Adoremus Bulletin - September 2018

Adoremus Bulletin

SEPTEMBER 2018

News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

Vol. XXIV, No.2

At Prayer in the Fields of the Lord: The Playfulness of the Liturgy A Centenary of Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, Part V

Two West Coast Bishops Work to Increase Eucharistic Reverence

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Why is the liturgy compared to play? Not only Romano Guardini, but other great minds after him—Joseph Pieper, Johan Huizinga, Hugo Rahner, and Joseph Ratzinger—asked the same question. What can the liturgy learn today from play?

Father Daniel Cardó

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t’s ironic that the serious question about the apparent “uselessness” of the liturgy is answered by invoking the playfulness in the liturgy. This is the genius of the fifth chapter of Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy.1 Guardini’s reflections on the playfulness of the liturgy have been influential in different areas of thought. Johan Huizinga quoted Chapter V in his classic Homo Ludens (1938) on play as a decisive element in culture.2 Josef Pieper, a student of Guardini, echoes his master in his philosophical reflections on Leisure: the Basis of Culture (1952), where he shows the centrality of leisure for culture, with worship at its core.3 And Joseph Ratzinger in his main work on liturgy (The Spirit of the Liturgy, 1999) honors Guardini’s short but influential volume. The future Benedict XVI begins his work with an explicit reference to the idea of the liturgy as play, highlighting the richness but also the limits of this image.4

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Adoremus Bulletin SEPTEMBER 2018

Put in Play Why is the liturgy compared to play?

What can we learn today from this idea? Let us first understand what Guardini said about this relationship between play and liturgy, and then reflect on the importance of this contribution for us today, a hundred years after these words were written.

So let us begin again by asking a more primary set of questions: Why is the liturgy so full of complicated rituals and elaborate prayers? What is the actual need, at Mass, for all the exact instructions for the ceremonies that surround what, seemingly, would be a rather simple action: the Eucharistic consecration?

Guardini’s main answer requires the careful distinction between purpose and meaning. Purpose is an organizing principle which subordinates actions towards an external goal. Projects and professions are normally organized by their purpose. But there are things in life which are purpose-less. Nature is a clear example: what is the actual practical need for so many shapes, colors, scents, and flavors? There

are things that are “purposeless, but still full of meaning” (63); aimless, but significant. Along with nature we can think of the life of the soul, philosophical knowledge, and art: while these realities have no practical finality, they are full of meaning.

They cannot be judged based on the criterion of functionality, but on that of significance, of meaningful existence.

These two principles—purpose and meaning—should not be seen as opposed to each other. The life of the Church shows their co-existence.

As there are practical needs of administration and organization, the Church has a system of laws and ecclesiastical government which is an important part of her life. But, of course, there is in the Church “another side”: that which is free of functional practicality and has no need for an external goal to justify its existence.

The liturgy is not a means to attain a certain practical objective, but an end in itself: the act of glorifying and contemplating God’s majesty.

Please see PLAY on page 4

Sunday Playdate

Singing the Word

Hola, Misal Romano!

On the Road Again

Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, explains Father Daniel Cardó, lays down some rules for the game of grace we play every time we pray the Mass..............................................1

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pair of bishops in the Pacific Northwest may be on to something when it comes to inspiring reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, OR, and his neighbor directly to the south, Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Clara, CA, have issued liturgical instructions to their respective flocks that seek to increase love for and faith in the Holy Eucharist. To this end, both bishops are prohibiting so-called “Communion services” in their diocese. When a priest is absent, a member of the laity, consecrated religious, or a deacon are not to distribute Communion at the parish. In addition, Archbishop Sample has also asked that, out of reverence for the Eucharist, the faithful in the Portland archdiocese kneel after the “Lamb of God” in Mass.

In the May 15, 2018 issue of the Catholic Sentinel, official publication of the Archdiocese of Portland, Archbishop Sample announced that to ensure greater “understanding and reverence” for the Eucharist, on June 3 (Solemnity of Corpus Christi), the Archdiocese of Portland issued a new liturgical handbook with “two new changes in practice.”

The first involves the posture of the laity in Mass after the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

“We will return to the practice of kneeling after the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God),” Archbishop Sample writes. “The current practice is to remain standing, which has been an exception to the universal norm of Please see WEST COAST on next page

The new Spanish-language translation of the Misal Romano will be a welcome book for pastors serving the more than 30 million Spanish speakers in the United States...........3

In the Heart of the South

According to Denis McNamara, the newlydedicated Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart in Knoxville, TN, is a sign of spiritual life, inspiring awe and grace for years to come...6

Father Columba Kelly was a pioneer in postconciliar liturgical chant. Adam Bartlett explains how this Benedictine monk’s musical wisdom scaled liturgy’s harmonic heights….9 Monsignor John Pollard maps out why James Pauley’s Liturgical Catechesis in the 21st Century: A School of Discipleship is a proven guide to the liturgical encounter with Christ....................................12

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

2 Continued from WEST COAST, page 1 kneeling that has been perfectly legitimate and permitted by the liturgical norms. Nevertheless, returning to the practice of kneeling at this moment in the Mass will foster a greater reverence for our Lord.”

“The priest at that moment,” he adds, “is about to hold up before the congregation our Blessed Lord in the Holy Eucharist and proclaim, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ It seems most fitting that we be on our knees before the Lord for such a proclamation of faith.”

As a second change reflected in the handbook, Archbishop Sample writes that “the distribution of Holy Communion on weekdays in the parish church during a ‘Communion service’ will no longer be permitted. This does not affect such Communion services in nursing homes, prisons, etc., where the people do not have the opportunity to attend Mass on Sunday in the parish.”

In prohibiting the “Communion service,” Archbishop Sample reminds his flock that when no Mass is available, celebrating the Church’s greatest prayer in a neighboring parish church is the best alternative.

“The faithful can also gather for other forms of prayer,” he adds, “and our Office of Divine Worship has prepared a prayer service for such occasions that include parts of the Liturgy of the Hours with readings from the Mass of the day. This is a way to experience another form of the Church’s liturgical prayer.”

Two months after Archbishop Sample’s directives, Bishop Vasa also prohibited the so-called “Communion service” as a valid alternative to attending Mass. In the July 25, 2018 issue of the North Coast Catholic, official publication of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, Bishop Vasa cited the Instruction on the Eucharist (Redemptionis Sacramentum) issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments on March 25, 2004: 165. It is necessary to avoid any sort of confusion between this type of gathering (Communion Service without Mass) and the celebration of the Eucharist.

The diocesan Bishops, therefore, should prudently discern whether Holy Communion ought to be distributed in these gatherings.

166. Likewise, especially if Holy Communion is distributed during such celebrations, the diocesan Bishop, to whose exclusive competence this matter pertains, must not easily grant permission for such celebrations to be held on weekdays, especially in places where it was possible or would be possible to have the celebration of Mass on the preceding or the following Sunday. Priests are therefore earnestly requested to celebrate Mass daily for the people in one of the churches entrusted to their care [Emphases in bold added by Bishop Vasa.]

In light of these instructions, Bishop Vasa provides four basic guidelines to priests of Santa Rosa, effective August 1, 2018: “1. As a general policy, Communion Services instead of Mass are not allowed either on Sundays or on weekdays. Those who have been asked to do them in the past may no longer do so.

“2. Information about the times for Masses at nearby Parishes and Chapels is to be published regularly in Parishes of the Diocese so that those who are able may travel to other sites for Mass.

“3. Pastors are encouraged to make arrangements, when they are unable to celebrate Mass, for a Parish Leader to be instructed to lead the Community in Prayer according to the Approved Rites. The Rites include leading Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer or a Celebration of the Liturgy of the Word. A lay person leading the Service may read a text prepared by the Pastor. Only a Deacon may preach. These Services are to be conducted without the Distribution of Holy Communion.

“4. Deacons may also expose the Blessed Sacrament for a period of adoration followed by Benediction.

Distribution of Holy Communion is not permitted in conjunction with Benediction.”

Like Archbishop Sample, Bishop Vasa points out that these guidelines have been issued with the greatest pastoral care for those persons who bring Holy Communion to the sick and shut-ins even as he reminded these same Eucharistic ministers that they are prohibited from reserving the Blessed Sacrament in their homes.

Both bishops see reverence for the Eucharist as an integral part of the living faith. In his May 15 column, Archbishop Sample recalled how the nearly universal custom of receiving Communion on the tongue instead of in the hands provided “a profound sense of reverence and awe for the presence of our Lord in

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

NEWS & VIEWS

the Blessed Sacrament. It is not just a symbol or sign.

Jesus Christ is truly present, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist.”

Mourning the fact that by contrast today “our liturgical and sacramental practices far too often do not reflect that profound understanding and faith in the Real Presence,” Archbishop Sample underscored his point by relating an account he’d heard of a Protestant minister who attended a Catholic Mass.

“Afterward he was questioned on what he thought,” Archbishop Sample writes. “He replied that he did not think that the congregation really believed in the Real Presence. When asked why he thought this, he said that he personally did not believe in the Eucharist as Catholics do, but if he did, he would approach our Lord for Communion walking on his knees. He found the casual and irreverent attitude at the time of Communion in that particular church very unconvincing.”

The “Communion service,” Bishop Vasa writes in his July 25 column, “while popular, is not consistent with the Instructions from the Holy See, cited above.

Our respect for the Most Holy Eucharist requires that we take very seriously the Directives of the Church.

Opinions about what should be done in our Parishes will certainly vary but what surrounds the Eucharist demands of us a deep fidelity to the Church and her Instructions.”

Archbishop Sample explains that there is “an intimate and intrinsic link” between offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priest ministering in the person of Christ at this time, and the distribution of the Eucharist to the faithful.

“These are not to be separated except for serious reasons and pastoral need,” Archbishop Sample says. “As long as the faithful have the opportunity to participate in Mass and receive Holy Communion on Sunday, there is no such pastoral need to receive Holy Communion outside of Mass.”

As an eternal action, the Mass is more than a sum of its parts; the faithful “do much more than just receive Holy Communion,” Archbishop Sample writes, noting that all who attend Mass are active and conscious participants in Christ’s sacrifice.

“From this sacramental offering, we receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, thus culminating our participation in the paschal mystery being celebrated,” he explains. “The Church never envisioned breaking them apart by distributing Communion outside of Mass. This is only done for the sick and those otherwise unable to participate in the Sunday Eucharist. To do otherwise is very poor sacramental and Eucharistic theology.”

Vatican to draft guidelines on decommissioned churches What happens when God moves out of a church? Is it party time for the new owners, who may want to use the decommissioned church structure as a pizza joint or hopping night club? Or should the building maintain a decorum respectful of its sacred use in the past?

According to a July 11, 2018 report by Carol Glatz, reporting for the Catholic Herald of London, the Vatican is attempting to give greater clarity to these sorts of questions by “helping organize an international conference to help dioceses work with their local communities in finding appropriate uses for decommissioned churches.”

“The Pontifical Council for Culture,” Glatz writes, “together with Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the Italian bishops’ conference, will sponsor the gathering, titled ‘Doesn’t God Dwell Here Anymore?

Decommissioning Places of Worship and Integrated Management of Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage,’ November 29-30 in Rome.”

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According to Glatz, the Vatican is looking for some visual aids from the faithful by sponsoring a photo contest as part of the conference.

“In the run-up to the conference,” she writes, “the public is invited to photograph and post on Instagram examples of deconsecrated churches being reused in a positive way, since examples of churches turned into nightclubs and gyms garner the bulk of media attention.”

“The photographs, to be tagged with #NoLongerChurches, #unigre and a hashtag of the name of the church and city, are meant to showcase positive ways the historical, social, artistic and sacred significance of such buildings can be maintained or highlighted.”

The deadline for posting photos is October 15, Glatz reports, “and selected winners will have their images displayed at the international conference and published on the sponsors’ websites and in Italian magazines dedicated to Christian art, the Church and architecture.”

The invitation to post pictures, Glatz notes in her story, extends to researchers and academic institutes, who are also encouraged to submit “papers on completed studies or projects underway dealing with the revitalization or repurposing of deconsecrated or underutilized places of worship.”

Both the contest and research information will be used to help bishops address the concerns that arise from closed parishes.

“Representatives from bishops’ conferences in Europe, North America and Oceania are invited to attend the conference,” Glatz writes, “to discuss and approve guidelines addressing the reuse of deconsecrated church properties.”

The conference has a practical purpose, Glatz notes, and does not address the current canonical strictures on deconsecrating a church. Rather, “its purpose is to show the need for a long-term planning process that involves the whole community and aims for reaching an understanding about how such structures should be reutilized or rebuilt.”

Citing Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Vatican’s culture council, in her report, Glatz writes that Cardinal Ravasi “told reporters that former places of worship must retain some spiritual, social or cultural value within the community and that every possible effort must be made to safeguard the church’s patrimony, for example, by transferring mobile assets to diocesan museums.”

The conference hopes to address “the current criteria for guiding this process,” Glatz writes, noting that Cardinal Ravasi calls the criteria “too generic.”

According to Glatz, the value of a decommissioned church is not based solely on its contribution to the Western artistic tradition.

“While European churches built during the Renaissance, Baroque or other periods may have great artistic value, it must not be forgotten that a simple brick or wooden church in North America also carries important ‘spiritual value,’ said Richard Rouse, an official at the Pontifical Council for Culture.”

“They may not have Michelangelo’s frescoes decorating the interior,” Glatz writes, quoting Rouse, “but so many of these places of worship were built thanks to the donations, support and hard work of generations of families, and for some members of the local community, they would still have strong emotional significance.”

The conference, Glatz writes, quoting a statement by conference organizers, “will seek to demonstrate that the cultural patrimony of the church, built up with faith and charity over time, is still able to transmit Christian culture if it is properly enhanced and not seen as a burden to maintain.”

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Mass Casualties: The Life and Times of Father Mulcahy

By Christopher Carstens, Editor

AB/CBRENNER21 AT WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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he family meal, so say the experts, is a key ingredient to household unity. For this reason, I’m grateful that my own upbringing featured, on most occasions, my mother and father, sister and brother gathering around the evening table to break bread (or more to the point, dig into mom’s meatloaf). But these same doyens of domestic harmony, I suspect, would object to the small black-and-white television that sat at the end of the table entertaining us as we ate.

Back then, in my childhood, it was M*A*S*H that captured our family’s attention (and no doubt also arrested its development). We were rapt by the small-screen portrayal of the Korean War, the characters of Hawkeye and Radar and the unit’s Catholic chaplain Father Mulcahy, and its strangely light-hearted instrumental theme music, taken from the song “Suicide is Painless,” featured in the original 1970 Robert Altman movie on which the sitcom is based. This TV show is as much a part of my childhood memories as family vacations to Grandma’s and warming the bench in Little League baseball.

This blast from my childhood’s past comes to mind today, as a scandalized Church fights another battle in the war between good and evil, both in the world and amidst her fallen faithful: the battle for sexual purity.

Indeed, Pope Francis likens today’s Church to a M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit. “I like to use the

“I like to use the image of a field hospital to describe this ‘Church that goes forth’; it exists,” Pope Francis says, “where there is combat.”

image of a field hospital to describe this ‘Church that goes forth’; it exists,” he says, “where there is combat, it is not a solid structure with all the equipment where people go to receive treatment for both small and large infirmities. It is a mobile structure that offers first aid and immediate care, so that its soldiers do not die. It’s a place for urgent care, not a place to see a specialist” (Pope Francis, The Name of God Is Mercy: A Conversation with Andrea Tornielli, 52–53). The world in which the Church serves is indeed fallen, wounded, and in need of urgent care. The situation is

all the more tragic when the doctors of that “field hospital” hobble its mission when their own woundedness disables their ability to perform life-saving work.

What place does the liturgy have in such a toxic climate? How helpful is the liturgical apostolate amidst so many casualties? Does the forthcoming release of the Rite for the Dedication of a Church and Altar really matter?

Does singing a hymn versus a biblical antiphon at the Offertory matter? Does it matter that although the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception,

December 8, falls on a Saturday this year, it remains obligatory, despite its proximity to Sunday?

Even though the newly-approved translations of the Breviary’s antiphons for Ordinary Time (to name another example) are not the solution to these troubled times, neither is the liturgy, its celebration, and our faithful participation in it irrelevant to the painful, destructive scandals that have come to light within the Church.

GK Chesterton once remarked that Original Sin is the only Christian doctrine that even non-Christians can readily acknowledge as true. Its effects, he observes, are demonstrated beyond a doubt every day in the news.

But such daily bad news can never get a scoop on the Good News. For the salve (that is, the salv-ation) of this wounded world is the Anointed One— Christ Jesus who is the substance and reality of the liturgy. As liturgist Aidan Kavanagh was fond of saying, “Liturgy is doing the world the way the world was meant to be done.” As an antidote to the world’s battlefields, the Divine Physician’s liturgy has great healing power.

Right worship—expressed in accurate antiphons, beautiful ritual texts, sublime music—can right the wayward journey of Peter’s bark, since these liturgical elements put Christ the High Priest firmly in the captain’s seat.

As we recommit ourselves to sanctity, let the authentic celebration of the liturgy and our heartfelt participation in it make us, our embattled Church, and our fallen world whole.

Hola, Misal Romano!

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By Joseph O’Brien Managing Editor

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he millions of Spanish-speaking Catholics in the United States will find a few things new and different about Mass by Advent 2018. According to the decree of Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), that’s the date that the Misal Romano, Tercera Edicion, the new and newly-approved iteration of the Spanish-language translation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal (Missale Romanum) will become the required Spanish-language liturgical text for the Mass in Catholic dioceses around the country.

Earlier this year, the USCCB Secretariat for Divine Worship announced that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome had confirmed on July 1, 2016 that this edition of the Misal Romano had been approved for use in the United States. The USCCB, in turn, decreed that it could be used beginning this year on Pentecost Sunday, May 20, and was to be the required text by December 2, First Sunday of Advent 2018.

The promulgation of a new missal proper to this country is good news indeed. According to a recent report by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., there are approximately 30.4 million Hispanic or Latino people in the U.S.

Imported Goods Before Misal Romano came along, bishops and priests in the United States relied on imported texts to serve the Spanishspeaking population in U.S. parishes.

Father Andrew Menke, Executive Director of the Secretariat for Divine Worship, told Adoremus Bulletin that “For the most part, people [in the U.S.] have obtained Spanish missals from Mexico, but some also use versions from Colombia, Ecuador, or Argentina. Rarely, the edition from Spain might be used.”

The new approved American edition is especially welcomed from a liturgical standpoint as it will provide much-needed consistency in the text and continuity among U.S. dioceses and parishes, Father Menke said.

“We hear stories of priests who serve multiple parishes who find themselves using different Spanish versions of the Missal, even on the same day,” he said, adding that “the new Missal follows the liturgical calendar of this country and includes Spanish translations of the various saints’ days on our Calendar. This will also contribute to the national unity of Spanish-speaking Catholics.”

The new Spanish-language missal offers other improvements, Father Menke says, that priests will notice immediately.

“For one thing, the layout and arrangement of the new U.S. Spanish Missal will be almost perfectly parallel to the English version of the Missal used in this country,” he says. “That ought to be

AB/CATHOLIC BOOK PUBLISHING

The new Spanish-language translation of the Roman Missal is out—and here’s how it came about

The USCCB has decreed that the Misal Romano could be used beginning this year on Pentecost Sunday, May 20, and becomes the required text by December 2, First Sunday of Advent 2018.

helpful for priests who offer Mass in both languages. Spanish Missals from other countries tend to rearrange a fair amount of the material, with respect to the Latin and English editions.”

Harmony and Variety The vital link between liturgy and sacred music has also played a part in the new missal, Father Menke says, noting that it includes “the same amount of music as in the English edition, which is a very substantial increase over what’s included in any other Spanish missal. The music is similar to the English melodies, and both the English and Spanish are ultimately based on the chants in the Latin edition.

This has potential to not only add a certain solemnity to the music of the Mass, but also promotes a unity between liturgies celebrated in Spanish, English, and Latin.”

Although unity of translation was a top priority for the most recent English translation of the Roman Missal, Father Menke says that the same concern was mitigated in the Spanish translation by factors that speak to the variety found

within the Spanish language.

“The Holy See was not insistent on arriving at a single, worldwide Spanish translation of the Missal,” he says. “Most people seem to agree that there are greater regional variations in Spanish than there are in English, and this might be the reason for that decision. Even so, the heart of the Missal—the Order of Mass—has a translation that is common to all Spanish-speaking countries, except for different customs regarding the second person plural form of ‘you.’ So there are differences between the missals of Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Argentina. Other Spanish-speaking countries adopt one of these forms of the Missal.”

Speaking of Mexico Because the largest group of Spanishspeaking faithful in the country comes from Mexico, Father Menke says, the U.S. Bishops decided that the new missal should use the Mexican edition as its base text. This decision also makes sense, Father Menke says, because “many other

Please see MISAL on page 5

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Guardini finds in Ezekiel’s vision of the Cherubim a model of play before God: “‘Every one of them went straight forward, whither the impulse of the Spirit was to go…, and they turned not when they went..., ran and returned like flashes of lightning..., went…and stood…and were lifted up from the earth.... The noise of their wings was like the noise of many waters…, and when they stood, their wings were let down.’ How ‘aimless’ they are! How discouraging for the zealous partisans of reasonable suitability for a purpose! They are only pure motion, powerful and splendid, acting according to the direction of the Spirit, desiring nothing save to express Its inner drift and Its interior glow and force. They are the living image of the liturgy.”

Continued from PLAY, page 1 This truth is apparent to anyone who pays attention to the abundance of liturgical prayers and rituals. Although there is certain organization based on seasons and feasts, no detailed plan of instruction, or clear and distinct purpose can be found in the liturgical life of the Church. Is this a waste of time? Do we find here a missed opportunity?

Guardini reflects at this point on two scriptural passages. The first one is Ezekiel’s vision of the Cherubim moved by the Spirit in contemplation of God’s glory (chapter 10). The second one is Proverbs 8:30-31: “I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world.” The Son “plays” before the Father, full of meaning and pure happiness, with a delight that goes beyond any practical purpose.

In our earthly life there are two realities that offer an image of this “sublime uselessness”: the play of the child and the creation of the artist.

Children do not aim at a specific functional objective when they play: they pour themselves forth in countless movements and words which beautifully express the richness of life. Artists try to give life to their being and longings without a necessary didactic aim.

The sacred liturgy, while being similar to these realities, offers something even greater: the possibility of becoming, with the aid of divine grace, a child of God. And, as this demands going beyond ordinary experience, the liturgy finds its expressions in the world of art. Thus, liturgy “unites art and reality in a supernatural childhood before God” (69). And there is nothing more important than this purposeless action.

We see a glimpse of this gravity in the earnestness that both children have in

setting up the rules for their games, and artists in their pursuit of the right form.

This is what the liturgy does: with “endless care” it has “laid down the serious rules of the sacred game which the soul plays before God” (71). The greatness of the liturgy does not consist only in producing wonderful works of art, but in transforming us “into living works of art before God” (71), becoming thus as little children. This is God’s solemn and joyful invitation: to “live liturgically,” to be children of the Father, to be not afraid of “wasting time,” of “playing,” of “celebrating,” of “existing” in the peaceful presence of the Eternal Father.

Paradoxically, it is here, says Guardini, that an essential didactic aim ought to be found in the liturgy: to learn the simplicity of prayer and abandonment, renouncing the oppression of always asking “why?” and “what for?”—of seeking a functional purpose to all that we do. Only in this way will we be able “to play the divinely ordained game of the liturgy in liberty and beauty and holy joy before God” (72). This is, truly, an anticipation of eternal life, which far from being some boring, endless, and fruitless passivity, will be the consummation of our existence in an unending song of praise.

Play Today Guardini’s reflections on the playfulness of the liturgy are beautiful. The reader is at times struck by the musicality and poetic tone of some paragraphs, which are perceived even more keenly against the background of a book which, generally speaking, is very precise yet theoretical. It only makes sense: the sublime purposelessness of the liturgy is, indeed, a beautiful gift that the act of glorifying God pours into the human heart.

Needless to say, the analogy of

Roles and Rules One of the most important concepts that the Church has repeated since the dawn of the twentieth century is that of actuosa participatio. It is not merely or mainly a reference to external activity, but to an interior movement: rather than being passive spectators, all the faithful are called to actually take part in what is celebrated in the liturgical act.

The over-simplification of active participation as doing things and multiplying visible roles for as many people as possible during the liturgy has been a serious source of confusion. The analogy of play can prove helpful here.

Everyone knows that in any good game there are roles and rules. If all the participants would claim the right to do what they please, or invent roles in order to have a more active part, that game would certainly fail. If the game is to be good, there is a need for balance: knowing its rules, and actually playing it.

Knowing every single rule of a game does not mean playing it well (not to mention enjoying the game very much either). On the other hand, playing the game without knowing its logic and basic dynamic only leads to failure. We need both: rules and action. In this way we can enter into the free and different world of a game.

In Rites We Trust Extending the analogy of play, we could say that the rules of the game of the liturgy are found in its rite. The liturgical rite must be done with reverence and appreciation for its value. For rather than being an arbitrary and ultimately disposable set of procedures, the rite is the path to the mystery, developed slowly and organically through the centuries. Indeed, as Benedict XVI wrote about Christ’s command do this at the Last Supper, the Lord had the “expectation that the Church, born of his sacrifice, will receive this gift, developing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the liturgical form of the sacrament.”6 It is this form, with its specific words and actions, that needs to be known, esteemed, and respected. Doubtless, the wisdom of millennia, with the countless generations that have faithfully prayed according to the “rules” of the liturgy, bearing abundant fruits of holiness and charity, ought to be greater than anyone’s individual creativity.

To promote a renewed appreciation of the liturgical rite we need to grow in our comprehension of it. Two privileged paths for this task are the ars celebrandi and mystagogical formation.

The priest’s art of celebrating (ars celebrandi) is, as former secretary in the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Ranjith, said,7 first and foremost the art of conforming oneself to Christ the High Priest. This interior disposition becomes devout fidelity to the rite of the Church.

In turn, a priest truly committed to the ars celebrandi will offer the serene and

radiant experience of the mystery of the sacred liturgy without compromises or rationalizations. This experience will lead the people to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the signs of salvation. There will be no need of useless explanations: only a “simple vision,” in the words of Josef Pieper, “to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye.”8

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the liturgy as play cannot be perfect.

Ratzinger, in his own The Spirit of the Liturgy, pointed out two of its limitations. First, he says, since the rules of certain games or sports can become burdensome, it is essential to indicate what we are playing. The second limitation of this comparison is that the idea of the life to come remains only too vague.5 Aware of its merits and limitations, let us reflect now on some ways in which the idea of the “playfulness of the liturgy” can make a relevant contribution to the liturgical life of the Church today, particularly in regards to active participation.

Enshrined by the light shed by candles and the smoke expressed by incense, priests offer an ample entry into the mystery of the liturgy.

It is the same with the liturgy.

To actually take part in its action we need to know what happens in it, and do our part. This demands a twofold act of trust in the game of the liturgy: trust in the rules (i.e., the rite) and trust in the players (i.e., the celebrant and the faithful).

The main demand of this art will be to trust in the power of the symbolic ritual of the liturgy, and appreciate anew the capacity of intuitive knowledge. In a practical way, the celebrant of the liturgy should not be afraid of a language that speaks of a different world: words that are beautiful and eloquent; gestures that are visible and powerful; vestments that show

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the beauty and dignity of the liturgical action; nobility in the sacred vessels and buildings; music that leads into the mystery of God and is not limited to the expression of our own spiritual experience. It is not a matter of blindly following rubrics, but rather of entering into the mystery.

More concretely: a blessing should be clearly seen by everyone as the expressive gesture of the cross, sealed by a noble movement of the arm. The anointing with the sacred chrism at Baptism or Confirmation should be so generous that the symbolic aroma of the consecrated oil can be perceived as a sign of Christ’s sweet aroma. The elevation of the consecrated host and chalice should be done without haste, accompanied by the reverence proper to such a holy moment, enhanced with the sounds of bells, and, especially on solemnities, enshrined by the light shed by candles and the smoke expressed by incense. In this way, priests will offer an ample entry into the mystery of the liturgy.

The intuitively perceived ars celebrandi should be accompanied by a mystagogical path of formation. Our catechetical programs should include more mystagogy, in order to lead those being formed in the faith, particularly those preparing to receive a sacrament, into the mysteries where they will receive the life of grace. Our homilies could also be enriched by frequent mystagogical reflections. Not only are these very attractive to our people, but they also offer abundant material for an ongoing education in what we all do in our liturgical celebrations. The Fathers of the Church are a shining and imitable example of this kind of preaching.

In their words we find the fine art of preparing the hearts of believers for the liturgical events of salvation without an excessive rationalistic explanation, leaving room for the mystery to speak loudly for itself, just as in the fine image provided by William Harmless:9 a movie critic will create expectation, telling us what a movie is about without spoiling the experience of watching it directly.

This kind of formation and preaching is only possible when there is an honest trust in the power of the rite (the “rules of the game”) and in the capacity of the faithful (the “players”) to receive and comprehend what God achieves through the liturgy. This leads us to our next point.

Playing Human Guardini famously asked in a letter to the 1964 Liturgical Conference in Mainz, in the face of the challenges of modernity for liturgical reform: “Would it not be better to admit that man in this industrial and scientific age, with its new sociological structure, is no longer capable of a liturgical act?”

It would seem that many liturgists would immediately respond in the affirmative to this question: an average person of our times is not really capable of liturgical act. Consequently, because of this lack of trust in the “liturgical capacity” of the modern or postmodern person, the liturgy would need to be adapted and simplified; it should always be completely understandable to our reason, and it must not include elements that are not familiar with daily experience. Furthermore, some liturgists might argue, if we want to keep our people in the pews, we need to reduce the mystery and solemnity of the rite, introducing enjoyable surprises and a positive tone to what we do and say.

We all have heard wordy comments explaining rites and gestures that interrupt the flow of the ritual, assuming that without them we cannot grasp their meaning; we all have seen the arms of cantors raised high before congregations,

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Millennials are fascinated by the mystery. For they can understand that the liturgy is a kind of sacred play, with beautiful rules and capable participants, who are grateful to find their joy as they kneel down to adore, as grateful children, their Father in heaven.

as if we were incapable of realizing when to sing “Alleluia!” We all have heard homilies so full of stories and jokes, as if we were not capable of following a simple argument, and we all have experienced the shortest forms of rituals at the most important feasts, as if no one could enjoy the calm of a well-executed ceremony over an extended period of time.

Aren’t the liturgical accommodations enumerated above (now hardened into common trends) rather condescending?

Should we not trust more in the capacity of the human heart and offer in the liturgy what the heart is truly looking for?

As Augustine said: “What does our soul desire more passionately than truth?”

(In Ioa 26,5). The human heart, even in a time of relativism and confusion such as ours, still desires the truth. And it is in the sacred liturgy, most especially in the Eucharist, that we can encounter the truth of life.10 This desire for truth appears to be particularly relevant for young people.

While in no way being the only factor, the general over-simplification of liturgical celebrations in the past decades has not proven particularly fruitful for young people in the practice of their faith.

According to a recent Public Religion Research Institute study, only 7 percent of young adults raised Catholic still attend Mass.11

Truth Is in Play Much has been said about millennials.

One thing is true: they reject what is fake; they like authenticity. They want good things; they care for complex flavors; they appreciate uncompromising beauty.

Unsurprisingly, they like games: board games that are intricate and demand attention, discipline, rules, time, and ceremony. And, also unsurprisingly, they are drawn to beautiful liturgies that are celebrated with art and without compromise.

Millennials like music that is well performed; they are attracted to chant, and hymns of beautiful melody and theology. They don’t instinctively reject the use of Latin; they appreciate the symbolic power of incense. They are grateful for homilies that challenge them and elevate their horizons. They are fascinated by the mystery. For they can understand that the liturgy is a kind of sacred play, with beautiful rules and capable participants, who are grateful to find their joy as they kneel down to adore, as good children, their Father in heaven.

Father Daniel Cardó was born in Lima, Peru, in 1975. A member of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 2006 and in 2010 was appointed to Holy Name Parish, Denver, CO. He received his Doctorate from Maryvale

Institute in 2015, specializing in liturgy and early Christian literature. He is the author of Faith in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger (University of Navarre), The Cross and the Eucharist in Early Christianity (forthcoming – Cambridge University Press), and of several articles. He teaches liturgical courses at St. John Vianney Seminary, Denver, and is visiting professor at the Augustine Institute. He is a board member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and co-founder of Source and Summit Institute for Liturgical Renewal and Sacred Music.

1. See Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy (New York: Herder & Herder, 1998), 61-72.

2. See Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the PlayElement in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 19.

3. See Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 15.

4. S ee Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, in Theology of the Liturgy: The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, ed. Michael J. Miller, vol. XI of Joseph Ratzinger, Collected Works (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 5-6.

5. See Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 5-6.

6. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 11.

7. S ee https://adoremus.org/2009/03/15/Toward-an-ArsCelebrandi-in-Liturgy/ 8. Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, 28.

9. S ee William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2014), 422.

10. See Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 2.

11. https://www.prri.org/research/prri-rns-poll-nonesatheist-leaving-religion/

Continued from MISAL, page 3

The pro multis did change for the new Spanish missal, Father Menke notes, from “for all” to “for many”; however, he adds, “this change has been in effect for quite a few years in Spanish-speaking countries, and I get the impression it didn’t cause a stir when it was implemented.”

immigrants in the U.S. come from countries that have also adopted the Mexican version of the Missal.”

While the U.S. bishops could have prepared their own Spanish translation of the missal, Father Menke says, it was determined a number of years ago that the effort that would require would not be a prudent use of resources. So even though the bishops took an integral part in the preparation of the English translation of the missal, for the Spanish version they have “simply adopted another Conference’s translation. The only new translations are for things like adaptations and saints’ days of the U.S. English edition. Relatively speaking, that wasn’t a difficult process.”

The adoption of the Mexican text in this manner, Father Menke adds, also means that because the Mexican text was approved after promulgation of the Holy See’s instruction on liturgical translations, Liturgiam Authenticam, the American text also met the requirements of the instruction.

“Whether that means,” he says, “the principles of Liturgiam Authenticam were applied in exactly the same way they were applied in the case of English translation—or the French or Italian or German or any other language—would take a careful linguistic analysis.”

Two points of contention in the English translation, shifting from a paraphrase to a translation of the Domine, non sum dignus, and the retranslation of the pro multis from “for all” to “for many” were not nearly as provocative in the Spanish translation prepared for the new missal, Father Menke says.

“From what I’ve been told, these things weren’t as controversial in the Spanishspeaking world as they were for some people in English-speaking countries,” he says. “The Domine, non sum dingus was never paraphrased like the old English version was, and didn’t even change from the 2nd to the 3rd Spanish editions.

However, the Spanish version isn’t quite as literal as the new English version— whereas we follow the Latin and say ‘under my roof,’ the Spanish continues to say ‘into my house.’”

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Viva Liturgia!

While the changes are, relatively speaking, minimal in the new Spanish text, Father Menke says, the very newness of the text serves as an entree for pastors to teach their flock about the liturgy.

“The introduction of the new book could be a great opportunity to present a renewed catechesis on the Mass, or to highlight the saints of the U.S. liturgical calendar,” he says. “The inclusion of the chants could also be an opportunity to introduce a beautiful style of music that has been part of Catholic worship for centuries, but that has been largely ignored for the last fifty years.”

Besides now having a new Misal Romano available for liturgical use, Father Menke says, the Spanish-speaking faithful in this country also have other ritual texts in Spanish translation in their parishes that are officially approved for use in the U.S. The USCCB has already approved Spanish editions of the rites for baptism and marriage, for example, and a Spanish version of the Book of Blessings approved by the U.S. bishops is currently in Rome awaiting approval.

“There are also plans to try to have a Spanish Lectionary ready in several years,” he says. “But sometimes the bishops decide that there isn’t a need to prepare a Spanish version of every liturgical book.

For example, there might not be a large market for some Spanish liturgical books in this country, and that would mean that the per-unit cost would be too high, or that cases of unsold books would sit in a warehouse for years. In that situation, if the bishops of this country haven’t approved a liturgical book in Spanish (or any other language, for that matter), we are free to use one that has been approved by the bishops of another conference.”

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Deep in the Heart of the South— Deep in the Heart of Christ

Knoxville’s Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral Pulses with Local and Sacred Tradition

Gate of Heaven: The front façade of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN, uses classical conventions that originate in the ancient world but have acquired multiple meanings across the centuries. The general basilican shape and horizontally-roofed porch reach back to the earliest churches of Rome, but also continue the local custom of the front porch as a southern marker of welcome. The use of Doric columns accomplishes two goals.

First, the Doric column has been associated with the proportions of the male body from the time of the ancient Greeks, and so marks the building as dedicated to Christ, the God-man. Second, Doric is low in the hierarchy of column types, establishing that the more complex columns on the interior mark a more important place, closer to altar and sacraments. The inscription over the limestone columns reads “O Sacrum Cor Jesum Misere Nobis” ("O Sacred Heart of Jesus, Have Mercy on Us”).

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On March 3 of this year, the bishop and the people of Knoxville, Tennessee, together with five cardinals and 18 other bishops, dedicated their new cathedral, named in honor of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The event received local media coverage as a milestone marking the growth of Catholicism in a region where only three percent of the population identifies as Catholic. But relatively unnoticed was the cathedral’s importance in the renewal of Catholic architecture in the United States. With its intentional embrace of the classical tradition, design sophistication, theological fullness, and iconic richness, the construction of the $31 million edifice marks a singular high point in the recent revitalization of Catholic visual and liturgical culture.

From the early planning stages, the diocese and its leaders sought a classical architectural mode for several reasons.

First, the building was envisioned to embody a clear Roman Catholic identity with a renewed ecclesiology presenting a deep understanding of the truths of the Catholic faith, including the eschatological emphasis in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, which famously stated: “In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims…” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 8). Moreover, within that cultural and theological vision stood the explicit

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By Denis McNamara

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Heavenly Inroads: The nave of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus provides a processional path from the entry to the altar that symbolizes the procession of the Church to Christ her groom. Made of several colors of inset marble, the floor presents the transfigured “streets” of heaven and the importance of the procession made by each Christian to receive Christ in the sacraments. In the ceiling above, square insets called coffers contain painted stars, indicating the church is open to the eternal cosmos where all of the created order worships God. Where the ceiling meets the wall, the beams of the coffers are raised above the grey cornice moldings, giving the worshipper a view from the floor which is intentionally puzzling because the ceiling appears to float above the moldings which should support it. In this way the boundaries between heaven and earth are blurred, allowing for an intentional hint of “mystical” support for the roof.

Eternal Marriage: As the worshipper moves down the center aisle of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN, the great four-columned baldachino becomes the natural focus of attention. The canopy, called a chuppa in the Jewish tradition, marks a place of marriage, in this case, the marriage of heaven and earth in the Eucharist. The columns support an octagonal dome, emphasizing the number 8 as the “eighth day,” the day of eternity made possible by the Eucharist which brings eternal life. In the sanctuary, the ceiling changes from flat coffers to a semi-circular vault, where its increased complexity marks the place of greater importance. The figures in the dome begin to become visible and inspire the worshipper to look up to an image of the heavenly court.

understanding of the leadership role of the cathedral church in a diocese; it was designed to model architectural and artistic excellence for the diocese and even provide for the musical leadership expected of a diocesan mother church by creating ample space for a pipe organ and consideration of the building’s acoustical properties.

Secondly, the design acknowledged its presence in the historically Protestant American South. As such, the cathedral was meant to give outward signs of being “good neighbors,” beginning with a prominent front porch. In a kind of architectural inculturation, the southern tradition of the welcoming porch was engaged while at the same time using a deeply Roman version of the classical orders, combining the local and universal characteristics of the Church in Tennessee.

The cathedral was at first envisioned as a fully limestone structure to indicate its inherent dignity, but to engage the local culture, a mix of brick and limestone was eventually chosen. The design intentionally avoided bright red brick, however, instead choosing a blend of stonecolored Roman brick—characterized by long, slender proportions—which

provided a finish with high visual interest as well as a distinctly Roman, public character.

A similar approach to architectural inculturation was taken with the cathedral’s great dome, taken as much from the architectural tradition of local buildings as from the great Catholic tradition.

Yet by being topped with a golden cross, the Catholic identity of the cathedral reads clearly.

Woven through the exterior design choices, however, lies a combination of perceived simplicity at the level of the entire design, but with sophistication in its many details. Over the entry doors, for instance, an almost lyrical design of cut stones form elongated and structurally-logical keystones which interlock with the stonework of the walls. On the porch, a prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus appears in sophisticated “V-groove” lettering centered around a subtle but legible carving of the Sacred Heart. Even the downspouts which carry rainwater were carefully designed to match the dignity of the building and its use.

The cathedral’s design architect, James McCrery of Washington, DC, compared the design of every part of the building to the Mystical Body of Christ, where

Every Eye will See Him: A longstanding architectural tradition sees a church’s dome as a representation of the eternal “dome” of the heavens, which, in the Christian revelation, shows the interpenetration of divinity and all of creation: heaven with earth, saints with humanity, God with his people. Here, in the new Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN, the four evangelists visually “support” the revelation of the heavenly realities above, as they did with their gospels. Above them, a canticle sung by the angels and saints from the Book of Revelation praises Christ with the words “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” in text boxes surrounded by fictive flowers and gems, markers of the new garden of heaven that replaces the Garden of Eden and the fallen world. In an early Christian method of indicating hierarchy, Christ appears as the largest figure, while the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph—forming an image of the Holy Family—appear slightly smaller. The rest of the saints, ancient and modern, are smaller still. At the center, where natural sunlight enters through the cupola, an image of the Trinity is presented as a triangle inserted with a cross, surrounded by the Latin phrase “Credo in Unum Deum” (“I believe in one God”).

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each member, no matter how different or differently placed, contributes to the beauty of the whole. The true noble simplicity of the building is achieved in simple shapes and exquisite details, yet each one is given careful attention.

While the exterior uses the relatively subdued colors of the earthly realm, the interior presents itself as the world redeemed, where large scale, decorative richness, and fine materials enchant the viewer. Unlike the grey granite of the exterior paving, the interior suddenly changes to carefully-designed patterns of colored marble, marking the glorified “streets” of heaven.

Looking up from these magnificent floors, giant-order Corinthian flat columns, known as pilasters, line the nave, sitting on pedestals which themselves are nearly six feet tall. Between their capitals, honorific titles for Christ from the Litany of the Sacred Heart give the building an architectural “voice” of praise. An arcade of marble Ionic columns in polished marble tucks between the large pilasters, scaling the high ceiling down to the human scale.

The ceiling is organized by a grid of inset squares, known as coffers, in which the paint changes from the earthly white color of the walls, to golden hues that signify heaven, to blue inset panels filled with glorified stars suggesting the heavens above, which also participate in liturgical worship. As the viewer moves closer to the altar, a great dome rises to 144 feet above the floor, claiming the symbolic number of the height of the walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation (21:17). Within the cathedral’s dome, a 25-foot image of Christ with his Sacred Heart exposed stands surrounded by the saints in a heavenly garden, an iconographic plan developed by the architect together with the cathedral rector and executed by Evergreene Architectural Arts of New York.

The richness of the cathedral’s interior provides a setting for a great stone altar surmounted by a 45-foot baldachino, a four-columned canopy roughly the height of a four-story building.

The large interior provides a setting of awe and grandeur, yet the baldachino scales the great interior down to the size of the altar and, like a picture frame, makes it the natural focus of the viewer’s attention. Beyond the altar, the tabernacle sits under a tiny replica of the baldachino, marking the Presence of Christ both in the action of the Eucharistic liturgy and the abiding Presence in the reserved Eucharistic species.

Seen on the golden rear wall through the baldachino and above the tabernacle, a golden Tree of Life pattern in vine-like spirals extends the reach of the large crucifix, the true Tree of Life that healed the effects of Adam and Eve eating of the tree in the Garden of Eden.

In sum, the patrons, architects and artists of the new Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have done something not seen for more than half a century: they commissioned an affordable building which nonetheless uses an erudite and recognizable classical mode, fine materials, local customs, time-honored Roman motifs, and a theologicallyinformed iconographic program. To a faithful Catholic, it might sound obvious to do these things. But recent years have seen many new churches where the client meant well, but lacked the architectural sophistication to hire a classical specialist or the liturgical understanding to see an iconographic program as more than a collection of devotional images.

In Knoxville, the cathedral shows a wholistic approach to sacramentalizing a new world on the interior, a place where space and time suddenly change from

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Re-Orientation: The altar of sacrifice in the new Cathedral is made of various colored marbles to sacramentalize heaven’s gem-like color and radiance. The altar sits amidst an illusionistic floor pattern. The stones surrounding the altar appear three-dimensional, and depending on the angle, they appear to “shift” from one direction to another in what the architect calls “intentionally un-architectural architecture” which exists in the earthly realm but at the same time seems to defy it. It therefore causes the Christian to become slightly disoriented and therefore be reminded that the liturgy is celebrated on earth as it is in heaven. Twelve round stones of three different colors surround the altar, indicating the Twelve Apostles who stand around the altar of God. Each piece of flooring stone in the cathedral had to be drawn one by one and its color and type indicated by the architect to produce the desired result.

the limitations of the fallen world to the expansiveness of the restored cosmos.

The cathedral does indeed represent a great local achievement, and congratula-

tions are in order to all involved. But it is also more. With a humble budget in a diocese of a mere 70,000 Catholics, this cathedral has set the high point to date

for architectural and theological richness in the postconciliar United States.

Please see CATHEDRAL on page 8

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018 Dr. Denis McNamara is Associate Professor of Sacramental Aesthetics and Academic Director at the Liturgical Institute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, a graduate program in liturgical studies. He holds a BA in the History of Art from Yale University and a PhD in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, where he concentrated his research on the study of ecclesiastical architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has served on the Art and Architecture Commission of the Archdiocese of Chicago and works frequently with

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

Architects, Craftsmen, and Artisans of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN: James McCrery, McCrery Architects, Washington, DC, design architect; Barber McMurry Architects, Knoxville, TN, architect of record; Evergreene Architectural Arts, Brooklyn, NY, decorative painter; Andrew Wilson Smith, architectural sculpture; James McCrery and Fr. David Boettner, Cathedral Rector, iconographic planning; Nick Ring, Traveler’s Rest, SC, bronze sculpture for baptismal font; John Canning Studios, Cheshire, CT, marblelizing faux finishes; Rugo Stone, Lorton, VA, marble fabrication and installation; Clancy Custom Woodwork, Knoxville, TN, millwork; Mountainview Millworks, Hedgesville, West Virginia, additional specialty millwork.

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For a fuller, clearer, and more detailed view of these beautiful images, see a photo essay on our website, www.adoremus.org.

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Life from Above: The underside of the baldachino in the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN, shows the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, recalling the epiclesis in which the priest calls down the Spirit to transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Theological names for Christ, including “Via Veritas et Via” (“The Way, The Truth and The Life”) are presented in gold lettering in the beams supported by the columns, known as the entablature. In another “anti-architectural” move, the lower part of the entablature, known as the architrave, is missing, replaced by carved bronze drapery.

Normally, drapery would be supported by the architecture, yet here it serves a supportive role, upending the expected earthly order.

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Born from the Side of Christ: The baptistery of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus sits in a carefully designed floor pattern giving it a permanent setting in the life of the building while indicating the realities of baptism: blood-red stone forms a cross in a background of white marble in which four pieces were cut from a single block of stone. The large white vein that appears in each white piece was then turned 90 degrees, giving the floor a sense of rotational movement like the “wind” of the Holy Spirit. A bronze roundel is inset in each side of the baptistery’s bowl, displaying shells and four scriptural scenes related to baptism and redemption. On each side of the bronze inserts, wavy incised lines called strigilation not only refer to the waves of water, but recall similar motifs frequently placed on stone caskets in the ancient Roman world, marking the font as a place of death to the old self and rebirth in the waters of baptism. Appearing on the font’s cover is a bronze figure of John the Baptist crafted by sculptor Nick Ring.

First and Last: Behind the main altar of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, TN, in a chapel-like area, the tabernacle houses the reserved Blessed Sacrament and establishes a relationship with the Eucharistic action through imitation of the forms of the Altar of Sacrifice. A miniature version of the baldachino over the altar covers the tabernacle, and an Altar of Repose with similar materials and motifs stands beneath. The Latin phrase “Ecce Agnus Dei,” (“Behold the Lamb of God”) appears on the miniature canopy, and the Greek letters “A” (“Alpha”) and Ω (“Omega”)—indicating Christ as the beginning and the end— appear on the tabernacle doors.

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

In Memoriam, Dom Columba Kelly, OSB

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Renowned monk of St. Meinrad’s remembered for embodying spirit of liturgy in music

By Adam Bartlett

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The late Father Columba Kelly, OSB, and the author, Adam Bartlett, in January 2018.

Upholding the primacy of Gregorian chant as the supreme model of sacred music and realizing that “any new forms adopted [such as vernacular liturgical music] should in some way grow organically from forms already existing,” Father Columba Kelly, OSB, realized that his principal vocation was to apply his newly gained insights about the Gregorian musical language to the idiom of the English language. And thus, he began composing English chant.

Fifty vs. Five When Guéranger—the father of the modern Liturgical Movement—decided to undertake the work of restoring Gregorian chant to its original purity after centuries of decay and mutilation, he sent his monks across Europe to collect images of the oldest chant manuscripts that could be found. His method was to study the contents of these manuscripts systematically and compare them line by line and neume by neume, in order to discern and determine the most authentic melodic restitution of the Gregorian tradition prior to the injurious influence of the development of polyphony and the early-Modern melodic revisions made around the Council of Trent. At this time, around the 1850’s and 60’s, Guéranger estimated that the project of restoration—including the task of decoding and understanding the mean-

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Early Life Father Columba Kelly was born and raised on a farm in rural Iowa in the 1930’s. An only child, he came of age during and in the years immediately following the Second World War. He began his college years studying music at St. Ambrose College before transferring to St. Meinrad College. During this time he took an interest in the monastic community at St. Meinrad Archabbey.

Almost immediately following his full reception into the monastery, the young monk was sent to Rome to study theology and Gregorian musicology. After receiving a licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’ Anselmo in 1958, the 28-year-old monk began doctoral studies at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, which would inspire and invigorate his work for the remainder of his life.

Upon arriving at the Pontifical Institute, he undertook the mentorship of his principal teacher and dissertation director Dom Eugène Cardine, OSB, a

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very summer for decades, Father Columba Kelly, OSB, offered two week-long seminars on Gregorian chant at his monastic home of St. Meinrad Archabbey entitled “Bringing to Life the Word of God in Song.” This brief dictum sufficiently summarizes the life and mission of a monk and a man dedicated to cultivating within the liturgical life of the Church what Ratzinger has called the “musification of faith”—“a part of the process of the incarnation of the Word.”1 Father Columba not only scientifically studied this sacramental phenomenon through the lens of Gregorian chant, made manifest through the singing of sacred song in the context of the solemn liturgy—but he also understood it and encountered it daily in his sung prayer as a faithful Benedictine monk.

Father Columba Kelly, a monk and priest of St. Meinrad Archabbey, died on June 9, 2018 at the age of 87. Born in Williamsburg, IA, on October 30, 1930, he was invested as a novice monk on July 30, 1952, and he professed simple vows on July 31, 1953, and solemn vows on August 6, 1956. He became internationally influential for his work in Gregorian musicology, English chant composition, and for the workshops he offered to parish musicians and religious communities.

Following his passing, some of his students posted pictures of notes written to them by the master, all of which concluded with a valediction similar to “May the Holy Spirit help you turn faith to song.” Such was the seemingly singular goal of his vocation, as well as his invitation to the Church in our day and to future generations.

Dom Columba’s life and work—masterful and timely, though not without misunderstanding by many—was carried out with constant joy, dedication, and unwavering enthusiasm up through the very last days of his 87-year life. His insights into the inner life and meaning of Gregorian chant will undoubtedly endure well beyond his time—through his theoretical writing and musical composition, and through the work of his dedicated disciples. His contributions to Church music also will echo into eternity through the very celebration of the sung liturgy which he fostered, where the logos, the Eternal Word of God, sings through his Mystical Body on earth, uniting it to the eternal song of the liturgy in heaven.

10th c. codex St. Gall 359, just as his classmates and colleagues were doing for the other neume forms which constitute the earliest elements of musical notation in the Western tradition. Under the hermeneutical and methodological guidance of Cardine, they were soon to cover comprehensively and synthesize all of the neumatic data found in the principal and most ancient chant manuscripts.

Solesmes’ multigenerational project of Gregorian chant restoration, in which Dom Columba became immersed in its final stages, is a storied one.2 The story received by his students (I, being one of them) as told at the beginning of each of his seminars, is as he received it from Cardine, who received it from predecessors Doms André Mocquereau and Joseph Gajard.

It is worth retelling here in order to demonstrate the significance of the contribution made by Father Columba and his colleagues in the Cardine school.

Adam Bartlett interviews his mentor, Father Columba Kelly, OSB, at St. Meinrad Archabbey in 2015. On this occasion, Father Columba was presented with the Spritus Liturgiae award by the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, for his penetrating insight and tireless contributions to the liturgical apostolate.

monk of the Abbey of Solesmes and the father of Gregorian Semiology. Cardine, during his time directing the Gregorian chant program in Rome, employed his students as researchers in the task of completing the project of the restora-

tion of Gregorian chant, commissioned and begun by Dom Prosper Guéranger a century earlier. Over the course of the next five years, Father Columba undertook an exhaustive study of the cursive torculus neume design as found in the

ing of the neumes in the oldest manuscripts—would take one hundred years to complete.

Approximately fifty years later, a former chorister who had sung from early Please see COLUMBA on page 10

10 Cont. from COLUMBA on page 9 chant editions produced by Solesmes ascended to the chair of Peter. Within months of his election to the papacy, Pope St. Pius X became determined to issue a motu proprio on sacred music, calling for a universal return to Gregorian chant as the foundational song of the liturgy.

Prior to releasing Tra le sollecitudini,3 the Pope called Dom Mocquereau into his chamber. He asked the monk and leader of the Solesmes restoration at the time a simple question: “How long will it take to complete the restored editions of Gregorian chant?” The pope stressed that he intended to call the universal Church back to Gregorian chant and needed practical editions for them to sing from.

Mocquereau responded: “Surely, your Holiness, it will take fifty more years.”

The Pope paused for a moment, contemplating his response, and then raised his index finger to Mocquereau, shaking it. “No, no,” he declared, “it will take you five!”

And so it happened that the motu proprio on sacred music was issued in 1903 and the Vatican Edition of the Graduale Romanum followed five years later, in 1908. Out of necessity, practical methods of singing were devised in haste in order to help the choirs of the world begin to sing the chants of the revised editions with some degree of beauty and success. Guéranger’s uncompleted work, however, continued and was brought to fruition in Rome in the 1950’s and 60’s—100 years following the project’s inception—by Dom Cardine and his students, including the bright young American, Dom Columba Kelly.

In service of the Word The fundamental insight that Father Columba and the Cardine school arrived at after the completion of their exhaustive study is that Gregorian chant is a musical form that is in complete service of and subservience to the text, of the liturgical word—that is, of the logos, the living and acting Word of God that becomes enfleshed in musical form in the sacred liturgy. Gregorian chant (as Father Columba certainly would have had inscribed as the epitaph on his tombstone if he could) is “sung speech.”

This conclusion, and the practical consequences that flow from it, in many ways contrasted with theories of Gregorian rhythm that had previously developed in the early decades of the 20th century—especially the theory of musical rhythm devised by Dom André Mocquereau. The young and optimistic Columba, however, did not appear to be determined to ignite a revolution against devotees of previous, if not fully informed, chant praxis methods.

Unfortunately, this is precisely how he was received by many of his American peers at his homecoming.

And besides, another revolutionary moment in the Church was already brewing. During Father Columba’s time in Rome, Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council. The young musicologist soon became surrounded by the very players who were drafting and debating the Council’s liturgy constitution, Sacrosanctum Concilium.

A hotly debated subject on the Council floor, not surprisingly, was the introduction of vernacular languages into the liturgy. While Kelly and the Cardine school remained fully devoted to the Latin Gregorian chant to which they had dedicated their lives, they also recognized that the vernacular was coming whether they liked it or not.

Father Columba successfully defended his dissertation in November

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

Q A

THE RITE QUESTIONS : Is it appropriate to conclude the Universal Prayer with a prayer said by all, such as the Hail Mary or other text?

: The Universal Prayer is an ancient element of the celebration of Mass, and in keeping with the tradition of the Church no one should modify the prayer. We should, rather, endeavor to understand why the prayer is structured the way it is.

The liturgical prayer of the Mass has its own, proper structure. The Church jealously guards that structure and retains the right to change or modify it, insisting that no one is “permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of the Mass” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 24.).

The Fathers of the Church have always seen the liturgy as a kind of symphony (in fact, ‘symphonia’ is the word that St. John Chrysostom uses to describe it [PG 55, 522]) in which each part contributes to the whole and each person fulfills his or her role fully. The Church today still maintains this ancient principle and is thus explicit in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, that all, ministers and “lay Christian Faithful, in fulfilling their function or their duty, should carry out solely but totally that which pertains to them” (GIRM, 91, emphasis added).

There are distinct roles for each member of the liturgical assembly, and each one must fulfill that role as well as possible. The Universal Prayer, or Prayer of the Faithful, is a particularly good ex-

ample of this. While to some extent the prayer is flexible—especially in its content—the Church makes no provision for changing its structure or ministers.

The Universal Prayer has a very long history. The first indication of such a prayer in the early Church comes to us from Saint Paul’s first letter to Timothy (2:1-2). This practice is repeated in the instructions given by the Didache (end of the first century) and in the Letter of Pope Clement I, who says, “Let us entreat the Creator of all things with urgent petition and supplication….”

The most exquisite model for this prayer is provided in the Good Friday liturgy. Notice how the intercessions constitute a kind of crowning of the Liturgy of the Word: the Holy Week celebration calls them “The Solemn Intercessions.” It gives this pattern: the deacon expresses the intention. “Then all pray in silence for a while,” after which the priest delivers a prayer which acts to gather or “collect” the silent prayers. Then the faithful respond, “Amen.”

At Mass the prayer’s structure is described by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. “It is for the priest celebrant to regulate this prayer” (GIRM, 71). He begins by inviting the people to pray. The deacon or another minister announces the intercessions. For their part, the whole faithful express their participation internally by joining their hearts to

the petition announced by the deacon and then affirm their participation externally by some form of response or by silent prayer (GIRM, 71).

The priest celebrant offers the “concluding prayer, which should always be brief, [and] is always addressed to God the Father…,” since the liturgical prayer of Christ’s body is always joined to the prayer of Christ the Head who prays to his Father (Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy Newsletter, 11:3, 468).

In this symphony of prayer, the parts and the roles are distinct: the priest celebrant invites, the deacon (or other minister) announces the petitions, the faithful respond, the priest celebrant concludes, and the faithful respond again.

Baptism equips Christians to participate in the priestly office of Christ: to offer prayer on behalf of others and to offer sacrifice. Thus, historically only the baptized were allowed to participate in the Prayer of the Faithful. A great dignity is assigned to this task. The faithful intercede on behalf of others for the needs of the world. In line with the vision of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, in the General Intercessions the Church expresses “its permanent role as a sign of Christ on Earth. The Church made present…assumes its role as advocate of the human family” (BCL Newsletter, 11:3, 467).

—Answered by Father Douglas Martis

every verse of the opening hymn Q : atMust Mass be used?

A : While every verse of a Mass’s opening hymn may be sung, the musical tradition suggests it is not necessary to do so.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) gives four options for singing at the beginning of the Mass: “(1) the antiphon from the Missal or the antiphon with its Psalm from the Graduale Romanum as set to music there or in another setting; (2) the antiphon and Psalm of the Graduale Simplex for the liturgical time; (3) a chant from another collection of Psalms and antiphons, approved by the Conference of Bishops or the Diocesan Bishop, including Psalms arranged in responsorial or metrical forms; (4) another liturgical chant that is suited to the sacred action, the day, or the time of year, similarly approved by the Conference of Bishops or the Diocesan Bishop” (n.48).

The hymn (“another chant”) is the last option, and whether its location should be read as an indication of the Church’s preference or not, its place does reflect the musical tradition of the Church, at least ideally. At Mass, the normative model for singing at the

entrance has been—and still is—the antiphon and psalm pattern, as the first three options in the GIRM attest.

The Church’s hymn tradition is by and large found in the Liturgy of the Hours (see Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship, 115).

The Graduale Simplex, or Simple Gradual, mentioned above in GIRM 48, describes how the antiphon and psalm pattern is used: “The entrance, offertory, and communion antiphons are sung with one verse or with several as the circumstances suggest. An antiphon is repeated after the verses of a psalm. But there is an option regarding versicles, even including omission of some of them, provided the versicles retained express a complete thought” (19, translation in By Flowing Waters, xxviii,

by Paul F. Ford). Thus, the objective of the opening chant is not simply to sing each of a psalm’s verses but (among other things) to accompany the minsters to their places in the sanctuary: the procession is the principal action, and the music serves the procession. The antiphon and psalm pattern is perfectly suited to this very purpose. When the hymn is substituted for the antiphon

and psalm, its own verses should be used similarly.

But the Graduale’s direction that the verses sung “express a compete thought” is noteworthy for hymns based upon the Trinity: if verses one and two praise God the Father and God the Son, respectively, verse three ought not to be omitted along with the Holy Spirit!

The GIRM gives other purposes of the entrance chant, namely, “to open the celebration, foster the unity of those who have been gathered, introduce their thoughts to the mystery of the liturgical time or festivity, and accompany the procession of the Priest and ministers” (47). In addition to attending the procession, the “liturgical time or festivity” may dictate additional verses: a solemnity merits more musical attention than does a weekday.

Thus, based on the Church’s documents and traditional practices, but also on particular circumstances of the day or celebration, a hymn’s verses may conclude when the ministers reach their places or continue. No fixed rule is applicable.

—Answered by Christopher Carstens, Editor

of 1963, and immediately returned to St. Meinrad Archabbey and the rolling hills of southern Indiana.

Weeks later, Sacrosanctum Concilium was promulgated and released to the Church universal. The newly minted monastic choirmaster quickly began to see the work that was coming before him.

cal climate of the 1960’s, it suffices to say that the use of the vernacular in the liturgy became widespread virtually everywhere, and almost instantly. This phenomenon undoubtedly discouraged Dom Columba, the young and idealistic Gregorianist. Working carefully through the dynamic as it presented itself, however, Father Columba discerned a faithful path forward.

Upholding the primacy of Gregorian chant as the supreme model of sacred music, as Pope Pius X taught

and the Council affirmed, and realizing that “any new forms adopted [such as vernacular liturgical music] should in some way grow organically from forms already existing,”4 he realized that his principal vocation was to apply his newly gained insights about the Gregorian musical language to the idiom of the English language. And thus, he began composing English chant.

Because of his penetrating

Vernacular Chant Without needing to comment further on the complexities of the ecclesiasti-

Please see COLUMBA on page 11

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

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of the Liturgy and called for a new liturgical movement in the Church’s life. Just as the hunger for beauty, tradition, and a faithful re-reading of the Council documents began to emerge, Dom Columba was equipped and prepared to shed his wisdom on the leaders of the next generation, and to pass on to them the treasures that he had continually amassed even when they were judged by most to be obsolete. During this time he began to publish English chant settings online and also with GIA Publications and Oregon Catholic Press.

understanding of the innate sacramentality found in Gregorian chant’s musical form, he realized that its musical language—its very genius—can inform the development of vernacular chant repertoires that do not merely mimic, but that actually achieve the goals of Gregorian chant itself.

By composing and adapting chant melodies for English liturgical texts, he was decisively avoiding the mere retrofitting of English texts into existing melodies written for Latin texts—this would be virtually impossible, and produce lackluster results at best.

Instead, he saw the need to get into the minds of the Gregorian composers, and to approach English texts as they approached the Latin texts, armed with a penetrating insight into their musical vocabulary and creative impulse.

The result was a decades-long effort of crafting an entire corpus of English chant which, though sung daily by the monks, unfortunately was almost never heard outside the walls of the St. Meinrad Archabbey church.

In spite of the apparent disinterest in vernacular chant on the part of most parishes and liturgical publishers in the decades following the Council, the tide began to change rather dramatically around the year 2000. At precisely that time, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger— Dom Columba’s liturgical-theological kindred spirit—published The Spirit

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Wonder Monk Despite his genius, Father Columba was known by his pupils to be not the most prodigious pedagogue. To harvest the bounty of his wisdom required some special skills and advanced machinery, but for those who were able to share in the banquet, a lavish feast was set before them. His students often said of his courses and seminars: “The syllabus never changes but the content is always different.” And because of this fact, they returned to sit at the feet of the master time and again. The source of Father Columba’s singular genius is the wonder that he experienced as he faced the mystery of the sung liturgy—a mystery which he knew he was only just beginning to grasp.

He also loved digital technology and did his best to keep up with its

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development. Within the past year, as he sat marvelling at the pedagogical possibilities presented by the iPad Pro, he gave his characteristic sigh and click of the tongue, repeating with his childlike grin the quip of Pope John XXIII after he had called the Council: “Well, I’m at the top of my heap and at the end of my rope!” His sense of perpetual youthfulness and untiring enthusiasm at the end of his life, despite his chronic pain and ailing frame, was a witness to all of the power of a vocation dedicated to truth, beauty, and goodness, and to the life-giving power of liturgical prayer which constantly restores the joy of youth.

Body and Soul In 2015, Dom Columba was given the Spritus Liturgiae award by the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL, for his penetrating insight and tireless contributions to the liturgical apostolate. He passed away peacefully in his sleep on June 9, 2018, just before Vespers on his patronal feast day of St. Columba of Iona.

Father Columba Kelly will be dearly missed by the fortunate few who had his friendship in this life and who truly knew and understood his mind.

In many ways, he lived well ahead of his time, and it seems certain that the impact of his life and work has only just begun. The younger and future

generations who will continue to hunger for a liturgical beauty that is ever-ancient ever-new will discover the insights of Dom Columba and will come to share in the wonder of encountering the living Word of God in the sung prayer of the Church.

May the Lord now grant him full entry into the ranks of the heavenly choir where the musification of faith on earth becomes the song of eternal glory.

Adam Bartlett is a composer and conductor of Catholic sacred music and serves as President and Editor of Illuminare Publications. He is composer and editor of Simple English Propers, and editor of the Lumen Christi Missal, Lumen Christi Simple Gradual, and Lumen Christi Hymnal.

Active as a speaker, teacher, writer and clinician, Adam speaks and presents on topics of liturgy, music, and the new evangelization throughout the United States and English-speaking world. He resides in Denver, CO, with his wife and two daughters.

1. See Ratzinger, Address to the Eighth International Church Music Congress, Rome, November 17, 1985, https://adoremus.org/2008/04/15/Liturgyand-Sacred-Music/ 2. See Pierre Combe, The Restoration of Gregorian Chant: Solesmes and the Vatican Edition, 2003, Catholic University of America Press.

3. https://adoremus.org/1903/11/22/tra-lesollecitudini/ 4. SC 23

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2018

An Intersection on the Road to Emmaus - New Book on Christian Initiation Maps Out Where Liturgy, Catechism, and Personal Conversion Meet

By Monsignor John Pollard

art of uniting ourselves to God. Carefully listening to the words of the liturgical rites, allowing the sacred signs to penetrate our consciousness and noticing the significance of even the simplest of gestures within the liturgical action can lead us into the center of ourselves where God awaits.

Third, revitalized liturgical catechesis develops the ability to cooperate with the grace of God. Sacraments give grace; they bring about what their respective signs reveal. Knowing that the effects of the sacraments are life-changing, being open to receiving those effects and bearing witness to the changes brought about by that sacramental grace draws forth from us a certain docility to the action of God in our lives.

Pauley summarizes it well when he writes, “These three skills, learned in liturgical catechesis, can deeply influence the quality of our liturgical experience.

The skill of preparing ourselves helps us to be attuned to the presence and action of God. The art of uniting ourselves to the words and signs of the liturgy enables us to offer true worship to God and to be sanctified through his gift of divine grace.

And, finally, that ability to identify and cooperate with the supernatural effects of the sacraments empowers us to grow in holiness and to reach out to others in acts of evangelization and loving service.”

Liturgical Catechesis in the 21st Century: A School of Discipleship by James C. Pauley. Chicago: Liturgical Training Publications, 2017. 256 pp. ISBN: 978-1-61671360-7. $28.95 paperback; $23.95 eBook.

I

n the original edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a visual work of art wordlessly introduces each of the four pillars. The intention is to present the material of the particular section of the Catechism in the context of the illustration. The same is true for the reproduction of the Garcia painting found on the cover of James Pauley’s Liturgical Catechesis in the 21st Century: A School of Discipleship. This illustration of Christ’s breaking bread with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus provides the hermeneutical key for understanding the book’s major thesis. This picture is not a surprising reference since catechists have looked to the Emmaus story for inspiration since it was recorded. Historically, complete series of very successful catechetical texts based on the dynamics of the Emmaus story have been published which have profoundly influenced the development of catechetical ministry.

Pauley asserts that a revitalized liturgical catechesis has a transformative effect in the lives of the persons involved in the liturgical/catechetical encounter. In the Preface he describes what he means by a revitalized liturgical catechesis. He states, “It is my deepest conviction that the more catechesis and liturgy are harmonized with one another in how they are conducted today, the more transformative they both will be to the great good of the Church and the world.”

He divides his argument into three parts: the relationship of liturgy and catechesis, the purpose of liturgical catechesis, and emerging practices of liturgical catechesis.

Today by Yesterday The first part describes the dismal situation of attrition in the Church today.

Fewer and fewer people are participating in the liturgy. Nevertheless, the impulse of the Church in every age is to find a way to lead people toward an encounter with God. In the post-conciliar Church, this way involves an evangelizing catechesis, a catechesis that aims, as St. John Paul II wrote in Catechesi Tradendae, “to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy with Jesus Christ” (§5).

Thus, an evangelizing catechesis comprises much more than doctrinal exposition and explanation.

Pauley ably traces the development of this understanding through the liturgical movement, the catechetical movement, and especially in the light of Sacrosanctum Concilium. Leaders in both these movements recognized that Catholics had lost their sense of the supernatural.

Both liturgists and catechists advised recovering a sense of the sacred by drawing closer to the source of divine grace in the liturgy. And the Council Fathers endorsed this direction by their insistence that liturgy and catechesis have respective but interdependent roles within the Church’s pastoral mission.

Centuries earlier, the Fathers of the Church arrived at this insight, expressed especially in the catechetical writings of Augustine in which the formal instruction of the newly-baptized largely followed their reception of the sacrament.

And even earlier, in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke reports that the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized after only one period of Philip’s instruction, and Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth, and her whole household were baptized after only one of

Paul’s lessons. In the first century, at least, there seems to have been a certain harmony between liturgy and catechesis, a harmony that actually had a transformative effect on those in which the fruits of that harmony unfolded.

Pauley rightly recognizes that this harmony seems most naturally evident in the apprenticeship model. It is potentially a particularly effective setting for the integration of liturgy and catechesis.

Once again, the Fathers recognized this intersection of prayer and learning—and even more importantly—so did Jesus.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were transformed by their catechetical encounter and their subsequent literal communion with Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They reversed their fearful journey away from the site of Christ’s Passion and death and immediately returned to Jerusalem to take up the preaching of that very cross.

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults also proposes the same model as a training period for neophytes as does Pope Francis as he develops the paradigm of personal accompaniment in his papacy. Within a personal relationship such as an apprenticeship, one does not merely learn the skills of the art, but the life of the artisan. A catechesis of apprenticeship is training for living the Christian life and for celebrating the Christian faith in the liturgy and sacraments. The hope is that the apprentice begins to sense that the master in the relationship is really the Master himself, not the catechist. The apprentice has been put not just in touch, but in communion with Jesus. This is a sacramental experience, an experience of divine encounter, the harmonious integration of liturgy and catechesis.

Close Encounter The second part of the book proposes liturgical catechesis as a way to encounter God. Here Pauley retrieves the seminal work of Cyprian Vagaggini, OSB, and Sofia Cavalletti on the notion of liturgy as the “privileged place of encounter of man with God.” These writers are both scholars and practitioners of what they profess, and their perspective on the possible transformative impact of a revived liturgical catechesis on the person is critical to the project of this book. In light of what the author terms “liturgical boredom,” he asserts that “the more we become convinced that the sacraments are transformative encounters with God—real exchanges of love with the One in whom all true love originates— and these encounters have supernatural effects, the more interesting they will become for people today.”

So, the catechetical plan must be to convince Catholics that the sacraments are transformative encounters with God. In other words, the catechetical plan is to allow the rites to instruct, the liturgy to facilitate man’s encounter with God, and the sacraments to give grace. The attempt to formulate such a catechetical plan is a formidable challenge, but I think the right one—or at least a hopeful one.

The book does not leave the reader— or the catechist for that matter—adrift beneath the weight of this challenge, but offers some helpful suggestions adapted from the experience of being in spiritual direction. First of all, a revitalized liturgical catechesis develops the skill of attuning ourselves to God, learning to become present to God and becoming comfortable in his presence. This can gradually emerge through cultivating stillness, focusing attention on the liturgical signs, creating prayerful moments and practicing attentiveness.

Second, such catechesis develops the

Parish Praxis The final part of the book consists of four emerging practices of parish catechesis that “envision in concrete terms how liturgical catechesis can be a school of transformative discipleship for people of different ages.” Two emerging practices are presented for use with young children; one for youth discipleship; and one for the RCIA. Each one is impressive on its own, imaginative, courageous, even daring. All attempt to harmonize liturgy and catechesis in the prudent hope that such a revitalized liturgical catechesis will make a difference in the lives of both catechists and those catechized. Each of these emerging practices heavily depends for success on agents—animators, partners, catechists, mentors, masters—of extraordinary faith and competence.

The author has nobly and persuasively argued for his fundamental assertion that a revitalized catechesis has a transformative effect within the faithful person.

Pauley has retrieved some of the most precious treasures from the Church’s catechetical and liturgical storehouse to shore up his assertion. In fact, he has called the Church back to her basic kerygma, to her apostolic preaching, to a time when liturgy and catechesis were inseparable. He has called the Church back to the road to Emmaus. If he has not proven his premise entirely, in my view he has proven a rather more modest one— that a revitalized liturgical catechesis can create the conditions for the possibility of personal transformation. The rest must be left to the Holy Spirit.

Monsignor John E. Pollard, STL, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, currently serving as Pastor of Queen of All Saints Basilica. Monsignor Pollard served as the founding Director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for the Catechism (1992–1999) and was appointed by Cardinal George as the founding Director of the Office of Education, and subsequently as the founding Director for the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In addition to several books and dozens of journal articles, Monsignor Pollard wrote the general introductory essay for Liturgy Training Publications’ The Catechetical Documents (2007).