BOOK REVIEW
Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness: Why the Modern Age Needs the Mass of Ages, by Peter Kwasniewski. Foreword by Martin Mosebach. (Angelico Press, 2017) By Joseph Shaw
D
r Peter Kwasniewski is a musician as well as an academic philosopher and theologian, and his work, exemplified in this book and in his prodigious blogging output, provides a link between fundamental principles of theology and philosophy and the practical, pastoral issues with which Catholic musicians, like priests engaged in pastoral work, have to grapple. Does this or that engage people? Can it be done with limited resources? Can it be part of a growing Church, drawing people in, inspiring commitment, supporting families, and fostering vocations? Kwasniewski’s experience, like the experience of many, is that the Church’s liturgical tradition works. The paradox of the debate about ‘progressive’ versus ‘traditional’ liturgy over the last century has been that, while progressive liturgists brush aside the Church’s perennial wisdom about liturgy, and above all the ultimate purpose of liturgy, the worship of God, in favour of something designed for pastoral effectiveness, the end product is something which is not very pastorally effective. To put it at its mildest, it is difficult to discern the positive effect the reformed liturgy has had in the context of the collapse of all aspects of Church life since the 1960s. To the argument that Gregorian Chant, beautifully decorated churches, and above all the Traditional Mass, actually bring people into church, on the other hand, progressive liturgists tend to respond with purely theoretical arguments. People may like chant and Latin, they say, but they shouldn’t, because they encourage the wrong kind of liturgical participation. The vocations of young men and women may be nurtured by that kind of liturgy, but they are the wrong kinds of vocations. Worshippers may feel consoled and strengthened, but either this is fake, or it is bad.
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SUMMER 2018
