(This is Neil) I’ve been wanting to post about the Jesuit liturgist John Baldovin’s recently published Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics. This relatively brief book is neither a polemic nor an exhaustive historical defense of the postconciliar liturgical reform. It is actually offered in the spirit of dialogue. Fr Baldovin writes “I would not have written this book if I had thought the critics had nothing to offer” and “I have also tried to reflect appreciatively on those areas where the critics need to be heeded.” (Two of the critics mentioned in the book, Frs Thomas Kocik and Alcuin Reid, have recognized that “Baldovin does not seek a fight” – see here and here.)
I don’t think that I can summarize the book in a blog post and I have already discussed Fr Baldovin’s comments on the then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings on the liturgy here. Instead, I’ll list five important (IMHO) points from Baldovin’s book:
1. There are different (and mutually exclusive) criticisms of liturgical reform. After all, criticism of liturgical reform now has a long forty-year history, perhaps beginning with Tito Casino’s La Tunica Stracciata: Lettera di un Cattolico sulla “Riforma Liturgica,” which was published in 1967 with a preface written by a curial cardinal, no less.
Fr Baldovin follows Msgr M. Francis Mannion in identifying five “types,” or approaches to liturgical reform – advancing the official reform (e.g., the International Commission on English in the Liturgy [ICEL] before 2002), restoring the preconciliar (e.g., the Society of St Pius X [SSPX]), reforming the reform (e.g., Adoremus), inculturating the reform (e.g., the North American Academy of Liturgy), and recatholicizing the reform (e.g., Mannion and others who want to transcend the current debate, but are worried about liturgical inculturation in a climate of individualism, anti-ritualism, and politicization).
Obviously, some critics would criticize Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) [SC], others would criticize its implementation by the Consilium in the late 1960s, and others merely criticize the reforms as implemented in most parishes. But, it should be noted, some of the criticisms are also theologically irreconcilable with one another. For instance, the SSPX has criticized the claim that the liturgy represents the whole “Paschal Mystery,” because they believe that it solely re-enacts Christ’s sacrificial death. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) disagrees. (See also Pope John Paul II’s Vicesimus Quintus Annus, 6).
2. There is a danger of romanticizing the “medieval mass.” In response to the Anglican philosopher Catherine Pickstock, Fr Baldovin notes that the medieval mass went through “an immense number of permutation and variations;” always needs to be contexualized by, for example, examining church architecture; and cannot be isolated from its role as “part of an enormously complex system of services, including the Divine Office, processions, and other sacramental rites.” Furthermore, it is too easy to allegorize the medieval mass for the purpose of critique, to suppose that it was understood by the entire congregation, and to ignore the pre-existing (and continuing) decline in the reception of the Eucharist. One must deal with the medieval mass as it actually was.
For instance, Pickstock interprets the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar as showing the eschatological nature of the medieval liturgy (“a necessarily deferred anticipation of the heavenly worship towards which we strive”). But, then, what does it mean that the Sarum Rite did not begin with the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar?
3. There is a danger of imagining that the Roman liturgy has had an unbroken history. Fr Baldovin also responds to the work of Msgr Klaus Gamber. Gamber has suggested that twentieth century liturgical reform, including the reform of the rites of Holy Week in the 1950s, has been “manufactured.” But Gamber also has a longer story of “the debacle of modern liturgy” that mirrors the ruptured and tragic history of the West. It begins with the failed Frankish assimilation of the rite of the city of Rome; continues with the medieval alienation from the East’s “cosmic and dramatic dimensions of worship,” the introduction of individualist piety in the Gothic period, and the unfortunate success of vernacular music; and culminates in the paralysis of the Roman Rite with the Missal of Pius V, which prevented organic development, and the rationalism of the Enlightenment reaction to Baroque theatricality.
There are two points to be made here. First, as Baldovin says, Gamber really might consider “the entire development of Western culture a disaster.” Second, we can see Msgr Gamber’s basic principle, that liturgical development has to be “organic” in nature, respecting the “timeless character” of the rite.” Gamber has written, “Every liturgical rite constitutes an organically developed homogeneous unit. To change any of its essential elements is synonymous with the destruction of the rite in its entirety.” (Thus, Msgr Gamber does not criticize all aspects of liturgical reform – he thinks that it is a good idea to use the vernacular for the Liturgy of the Word and to incorporate readings from the Old Testatment.)
But, here, Fr Baldovin notes that all Christian rites have borrowed from other liturgical forms. There simply is no “pristine rite.” There is no reason to see ecumenical conciliation (e.g., the addition of the doxology to the embolism after the Our Father) as contamination. There is likewise no immediate reason to exclude scriptural exegesis (e.g., the claim that multis is a mistranslation of pollon) or the historical recovery of the basic structure of a liturgy as alien or foreign. Furthermore, it is not clear that the Pope can never make radical changes to the liturgy, even if radical change is usually pastorally inadvisable.
One related problem has to do with the word “organic.” As SC 23 says, “Care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” But this clearly is a metaphor. Can one use such a metaphor to support every development of the mass, including silent recitation of the Canon, infrequency of reception of the Eucharist, and the use of Latin? Fr Baldovin even suggests that the biological metaphor can be pushed in new directions, “[I]s it not possible or necessary that broken limbs must be reset to become useful again to the whole organism?”
Finally, the claim that the Roman Rite had been “pristine” ignores how the rite has often been celebrated. One of the major consultants in liturgical reform was Dom Bernard Botte, who described hearing daily Mass at the beginning of the 20th century as a “murmur.” One of his sisters was told by a dean of theology that the best time to receive communion was “before mass” so she then could “offer mass in thanksgiving for communion” (!). (This point is especially true in discussions of liturgical music.)
4. There is a danger of identifying Tridentine and post-Tridentine liturgy with the spirit of early liturgy. Responding, mostly positively, to Denis Crouan, Baldovin notes that the Tridentine liturgical reform took as its model the Low mass, not the corporate sung mass. He agrees with Crouan, who says, “the Tridentine reform would progressively develop a practice of making the Eucharistic celebration an act of private devotion of the priest, whereas the faithful were simply invited to attend the Mass and to unite their prayers with it as sincerely as possible.”
Baldovin also agrees with Crouan that the Baroque period had negative consequences for liturgical development, as its theatricality “would further distance the liturgy from being a true exercise of the Body of Christ,” and its grand tabernacles, as Crouan says, “transformed sanctuaries into religious dioramas.” Furthermore the invention of printing “which made regularization of the liturgy possible (for the first time really) also turned the book itself with its rules and rubrics into a kind of object of worship,” or, as Crouan says, “the missal becomes the guarantee for tradition.” The Baroque appeal to sentiment was only made worse by the Pietism of the 18th century and the Romanticism of the 1900s.
5. The critics of liturgical reform make valid and useful points. Of course Baldovin does not agree with the critics on everything. This is true about translation and the meaning of active participation, which, he says, really is meant to be “active,” originally rendered as the Italian “participazione attiva” in Pope Pius X’s Tra le Sollecitudini. Nevertheless, Baldovin does identify common ground on five points:
A. Baldovin agrees with the sociologist Kieran Flanagan that “liturgies operate best when they manage to make their social apparatus invisible and unsignified.” He quotes from CS Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm:
Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best – if you like, it “works” best – when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. … A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant.
B. Baldovin agrees with David Torevell and James Hitchcock that the reformed liturgy did inspire a certain “poverty of gesture.”He says, “[T]here is need for a new ‘choreography’ of the liturgy in the sense of conscious and intentional use of the body” after the “infatuation with ideas and concepts in the late 1960s and the 1970s.” (We discussed this briefly on the blog, with regard to Peter Jeffrey’s work, here and here.) To be sure, this isn’t merely a “traditionalist” or “conservative” sentiment. Baldovin is able to quotes the late liturgist Fr Robert Hovda, “Anyone who contrary to the most elementary human experience, persists in the stubborn conviction that ideas, points, arguments are the stuff that move human beings, is natively unfit for liturgical leadership, if not for liturgical life.”
C. While Fr Baldovin argues that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal does envision celebration facing the people (versus populum) – this is a disputed question of translation of a quod clause, he concedes that in the early church the “idea of facing the people in praying was not nearly as important as the question of orientation: i.e., facing the geographical east.” Baldovin notes that the priest can “hijack” the liturgy if he is always in the gaze of others. He also writes that celebration with the priest facing the liturgical east has never been forbidden. That said, Baldovin is somewhat skeptical of celebrating ad orientem, because he wonders if the symbolism of the rising sun makes sense in a world “flooded with artificial light.” (This, to me, was the most unpersuasive paragraph in the book – I haven’t noticed a lack of “sun” references in popular music or a lack of light imagery in contemporary film.)
In any case, Baldovin is not dogmatic about celebrating versus populum, ad orientem, or (as in Ratzinger and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s writings) obviam Sponso, facing a cross on the altar. He concludes, “Whatever the stance of the priest, both priest and people need to be oriented toward God in prayer.”
D. Fr Baldovin agrees with Dom Aidan Nichols, OP, and the then-Cardinal Ratzinger when they argue that the “didactic element overwhelms the latreutic” (that is, the liturgy becomes about instruction rather than worship) in much contemporary liturgy, or, worse, that the liturgy becomes spectacle. He argues that we must receive the liturgy as gift. Baldovin notes, “Realizing that we cannot do catechesis during the liturgy itself may well force us to work harder to find appropriate ways to catechize the community. It has been my frequent observation that the liturgy is unable to sustain the catechetical and community-building weight that has been put on it.”
E. Baldovin agrees that there are aesthetic problems and “performance” problems that mar contemporary Catholic liturgy. First (as hinted above), priests should not begin the Mass by saying, “Good morning, I’m Father ? and I want to welcome you here today.” The second and third problems can be summarized by two quotes from the late Adrian Kavanaugh: “Churches are not carpeted,” and “Most of the music currently done in the liturgy is stunningly immodest and stunningly bad” (1976; Baldovin says that things have gotten better).
What do you think?
I don’t mean to imply that this is some kind of competition, but Carl Olson’s premise in this post at Insight Scoop got me thinking. Here’s the quote:
Here are my thoughts:
It’s a great day to enjoy band music and stirring patriotic fare. Me, I think I’ll settle down with a listen to Alan Hovhaness’s second symphony, “Mysterious Mountain.”
As a campus minister, I’m pleased to see one of my tribe move to the next square in the four-step movement to official sainthood. 
As promised, I’ll begin a series of posts on some liturgical principles outlined in the US Bishop’s document, 
Jack concedes his own blog headline, “We Are At War,” didn’t quite match the bishop’s keynote title, “Warriors for the Victory of Life.” I mention on Jack’s Catholic Key blog that I find the terminology of warfare problematic. As a pacifist, I certainly object to it on principle. But additionally, it adopts the political ploy of playing to the “base.” It’s not much different from warm-feely messages delivered to the self-satisfied. And to be sure, there are times when people are dispirited and crestfallen and need a pep rally to bolster their own energies for the task ahead. A more effective message to the pro-life “base” would be, in my opinion, a serious self-examination from top to bottom. Do individual pro-lifers present the best example, as the Church insists believers always should? When we have erred, are we not challenged to examine consciences, confess wrong, and amend behavior? And when we are confronted with political failure, as the pro-life movement itself judges the elections of 2006 and 2008, isn’t it time to reexamine strategies and tactics? The GOP mainstream seems to be repeating the same old messages, only louder and longer, and their political foes seem pleased to give them ample rope to hang themselves. The president is clearly an able politician (even if he is inexperienced) and maintains a posture above the fray. Too bad pro-life leaders, especially bishops, haven’t managed the same.
29 June 2009
De Mortuis and the Anti-Saints
Posted by catholicsensibility under Commentary, The BlogosphereLeave a Comment
If I may make a more apt comparison, I think Pope Pius XII is a better fit for the Jackson glove. The WWII pope has his own legions of followers and detractors, each trying to out-shout the other to make their point.
Commenting on Michael Jackson as some sort of saint requires us to examine how we really deal with celebrities. Let’s be honest and say that the modern culture might even be more obsessed with discrediting celebrities and outing them as objects of derision. Did this start in earnest with President Nixon? With his enemies lists, and with the delicious nightly unveiling of the congressional Watergate hearings? My dad watched them like a soap opera. Each subsequent political mini-generation seemed to up the temperature, and conservatives were surely no dissenters from escalation.
Even more, Americans seem to rejoice in the rehabilitation of politicians from Nixon to Bill Clinton. Consider also such jailed notables as Martha Stewart. Is Mike Vick not far behind? It seems there’s a curious cult wanting to elevate saints, watch them trip and fall, then cheer again as they are restored to a (hopefully) chagrined greatness. As the Culture War accelerates in the face of Republican political humiliation, we see it on both sides of the ideological divide: a rallying around the heroes, Obama and Palin, and no spared effort to embarrass or humiliate them, or, failing that, their loyal followers.
It seems to me the current culture is more about anti-saints, and Jackson is no different. Stardom in his young life was followed by weirdness and scandal, and now in death, by adulation again. Yet there are those who want to continue the cycle of hero/failure even now. Maybe the Romans were on to something in bringing these messes to a dignified conclusion: de mortuis nil nisi bonum