BEYOND THE PROSAIC: RENEWING THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT

Edited by Stratford Caldecott. Published by T &T Clark, Edinburgh Scotland, 1998 £21.95, hardback

Available from St Philip’s Books, 85 Lock Crescent, Kidlington, Oxon. 0X5 lHG.

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Reviewed by Carl Green

Authentic liturgical reform and restoration is an interesting subject in a Church that continues to bulldoze marble altars, allow laity to distribute Communion and to receive it on the hand, permits altar girls flatly contrary to tradition, continues the proliferation of new Eucharistic Prayers (the Swiss one is Gaudium et Spes anaphorised!), and refuses the elementary courtesy of a universal traditional rite indult to thousands of long-suffering faithful and clergy.

Not a fair way to introduce the book Beyond the Prosaic, but a good reality check nonetheless. This volume is really a collection of reflective essays, seven in all including a rather tendentious introduction by English bookseller Christopher Zealley and a lyrical and charming reflection on liturgy, modernity and the divine economy which forms the conclusion by the editor, Stratford Caldecott.

The disappointments

In between, there are three rather disappointing essays, by Mgr M Francis Mannion, President of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, Fr Mark Drew, and Dr Eamon Duffy (author of The Stripping of the Altars). Mannion and Duffy both take the Novus Ordo far too seriously and vastly underrate the traditional rites as a dynamic source of liturgical refreshment for the modern Latin Church, as well as a rich source of vocations. Fr Drew, whose essay I will not address at length, wanders in the same territory in his rather weak essay “The Spirit or the Letter? Vatican II and Liturgical Reform”, saying much that is obvious, irenic and perhaps naïve.

Mgr Mannion in his “The Catholicity of the Liturgy: Shaping a New Agenda” suggests that traditionalism has only a “popular rather than an academic base” and that “very little scholarly material has up to now been available in support of liturgical restorationism”. He thus downplays the current scholarly renaissance, particularly in France, which is nourished also by the outstanding practice to be witnessed at the abbeys of Fontgombault, Le Barroux and Randol, (to name the most prominent), and by implication neglects the fact that every work of the pre-conciliar Liturgical Movement by its nature referred to the Traditional Rites.

Mannion’s contribution is, in any case, preoccupied with “recatholicizing the reform”, based on the premise that “the liturgical books since the Second Vatican Council are fundamentally to be welcomed and embraced”. He envisages this occurring through such measures as a greater use of traditional music and aesthetics, more reverent celebration and greater formation of the laity. Not bad ideas, but obviously these aspirations can be achieved within the current dispensation by any priest willing to use “traditional” options and reject liturgical canards like altars facing the people. That these opportunities have not been taken up over 30 years can only suggest that Mgr Mannion’s model has been tried and found inadequate.

Paul VI and John Paul II have both repeatedly stressed the normative value of the 1969 Rite and made strong claims for its popular appeal and fruitfulness. When eminent churchmen like Mgr Mannion have to call for a restoration of such elementary qualities such as reverence and beauty, we might surmise that Their Holinesses have been deluded and that a more serious remedy is needed.

Whither “reform of the reform”?

It is perhaps by no accident that the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, which seemed merely to be the resolution of a particular pastoral and juridical problem in 1988, shows every sign of being a lasting foundation for the renewal of truly sacral liturgy in the Latin Church and of priestly and religious life. The survival and spread of the traditional Rites by the formation of new religious congregations and of traditional foundations within existing Orders is actually the central fact of the modern Liturgical Movement. By contrast, the academic “reform of the reform” movement seems as oddly irrelevant as Mgr Mannion’s recatholicisation of the Novus Ordo is already a failure.

It must be added that the “reform of the reform” lacks any real progress on the ground or responsiveness from Rome, which can only be unflatteringly compared to the traditional movement, which has seminaries and abbeys, chapels and parishes, and new clergy emerging at a healthy rate. Indeed, since the Oxford conference in June 1996, there has been at least one new Benedictine abbey founded (in the US) and at least two new religious congregations (the Society of St John and traditional Franciscans) and the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter has been obliged to build a new seminary to deal with the inflow of vocations.

As the distinguished linguist and author, Dr Geoffrey Hull has observed elsewhere, the living heart of the Church is not a set of abstract propositions for the mind and rules for righteous behaviour, but an unbroken tradition of deeply inculturated worship made to ennoble man’s senses and enliven his soul, and thus the survival of Latin Catholicism depends on the continued transmission of its immemorial liturgies.

Thus it is regrettable that Dr. Eamon Duffy feels free to assert that “the situation now is very much healthier than it was before the Council”. (p. 123) This after a lengthy, forensic examination of the pedestrian and reckless mistranslation and Pelagianism of the ICEL translation of the collects in the Novus Ordo, which surely typifies the obeisance to the phantom of “modern man” and the falsification of texts which so abundantly marked the work of Archbishop Bugnini and his cohorts. Duffy’s prescription of more elegantly translated English version of the missal is hardly proportionate to the grave state of liturgical decay nor the fundamental flaws which beset the rite of 1969. These issues will not be solved by a new Sacramentary featuring Cranmerian English.

Sung Theology

The Eastern Catholic archimandrite, Serge Keleher, makes perhaps the most distinguished contribution to the volume, analysing with acute insight in the essay “What happened to the liturgical movement?” how authoritarianism, philistinism, irreverence and ignorance in a large section of our pre-conciliar clergy prepared the Latin Church for its suicidal acceptance of the liturgical revolution after the Council. He also administers a sharp filleting knife to the contention that the 1969 reform was inspired in part by the Eastern Rites. This alone makes his article worth reading.

In a captivating article “Sung Theology”, Cistercian Marc-Daniel Kirby emphasizes the fact, all but forgotten in the West, that chant is not an accompaniment or an embellishment of divine worship, but an integral part of it. He deserves quotation at length:

“As ‘sung theology’, liturgical chant reveals, transmits and serves the orthodox vision of the mysteries of the faith within the context of their sacramental actualisation by the Church. … Liturgical chant is woven into the very fabric of the liturgy; to excise it from its liturgical context violates its very nature and leaves the lex agendi theologically threadbare and incomplete. … In the enactment of the liturgy, chant is a sacred doorway to the numinous. As a sacramental expression of ecclesial prayer, liturgical chant must mediate and express the encounter with the Holy. … As an integral part of the liturgy, chant is a channel and vehicle of the Word of God, of the prayer of Christ, and of the thanksgiving of the Church; it is both sanctified and sanctifying.”

This article should be read by every traditional Catholic, as its profound reflections on the centrality of chant in the liturgy will dispel foreover the idea of Low Mass as the norm and should leave one thirsting for authentic “participatio actuosa”.

Stratford Caldecott’s reflections on the relationship between worship and culture and on Christians as the leaven of society are persuasive and moving. He divines clearly that the shocking degeneration of Western civilization and morality finds its real cause in the self-destruction of the Catholic Church. Quite fascinating also are his psychological musings, for example that the liturgical spirit is essentially the spirit of children who, like the angels, delight in playing a ritual game of “profound earnestness and divine joyfulness” before their Creator (pp. 156-7), something which the “adult Christians” of today can only dismiss as a waste of time.

Reading Beyond the Prosaic will not be a waste of time for anyone who loves the liturgy as the source and summit of the Christian life and longs for its restoration. That several of the volume’s contributors marginalise the role of the traditional Rites in this restoration is an annoyance whose variance with reality will only become more obvious with time.

The modern liturgical movement tends to act as though “the liturgy is made, that it is not something that exists before us, something given, but that it depends on our decisions” (Ratzinger). Much of the later pre-conciliar Liturgical Movement (e.g. Jungmann), as well as the neo-conservative liturgical restoration movement typified by the “reform of the reform”, share this tendency but in a lesser degree. A close reading of Beyond the Prosaic might help illuminate both why this so and how it can be overcome, though I fear this was not what some of the contributors had in mind.

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