A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski on the banality of a perfectly “understandable” liturgy June 11, 2013

And I thought I had written strong comments on the Novus Ordo Mass!  Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is a professor at Wyoming Catholic College and writes pretty extensively in a number of publications like Latin Mass Magazine.  He has been posting of late at Corpus Christi Watershed, which organization produced the gorgeous St. Edmund Campion Sunday Missal.  This recent post on the main drive behind the revolution in (or destruction of) the Roman Rite – the idea that the transcendent, beyond-human and mystical Mass had somehow to be made “understandable” – was of particular interest.  I add emphasis and comments along the way:

THE CLAIM that the common people, before Vatican II, did not understand the Mass—that they no longer understood what it meant, the significance of its rituals and prayers, and so, as a result, the liturgy had to be updated, modernized, simplified—can be decisively refuted.

First, as is well attested in writing and photographs, all over the world there were immense numbers of Catholics who loved the liturgy and attended it as often as possible—including ordinary peasants and manual laborers. Whatever they cognitively derived from the exact prayers or gestures is insignificant compared to the overall shape, the seriousness and focus, the opportunity to adore in fear and trembling, which the sacred liturgy provided for their spiritual lives………[I can attest to the fact that I never felt profoundly moved or impressed with usual Mass that is offered at 99% of all parishes in the country – the vernacular Novus Ordo. It was virtually indistinguishable from what I had experienced as an episcopal, and was frankly most often even LESS reverent and spiritually edifying that many episcopal services, as at least we knelt for episcopal pseudo-communion!  But when I started to assist at Latin Novus Ordo Masses offered in a very reverent style, fully according to the rubrics and with no abuses, plus use of EP1, chant, incense, etc, I began to develop an increasing love for the Liturgy.  It was when I became exposed to the Traditional Mass, however, that I was simply blown, blown away. It is inconceivable to me to go more than a few days without assisting at Mass and receiving the Blessed Sacrament. Such an incredible gift!]

Second, due to the Liturgical Movement in its original fervor, countless missals and prayer books were published and disseminated, containing clear translations of, and often meditations based on, the prayers and gestures of the Mass. As Joseph Ratzinger recollects in Salt of the Earth, there were even “graduated” missals for children, so that at each stage of their maturity they could take one further step in intimacy with the Church’s grand liturgy. [These are still available. My children have them!  But I have found that even 8 or 9 year olds can follow the adult missals easily.  This is not rocket science.]  People everywhere grew familiar with the Mass, its calendar, ritual, processions, and music, in a far deeper way than anyone now does with the Novus Ordo; the liturgy grew into their hearts, it took root there and found a permanent home. [I cannot agree more] There was never a lack of opportunities for the faithful to enter into the letter and the spirit of the liturgy. A particularly fine example of the resources made available in the nineteenth century would be The Liturgical Year by Dom Gueranger, which continues to nourish readers today. [It certainly nourishes ME everyday!  I love it!  Even though the entire set is expensive, I really believe every Catholic home should have The Liturgical Year.  It is transformative in one’s understanding of the Mass, of the various liturgical seasons, and of the lives of the Saints.  It would make a great Christmas gift to a pious family.]

And a last point should be recalled, in our era more than ever, when preaching has reached an all-time nadir in both content and style. If there was occasionally some failure to understand or appreciate the spiritual-theological depths of divine worship, this was chiefly the fault of priests and bishops. [This point cannot be emphasized enough]  It is their duty to preach about the liturgy no less than about Sacred Scripture and Catholic doctrine, and, in the preconciliar period, faithful priests did just that—witness Romano Guardini’s beautiful Meditations Before Mass, intended for and well appreciated by the “people in the pews.” We see here the pastoral solicitude urged by Pope Francis when he tells pastors to feed their flocks.

A concerted, widespread effort to preach the Mass in all its richness would have sufficed for stirring up a profound renewal of the participation of the faithful at the time of the Second Vatican Council and into our times. This prudent and courageous approach appears never to have been even considered; [No! It was considered! Not at the Council, but before!  In fact, this was precisely the ENTIRE reason for the founding of the 20th century Liturgical Movement. It wasn’t founded to destroy the Mass, or “reform” it virtually out of existence!  It was founded to improve people’s involvement at Mass and the edification they received from it. The early liturgical movement NEVER intended to make any but the slightest changes to the Mass, at most. I would say even that was a stretch.  The real intent of the movement, throught it’s first 20 years or so, was simply to educate souls in the glory of assisting at Mass. But that was hard work, often unrewarding, and did not demonstrate immediate results. Plus, an influx of modernist academics kicked out of theology schools after Pascendi brought a huge change in   the choice was made, instead, to simplify to the point of infantilism, so that there would be nothing that needed explanation—which is to say, nothing of mystery, nothing profound, nothing transcendent, nothing rooted in ageless tradition. The reformed liturgy represents the final capitulation of the priesthood to the democratic spirit of modernity: the priest gave up, or was practically compelled to give up, his role as teacher and ruler. As the sociologists and anthropologists were saying back in the seventies, those who take away the density of ritual and the solemn beauty of the ineffable will not gain more worshipers; they will merely give them more reasons to go away and find something more interesting to do. [Which is precisely what has occurred, is it not?]

I want to expand on one point some more, because I think it is key.  I have seen shadows of evidence for what I am about to say in other sources, but reading The Organic Development of the Liturgy really convinced me, that the revolution in the Liturgy occurred for two reasons.  The first was the apparent failure of the Liturgical Movement – so called – to dramatically improve lay participation in Mass. I think this initial goal was greatly undermined by the second reason, which was a self-interested assumption by modernists who entered the liturgical movement 20 years after its initiation that the laity were simply too stupid to understand the Mass as it then was, and that it had to be radically changed – “reformed” to some, destroyed to others – in order to “reach” us dead-eyed rubes.  I blogged on this facet recently.

As a friend of mine has put it many times, the Church opted for revolutionary approaches because so many shepherds of souls did not want to do the hard work, slow, often apparently (but, I think, only “apparently”)  unrewarding of catachesis. Instead, there was a very loud call (from a few, but very influential, individuals) for radical changes and “big programs” that were glamorous and often career-enhancing, but wound up being some of the most spectacular failures – pastorally, liturgically, theologically – in the history of the Church.  But to the extent that there was a failure to achieve the original goals of the liturgical movement – improving the average parish Mass experience and the benefit the laity derived from that – I agree with Dr. Kwasniewski that the prime reason was a failure of catachesis, and more fundamentally, a deep-seeded resistance to do that very necessary type of work.

And I’m afraid the situation is in fact much worse today than it was 50 or 60 years ago. So many of our shepherds spend far, far more time on parish administration, basically running their little branch of the “American Patriotic Church,” than they spend on catachesis, the Sacraments, or fostering the interior life in souls. As such, they hand off catachesis on all manner of subjects to lay people of often dubious quality themselves (there are, of course, some that are wonderful), and, very distressingly, even more dubious orthodoxy.  Of course, 50 years of abysmal seminary formation has not exactly equipped our clerics to be present-day equivalents of Joseph Clifford Fenton and Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange.  But ultimately I think it very important to get priests to start doing much more of the heavy lifting of catachesis.

In sum, I share Dr. Kwasniewski’s conclusion that those of us who treasure the Mass must do our part – and maybe even more than our part – to inculcate in others a similar love of both the theology behind the Mass and the Ars Celebrandi – the actual conduct of the Liturgy.  Perhaps reading Dr. Boyd’s book would be a good place to start, to light the fires of our zeal!  May God be merciful to His Church!  May He restore the great worship that was so efficiacious of Grace and produced so many Saints for so many centuries!  And may we all pray for our priests and bishops with the utmost possible zeal!