the whole person is engaged in the operation of love, and the heart (or will) is the center of operations.

For, elsewhere in the Treatise, de Sales defines love as “no other thing than the movement, effusion and advancement of the heart toward the good.”

Proceeding with both Paschal and de Sales in mind, the reader may better understand what Rennier is up to in his recovery mission. His approach engages both heart and mind, but for someone with a strong sense of the poetic, his bias tends toward the heart. The subtitle of his book (How Recovering the Poetics of the Mass Will Change Our Lives) already puts the reader on guard and on notice. The author acknowledges the instinctual distaste for poetry among the reading public when he admits, “I struggled with titling this book. I know that a book boldly proclaiming itself to be about poetics limits the number of you who pick it up to read (and thank you, intrepid friends, for picking it up to read).”

But, as Rennier notes, poetics is not the same thing as poetry. “Although related to poetry and art, which are things made and incarnations of creativity, poetics is a more universal concept, one that concerns us all.” For Rennier, this concern is what the poet Williams puts so dramatically: the need for beauty in our lives is a matter of life and death—and poetics, both God’s making and our share in his making, is the means by which

we come to comprehend beauty and its exacting and overwhelming purpose in our lives.

Indeed, for Rennier, poetics is as indispensable to life as breathing and eating, although it makes no claim to being nearly as practical. “Beauty seems unnecessary,” Rennier writes. “When I tell people the Mass must be a poem, they comment that it’s a nice idea, but then default to arguing for more functional purposes for the Mass. They say it must move our emotions, be relevant, cause sociopolitical change.” But such arguments see majestic oak trees as lumber and a dance of moths as a reason to buy mothballs. Rennier writes, “Poetics is the art of living. For a Christian, it’s also the art of learning to live as a saint, an exploration of what it means to claim that God is remaking us through grace.” We are the poems God is making—and he makes us, or rather, remakes us through the liturgy.

Poetic License Already, readers may have fairly surmised that The Forgotten Language is not so much about the theological and doctrinal issues involved in the liturgy (although Rennier does include some discussion of these things); rather, Rennier seeks to help us better understand how and why the liturgy reserves for itself a language, much the way poetry does, which offers not simply delight but the graces which will lead us to the ultimate delight—a deeper union with Christ. Rennier works out this thesis through a layering of voices—a polyphony—in both his style and the texture of his thought.

For lovers of poetry, the author includes among these voices a generous variety of versifiers—Gerard Manley Hopkins, Paul Claudel, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot, and some lesser-known poets, such as Kay Ryan and Wendell Berry (in addition to the usual gang of Christian apologists, including G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis). The poets Rennier cites do not specifically speak to the Catholic liturgy, but they do offer some insights into how we are to approach the liturgy—with mind and heart, intellect and will, married together in the language of the Mass. For instance, American poet laureate Kay Ryan notes, “If we are not compelled to submit in some ways to a poem it cannot change us….

We’re converts here, or we’ve quit.” To which Rennier notes, likewise, “We must fully abandon ourselves to the Mass or better not participate at all.” If such a sentiment seems excessive, you are beginning to understand the urgent premium that Rennier places on the need for beauty in our lives.

On another level, too, Rennier’s layering of voices are different aspects of the author’s own voice: the personal, the professional (i.e., priestly), the scholarly, and the artistic. The author interweaves his own experiences as a married priest—he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church before becoming Catholic, after which he was ordained a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision for former Anglican clergy authorized by Pope John Paul II in 1980—with his journey to conversion, quotidian moments in his Catholic priesthood, and poignant scenes from his homelife. These experiences stand as the basic narrative for the book, but Rennier is not offering a strictly linear autobiography. The anecdotes and insights from daily life often serve as steppingstones to his reflections on the liturgy as the ultimate poem which in turn serve as epiphanies which inform and shape his personal life.

Like Paschal, Rennier works from a seemingly

disconnected series of reflections; however, the reader will find, as Eliot notes about Paschal, that the disconnect is only apparent. Rennier juxtaposes lessons from life as both a priest and a father with deep dives into the theological and poetic significance of the liturgy. In doing so, he seeks to demonstrate that, as de Sales would agree, love is a matter of multi-tasking with head, heart, body, and soul.

For instance, Rennier offers a personal recollection near the beginning of the second chapter of the book, “Like a Moth to a Candle.”

“My wife Amber and I have six children who have taught me the value of paying attention the poetic shape of our lives,” he writes. “To my toddler, a generic tree is an object worthy of lingering over: a sap-scarred oak, triumphant against an ancient wind, strong as a king yet kind enough to gently drop a gift to her, a single trembling leave. She carried it home in one hand while allowing me to hold her other hand in mine.”

(For those familiar with Rennier’s writing in the pages of Adoremus—and looking for more—The Forgotten Language is full of such fine passages.) In relating this moment of father and daughter beneath an oak tree, Rennier is drawing our attention to the drawn attention of his child. “Love sharpens our vision,” he writes, for those that may have missed the lesson of the oak leaf.

“The lover sees most true.”

Rennier next jumps to a reflection on his celebration of the Mass as pastor of Epiphany of Our Lord Parish in St. Louis, MO. “When I celebrate Mass…and I manage to pay attention, this is what I notice….

“The wind moves slowly across the clay roof tiles.

Clouds are passing. The Host almost afloat on my fingertips. The bell in the tower lazily rolls. Time is spilling out in whispered prayers…. The thurible chain bends onto itself with a sound like a waterfall. I make the Sign of the Cross, look at the crucifix, and bow over the altar to consume the Host.”

In learning to see and love as his child sees and loves the oak tree and its gifted leaf, Rennier begins to see his own trees for the forest of details in the Mass. He internalizes these lessons of the eye until they sprout with a new understanding of what draws him (like a moth?) toward the sanctuary light: “It’s an act of love to look away from ourselves. It’s a sacrifice, a spiritual death and a constant departure into the wilderness.

I struggle with this calling out from myself to pay attention to God. I don’t believe God holds anything back from us—after all. He is our Daily Bread, but I fail to take and eat. The universe, my destiny, the heart of God—they’re written in a language of which I sense the meaning but cannot quite translate.”

Remember and Forget It is this mystery to the language of the liturgy which haunts Rennier’s book; it is also, fittingly, the prime and primal focus of the book. As Rennier says, “if you find the Mass difficult, don’t give up or change it. Instead, surrender. Ask God to open your heart to His divine communication. Make yourself ready to hear.” The heart does indeed have its reasons, and only the fool saith in his heart that there is no God. As the religion writer for a secular newspaper, I’ve interviewed many members of the clergy. One Protestant minister shared with me a lesson that his father, who was also a minister, imparted to him: “‘Don’t miss heaven by eighteen inches.’ That’s the distance between the head and the heart.” For the Catholic, the “forgotten language” of the liturgy must be recovered; it is the bridge between head and heart: coordinating and reordering both in unison, heart to mind and mind to heart—and both to Christ.

“If poetry is a forgotten language,” Rennier writes near the end of his book, “perhaps that’s a feature, not a bug. A forgotten language for a people who must learn to forget themselves, who are taking on the likeness of Christ. The Mass must show us that image. How else are we to find it if not here?”

Father Michael Rennier, a gifted and insightful writer, uses his creative and scholarly talents side by side to rouse in the reader a sense of the beauty of the Mass— and he does this by rousing in the reader a sense of beauty in the words he uses to convey this beauty. The form fits the matter, as the philosophers say, and in Rennier’s case, what results, The Forgotten Language, is one priest’s remarkable and moving paean celebrating— and showing us why only the best will do when it comes to celebrating—God’s gift of the liturgy to the Church and to the world.

Joseph O’Brien is the managing editor of Adoremus. He writes a bi-monthly religion column for the San Diego Reader, “Sheep and Goats” (https://www.sandiegoreader. com/news/sheep-and-goats/).