Adoremus Bulletin - September 2020 Issue

Adoremus Bulletin

SEPTEMBER 2020

Vatican: Baptisms Administered ‘in name of the community’ are Invalid

By Hannah Brockhaus

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VATICAN CITY (CNA)—The Vatican’s doctrinal office issued August 6 a clarification on the sacrament of baptism, stating changes to the formula to emphasize community participation are not permitted.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) responded to a question about whether it would be valid to administer the sacrament of baptism saying, “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The formula for baptism, according to the Catholic Church, is “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The CDF ruled that any baptisms administered with the formula “we baptize” are invalid and anyone for whom the sacrament was celebrated with this formula must be baptized in forma absoluta, meaning the person should be considered as not yet having received the sacrament.

The Vatican said it was responding to questions on baptismal validity after recent celebrations of the sacrament of baptism used the words “In the name of the father and of the mother, of the godfather and of the godmother, of the grandparents, of the family members, of the friends, in the name of the community we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The response was approved by Pope Francis and signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

A doctrinal note from the CDF Please see BAPTISM on next page

XXVI, No.2

Black and White and Read All Over: Readers Celebrate 25 Years of Adoremus Bulletin

By Joseph O’Brien, Managing Editor

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doremus Bulletin is celebrating 25 years of publishing in 2020—and throughout those years, the publication has collaborated with expert writers and thinkers on the sacred liturgy and its important place in the life of the Church. But Adoremus’s editors have also always provided ample space for its most important collaborators—Adoremus readers.

It was not uncommon in the past for readers’ letters to take up one or two whole pages of an issue—and while letter writing seems to have fallen out of fashion with the advent of the internet, email, and texting putting snail mail on the endangered species list, the editors at Adoremus still receive stamped-andaddressed correspondence through the U.S. Post Office from readers—as well as phone calls and emails—responding, commenting, and generally keeping in touch.

If Adoremus Bulletin takes pride in its team of writers—priests and lay persons from all corners of the world—it also recognizes that no publication is any better than the readers who support it. For the last 25 years, Adoremus can proudly claim to have some of the most devoted readers in the publishing business. To honor our readership—and ensure that we’re hearing them loud and clear—the editors have invited Adoremus’s audience to tell us what they liked best about the Adoremus Bulletin—how they use what they learn in its pages in their professional lives and personal lives, and why it is maintaining its stated mission: “to rediscover and restore the beauty, the holiness, and the power of the Church’s rich liturgical tradition while remaining faithful to an organic, living process of renewal.”

The response we received—from lay persons and clergy—is a testament to the faith of our readers and an encouraging sign that Adoremus has a place in the ongoing conversation about the life of faith in the modern world—with a special and ardent focus on the timeless relevance of the sacred liturgy.

Collaborative Service Because the Catholic clergy have devoted their lives to providing the faithful the sacraments as an authentic encounter with Christ through the lit-

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Adoremus Bulletin SEPTEMBER 2020

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News & Views

For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy

If Adoremus Bulletin takes pride in its team of writers—priests and lay persons from all corners of the world—it also recognizes that no publication is any better than the readers who support it. For the last 25 years, Adoremus can proudly claim to have some of the most devoted readers in the publishing business.

urgy, it is not surprising that a number of clergy—deacons and priests—have counted themselves among the most avid readers of the Bulletin.

Adoremus reader Deacon Paul Lim has only recently subscribed to the print edition of the publication, but he told Adoremus that he’s been a long-time reader of the Adoremus website. It was another venue, however, which proved to be the tipping point for Deacon Lim’s decision to subscribe.

“I’m only on my second print issue,” he said, explaining that he decided it was time to receive the print edition during the 2020 Triduum. “I had been a listener to the Liturgy Guys podcast [with Adoremus editor, Chris Carstens, and regular Adoremus contributor, Denis McNamara] for quite a while—maybe two or three years. I just found the conversation so stimulating.”

Because of the pandemic lockdown, Deacon Lim said, he was looking for more outlets to continue his education in all things liturgical—and Adoremus Bulletin fit the bill.

“When I was in diaconate formation, I found myself constantly being engaged, and there was such good conversation in every direction,” he said.

“Then, once you’re ordained and out in the real world, you don’t have that.

It just goes away. I felt I wanted to ex-

Black and White and Read All Over…

We asked—and you responded. As part of our 25th anniversary coverage, Joseph O’Brien reports on what readers have to say about Adoremus Bulletin.............................................1 The Shock of the Familiar The French call it jamais vu—seeing the familiar anew—and Christopher Carstens sees COVID as a jump-start for this reversedéjà vu when it comes to the sacraments.......3 Power to the People!

Denis McNamara writes that the People of God (as the Second Vatican Council envisioned that term) find their surest bearing—en masse—as the Mystical Body.....6

plore more about the liturgy. So when I started checking out the Adoremus Bulletin, I fell in love with it. It was perfect for what I needed—to dig deeper and to know more about the sacred liturgy.”

Noting his appreciation for how Adoremus presents the liturgy in a “concise way,” Deacon Lim also finds practical application within its pages.

Ordained a deacon only a few months ago, on June 13, Deacon Lim, 43, told Adoremus that he is the “youngest deacon in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.”

Serving three parishes in Pittsburg, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Margaret of Scotland, and Sts. Simon and Jude, he said it’s easy to see the work of a deacon become service-oriented, which is how it should be. But at the heart of his work, he said, the liturgy must take precedence.

“So when Adoremus includes the practical things such as I find in the Rite Questions or something like an article on the liturgy’s connection to the domestic church—that’s neat,” he said. “As a deacon, that’s something close to me because a lot of what happens in the liturgy is brought forth into the world, especially for the deacon. A lot of people think the deacon only sits next to the priest during Mass—and he does do that—but the rest of my ministry is away Please see READERS on page 4 One Church to Another…

According to Richard Budd, the domestic church can teach a thing or two—namely the proper ordering of liturgy and devotional prayer—to the universal Church.....................8 It’s Always Personal Reviewing Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Liturgy and Personality, Father Nick Blaha shows how the liturgy is the focal point of our personal (yet selfless) encounter with God..................12 News & Views ....................................................1 Readers’ Quiz......................................................3 The Rite Questions...........................................10

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

NEWS & VIEWS

August 6 said “with debatable pastoral motives, here resurfaces the ancient temptation to substitute for the formula handed down by Tradition other texts judged more suitable.”

Quoting the Second Vatican Council document Sacrosanctum Concilium, the note clarified that “no one, ‘even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.’”

The reason for this, the CDF explained, is that when a minister administers the sacrament of baptism, “it is really Christ Himself who baptizes.”

The sacraments were instituted by Jesus Christ, and “are entrusted to the Church to be preserved by her,” the congregation stated.

“When celebrating a Sacrament,” it continued, “the Church in fact functions as the Body that acts inseparably from its Head, since it is Christ the Head who acts in the ecclesial Body generated by him in the Paschal mystery.”

“It is therefore understandable that in the course of the centuries the Church has safeguarded the form of the celebration of the Sacraments, above all in those elements to which Scripture attests and that make it possible to recognize with absolute clarity the gesture of Christ in the ritual action of the Church,” the Vatican clarified.

According to the CDF, the “deliberate modification of the sacramental formula” to use “we” instead of “I” appears to have been done “to express the participation of the family and of those present, and to avoid the idea of the concentration of a sacred power in the priest to the detriment of the parents and the community.”

In a footnote, the CDF note explained that in reality, the Church’s Rite of Baptism of Children already includes active roles for the parents, godparents, and the entire community in the celebration.

According to the provisions laid out in Sacrosanctum Concilium, “each person, minister or layman, who has an office to perform, should do all of, but only, those parts which pertain to his office by the nature of the rite and the principles of liturgy.”

The minister of the sacrament of baptism, whether a priest or lay person, is “the sign-presence of Him who gathers, and is at the same time the locus of the communion of every liturgical assembly with the whole Church,” the explanatory note said.

“In other words, the minister is the visible sign that the Sacrament is not subject to an arbitrary action of individuals or of the community, and that it pertains to the Universal Church.”

CDWDS Confirms Hymnody of the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship

The English translation of the corpus of hymns for the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition has been confirmed for the United States by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The decree of confirmation was dated May 14, 2020 and received by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at the end of that month.

Encouraged by the Committee on Divine Worship and the Holy See, USCCB Communications has begun work on preparing a hymnal, with technical assistance provided by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). The hymns will be available for immediate liturgical use upon publication, but will remain optional for use in the Divine Office until the completion and implementation of the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition.

The 294 hymns that are included in the present Liturgia Horarum represent the long and rich tradition of Catholic hymnody and are drawn from sources both ancient and modern. The earliest works come from the fourth century, such as the frequently-used Te Deum and a number of hymns by St. Ambrose and Prudentius. Three 13th-century hymns attrib-

uted to St. Thomas Aquinas for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ are also part of the collection: Pange, lingua, gloriosi (including the Tantum ergo hymn as its last two verses), Sacris sollemniis, and Verbum supernum prodiens (including its last two verses, the O salutaris hostia). These texts have received new liturgical translations, although more familiar translations can still be used, especially for Eucharistic Adoration.

In the 20th century, the committee working on the reform of the Divine Office after the Second Vatican Council emended and organized the hymnody, also including new hymns composed by Dom Anselmo Lentini, OSB. The most recent hymn was added to the Liturgia Horarum in February 2018, when the Holy See issued the hymn Virgo, mater Ecclesiæ for Evening Prayer of the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.

A “scope of work” for the preparation of a new edition of the Liturgy of the Hours was approved by the body of bishops in November 2012. Among other items, it was decided that the future Breviary should contain English translations of the Latin hymns from the Liturgia Horarum, and ICEL began its translation work soon thereafter. ICEL was guided by four overarching principles as it worked on the hymnody: 1) to give the full sense of the Latin text in English; 2) to produce texts that sing well, for those who sing them

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Continued from BAPTISM, page 1

Vatican Publishes Instructions on Parish Reform and Diocesan Restructuring

By Courtney Mares

VATICAN CITY (CNA)—The Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy published instructions on July 20 on reforming parishes and restructuring dioceses to better serve their “singular mission of evangelization.”

The 24-page document is called “The pastoral conversion of the parish community in the service of the evangelizing mission of the Church” and seeks to “foster a greater co-responsibility and collaboration among all the baptised,” according to Msgr. Andrea Ripa, the under-secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy.

The under-secretary described the instructional document as an “instrument with which to support and accompany the various projects of parish reform and diocesan restructuring.”

“One could say that the essence of the present Instruction is to recall that in the Church ‘there is a place for all and all can find their place,’ with respect to each one’s vocation,” Msgr. Ripa said in an introduction to the document July 20.

The instruction, which does not introduce anything new to Church law, sets out provisions of the existing law and guidelines to preserve “the faithful from certain possible extremes, such as the clericalization of the laity and the secularization of the clergy, or from regarding permanent deacons as ‘half-priests’ or a ‘super laymen,’” the under-secretary wrote.

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and who may also wish to use them in other contexts; 3) to produce texts that read well, particularly for those who recite the Hours; and 4) to produce English texts that reflect the sobriety and theological depth of the rich and living tradition of hymnody that is a treasure of the Western Church.

ICEL’s hymn translations began appearing in draft form (“Green Books”) along with other material for the Breviary starting in May 2014, and bishops in the United States and around the English-speaking world provided comments and suggestions to improve the texts. Eventually, the hymns from various sections of the Divine Office were consolidated into one collection, with the final translation (“Gray Book”) transmitted to the conferences of Bishops in May 2019.

The Committee on Divine Worship approved them the following month and presented the hymns to the Latin Church bishops for canonical vote in November 2019. Before the vote, the Committee arranged for a musical demonstration of the hymnody with a small choir from The Catholic University of America and the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and the bishops sang two of the proposed hymn translations to both Gregorian and metrical settings. Following its approval by the USCCB, the hymns were sent to the Holy See for the requisite confirmation, which has now been received.

— from The Committee on Divine Worship Newsletter, Vol. LVI, May-June 2020 Signed by Pope Francis June 29, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the instruction promotes greater cooperation among different parish communities, emphasizing the need for the parish to be inclusive, evangelizing, and attentive to the poor.

“Pastoral activity needs to go beyond merely the territorial limits of the parish, to make ecclesial communion more clearly transparent by means of the synergy between ministers and diverse charisms, structuring itself as a ‘pastoral care for all,’ at the service of the diocese and of its mission,” the document states.

To achieve this goal, the document recommends the establishment of “pastoral regions or units” entrusted to the oversight of an episcopal vicar appointed by the bishop.

“At the heart of a process of renewal, instead of passively undergoing change by supporting and going along with it, there exists today the need to individuate new structures that will incite all those who make up the Christian community to fulfill their vocation to evangelize, with a view to a more effective pastoral care of the People of God, the ‘key factor’ of which is proximity,” it states.

The document builds on the 2002 instruction from the Congregation of Clergy, “The Priest, Pastor and Leader of the Parish Community,” and the Vatican interdicasterial instruction Ecclesia de Mysterio, on the collaboration of laity in the ministry of priests.

It includes instructions on the suppression or merging of parishes, ways of assigning pastoral ministry within the parish, the pastoral council, the sacraments, and the renewal or “conversion” of parish and diocesan structures.

“The historical parish institution (must) not remain a prisoner of immobility or of a worrisome pastoral repetition, but rather, it should put into action that ‘outgoing dynamism’ that, through collaboration among different parish communities and a reinforced communion among clergy and laity, will orient it effectively toward an evangelizing mission, the task of the entire People of God, that walks through history as the ‘family of God’ and that, in the synergy of its diverse members, labors for the growth of the entire ecclesial body,” it states.

EDITOR - PUBLISHER: Christopher Carstens MANAGING EDITOR: Joseph O’Brien CONTENT MANAGER: Jeremy Priest GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Danelle Bjornson OFFICE MANAGER: Elizabeth Gallagher WEBSITE AND TECHNOLOGY: Matt Korger MARKETING AND FUNDRAISING: Eugene Diamond SOCIAL MEDIA: Jesse Weiler INQUIRIES TO THE EDITOR P.O. Box 385 La Crosse, WI 54602-0385 editor@adoremus.org

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The Rev. Jerry Pokorsky = Helen Hull Hitchcock The Rev. Joseph Fessio, SJ

Contents copyright © 2020 by ADOREMUS. All rights reserved.

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

The Death and Resurrection of Sacramental Signs

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By Christopher Carstens, Editor

AB/WIKIMEDIA. HANS MEMLING, CHRIST WITH SINGING AND MUSIC-MAKING ANGELS (1480S)

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op quiz: What is a sacrament?

Some Catholics (I would have written “Many Catholics” were I composing this entry 25 years ago) will respond automatically that a sacrament is “an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace.”

Fewer Catholics—although not those who have suffered through my various presentations on the sacraments to parishes and conferences over the years— would reply that a sacrament is an “efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to his Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us by the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Whichever definition you prefer, whether the former found in the Baltimore Catechism or the latter found in the more recent Catechism of the Catholic Church (as quiz answers, either is acceptable), there stands one concept, one word common to both: sign.

Even the liturgical celebration in its entirety, whether or not it enacts one of the seven sacraments, depends on the medium of signs. “A sacramental celebration is woven from signs and symbols” (CCC, 1145). It is logical that it be so, for the liturgy and the sacraments make present Christ, who is a sacramental sign of God: “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and “whoever has seen [him] has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And the Church herself is similarly significant: Christ’s “Body, which is the Church, is like a sacrament (sign and instrument) in which the Holy Spirit dispenses the mystery of salvation” (CCC, 1111).

In short, all sacramental theology, all liturgical understanding, and all ritual celebration rests upon signs. If we get the signs wrong, we get the liturgy wrong. If we misunderstand sacramental symbols, we misunderstand the sacraments themselves.

The fact that Catholics put such stock in signs is not, however, an especially Catholic phenomenon. Catholics celebrate their liturgies with signs not simply, or primarily, because they are Catholic, but because they are first and foremost human. God, the author of human nature, knows this better than we do; hence he communicates with us through a peculiarly human (yet altogether divine) way. Dom Virgil Michel, OSB (18901938) expressed this “sacramental principle”—how men and women communicate among themselves, and how God and man communicate with each other—succinctly: “God has chosen to manifest himself to our minds through external, sensible things, and to act in human souls by means of material things.”

For example, to use a human instance before your eyes as they follow the text in this column, the only way you know the otherwise unknowable thoughts of my mind is through the words—signs—on the page or screen before you. Take away these written signs (or obscure them by poor writing!), and you cannot know my mind. The same is true of the communication that occurs between God and man: the only way that we humans can know God is through signs and symbols, such as his revealed word, the prophetic voice, miracles and workings of Providence in our life and in our world.

Sacramental worship, then, represents a profoundly human kind of worship.

But there is a problem. (Isn’t there always?) The downfall may come from the fact that this glorious made-in-the-image-of-God nature is fallen. It may stem from our finitude. It may result from the nature of how the sign is used. Whatever the cause, if left unacknowledged and untreated, the liturgical and sacramental consequences—and our salvation—are jeopardized.

So, what is the problem—and its solution? To my mind, the Catholic novelist and semanticist Walker Percy speaks most clearly to this conundrum. (I wrote about Percy and his potential take on COVID conditions in my May 2020 editorial, “Mass During a Hurricane.” He’s been an interesting companion during these lockdown days.)

In his 1983 book, Lost in the Cosmos, Percy describes how “signs undergo an evolution, or rather a devolution” (104). And remember what’s at stake here: if the liturgy and sacraments are predicated upon signs, and our signs undergo a “devolution,” then our liturgy, too, disintegrates.

At first, he writes, a sign “serves as the discovery vehicle through which the signified is known.” The threeyear-old asks his father, “What is that?” and the father replies, “That is a balloon.” Consequently, Percy notes, the child “will repeat it; his lips will move silently while he frowns and muses as he considers how this round inflated object can be fitted into this peculiar utterance, balloon.” Consider how the signs are uncovered (“discovered” was the word used by Percy) on the liturgical

The Mass’s Sanctus—like every other sacramental sign—can cease being the revelation of divine glory it is meant to be and become, rather, only a sign of more mundane realities. But a catastrophe—or even a pandemic—can restore the Sanctus to its true meaning: the sonorous eruption of God before us.

plane: What is that bread upon the altar? It is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. From where has this chant, Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus come? The heavenly host. What day is it? Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Here, the blessed bread, the Sanctus, and Sunday are each sacramental signs that reveal, manifest, and communicate Christ.

Second, Percy notes, the signs themselves become transformed by what they signify. The “signifier balloon becomes informed by the distention, the stretchedrubber, light, up-tending, squinch-sound-againstfingers signified.” In a kind of onomatopoetic way, the word balloon—the sign—begins to be changed into that

which it signifies—the actual rubber balloon.

But then, third, devolution of the sign sets in: “there is a hardening and closure of the sign, so that in the end the signified becomes encased in a simulacrum like a mummy in a mummy case.” Percy offers an effective example: one bird watcher asks, “What is that?” and the second bird watcher simply and uninterestingly replies, “That is only a sparrow.” Don’t we as Catholics tend to allow a similar sort of devolution among liturgical and sacramental signs? What is that upon the altar? Oh, it’s merely a sign of faith. From where has that song come?

It’s just some line of poetry from Isaiah (or is it Ezekiel?).

Please see SACRAMENTAL SIGNS, page 11

Readers’ Quiz

4. What number of candles does the Roman Missal prescribe for the celebration of Mass?

a. 2.

b. 4.

c. 6.

d. 7.

e. Any of the above.

f. None of the above; it gives no direction on number of candles.

On Liturgical Arts in the Roman Missal: music, art, vestments, architecture, gesture As we continue our 50-year look at the postconciliar Roman Missal, we turn to the treatment of the Missal’s artistic elements: music, art, architecture, appointments, vestments. Would you describe your parish’s liturgy as beautiful? If not, what accounts for its lack of luster?

Whatever its shortcomings, the Missal’s own prescriptions offer a foundation and recovery of liturgical arts.

Test your own knowledge of sacred art in the Roman Missal quiz questions that follow.

1. In choosing the parts of the Mass to sing, the Roman Missal sees which of the following as most important?

a. Gospel acclamation.

b. Opening, Offertory, and Closing hymns.

c. Dialogues between ministers and assembly (e.g., V/. The Lord be with you. R/.

And with your spirit.).

d. Mass ordinary (e.g., Gloria, Sanctus).

e. Responsorial psalm.

2. Why does the Missal envision a high degree of unity among the people’s postures at Mass in contrast to the Church’s view of personal prayer and private devotions, which allow individuals to choose postures most conducive to their prayer?

3. True or False: because the Roman Missal, like the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy which directed its reform, encourages the Mass and its elements to consider and even adapt to contemporary needs, iPhones and iPads could legitimately substitute for ritual and ceremonial books.

5. What are the two types of altars envisioned by the Roman Missal?

6. Which of the following ways of singing the Entrance Chant are permitted by the Roman Missal?

a. Sung alternately by the choir and the people.

b. Sung alternately by a cantor and the people.

c. Sung entirely by the people.

d. Sung entirely by the choir alone.

e. All of the above.

f. Options a, b, c.

7. True or False: the postconciliar Missal called for church buildings to resemble other modern, contemporary structures.

8. Which style of music does the Roman Missal consider as most appropriate for the celebration of the postconciliar Mass?

a. Polyphony.

b. Glory and praise.

c. Contemporary.

d. Traditional.

e. Gregorian Chant.

9. Why does the Roman Missal consider images of angels and saints an essential element of a church building?

10. True or False: glass, crystal, or pottery vessels (i.e., chalices, ciboria, etc.) are permitted by the Roman Missal.

ANSWERS on page 11

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020 A Healthy Faith As Father Masla indicates in his citation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the liturgy is not the exclusive realm of the clergy—and many lay persons who read Adoremus also find it an important resource for their daily encounter with Christ.

Dr. William Klein is a retired U.S. Air Force flight surgeon with 21 years of active duty and seven years of reserve duty who now works part-time on the board of directors for the American Board of Preventive Medicine. He also serves as a catechist, teaching in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program and confirmation classes for the CCD program at his local parish.

“Increasing appreciation and knowledge of the liturgy makes my participation more meaningful,” he told Adoremus, “which should make me a better Catholic, a better person, and therefore a better physician.”

A convert to Catholicism, Klein entered the Church in 2003—at which point, he said, “I started immersing myself in all things Catholic.” Although he doesn’t remember the exact date he began to subscribe, Klein said, “I suspect I may have signed up for Adoremus from a mention of it in another publication. I also read First Things and The New Oxford Review semi-regularly.”

One of the newer features of Adoremus Bulletin, the regular Readers’ Quiz, Klein said, has been especially welcomed “as it gives me interesting facts for CCD. The publication really helps me appreciate how much history and tradition is behind the sacred liturgy.”

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Barbara Konrad (foreground, right) founded the St. Hildegard von Bingen Schola, consisting of 5th- through 12th-grade young women, that sings the Mass at churches throughout the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. “As a graduate of the Liturgical Institute, I saw receiving Adoremus as a way for me to be reminded of what we are called to do and to know,” she said.

“Adoremus refreshes my love of the liturgy through its insightful and thoughtful articles.”

Continued from READERS, page 1

from the altar. Still, whatever else I do, my ministry starts and concludes with the liturgy. Adoremus really helps me to see that.”

Priestly Blessings Another member of the clergy in the U.S. who reads Adoremus, Father Christopher Masla, was ordained priest for the Diocese of Richmond, VA, on June 1, 2019, at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond. Today he serves as parochial vicar of the Church of the Incarnation Parish in Charlottesville, VA, after spending a year as parochial vicar at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Harrisonburg, VA. Father Masla, told Adoremus that the trials and travails of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have been the greatest challenge in his new life as a priest.

“I never anticipated having to spend several months celebrating Mass without a congregation present in my first year of priesthood,” he said. “But the Adoremus Bulletin helped me to make sense of this unexpected trial by getting me to see that every Mass involves the entire mystical body of Christ, and so is still objectively efficacious in God’s continuing renewal of the world.”

Although Father Masla, is a relatively new reader—he only subscribed a year ago—like Deacon Lim, he had first discovered Adoremus after listening to The Liturgy Guys podcasts in the seminary “when my appreciation for the beauty and richness of the Church’s liturgical tradition began.”

“Now, as a newly ordained priest, reading the Adoremus Bulletin has continued to deepen my understanding and love for the mysteries I celebrate,” he said. “I recall the words of the bishop to the newly ordained from the priesthood ordination rite: ‘Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.’”

As a priest, too, Father Masla depends on Adoremus to help him incorporate the liturgy into his work—and not only at the altar.

“On occasion I try to consciously and thoughtfully weave liturgical catechesis into my homilies, always drawing from the scriptures or feast of the day,” he said. “I can think back to the feast of Corpus Christi this year. It was difficult and a bit emotional preaching on Christ’s love in giving us the gift of the Eucharist when more than half of our parish couldn’t come to Mass.”

“The Mass was also being livestreamed,” he continued, “and so I had to speak both to those few who were physically present and able to attain full sacramental participa-

tion, and to those who were watching Mass on a screen at home. Fortunately, I had read an article in the Adoremus Bulletin written by Dr. Denis McNamara, entitled, ‘Why Celebrate the Mass with Empty Pews?’ [May 2020 Adoremus Bulletin] which gave me inspiration in crafting my homily. In it, Dr. McNamara explains that while the Mass is first and foremost Christ’s perfect offering to the Father in which we participate, culminating in the reception of Holy Communion, we can also participate by making an internal gift of self to God, which, while never replacing sacramental union with Christ, is still real. This article helped to clarify some of the different ways grace comes to us through the liturgy.”

“ Adoremus Bulletin is a valuable resource in helping both the clergy and the lay faithful discover both why and how to enter into this full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy, so God can be glorified, and we can be sanctified.” ­­ — Father Christopher Masla In many ways, the Church’s vision of the liturgy remains to be seen by the faithful, but, according to Father Masla, for the faithful, Adoremus Bulletin is a perfect vehicle for communicating this vision. Quoting from the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Father Masla sees the laity’s part in the liturgy as vital to making this vision a reality. “‘[F]ull and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit,’” he said. “Adoremus Bulletin is a valuable resource in helping both the clergy and the lay faithful discover both why and how to enter into this full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy, so God can be glorified, and we can be sanctified. The liturgy is the source and summit of the Christian life, and I believe Adoremus Bulletin will continue to play a role in helping the Church to realize this central goal of the Second Vatican Council.”

Liturgical Harmony Like Dr. Klein, Barbara Konrad also finds both professional and personal enrichment in the pages of Adoremus.

A piano and voice teacher who works from her home in Shumway, IL, in 2013, Konrad founded the St. Hildegard von Bingen Schola, consisting of 5th- through 12th-grade young women. The schola, Konrad told Adoremus, sings the Mass at churches throughout the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and “also evangelizes by singing the sacred music in concert at our local Catholic hospital chapel twice a year.”

Konrad also serves as Director of Music and organist at Immaculate Conception Parish in Mattoon, IL. An Adoremus reader since 2105, Konrad said that she had subscribed as a way to remember a dearly departed friend.

“I started subscribing to Adoremus when I made a contribution to honor Barbara Nield” who served for 11 years as administrative secretary for the Liturgical Institute (LI) at University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL. “She passed away from cancer in August of 2015 just as I had finished my course work at Liturgical Institute (LI).”

According to Konrad, Adoremus provides a kind of continuing education in the liturgy after her formal studies at LI were completed.

“As a graduate of the Liturgical Institute, I saw receiving Adoremus as a way for me to be reminded of what we are called to do and to know,” she said. “Adoremus refreshes my love of the liturgy through its insightful and thoughtful articles. To pick my favorite would be like asking which kind of dessert is my favorite: all of them!”

“Reading the AB helps me in both my personal work as piano teacher and my professional work as church musician,” she added. “It helps me blend my two worlds together and stimulates my desire for a more thorough understanding of the liturgy and all things Catholic.”

Married in Christ Long-time Adoremus readers, James and Patricia Schaaf of Cupertino, CA, decided to subscribe to the publication after they were sent a complimentary issue. James Schaaf is a retired civil engineer and Patricia a retired dietician; they have three grown children.

According to James Schaaf, Adoremus was a welcomed antidote to what passed for liturgical ideas he’d heard being discussed at a local parish.

“The concept that probably disturbed me the most was that of filling the church with the odor of freshly brewed coffee during Mass to provide a more inviting atmosphere,” he told Adoremus. “Well, thank God, that never happened.

But then I started to wonder where this new liturgical movement was going and why it was going in that direction. Adoremus seemed to help focus me on a different, deeper, and more traditionally Catholic meaning of the Eucharistic liturgy.”

While some of the articles he reads are “a little too deep,” Schaaf said, he added, “the features that I like have always been the news section. And I also like the questions and the responses to those questions. That’s because very often I have the same questions. Your new Readers’ Quiz feature is also very good.”

Like many faithful around the country, the Schaafs have found the pandemic shutdown a challenge, especially in regard to attending Mass.

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

Adoremus Bulletin’s 25 years are relatively few, especially when compared to the Diocese of Nitra in Slovakia (whose Cathedral of St. Emmeram is pictured here), founded in 880. Still, the young Bulletin finds grateful readers among clergy and seminarians in the Diocese of Nitra today—and will continue to do so, God willing, well into the future.

“With the pandemic most of the Masses we attend are on television,” James Schaaf said. “But we have been able to attend a few outdoor Masses limited to 25 people. Of course, you view the Mass on TV but you do not receive Holy Communion. The Adoremus Bulletin has given me a sensitivity to the true purpose and meaning of the liturgy.

I was beginning to believe that the reception of Holy Communion was the highlight of the Mass and without Holy Communion the Mass had lost its meaning. But is that true? Mass even without Holy Communion has, with Adoremus’s help, become to me a more meaningful liturgy.”

Schaaf realized that by reading Adoremus’s articles addressing how to approach the liturgy during the shutdown he was seeing the liturgy in a new light. “The reception of Holy Communion makes the Eucharistic liturgy ‘more perfect,’” he said. “I’m of the generation that had to fast from midnight to receive my first Holy Communion, but the Mass was taught to be the ultimate liturgical celebration. At that time, years and years ago, few people received Holy Communion. But they did attend Mass. Today, almost everyone receives. Which is better? I don’t know, but the Mass is still a powerful action which provides GodWith-Us.” Una Voce The Adoremus Bulletin also has a strong international appeal as several European readers who subscribe to the print edition can attest. Father Anton Datelinka was ordained a priest in 2011 for the Diocese of Nitra, located in western Slovakia. The diocese traces its 1,100-year history back to the bishopric of St. Methodius; he and his brother St. Cyril are known as “Apostles to the Slavs.”

For the past four years, Father Datelinka has been a professor of sacred liturgy at the Comenius University of Bratslava while he also serves “in a small parish where I celebrate the Western Catholic rites in the extraordinary and ordinary form.”

“As a liturgy lecturer I use Adoremus working with students and theologians who might get better in touch with liturgical happenings in the U.S. as well,” he told Adoremus by email. “The importance of experiencing the liturgy as a highlight of clerical activity is frequently a topic in Adoremus’s articles.”

Father Datelinka writes that he finds a wealth of information about the liturgy in Adoremus, both from an English-speaking perspective and on the more general concerns of those celebrating the Latin Rite.

“For example,” he writes, “it was quite interesting to mention to the theologians the American point of view concerning celebrating the holy Mass with children with dignity [see September 2019 Adoremus Bulletin, “A Deep Dive into the Divine: The Catechism of the Good Shepherd”]. It is quite rare as well to observe the way that sacral architecture [has] evolved, uniquely joining both liturgical and artistic quality.”

According to Father Datelinka, he first discovered Adoremus through the publication’s website, four years ago.

“I soon found out the published articles are well written and of high quality,” he notes. “Being a European priest, I was glad to find a journal from the U.S. dealing with liturgy. It is always quite enriching to read foreign materials.

Although we live our faith in each of our respective [cultures], we are all members of the universal Church.

Adoremus Bulletin represents the opportunity to take a look inside this ecclesiastical universality.”

Although Adoremus seeks primarily to address the Church in English-speaking countries, Father Datelinka sees the journal having a broader influence.

“ As a liturgy lecturer I use Adoremus working with students and theologians who might get better in touch with liturgical happenings in the U.S.” — Father Anton Datelinka ­­ “Adoremus has become one of the essential sources of my lecture preparations for the future priests,” he writes.

“It is necessary to be aware not only of the situation in our country or in Europe. Adoremus offers the opportunities to perceive the liturgical happenings globally and at the level of the whole Church. Simultaneously, it is essential to realize, as in any other field, the liturgical field needs to perceive new trends, upcoming questions and challenges standing ahead of us.”

In addition to serving as a professional resource, Father Datelinka said, Adoremus also provides him with personal spiritual and intellectual enrichment.

“I consider AB to be very well composed journal as a whole,” he said. “The most valuable articles for me are those which nowadays help to perceive the importance of Catholic liturgy as a field where one may constantly improve. I think the faithful currently need to have the opportunity to face the texts pointing at the depth of the liturgy.”

Liturgy in Common Another European reader and a native of France, Deacon Georges-Henri Galey is studying for the priesthood in his homeland and was ordained a transitional deacon earlier this year on June 27. He currently serves the Parish of Mortagne-au-Perche in the Diocese of Séez, located in Normandy in the north of France, and will be ordained a priest for the Community of St. Martin, a public association of the clergy which works in collaboration with bish-

ops to provide liturgical and pastoral support for the dioceses in which they serve.

The Community of St. Martin currently serves 22 parishes around the world, including in France, Italy, and Cuba. It was founded in 1976 by Father Jean-François Guérin (1929-2005) and received canonical status four years later in 1979. As an oblate of the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault prior to founding the Community, Father Guérin embraced the spirituality of Dom Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger, one of the founders of the Liturgical Movement. Priests and deacons in the Community of St. Martin live out their ministry in community—as modeled by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. Drawing on both Benedictine and Augustian traditions, Community clergy practice Lectio Divina on a daily basis and sing the Liturgy of the Hours in Latin according to the ordinary form of the Roman Rite.

Deacon Galey told Adoremus by email that he decided to subscribe to the print edition after discovering the publication on the internet.

“Appreciating the in-depth research” of the articles he read, he said, “I asked for a subscription.”

As part of Adoremus’s subscription policy, any seminarian or clergy can by request receive a gratis subscription— which Deacon Galey appreciates considering his own lack of funds as a seminarian.

“I am deeply grateful for the free subscription offered to me,” he writes, “as the stipend clergy receive in France is below the minimum wage and I could not [otherwise] afford to subscribe.”

Of particular importance, Deacon Galey writes, Adoremus has helped him better appreciate the development of the liturgy in the late 20th century.

“Adoremus Bulletin helps me understand the liturgical reform conducted by Pope Paul VI and its requirements, as well as how to better implement it,” he said, adding, “It proves extremely useful” in seeing the importance of “liturgical formation in a spirit consonant with tradition and faithful to the Magisterium.”

In his current work as a transitional deacon, too, Deacon Galey writes, “Adoremus has helped me to better understand the liturgical dynamics of the Mass and the sanctuary setting.”

Mission: Much Accomplished Like Deacon Galey, Father Datelinka sees in Adoremus a valuable resource for encouraging a love for the liturgy both as it’s celebrated today and through a deeper appreciation of the liturgy in tradition.

“Reading Adoremus might lead to the understanding of the liturgy as a treasure protected by the Catholic Church for centuries,” he said. “It is impossible to live the faith without liturgy. Articles and texts published in Adoremus are highly convenient for its proper comprehension. They provide new chances to see the beauty of God’s work present in the liturgy of the Church.”

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

Resuscitating the Mystical Body Theology as Key to a Mystical Liturgy

By Denis McNamara

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When seen in light of Pius XII's encyclicals, Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium stand out as a great clarion call for the laity’s participation in the victimhood of Christ by virtue of their membership in the Mystical Body.

“ The postconciliar emphasis on the Church as the People of God nearly eclipsed perhaps the most prominent ecclesiological concept leading up to the Council: the Mystical Body of Christ.”

Mystical Body of Christ, then, is not simply a concern of the academic specialists, but an explosive idea which was foundational to the entire concept of lay liturgical participation so universally promoted after the Second Vatican Council, and so frequently understood at only the shallowest level as a mere external busyness. Today’s understanding of Conciliar liturgical theology can be enriched by a second look at Mystical Body theology and the proper understanding of “community” as those who assemble for corporate worship as the mystici corporis Christi.

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he Second Vatican Council’s document Lumen Gentium (LG), “The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” gives many descriptive names for the Church, but perhaps none took root more widely in the post-conciliar years than “People of God” (LG, 9-17), often used to emphasize a “bottom up” model of the Church, sometimes with a strikingly anthropocentric turn associated with the word “community.”

In 1966, Jesuit Avery Dulles wrote that Lumen Gentium struck a “democratic” tone because it spoke of the Church’s mission in terms of “service rather than domination.”1 Similarly, the Abbott-Gallagher translation of the documents of Vatican II added an explanatory footnote to the use of the phrase, noting that “People of God” met a “profound desire of the Council to put greater emphasis on the human and communal side of the Church, rather than on the institutional and hierarchical aspects which have sometimes been overstressed in the past….”2 This anti-hierarchical bias continued to grow in some quarters, such that in 2011 Notre Dame theology professor Father Richard McBrien could give an interpretation of “People of God” this way: “Who or what is the church? It is first and foremost people. It is also an institution. But it is primarily a community. The church is us.”3 This “People-of-God principle,” as he called it, was expressed “in parish councils, in base communities, in the multiplication of ministries, and particularly in ministries associated with the liturgy, education and social justice.” This reactionary postconciliar emphasis on the Church as the People of God nearly eclipsed perhaps the most prominent ecclesiological concept leading up to the Council: the Mystical Body of Christ, the notion that the Church is the continuing action of Christ in the world, operating mystically as both Head and Members.

In our day, more than 50 years after the Council, rediscovery of Mystical Body theology provides many helpful insights in understanding what “active participation” really means. Indeed “new People of God” (LG, 9) is an apt and deeply scriptural name for the Church, since God called the chosen people in order to form and save them as a corporate body rather than as individuals. But Christ took this gathered people and raised the

Participation in liturgy is participation in Christ’s own perfect self-offering, and because the laity are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, they can be offered to the Father as a perfect offering as well. And sharing sacramentally in this seamless sacrifice, they are made holy as Christ is holy and, by extension, become perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect.

stakes, incorporating them into his own body, grafting them on to the vine of his own divine and human natures so that they might live with him, die with him, and rise with him.4 This Mystical Body, which includes all of the baptized, not simply ordained ministers, celebrates the Paschal Mystery in the Church’s liturgy.

Consequently, when united to the ordained minister in the liturgy, the laity “are” Christ, and therefore the concept of participation takes on profound importance in modern liturgical theology. The lay faithful make a real priestly offering by virtue of their baptismal priesthood, and therefore join their offering of self to that which Christ makes to the Father. They therefore share in the glorification and resurrection that Christ enjoys at God’s right hand. This rediscovery of the theology of the

Pius XII and Mystici Corporis The promotion of Mystical Body theology took a great leap forward in 1943 with Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (MC).5 Teaching authoritatively, the pontiff makes it clear that he is clarifying ideas that are already present in the Church, encouraging that which is true and correcting errors.6 His text shows a hint of defensiveness, beginning with the claim that the doctrine was “taught us by the Redeemer Himself ” (MC, 1), and later he reminds those who think the doctrine “dangerous” that mysteries “revealed by God cannot be harmful to men…” (MC, 10).

Mystici Corporis says surprisingly little about the implications of the doctrine on liturgy, but a few insights can be gleaned which would be developed four years later in its sister encyclical, Mediator Dei (MD). One of

his purposes in writing Mystici Corporis, Pius XII notes, is “to bring out into fuller light the exalted nobility of the faithful who in the Body of Christ are united with their head” (MC, 11). Later he makes the point that though the Body of Christ is subordinate to the Head, “they have the same nature” (MC, 46) and then extends that connection to human nature, which Christ took upon himself to make “His brothers according to the flesh partakers of the divine nature” (MC, 43). This divinization of the members of the body occurs through sacred rites of the Church, what Pius XII identifies as “participation in the same Sacrifice” of Christ (MC, 69).

Pius XII calls the earthly priest one who “acts as the viceregent not only of our Savior, but of the whole Mystical Body and each one of the faithful” (MC, 82). But then he strikes the salient point which begins to establish the role of the laity in worship: united with the priest in prayer and desire, the faithful as well “offer to the Eternal Father a most acceptable victim of praise and propitiation…” (MC, 82). This earthly worship by the full Mystical Body, then, allows lay participation in Christ’s perfect self-offering, since he offers not only himself, but “in Himself, His mystical members as well.”

The laity’s important role in worship here finds its foundation while preserving the liturgy’s hierarchical nature and the uniqueness of the ordained priesthood.

“ This rediscovery of the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ, then, is not simply a concern of the academic specialists, but an explosive idea which was foundational to the entire concept of lay liturgical participation so universally promoted after the Second Vatican Council, and so frequently understood at only the shallowest level as a mere external busyness.”

Mediator Dei and the Mystical Body In Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei, this pontiff addressed the growing interest in liturgy during the previous decades, known collectively as the Liturgical Movement. The first encyclical in the history of the Church completely dedicated to liturgy, it clearly positions worship in relation to the Mystical Body, a phrase used 25 times through the text. He begins by defining the priestly life of Christ continuing “down the ages in His Mystical Body, which is the Church” (MD, 2-3), and later gives a remarkably succinct and complete definition of the sacred liturgy as “the public worship which our Redeemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its Founder, and through Him to the heavenly Father. It is, in short, the worship rendered by the Mystical Body of Christ in the entirety of its Head and members” (MD, 20).

Pius XII is careful to maintain the essential distinctiveness of the ordained priesthood, noting that not all in the Body have the same powers (MD, 39); that minis-

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terial priesthood does not “emanate from the Christian community” (MD, 40); and that ordination leaves an “indelible ‘character’” (MD, 42) which “sets the priest apart from the rest of the faithful” (MD, 43). He even goes so far as to say that the laity “can in no way possess sacerdotal power” (MD, 84) as does the ordained priest because they are not mediators between themselves and God (MD, 84). But Pius XII’s understanding of the Mystical Body means that he asked the faithful to understand that “to participate in the eucharistic sacrifice is their chief duty and supreme dignity,” urging them to be “united as closely as possible with the High Priest,” and in “union with Him…offer up themselves” (MD, 80). Though it is done “in a different sense” from the ordained priesthood, he notes, “it must be said that the faithful do offer the divine Victim” (MD, 85). Evidence for this claim was found in the “orate fratres” of the

Vatican II in a New Light When seen in light of Pius XII’s encyclicals, the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) and Lumen Gentium stand out as a great clarion call for the laity’s participation in the victimhood of Christ by virtue of their membership in the Mystical Body. Indeed, Lumen Gentium’s very chapter entitled “The People of God” claims that this people “has for its head Christ” (LG, 9) and then discourses on the hierarchical nature of the Church, noting that the ministerial priesthood and common priesthood differ “in essence and not only in degree” (LG, 10). As in Pius XII’s writings, the lay faithful are said to “join in the offering of the Eucharist by virtue of their royal priesthood” and are “consecrated by baptismal character to the exercise of the cult of the Christian religion” (LG, 10). Moreover, lay participation in the “Eucharistic Sacrifice” is to “offer the divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with it” (LG, 10). One could say, then, that the People of God are gathered by the Lord precisely so that they may assemble as the Mystical Body and act as Christ, offering themselves together with the Immaculate Victim to die and rise again with him.

Sacrosanctum Concilium confirms and develops this idea, clearly defining the sacred liturgy not as an action of the People of God per se, but as an action of Christ exercising his priestly office (SC, 7). And since Christ’s nature includes his Mystical Body, consequently “in the liturgy full public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members” (SC, 7). Now the subsequent claims of the document become clear. Mother Church desires “that the faithful be led to that full, conscious and active participation in liturgical celebrations” precisely so that they may share in the action of Christ.

Since this is God’s chosen method to sanctify his people, their participation in the liturgy is, both obviously and profoundly, “the aim to be considered before all else” (SC, 14). Participation in liturgy is participation

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liturgy itself, where the priest asks the people to pray that “my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable” to the Father (MD, 87). By the waters of baptism, the people “are made members of the Mystical Body of Christ,” and “by the ‘character’ which is imprinted upon their souls” are “appointed to give worship to God. Thus they participate, according to their condition, in the priesthood of Christ” (MD, 88).

Liturgical participation for the laity, then, is not only partaking in the external ceremonies of the rite, but in offering the “oblation” in which “Christ is made present upon the altar in the state of a victim” together with the earthly priest, and through him, Christ the High Priest (MD, 92). And to make this offering most effective, that is, to best participate in the sacrifice of Christ, Pius XII notes that the lay faithful should include “the offering of themselves as a victim” (MD, 98).

Through external participation in the rites and free internal participation in the oblation of Christ, the laity do more than simply wait for the priest to confect the Eucharist with powers they do not have. Rather, they participate in the action of Christ externally through the liturgical rites, and internally by exercising the powers and duties of their baptismal priesthood. The phrase “active participation,” then, takes on layers of nuance frequently forgotten in the years that followed Pius XII’s encyclicals. And the goal was much more than generating feelings of hospitality and inclusion. Rather, it was to act with Christ and as Christ, with the goal of participating in God’s own divine nature (MD, 155).

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“ To participate in the eucharistic sacrifice is the laity’s chief duty and supreme dignity.”

—Pope Pius XII

With a careful reform of the liturgy, the People of God would no longer be inertly gathered like a pious crowd of individuals, but act as a Mystical Body.

As Lumen Gentium notes, “it pleased God to bring men together as a people,” but this gathering was not an end in itself. Rather, it was a preparation for the “new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ,” making humanity a “royal priesthood” which could then offer true and acceptable sacrifice when united to the headship of Christ.

in Christ’s own perfect self-offering, and because the laity are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, they can be offered to the Father as a perfect offering as well. And sharing sacramentally in this seamless sacrifice, they are made holy as Christ is holy and, by extension, become perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect.

Sacrosanctum Concilium called for reforms which allow the corporate and sacrificial nature of the liturgy to shine refulgently so that the Mystical Body may act most perfectly. Rubrics were to take the role of the people into account (SC, 31). The rites were asked to shine forth without harmful accretions, or as the Council called it, with a “noble simplicity” (SC, 34, 48).

Increased familiarity with scripture and liturgy-based homilies (SC, 35) were requested to increase people’s capacity to enter into the sacrifice. Even questions regarding the use of vernacular languages (SC, 36) and adaptations to the “genius and traditions of peoples” (SC, 37-40) were meant to allow the realities of the liturgy to penetrate the minds and heart of the faithful, making them participants rather than “strangers or silent spectators” (SC, 48).

“ Vatican II hoped to transform the world by strengthening the Church through grace, the Christ-life which would make human-life ever more divine.”

By exercising their newly-discovered dignity as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, they would participate in Christ’s own action “by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him…[and] offer themselves, too” (SC, 48).

With a careful reform of the liturgy, the document implies, the People of God would not be inertly gathered like a pious crowd of individuals, but act as a Mystical Body. As Lumen Gentium notes, “it pleased God to bring men together as a people” (LG, 9), but this gathering was not an end in itself. Rather, it was a preparation for the “new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ,” making humanity a “royal priesthood” (LG, 9) which could then offer true and acceptable sacrifice when united to the headship of Christ.

Vatican II hoped to transform the world by strengthening the Church through grace, the Christ-

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life which would make human-life ever E more divine. The fountain IK IM AB/W of this Christ-life, of course, was the sacred liturgy, and self-offering as a member of Christ’s Mystical Body joined to Christ’s self-offering was the recommended remedy for this great need for divinization. Without an understanding of Mystical Body theology before the Council, the laity were often compared to deer yearning for running streams of Christ’s own life.

It seems reasonable to ask, a half century after the Council, if the same can be said of great portions of the laity today. The rich theology of participation is laid like a feast in Vatican II, but it would not be hard to argue that in people’s lived experience of worship, it frequently suffers under the weight of liturgical trivialities and poor catechesis.

God’s goal is clear; he desires to share his own divine life with his creatures so that he might “be all in all” (SC, 48; 1 Cor 15:28). All he asks is that his people exercise the very “exalted nobility” which Pius XII proclaimed and surrender to his merciful love in the liturgy offered by the Church he gave us. Here is the clarion call to a new liturgical evangelization. Here is the true hope of Vatican II. .

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Dr. Denis McNamara is Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS, and cohost of the award-winning podcast, “The Liturgy Guys.”

1. Avery Dulles, SJ, in “Introduction to Lumen Gentium,” Walter M. Abbott and Joseph Gallagher, The Documents of Vatican II (Chicago: Association Press, 1966) page 12.

2. Walter M. Abbott and Joseph Gallagher, The Documents of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, footnote 27, page 24.

3. Richard McBrien, “Vatican II Themes: The People of God,” National Catholic Reporter, July 25, 2011. Accessed July 28, 2020: https://www. ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/vatican-ii-themes-people-god 4. The theology of the Mystical Body finds its foundation in the writings of St. Paul, especially Colossians 1:18 (“He is head of the body, the Church”) and Romans 12:4-8 (“For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”).

5. Though Pius X’s 1903 motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini is widely known as a foundational document for modern liturgical reform because it was the first papal document to use the phrase “active participation,” its emphasis proved largely on the externals of ritual worship and only implicitly acknowledged the liturgical assembly as a Mystical Body. He hoped that the restoration of chant would allow the faithful to “again take a more active part in the ecclesiastical offices, as was the case in ancient times” without specifically commenting on the nature of the laity’s liturgical participation.

6. The bibliography of the Mystical Body before Vatican II is vast and was foundational in many areas including religious life, liturgy, social reconstruction and race relations. Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy addressed the notion of corporate worship in chapter 2, “The Fellowship of the Liturgy” as early as 1918. Influential also is Emile Mersch’s, 1938 book, The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradtion and the popularizing writing of Fulton Sheen through his 1934 book The Mystical Body. For a more recent work on the topic, see Timothy Gabrieli, One in Christ: Virgil Michel, Louis-Marie Chauvet and Mystical Body Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017).

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

Outside Voice & Inside Voice: How Domestic Liturgy and Devotions Offer Promise for the Universal Church

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n March 10, 2020, the state of Michigan, where I reside, recorded its first positive case of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus. Within days, the seven dioceses across the state all decided to close Mass to the public in an effort to help slow the spread of the disease and help the civil and medical authorities respond to the health crisis. But Michigan wasn’t alone as the entire country soon understood the gravity of the situation. Immediately, parishes and dioceses across the U.S. began a major outreach to move local celebrations of the Mass to online streaming services. Resources were posted on social media and websites encouraged individuals and families to follow along at home and gave instructions on how best to bring the “Sunday Experience” into the living room.

My own family was featured in a diocesan video with our three small children on April 8. The video voiceover of my wife and I described our two- and four-year-old setting out icons, crucifixes, and candles alongside the iPad. What the video left out were the screams, jumping on the couch, and running through the living room while the livestream played—not to mention the poor behavior of our children. Continually, my wife and I left these livestreamed Masses feeling unfulfilled and uneasy. We wanted to be at the sacred liturgy, but we couldn’t shake the fact that we had merely been trying to simulate the Mass in our home. We weren’t participating in the Mass: we were watching other people participate in the Mass. Four weeks into “attending Mass” in our living room, my wife and I had a serious talk about how we were going to continue to honor the Lord’s Day.

The Pattern of the Church’s Prayer Romano Guardini opens his 1918 classic, The Spirit of the Liturgy, with a reflection on the nature of prayer in the liturgy. He begins this reflection by first establishing the difference between the characteristics of liturgical prayer and devotional prayer: “The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of the individual’s reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual soul as such. Nor does the onus of liturgical prayer rest with the individual.”1 He goes on to explain, “The liturgical entity consists rather of the united body of the faithful as such—the Church—a body which infinitely outnumbers the mere congregation.”2 He concludes by saying, “The liturgy is the Church’s public and lawful act of worship.... God is to be honored by the body of the faithful, and the latter is in its turn to derive sanctification from this act of worship.”3 Guardini then goes on to explain the nature of devotional prayer. He begins, “Now, side by side with the strictly ritual and entirely objective forms of devotion, others exist, in which the personal element is more strongly marked.... [T]hey bear the stamp of their time and surroundings, and are the direct expression of the characteristic quality or temper of an individual congregation.”4 Guardini notes that, while popular devotions may be similar to the liturgy in their communal and more objective nature, they more properly express the individual piety of the local community and therefore greater stress is placed on popular devotion for the “individual need of edification.”

These two forms of prayer—the objective/liturgical and the subjective/devotional—each play a foundational role in the life of prayer and should exist side by side, since the human person has a dual nature that is at once both social and individual, objective and subjective.

“The changing demands of time, place, and special circumstance can express themselves in popular devotion; facing the latter stands the liturgy, from which clearly issue the fundamental laws—eternally and universally unchanging—which govern all genuine and healthy piety.”5 These two forms of prayer, Guardini notes, mutually enrich each other and great care should be taken that they do not lose their particular forms for the sake of the other. “There could be no greater mistake than that of discarding the valuable elements in the spiritual life of the people for the sake of the liturgy, or than the desire of assimilating them to it.”6 Each must be respect-

ed for what it is, Guardini concludes, so that the totality of human piety may be expressed; the objective by liturgical prayer and the subjective by devotional prayer.

This notion is not merely the opinion of one theologian writing a hundred years ago, however. In the document Sacrosanctum Concilium we have described this dual nature of prayer when the Council explained that “[t]he spiritual life, however, is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy. The Christian is indeed called to pray with his brethren, but he must also enter into his chamber to pray to the Father, in secret…. Popular devotions of the Christian people are to be highly commended, provided they accord with the laws and norms of the Church.”7

A Lost Distinction From October to November of 1983, the University of Notre Dame conducted a study of parish life as it stood 18 years after the Second Vatican Council. The study sampled 1,850 parishes and covered a multitude of aspects regarding the late 20th-century parish, including the identification, family and ethnicity, activity level, etc. of membership. It covered leadership, both lay and clerical, liturgy and spirituality, the fostering of community, religious education, and finances. It is still a useful study because it gives us a glimpse into the direction of the parish in the first generation after the Council.

The study describes the character of 19th- and early 20th-century parishes as strongly devotional, with ethnic parishes providing specific flavors of Catholic devotional practice. The study describes a strong culture of novenas, parish missions, statues of patron saints and feasts. Yet, when discussing the patterns of piety in the late 20th century, it had this to say: “What Flannery O’Connor called the ‘novena-rosary’ style of religion has undergone a dramatic decline. Gone is the elabo-

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By Richard Budd

worshiping God in a liturgical way. The very style of the vocabulary reveals the transcendent nature of who the worshiping assembly is.

“My wife and I,” writes author Rich Budd (whose family is not pictured here), “left livestreamed Masses feeling unfulfilled and uneasy. We wanted to be at the sacred liturgy, but we couldn’t shake the fact that we had merely been trying to simulate the Mass in our home. We weren’t participating in the Mass: we were watching other people participate in the Mass.”

“Today within the same parish community, a visitor can observe quite different styles of liturgies that are indicative of very diverse patterns of piety. The 8:00 Mass is often strikingly different from the 10:30 Mass. It is almost as though there are different congregations within the same parish.”

This understanding of differing forms of prayer and their role was operative in the document Liturgiam Authenticam which lays down the principles of translating liturgical texts: “Even if expressions should be avoided which hinder comprehension because of their excessively unusual or awkward nature, the liturgical texts should be considered as the voice of the Church at prayer, rather than of only particular congregations or individuals; thus, they should be free of an overly servile adherence to prevailing modes of expression. If indeed, in the liturgical texts, words or expressions are sometimes employed which differ somewhat from usual and everyday speech, it is often enough by virtue of this very fact that the texts become truly memorable and capable of expressing heavenly realities” [emphasis added].8 Here again, we see applied the concept that the body at prayer in a liturgical assembly transcends the particular congregation or individual. Rather, it is the whole Church which assembles, even to the extent that it includes those members of the Church which may no longer have earthly life. Liturgiam Authenticam argues that even sacrificing language that is immediately familiar and perceptible in favor of language which is more opaque to the specific congregation can be considered a good because it expands that congregation into the larger worshiping Church. This principle expresses the nature of the liturgy and the language it employs when

rate network of devotional Catholicism with its statues, medals, scapulars, novenas, and parish revivals.”9 If what the study describes is true,10 what meets the subjective-devotional need of the human person discussed above? If the person, who is a combination of objective/subjective and liturgical/devotional, once had prayer forms that met and enabled particular communities and individuals to express their piety to God in a well-rounded way, then what are the implications of such a wide-ranging abandonment of devotional prayer today?

This need for subjective expressions of piety required an outlet, and as the Mass was now practically the only avenue of devotional prayer, that need was then imposed on the sacred liturgy. The study noticed this phenomenon as well when it described the alreadychanging liturgy: “Undoubtedly the most visible indicator of this change in Catholics’ devotional or spiritual lives is the variety of Sunday liturgies or Masses in the parish.... Today within the same parish community, a visitor can observe quite different styles of liturgies that are indicative of very diverse patterns of piety. The 8:00 Mass is often strikingly different from the 10:30 Mass.

It is almost as though there are different congregations within the same parish.”11 Again, the study describes what most of us witness

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

“Side by side with the strictly ritual and entirely objective forms of devotion” found in the liturgy, writes Romano Guardini in his 1918 text, The Spirit of the Liturgy, “others exist, in which the personal element is more strongly marked....

[T]hey bear the stamp of their time and surroundings, and are the direct expression of the characteristic quality or temper of an individual congregation.”

semblance of normality we were actually limiting our opportunities to enter more fully into prayer. We were trying to defy our circumstances, to a degree, and engage in the objective worship of the Church when it was literally impossible because we were not present.

We were trying to make our devotional prayer liturgical, the opposite problem of liturgies being overly devotional.

Instead, we decided to fulfill our Sunday obligation to worship through lectio divina with the family, which, with our small children, was more open to “audience participation” than watching Mass on TV! We also made the commitment to begin praying a few hours of the Divine Office every day. Here was our access to the liturgical worship of the whole Church which we could participate in from home. This practice has provided us exactly the benefit that liturgical prayer promises: a structure, a skeleton, of objective, common prayer by which the rest of our day of domestic devotions is supported.

This is the contribution the domestic church can offer the parish church in recovering what she professes about the liturgy. Communities of families, recovering the order of prayer, owning and promoting the beauty of the devotional life and promoting it with their friends, may, with God’s grace, cultivate a more complete culture of worship and in so doing, truly satisfying the longing of human hearts.

“ The shutdown is providing parishes the chance to do an examen-like review of everything in the parish, and this process affords the opportunity to reintroduce a deeper and more wide-ranging devotional practice in the parish life.” develops a common prayer life which is universal and more objective in character that will train for the universal character of the liturgy, and that they develop a culture of subjective, individual prayer which will find full expression in the popular devotions of the individual community of the particular time and place in which they live.

The family can better contribute to recovering this vision in our parishes in two ways which are natural to the domestic church. The first way is the cultivation of this pattern of prayer within their own homes and the second will be to act as catalysts in their community by inviting other families into their prayer and promoting prayer between families in common expressions of faith and devotion. This is precisely the model Pope Paul VI envisioned when he spoke about the evangelized family becoming the “evangelizer of many other families.”14 Then, with the parish being, in the words of Pope Francis, a “family of families,”15 the larger ecclesial community will benefit from the recovered balance between liturgical prayer and devotional prayer. Liturgical prayer will then not need to bear the burden of both objective

“ We were trying to make our devotional prayer liturgical, the opposite problem of liturgies being overly devotional.” and subjective prayer. It can return to its role of being the objective worship of the whole of the Church.

This is the proper exercise of priestly ministry in the family. With the education of life as one of its central tasks, the family not only is suited to educate in prayer, but also to order its life around this dual nature of prayer. The family’s place in renewal is central, then, because through their interactions with other families, the wider community will encounter a fuller expression of prayer and be educated by this more complete worship of God. COVID Lessons Ultimately, my wife and I decided to stop watching livestreamed Masses. We found the experience wasn’t beneficial to our family and in trying to maintain this

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Home Restoration Project And this deconstruction of both liturgical and devotional life is where I believe Covid-19 provides an opportunity. On the one hand, having Masses suspended for several weeks or months requires a plan to “bring back” the liturgy whether during or after the pandemic.

This gives parishes a chance to reconsider how exactly the sacred liturgy is being celebrated and how to best cultivate the fruit of objective worship in their congregations. On the other hand, the shutdown is providing parishes the chance to do an examen-like review of everything in the parish, and this process affords the opportunity to reintroduce a deeper and more wideranging devotional practice in the parish life. With the nature of devotional prayer being specific to time and place, one need not simply resurrect devotions from the past, but instead creatively explore the ways in which the particular people of a particular parish will best express their piety in 21st-century America.

The family, as the ecclesia domestica, has an important role to play in any possible renewal. In his 1981 document, Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II said, “[b]y reason of their dignity and mission, Christian parents have the specific responsibility of educating their children in prayer, introducing them to gradual discovery of the mystery of God and to personal dialogue with Him.”12 He goes on to say that this education is the result of praying with children as well as the witness of our own lives and the role our prayer takes in responding to various moments.

In reflecting on the Second Vatican Council’s definition of the family as the domestic church, Pope Paul VI taught that “there should be found in every Christian family the various aspects of the entire Church.”13 Therefore, if there are two patterns of prayer in the Church, liturgical and devotional, there should analogously be found in the family both “domestic liturgy” and “domestic devotions” that answer the call of John Paul II for education in the discovery of the mystery of God and the personal dialogue with him. Formally, this call should consist of a “Domestic Liturgy” and “Domestic Devotions.”

Domestic Liturgy will be those prayers which have a more universal character to them: they are prayed with a standard form, at a standard time, and in a standard manner. All the members know what to pray, when to pray, and how to pray. All are expected to participate.

Examples of these are morning and evening prayers or prayers before meals. Even a prayer rightly thought of as devotional, such as the family rosary, can be instructive of this more universal character of prayer. These “liturgies” can also include the ways the family brings the liturgical year into the home through the celebrations of the seasons or the various solemnities and feasts of the year. At its fullest, it will include praying the Liturgy of the Hours in the home as is recommended for families by the Church.

Domestic Devotions will be instructive of the particular need to express one’s piety to the Lord. Families should promote, cultivate, and defend the prayers of individuals to unite with the “Father who sees in secret.”

As John Paul II indicated, instructing on this aspect of prayer will begin with the witness of parents’ own lives, taking time away to spend with the Lord. As children grow, parents can encourage their children to develop their individual piety through such practices as devotion to saints, time spent in Eucharistic adoration, or the reading of scripture. Finally, its expression will reach maturity when the members of the family can spontaneously pray and express their heart and desires in petition or praise for themselves or on behalf of another in the family. It is particularly beneficial for spouses to pray with and for the other, from the heart, expressing the personal character of their prayer to God. What is of ultimate importance for the education in this liturgical/devotional schema is that the family

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weekly at our own parishes. One Mass is for the group that likes contemporary music, one is for the crowd that prefers traditional hymnody, and then there is the third group, the quick Mass, which seems to be designed to get everyone in and out as swiftly as possible. If the nature of the liturgy, as objective/universal, is meant to draw a particular congregation beyond the confines of its specific time and space to include and unite with the whole Church, the new ways in which the Mass is prayed in our parishes labors to include and unite even the other members of that particular parish. There exists, then, a double loss: the abandonment of one form of prayer, the devotional, has brought about the further loss of the liturgical as the people of God experience it.

Of course, the objective/universal pattern of the Mass remains the same, but the fruit of expression by those participating in it, is negatively affected.

“Domestic liturgies” are those prayers which have a more universal character to them: they are prayed with a standard form, at a standard time, and in a standard manner.

All the members know what to pray, when to pray, and how to pray. All are expected to participate. Examples of these are morning and evening prayers or prayers before meals.

Even a prayer rightly thought of as devotional, such as the family rosary, can be instructive of this more universal character of prayer.

Richard Budd lives in Lansing, MI, with his wife and three children. He obtained a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Theology from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., and he has served as the Director of Marriage and Family Life for the Diocese of Lansing, for the past five years. In addition to the work he does for the diocese to build up the domestic church, and building up his own domestic church at home, he directs the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program at his home parish and regularly writes and gives talks on marriage and the family, the domestic church, Theology of the Body, and other related topics.

1. Romano Guardini, Spirit of the Liturgy (Chestnut Ridge, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), 19.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., 20.

5. Ibid., 21.

6. Ibid., 20.

7. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 12-13.

8. Liturgiam Authenticam, 27.

9. Th e Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life, Report no. 2, (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Publishing Company, 1981), p. 8.

10. See Pope John Paul II, Vicesimus Quintus Annus, 11.

11. The Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life, Report no. 2, p.8.

12. Familiaris Consortio, no. 60.

13. Evangelii Nuntiandi, 71.

14. Ibid.

15. Amoris Laetitia, 87.

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

THE RITE QUESTIONS : Why does the Roman Missal desire that the : What is a corporal? people receive communion from the altar, not from the tabernacle, at Mass?

: The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy put forward as one of its reforming norms, “That more perfect form of participation in the Mass whereby the faithful, after the priest’s communion, receive the Lord’s body from the same sacrifice, is strongly commended” (55). The postconciliar Missal, incorporating this norm, directs in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM): “It is most desirable that the faithful, just as the Priest himself is bound to do, receive the Lord’s Body from hosts consecrated at the same Mass…” (GIRM, 85).

Not only do these documents promote the practice of communion from the altar, but they also ground their prescription in the principle of active participation. Echoing Pope Pius X (patron saint of First Communicants), the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy says, “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else” (14; emphasis added). Hence, the faithful’s communion from the altar ought to be read as a means to their active participation. The GIRM makes the connection more explicit: by means of communicating with hosts consecrated at the same Mass, “Communion may stand out more clearly as a participation in the sacrifice actually being celebrated” (85). In short, the worthy reception of holy communion from the altar, more so than with hosts retrieved from the tabernacle, facilitates the laity’s active participation in the sacrifice of Christ made present during the Mass.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, the lay faithful, in virtue of their baptism, have (or are supposed to have) joined their prayers, works, joys, and sufferings—their entire selves—to Christ as he gives himself to the Father through the hands of the priest by the power of the Holy Spirit. They have, in other words, actively participated in the offering of themselves and of Christ—the pinnacle of liturgical participation. The fruit of this sacrificial participation, as well as the most explicit connection to it, is the sacramental reception of the body and blood of Christ.

Since the laity have participated in offering the sacrifice of the Mass, it is reasonable that they also receive that same sacrifice from the altar upon which it was offered. Certainly, one does not receive less of Christ from the tabernacle. And as a matter of practicality, especially at Mass with large numbers, communion from the tabernacle may be necessary. But all things being equal, the Roman Missal desires the that the people receive the same sacrifice that they themselves offered.

—The Editors

Q

:M y wife and I were married in the midst of

COVID-19, which allowed only ten people to attend. Now that things seem to be getting back to normal, can we have another wedding celebration in the church with all our extended family and friends?

A

: Congratulations on your marriage!

At the outset, it should be emphasized that belated wedding receptions have always taken place in situations where couples get married on the other side of the country or a significant group of family or friends is not able to attend the wedding. A joyful wedding reception is always in order. Nevertheless, you don’t need a wedding to have a party.

The desire to have a full complement of the faithful present for a celebration of marriage is a good one. It helps to express the “communitarian character” (Order for Celebrating Matrimony (OCF), 28) of the union of bride and bridegroom. Holy matrimony is never a private event. The Order for Celebrating Matrimony even goes so far as to suggest that the communal nature of holy matrimony might be expressed through a celebration of this sacrament “during the Sunday assembly” (OCM, 28).

The liturgical celebration of matrimony, especially within Mass, is meant to be an iconic sign of the goodness and fruitfulness of the New Covenant between Christ and his Bride, the Church. Indeed, God calls couples to marriage and “continues to call them in marriage” (Familiaris Consortio, 51; OCM, 11).

Bishop Robert Barron puts it this way: “You get married in church when you say to each other and to the people gathered there and before God: ‘We realize that our relationship is part of God’s providence. That we were brought together by God precisely for God’s purposes, so that our relationship might become an iconic sign of God’s love for the world.’ When you can say that, then you’re ready to stand before a priest and stand before God and his people and make your vows.”1 That said, just as you can’t go home again, you can’t marry the same person again.

But, while there are no wedding do-overs, the Church does offer “The Order of Blessing a Married Couple within Mass on the Anniversary of Marriage.” Liturgical commemorations of significant anniversaries have been on the books since at least the 1570 Missale Romanum, and as far back as “the tenth-century Roman-Germanic Pontifical.”2 While

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: A corporal is a linen cloth placed atop the altar cloth but beneath the chalice and paten used at Mass. Traditionally, the fabric is linen, as was that which wrapped the body of the Lord in the tomb; hence the name, too: corporal, from the Latin word corpus, “body.” The corporal’s purpose is to collect any fragments from the Eucharistic body of Christ during the Mass, which are then enfolded within the corporal at the end of the Communion Rite.

While the size of corporals may vary, an average-sized corporal may be around 18 inches square. The starched linen is then folded into thirds, and then thirds again. In this way, a folded corporal (if 18 inches square when unfolded) is about six inches square; when unfolded, it has nine smaller square sections (three by three) formed by the indents of the folds.

At the start of Mass, the folded corporal is either held in a burse or placed directly upon the top of the chalice on the credence table. At the preparation of the altar at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, an acolyte or deacon or the priest himself unfolds the corporal in the center of the altar. Placing the folded corporal about six inches from the near edge of the altar, the corporal is first opened to the left, as one would open the cover of a book, and then to the right; three of the corporal’s nine square sections are now visible. Next, the corporal is opened away from the one unfolding it so that six of the nine sections are now visible. Finally, the remaining section is opened down toward the edge of the altar and the one unfolding it; now all nine sections are visible. (Of course, opening the corporal according to this accepted pattern presumes that it was folded properly at the end of the last Mass.)

Many corporals will have a cross embroidered onto them, sometimes in the center, but usually upon the bottom, center square of the nine squares. If the corporal has not been folded correctly and the cross ends up on either of the sides or the top section, the corporal is either refolded and then unfolded again properly, or else the corporal is turned while maintaining its flat contact with the top of the altar. The corporal is never lifted by its corners and rearranged, for this defeats its entire purpose—to collect any fragments of the Eucharist.

Before a corporal is laundered, any visible Eucharistic particles are consumed. It is then rinsed with water which is poured into the sacrarium (a sink set aside for this specific purpose with a drain leading directly into the earth from the sacristy; see GIRM, 334).

The corporal can then be cleaned, starched, folded, and ironed for future use at Mass.

—The Editors these have traditionally been reserved for significant anniversaries, a first anniversary in the context of a global pandemic might fit the bill as “significant.” The ritual is outlined in the Order for Celebrating Matrimony, Appendix III (237–251).

In the context of the Mass On the Anniversaries of Marriage, the couple is invited “to renew before the Lord the promises you made to one another” (240) either by means of a quiet moment between themselves (see 241) or by exchanging the following “form provided” in 242: “Blessed are you, Lord, for by your goodness I took N. as my wife [/ husband].”

There is even the possibility of blessing and exchanging new rings (OCM, 244) or simply blessing the original wedding rings (OCM, 243): “Increase and sanctify, Lord, the love of your servants N. and N., who once gave each other these rings as a sign of faithfulness, that they may always grow in the grace of the Sacrament. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.”

In the place where the Nuptial Blessing is traditionally given following the Lord’s Prayer during the nuptial Mass, there is a prayer of blessing that the family life of the couple might more closely resemble an “image of Christ’s union with the Church” (OCM, 248). While such a celebration could be done for a single married couple, it could also be done for a group of those who were married during the pandemic. In the latter case, perhaps the Sunday assembly might be an excellent occasion to express the communal character of marriage in the Church (see OCM, 28).

A best-practice in this regard might be to hold this celebration on or about the first anniversary of the marriage. In the current COVID context, celebrating a marriage on or near the one-year mark would allow the maximum amount of time for things to return to a modicum of normal (especially in regard to external venues necessary for receptions and anniversary parties such as restaurants, catering services, hotels, etc.). By setting the date as close as possible to the first anniversary day, the celebration will not only give the same seasonal context (spring/summer) for the renewal of commitment, but will likely allow the couple to invite the maximum number of people to the celebration (and might even allow the couple to reuse those specifically-dated napkins!).

—The Editors 1. Robert Barron, “Bishop Barron on Sex, Love, and God.” Word on Fire: Online Videos, January 07, 2013. Accessed August 19, 2020. http://www.wordonfire.org/resources/video/sex-love-and-god/262/ 2. See Paul Turner, Inseparable Love: A Commentary on The Order of Celebrating Matrimony in the Catholic Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017), 279–280.

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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020

MEMORIAL FOR AB/LAWRENCE OP ON FLICKR

Vincent J. Barreca, Sr.

Nicholas and Eileen Barreca

Fr. Paul Carey Luana

Dorothy Flake Donald Flake

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal directs that “Ornamentation on vestments should consist of figures, that is, of images or symbols, that denote sacred use,” as on this chasuble depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Readers’ Quiz Answers: From Quiz on page 3

1. c or d. Dialogues or acclamations. “[I]n the choosing of the parts actually to be sung, preference is to be given to those that are of greater importance and especially to those which are to be sung by the Priest or the Deacon or a reader, with the people replying, or by the Priest and people together” (GIRM, 40).

2. Beauty, clarity, active participation. “The gestures and bodily posture of both the Priest, the Deacon, and the ministers, and also of the people, must be conducive to making the entire celebration resplendent with beauty and noble simplicity, to making clear the true and full meaning of its different parts, and to fostering the participation of all. Attention must therefore be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and by the traditional practice of the Roman Rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice” (GIRM, 42).

3. False. “Special care must be taken to ensure that the liturgical books, particularly the Book of the Gospels and the Lectionary, which are intended for the proclamation of the Word of God and hence receive special veneration, are to be in a liturgical action truly signs and symbols of higher realities and hence should be truly worthy, dignified, and beautiful” (GIRM, 349). Like all liturgical signs, even books manifest God’s heavenly glory.

4. e. Any of the above. “[O]n or next to the altar are to be placed candlesticks with lighted candles: at least two in any celebration, or even four or six, especially for a Sunday Mass or a Holyday of Obligation, or if the Diocesan Bishop celebrates, then seven candlesticks with lighted candles” (GIRM, 117).

5. Fixed and moveable. “It is desirable that in every church there be a fixed altar, since this more clearly and permanently signifies Christ Jesus, the Living Stone (1 Pt 2:4; cf. Eph 2:20). In other places set aside for sacred celebrations, the altar may be movable. An altar is said to be fixed if it is so constructed as to be attached to the floor and not removContinued from SACRAMENTAL SIGNS, page 3

What day is it? It’s only the first day of the calendar week, Sunday.

Is the Church determined to celebrate the sacramental liturgy—which is a “weaving together of signs and symbols,” as we heard the Catechism say—with fidelity, joy, and awe? Are we Catholics ready and willing to open our eyes and ears with hunger, docility, and intelligence to be transformed by sacred signs? Am I like the deer thirsting for running streams (water—another sign!) of grace set before me in the liturgy and sacraments?

If not, what can be done? Among the many possible answers (God is full of them!) is one we’re all coping with as I write these words: COVID-19.

The recovery, the resurrection of signs is possible.

The sign “can be recovered from the ossified signifier, sparrow from sparrow…, under the conditions of catastrophe” (105). Percy gives a number of examples of how this happens, including the German soldier who “in All Quiet on the Western Front could see an ordinary butterfly as a creature of immense beauty and value in the trenches of the Somme.” For a more everyday example, consider how you look at your car once you’ve discovered that its transmission is blown. Everything that worked quietly and invisibly to make the car change gears is now front and center.

Morris and Leone Hanson Fr. Richard Hanson

able; it is said to be movable if it can be displaced” (GIRM, 298).

Eugene Kadera

Marjorie Tushaus

6. e. All of the above. “This chant is sung alternately by the choir and the people or similarly by a cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone” (GIRM, 48).

Deceased Members of the Lantz and Johnson Families Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Lantz

7. False. “[S]acred buildings and requisites for divine worship should be truly worthy and beautiful and be signs and symbols of heavenly realities” (GIRM, 288).

Even though we celebrate an earthly liturgy and include natural, human, and cultural elements, we also “take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 8).

Judy Morris Loretta Dula

Frances E. Muller Anthony C. Muller

Richard Peltzer Family

Ann Quin

Quin Family

8. e. Gregorian chant. “The main place should be given, all things being equal, to Gregorian chant, as being proper to the Roman Liturgy. Other kinds of sacred music, in particular polyphony, are in no way excluded, provided that they correspond to the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful” (GIRM, 41).

D’Ann G. Rittie Bob Rittie

Deacon Bill and Rudy Steltemeier Ramona Steltemeier

Mary Patricia Fritz

9. Angels and saints are an essential part of the liturgy, and thus of the liturgy’s sacramental expression. “In the earthly Liturgy, the Church participates, by a foretaste, in that heavenly Liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem, toward which she journeys as a pilgrim, and where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; and by venerating the memory of the Saints, she hopes one day to have some share and fellowship with them. Thus, in sacred buildings images of the Lord, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saints, in accordance with most ancient tradition of the Church, should be displayed for veneration by the faithful and should be so arranged so as to lead the faithful toward the mysteries of faith celebrated there” (GIRM, 318).

Jerome Fritz

Peter Wall

James Drummey

TO HONOR The Liturgy Guys Fr. Thomas Kocik

Monique LeMay - Birthday Charlotte and Barry LeMay

10. False—at least not ideally. “In the Dioceses of the United States of America, sacred vessels may also be made from other solid materials which in the common estimation in each region are considered precious or noble, for example, ebony or other harder woods, provided that such materials are suitable for sacred use. In this case, preference is always to be given to materials that do not easily break or deteriorate” (GIRM, 329; emphasis added).

Can you relate to Percy’s observation that, during bouts of “average everydayness” (as Martin Heidegger would put it), butterflies and your car and breathing—or bread or music or Sunday—have become signs of, well, what exactly? Yet when, through catastrophe or similar upheavals, life’s signs (and their commensurate realities) come into focus and take on a new and powerful reality?

If what Percy says is true—judge for yourself—then our current COVID “catastrophe” has great potential for our liturgical celebration, participation, and understanding. The vicarious experience of livestreaming notwithstanding, the liturgy may offer those returning to Mass for the first time in months a new vista from which to view its signs and symbols—and by them, God himself.

Suddenly, that “bread” upon the altar appears as something else: the locus of heaven and earth, for instance.

The Sanctus is no long blah-blah-blah but the chorus of Angels, Archangels, Thrones, and Dominions. And Sunday may become again the first day of the new creation wrought by Christ—not just the first square to cross off in the coming week. For the liturgy and its sacraments are supernatural signs. We only need to be awake to the wonder and mystery of these signs. If we can resurrect them from their devolution, then they will once again communicate in a flash the brilliance of Christ and become as radiant an encounter as that which Peter, James, and John once enjoyed upon Mount Tabor.

Queenship of Mary and the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart Jennifer Fakult

IN THANKSGIVING Fr. James Altman

Phil and Judy Clingerman, OCDS

For Life

Patricia Devlin

My Parents

Michael S. Guarnieri

The Staff of Adoremus Bulletin Sr. M. Louise Jundt, OSF

Brennan Paul Leger - Birthday Pop and Grandma Leger

OTHER Joseph Collura - Health Maria Collura

Eldor Floether Bill Wingren

Personal Intentions James Schneider

12 Save a Place for Goodness: Hildebrand Shows How to Find Full Value in the Liturgy

By Father John Nicholas Blaha

Liturgy and Personality, by Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Steubenville, Ohio: Hildebrand Press, 2016. 160 pp.

ISBN: 978-1939773005. $17.99 Paperback.

I

don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.”

These words, uttered with a malevolent drawl

by Frank Costello, open Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film The Departed. Costello, played by Jack Nicholson, is a fictional adaptation of the Boston mobster Whitey Bulger—a dominating, forceful figure capable of terrifying brutality in the gratification of his lust for power and pleasure as a tyrant of the streets. As the film unfolds, it shows how Costello’s minions shrink in submission to his every word. Through fear and threat of violence, he commands the obedience of the inferior personalities around him, and inflicts a heavy price on those who withhold it—few do.

Most of us, when asked to categorize Costello’s sort of personality, would respond with a range of observations converging on something like largeness or dominance, distinguishable from a Churchill’s or Napoleon’s only by the moral squalor of his aims. Goethe claimed that humanity is divided between the mediocre and those who rise to being “personalities” by the exercise of their genius.

However, such common-sense definitions of “personality” as Goethe proposes are far too simplistic, says another German philosopher, Dietrich von Hildebrand, in his 1931 book Liturgy and Personality, recently republished by the Hildebrand Project. Far from being a reliable mark of greatness, Hildebrand argued persuasively, an acumen for assertiveness and success has very little inherent connection to a truly great personality. What counts is the capacity to perceive and respond to objective value.

Clear and Common Sensibles Before taking a closer look at this claim, a brief word about Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) is in order. As a writer of great insight, von Hildebrand has the power to bring me up short every time I read his work, beginning with the first book of his that I read, Transformation in Christ, which came into my hands a decade ago. There, I was introduced to a mind and heart exquisitely tuned to the workings of grace in the human soul.

Trained in the late 19th- and early 20th-century philosophical school of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, Hildebrand honed to a keen edge his sense of attention to the common objects of experience in life, both natural and supernatural. By suspending his own subjective curiosity and allowing the truth of what was before him to present itself without a veil of probing questions, he gained insights into reality that were not granted to those who were unwilling to quiet themselves sufficiently to allow what they were studying to disclose itself. His writing proceeds like a sculptor circling a ponderous block of stone, carving away excess material to expose the form he beholds in his mind’s eye—presently concealed within the marble, but emerging with each deliberate bite of the chisel. One by one, each concept has its false or imprecise versions punctiliously carved away and discarded—not this, no, nor this either, but this—until the pure form radiates its essence in repose, another David astride the brittle chips at its feet. To read Hildebrand is to receive an education in making the right distinctions.

Liturgy and Personality is no exception to this habit of attentive observation. It is first observable in the way he defines the concept of personality. A “normal” human being, in his view, is not the average of all the instances of the species, but rather the complete person “in whom are revealed the great fundamental traits of man, undistorted and unbroken.” A “normal” person, in other words, means “man fully alive,” an instance in which all human potential is realized, and therefore far more rare than the average.

Hildebrand claims that we can achieve the fullness of humanity by being alive and responsive to values. When a being presents to us its excellence or preciousness, when an event manifests a singular or universal meaning, when a work of art or spectacle of nature beguiles our senses and causes us to forget ourselves momentarily, we have discovered a value. These values possess a hierarchy among themselves; in order to perfect the

Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020 personality, a person must discover what is objectively valuable, and make a true and adequate response to that value: a greater, more heartfelt response to what is truly great, and a lesser, partial response to what is inferior.

Contrary to this “fullness” is the person who is configured by his own subjective desires and preferences, dismissing what is inconvenient or overwhelming, regardless of its value. But this stance falsifies reality. As Bishop Robert Barron puts it in his lucid preface to the book, values for such less-than-full human beings “are not bent to the ego’s purpose, but rather, they bend the ego to their purpose.” A soul malleable under the weight of value is Hildebrand’s definition of “personality,” and therefore has little to do with the power of a personality to command attention upon striding into a room. It has everything to do with a personality being able to draw true and authentic conclusions about the circumstances that are encountered upon entering the room in the first place.

Hildebrand is therefore arguing that the great personality is one who swims not only against the tide of our fallen human nature, but also through a tsunami of cultural and technological incentives that play to our inherent weaknesses. Thus, the world urges us to ignore the realm of objective values and their demands, and to sink into the petty satisfaction of preference. But the true personality as defined by Hildebrand will resist. For, in the surging of this flood of distraction and mediocrity, Hildebrand points to a levee that stands fast, a stalwart refuge through the ages that serves as the source of all real value. The refuge to which he sends us is the liturgy.

Liturgical Value Thus far, the reader of this review could be forgiven for suspecting that Hildebrand was a philosopher first and a Christian second; but in the first chapter of Liturgy and Personality Hildebrand unmistakably grounds his work in Christian spiritual theology. Since all that possesses value “is a reflection of His eternal light and imitates God according to its own fashion,” value spurs the human creature to the glorification of God in the conscious utterance of praise and overflow of adoring love.

The Christian distinctiveness in presenting a truth that could just as easily be found among the reasoning of pagan philosophers is the revelation that only in Christ is God adored according to his deserts; only the God-man apprehends and responds to the Godhead, the source of all value, with the loving glorification that is his due. Only in our union with Christ the Head of the Mystical Body does each one of us acquire the capacity to be united to that prayer, and it is in the liturgy of the Church—the Mass and the Divine Office—that we speak and are spoken by the true Word that glorifies the Father in an unsurpassable manner. In the liturgy, the one value of all values is presented, evoked, and adored; the divine and heavenly reality impresses itself upon the mind and heart, and by our participation in it, Hildebrand notes, “we make our own the fundamental attitudes embodied in it.” The liturgy is the privileged place of encounter with the living presence of God; only in the liturgy, then, can the human person acquire personality in its fullest sense. Hildebrand spends the rest of the work detailing the fundamental attitudes that, within a liturgical context, properly order the personality around God. One of these fundamental attitudes is the capacity of the liturgy to form this “responsiveness-to-value” in the faithful. In order for the liturgy to have a formative effect on the personality, however, we must not fall victim to the tendency to pursue self-fulfillment by means of it; as soon as we do so, our adoration ceases to transform us, and the efficacy of our participation in the spirit of Christ evaporates.

This may at first seem a strange phenomenon. What could possibly be false in recognizing the power of the liturgy to draw us Godward, and seeking it out with all eagerness for our personal edification? Supposing the liturgy truly does have this profound effect, is this not simply to act upon the facts as they stand? Are the illnesses of the sick prolonged by seeking out a capable physician?

The nature of the danger is subtle, but real, and Hildebrand states it thus: any diversion of one’s attention from the object in its precious excellence to the positive effect that it exerts upon us falsifies the relationship to the whole realm of heavenly value. “The soul grows wings—that is, the deepest inner transformation takes place—only if there is a real penetration of values and a real self-forgetfulness is achieved,” Hildebrand insists.

“Were this act of ‘beholding values’ to become a means of attaining such transformation, at that very moment it would cease to be a genuine irradiation by values, and they no longer would be taken in their proper seriousness; there would no longer be a true communion with the world of values, and the deep transformation would thus be halted.”

Given the swift currents of fallen nature and of culture, we cannot be reminded of this too often: all values, above all the Lord, must be given an adequate response that is due to it for no other reason than itself. Anything less is to slip into the contrary, subjective posture. Our reason for responding to the goodness of God is simply God; as the liturgy itself puts it, “For you alone are the Holy One; you alone are the Lord. You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ….”

God Foremost Hildebrand draws upon common experience to drive home the point: what lover could truly be called a lover, who delights not in the goodness and beauty of the one she loves, but allows him to recede into the background in order to favor the sweetness of her feelings? This is sentimentality, of course, not love; this is the victory of subjective preference over responsiveness to the value of the other. There is an obvious congruence between Hildebrand’s insights and the observation of his fellow personalist, Karol Wojtyla, that sentimentality amounts to reducing another person to a means. Analogously, it is even more a perversion of personal ends into instrumental means to relate to God in this way. We don’t use God for our ends, in other words—he is our end. To regard him otherwise is to conceive of a version of God “in whose presence one does not linger, whose rays do not irradiate one, to whom one does not give oneself up in pure response-to-value...; the air [such persons] breathe daily is too much determined by the narrow scope of their particular lives, even though they might be embellished with religion.” According to Hildebrand, as soon as I delight in my own illumination rather than the light that irradiates me, that same light is obscured by the hulk of my own ego. Glancing with relish at my contrition in the moment of my repentance is to delight more in my own piety than the mercy that descends upon my pride like a flame and consumes it. Our Lord spoke truly when he taught that the left hand should not be aware of what the right is doing.

Yet Hildebrand does not think that one must already approach the worship of God with a perfectly-ordered soul; this would be to presuppose what the liturgy is meant to effect. It is enough that we approach with a determination to forget ourselves for a while and let our contact with the values perceived in creatures to open transparently to the face of Christ. He reassures us that, not without reason, our prayer often begins with “God, come to my assistance / Lord, make haste to help me”—a simple act that itself serves as a foundation for the necessary self-forgetfulness.

A Full Life In the end, Hildebrand’s demonstrates that Frank Costello’s view of the world need not exhaust the options available to us. To be a product of one’s environment—this is determinism at its worst, a sentence of permanent imprisonment. To force one’s environment to conform to oneself—this is a cry of primal rage and defensiveness in a posture of alienation. Both of them fall short of the “man fully alive” that is held out to us in Christ, because both of them ignore a third possibility in which the fullness of humanity may be found.

This fullness is the emergence and purification of personality through communion with the realm of values, the enjoyment of goodness that is the result of willing the good that God is—longing for it, rejoicing over it, and loving it. Sadly, forgetfulness of this path is all too common.

But with guides such as Dietrich von Hildebrand to light the way, it need not be so. Deo gratias.

Father John Nicholas Blaha, S.T.L. was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, KS, in 2011.

He is a 2002 graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA, and he served for three years as a FOCUS missionary before receiving his priestly formation at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. He currently serves as pastor of three bilingual parishes in the urban core of Kansas City.