Bishop Restores, Develops Traditional Theology of Liturgy

A sitting bishop who knows the Roman liturgy, and teaches with authority

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation, on December 4, 1963, of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. (At my Substack I have published a commemorative piece entitled “Bombed Out and Rebuilding,” which you may read over there if you are so inclined.)

The question may rightly be asked: Have any two people ever agreed on what this document means, what it requires, what it rules out, and what it was supposed to accomplish? It seems to me that one of the great problems introduced by the last Council was the creation, within ecclesiastical discourse, of a sort of giant cloud of verbiage that allows one to see, or not see, or invent, a nearly unlimited number of shapes and forms. This is a harmless activity when done lying down on the grass, looking up at the puffy clouds as they drift by, but it is destabilizing as a method of church governance.

Sixty years after the passage of this constitution, we look around in vain for a coherent treatment of the Roman liturgy on the part of the Roman episcopate in general and of the bishop of Rome in particular. One could compile a gigantic book of highly conflictual and inconsistent teaching and pastoral directives from these wearisome decades. With a sigh, one utters melancholy words: “Is there no one who will teach clearly about these matters, from first principles to sound conclusions?”

To be sure, there is no shortage of presentations on the sacrament of the Eucharist. Nor has there been any dearth of programs and events intended to bolster our attendance at Holy Mass — although the quality of such initiatives often leave something to be desired (if not openly questioned, as Fr. Robert McTeigue pointed out recently), and the prohibition of Mass as “non-essential” during the lockdowns contradicted the same.

However, at the intersection of sacramental and moral theology, there sits a pair of considerations that have been almost unaddressed by bishops since 1969, trained as they have been (and more recently, admonished) to uphold the Novus Ordo Missae as the “unique expression of the Roman Rite.” We might frame these twin considerations as questions. First, the theoretical, theological question: What is the Roman Mass as a discreet act of divine worship? Second, the practical, moral question: What are a Catholic’s duties in regard to this specific ritual act?

As I have described at length elsewhere, the reason that these questions have been left without cogent answer by local ordinaries since the 1960s is due to the near-universal adoption of the Pauline Missal “put official approval on the idea of liturgy as a permanent workshop of change, accommodation, inculturation, and open-ended participation—to be defined as meaning whatever those in charge want it to mean.” Bishops that embrace a revolution of liturgical formlessness cannot in principle defend any ritual act in itself, much less the venerable Mass of the Ages.

It is therefore of historical and theological moment to observe that, for the first time since Sacrosanctum Concilium, a living bishop has chosen to address the two above questions directly, in print, and in a way that is both coherent and profound.

Last month in Rome, Robert Cardinal Sarah and several others joined Bishop Athanasius Schneider for the international launch of his book, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2023).

Although many have already hailed this work as a timely and monumental “catechism for our times” (myself included) and have defended it against its critics (as I did here), today I should like to comment upon the particularly lofty liturgical vision offered in Credo — a vision which, I maintain, reclaims a lost thread of the Church’s traditional doctrine of liturgy, and proffers a legitimate development of that same doctrine.

Although the topic comes up in many places, Part 3, Chapter 15, is where Credo contains exceptional teaching on the sacred liturgy. After correctly defining liturgy as “the many official rites and ceremonies of the Church’s public worship, through which she glorifies God and sanctifies man,” ^[1] the author insists:

The Church was established to offer right worship. It continues the work of Our Lord, the eternal High Priest, “prolong[ing] the priestly mission of Jesus Christ[.]” ^[2]

In Credo, one immediately sees that the Church could never be mistaken for “a kind of non-governmental humanitarian aid organization.” ^[3] Rather, it stands out as existing precisely for the right worship of God.

As such, Catholic liturgy shines out as “primarily for the glorification of God.” ^[4] Such an assertion could not be farther from the notion that liturgical “participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else,” ^[5] generally interpreted since Vatican II as license to adopt any number of novel practices in Catholic worship if they serve more favorable outcomes for the congregation — a dynamic often described as “relevance.”

With the general nature of worship introduced, the reader of Credo suddenly finds himself in the midst of what are perhaps the most remarkable three pages of the entire book, if not the most striking three pages of formal episcopal teaching on liturgy in the last century. Under the unassuming subheading “History of Liturgy,” Credo develops a central principle that has been almost entirely ignored for decades: namely, that our liturgical rites are first revelatory, and therefore morally binding.

The teaching of Credo in this area is so succinct and well-formulated, and so admirably arranged, that it warrants direct quotations:

758. What is the origin of the liturgy? It originates in the eternal exchange of divine charity between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, which in turn is the object of ceaseless adoration in heaven (see Isa. 6, 1–3; and Apoc. 4, 8).

759. What is the origin of the liturgy on earth? Like religion itself, earthly liturgy goes back to the dawn of human history, developing gradually under the careful providence of God. … In anticipation of the coming Redeemer, God formed a chosen priesthood and gave precise directions for the sacrifices, feasts, and ceremonies of the Old Law (see Leviticus). ^[6]

From this divine and transcendent origin, the Catholic learns that liturgy has only ever existed in one historical “stream” of acceptable worship; revealed by God in the beginning of history, gradually developed and codified, and finally perfected in and through Jesus Christ. ^[7]

For those familiar with them, these considerations will sound much like the formulations of other catechisms in our celebrated tradition. ^[8]

The liturgy belongs to the whole body of the Church

What comes next, however, is truly amazing:

764. Who has ensured the integrity of Catholic liturgy across time and space? The entire body of the Church; but chiefly the apostles and their successors, whom Our Lord empowered to safeguard the liturgy and oversee its development with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. ^[9]

In this compact formulation, I maintain that we are witnessing what is possibly the first coherent theology of ritual development from the ordinary magisterium of the Church. “The entire body of the Church” is here maintained as the guarantor of integrity in the Church’s liturgy: i.e., the Church as a corporate entity.

A corollary follows immediately:

765. May the Catholic hierarchy therefore create novel liturgical forms at will? No. Liturgical continuity is an essential aspect of the Church’s holiness and catholicity: “For our canons and our forms were not given to the churches [only] at the present day, but were wisely and safely transmitted to us from our forefathers.”

766. Isn’t any form of worship inherently sacred? No. Only traditional rites enjoy this inherent sanctity — liturgical forms that have been received from antiquity and developed organically in the Church as one body, i.e., in accord with the authentic sensus fidelium and the perennis sensus ecclesiae (perennial sense of the Church), duly confirmed by the hierarchy. ^[10]

Here, from the pen of a living bishop, and under the imprimatur of another (and the episcopal endorsement of several more), we have a clear and principled answer to the weary decades of liturgy wars, in plain black and white.

It is not — and speaking historically, it never has been — the mere “fiat” of ecclesiastical officeholders that “makes” the sacred worship of the Church. Rather, the essentially traditional character of our rites itself stands as the demonstration of this sanctity, rooting them in manifest continuity with their supernatural origin and continuous development.

Credo again, with a most ringing elucidation of this point:

767. Why is this link to antiquity so essential for the sanctity of right worship? God has revealed how He desires to be worshipped: therefore, this sanctity cannot be fabricated or decreed; it can only be humbly received, diligently protected, and reverently handed on. This is the guiding apostolic principle: Tradidi quod accepi, “I handed over to you, what I first received” (1 Cor 15:3). “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess 2, 15). ^[11]

This paragraph alone merits hours of reflection and focused prayer. “God has revealed how He desires to be worshipped.” This means that the “link to antiquity” is not only essential, it is itself the badge of orthodoxy — a term most accurately translated from Greek as simultaneously “right worship” and “right belief.” Only by her corporate maintenance of particular ritual forms, first received from God, is “the Church’s holiness and catholicity” preserved.

Concrete ritual forms: Bishop Schneider vests for pontifical Mass (photo by Allison Girone)

Such a transcendent view of the traditional rites of the Church is the only thing that makes sense of that rubrical care that has always been paid to her ceremonies, on pain of the sin of sacrilege. As Credo reminds us:

Every ceremony of the Holy Mass, however small or minimal, contains in itself a positive work, a real meaning, a distinct beauty…. For this reason, St. Teresa of Avila declared: “I would rather die a thousand times than violate the least ceremony of the Church.” ^[12]

Indeed, no other justification could be marshaled (and none other is needed) for asserting that the highest earthly authority — the Roman Pontiff — has no power to abolish the Ancient Mass; and that, should this be attempted, no cleric or layman can be obliged to comply with such an order:

771. Can a pope abrogate a liturgical rite of immemorial custom in the Church? No. Just as a pope cannot forbid or abrogate the Apostles’ Creed…neither can he abrogate traditional, millennium-old rites of Mass and the sacraments or forbid their use. This applies as much to Eastern as to Western rites.

772. Could the traditional Roman Rite ever be legitimately forbidden for the entire Church? No. It rests upon divine, apostolic, and ancient pontifical usage, and bears the canonical force of immemorial custom; it can never be abrogated or forbidden.

And from earlier in the book: 

478. Must we comply with the prohibition of traditional Catholic liturgical rites? No. … The rites of venerable antiquity form a sacred and constitutive part of the common patrimony of the Church, and not even the highest ecclesiastical authority has power to proscribe them. ^[13]

With this simple and eminently logical sequence of principles and applications, a path has been paved toward a full restoration of the Church’s liturgical theology, as well as a legitimate development of the same.

Nevertheless, a number of related questions arise:

Is it theologically possible for the Church’s hierarchy to promulgate a liturgy that is deficient in itself? If so, would Catholics be bound to offer or attend it? Does the hierarchy have authority to ever suspend the public offering of Mass altogether, e.g., due to public health concerns?

These and a great many more topics are raised and directly answered in the pages of Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith — a book which will continue to warrant attention and careful study for years to come, and which should be under every Catholic’s Christmas tree this year.

A book published in 1967. How’d you guess?

NOTES

^[1] Credo, 312.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid., 213.

^[4] Ibid., 312.

^[5] Second Vatican Council, Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 14.

^[6] Credo, 313.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] E.g., the venerable bishop Richard Challoner’s catechism of 1737, The Catholick Christian Instructed: “The servants of God, from the beginning of the world, [have] been always accustomed to honor Him with sacrifices…. in view of the sacrifice of Christ, of which they all were types and figures” (see Tradivox Catholic Catechism Index [Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2021], 3:125–126).

^[9] Credo, 313.

^[10] Ibid., 314.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Ibid., 312.

^[13] Ibid., 315, 185.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

Nostalgia? No Thanks! Tradition Will Always Be for the Young

Earlier this week, the Second Vatican Council passed its 60th anniversary; time to dust off the ever-dustier canard that those who prefer the liturgy that the Council Fathers wanted to be renewed and flourish to the one it never even remotely imagined are “nostalgic” for the wicked old days before the Council. I could not hope to write a better reply to this canard than these words from an article which Peter wrote a bit less than 3 years ago on One Peter Five.

“Most of the people in a modern TLM congregation were born well after Vatican II and have not the slightest clue what things were like beforehand, nor do they particularly care. They are not hankering for a lost culture or seeking to reconstruct a lost world. Rather, they desire a proper Catholic culture here and now, which begins with the solemn, formal, objective, beautiful divine cult we call the sacred liturgy, which we do inherit from many centuries of faith — but we live it and we love it now. ... (They) are clear-sighted, energetic, and future-looking people. They are too busy discerning vocations, managing a pewful of children, singing in chant scholas, or cooking for potlucks after Rorate Masses to have time for lollygagging in the lanes of an inaccessible memory.”

Case in point: on September 30th, the feast of St Jerome, His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who is well known to all of our readers, celebrated a Pontifical High Mass at the Institute of Christ the King’s church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (The church is titled to the Precious Blood, a favorite devotion of St John XXIII, which, like the feast he chose as the opening day of Vatican II, was removed from the general calendar of the post-Conciliar rite.)

Bishop Schneider enters the church; behind him is Chorbishop Anthony Spinosa, rector of the Maronite National Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in North Jackson, Ohio, who attended the Mass in choir.

Anyone who has ever served this rite of Mass knows that it requires a good amount of organizing and rehearsal to do properly; the reward is a ceremony which truly impresses upon one, forcibly and unmistakably, the power and majesty of what the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass really is. We can all take encouragement once again from the fact that almost none of the people who are making the effort and commitment to put this together are old enough to be doing so from any sense of “nostalgia.” (Bishop Schneider himself was not even five years old when the last Council ended.) What we see here is a true and sincere love for the richness of our Catholic liturgical tradition. Feliciter! Once again, thanks to one of our favorite photographers, Allison Girone, for sharing her beautiful work with us.

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The Participation of Women in the Priestly Work of Liturgy

It seems almost impossible these days to read anything coming from the Vatican without reading about desires to “increase women’s roles and responsibilities” in the Church. Yet somehow suppressed is the truth that there cannot possibly be, in any possible or actual universe, a higher role or responsibility for women than (1) to be mothers and (2) to pray, in some combination of the two, ranging from a wife and the mother of a family to a consecrated virgin and spiritual mother. I am all the more confident in saying this, in spite of not being a woman, because all of the best, holiest, wisest, and happiest women I have ever known agree with this view; in fact, they are the ones who taught it to me, much as Diotima taught Socrates.

As Bishop Athanasius Schneider says:

[The faithful Catholic women during Soviet times] would never have dared to touch the holy hosts with their fingers. They would refuse to even read a reading during Mass. My mother, for example…when she first went to the West, she was shocked, scandalised, to see women in the sanctuary during Holy Mass. The true power of the Christian and Catholic woman is the power to be the heart of the family, the domestic church, to have the privilege to be the first who gives nourishment to the body of the child and also to be the first who gives nourishment to the souls of the child, teaching it the first prayer and the first truths of the Catholic faith. The most prestigious and beautiful profession of a woman is to be mother, and especially to be a Catholic mother. (source)

No doubt Bishop Schneider would say, in accord with the traditional teaching of the Church, that the religious profession of a consecrated virgin exceeds even this most beautiful natural calling, for it is an especially lofty and pure reflection of the nature of the Church as Christ’s Immaculate Bride, and the fullest outpouring of faith and love for the heavenly Bridegroom. All this could be said to be John Paul II’s perspective as well, but of course he has been thrown under the bus by the feminists and their allies who now occupy the positions of authority.

My own views on the irreducibly distinct and complementary roles of men and women in the Church may be found in my book Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion, which is intended to be nothing other than a presentation and defense, in modern language, of traditional teaching and practice.
 

But it seems to me valuable to share a passage from the famous Eastern Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov, who paints an attractive picture of the necessary and valuable involvement of women in making and repairing items for the liturgy. The following is taken from The Spiritual Diary (pp. 132–33), an entry written on March 20, 1925.

How lovely are Your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord [Ps. 84:2–3 Douay-Rheims]. The lot of the priest—how joyful, how elect, for the sparrow has found herself a nest [Ps. 84:4].
          Though not all are priests, still the Lord allows those who are not to reach out and to touch the sanctuary and to rejoice in it. I behold women, old and young, making clerical vestments and veils for the holy mysteries of Christ, and my heart expands as I rejoice in their love, in the miracle of God’s mercy. Unceasingly created and continually traversed is the grace-bestowing ladder between earth and heaven [John 1:51]. This ladder is brought into being even now by timid and obedient fingers. For whatever is intended for the sanctuary is already holy by virtue of its purpose, it is holy in its consecration, and, after entering through the curtain of fire, is taken out of human hands to remain in consecrated hands alone, for in truth consecrated hands are no longer human (no matter how sinful or wretched my right hand may be, O Lord). And that which is sewn and woven in our daily, mundane life is already regenerated and sanctified in [priestly] hands and becomes a thing of another world, of the new heaven and new earth.
          The Lord has elected the most skilled and endowed them with the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the completion of their work for the tabernacle [cf. Ex. 31:1–6]. But this gift, having once come down for the elect, remains and is passed down even now in the Church. It rests even now on those who worthily and prayerfully complete this work.…
          Through them, a bridge is created between the sanctuary and the outer courts, a link by which angels ascend and descend from heaven to earth and back. And the woman who offers the Lord her love and her work is like the woman who bought the alabaster jar of expensive oil and poured it on the feet of the Savior and filled that home with fragrance; and the Lord said of this blessed woman that she hath wrought a good work.… Yes, may there also be a blessing for those women who do a good work today by offering a vial of the precious oil of love from their hearts [cf. Matt. 26:6–10].

These words bring to mind the many women over the years whom I have worked with or have heard of, who are sewing and repairing vestments, altar cloths, altar frontals, who are rinsing, washing, mending, doing all sorts of behind-the-scenes work without which the liturgy would not be fittingly offered. The Lord knows of their service and He will reward it.

I think about this YouTube channel, humbly entitled “Vestment Lady” (nowhere will you find out her name—she would not even use her name in our email correspondence): 

 

Or the many makers of fine vestments you can find with a minimum of searching, like Altarworthy or Traditional Vestments. And who can forget the charming pair of ladies featured in Mass of the Ages who continued to sew and repair traditional vestments all through the dark days of the 1970s when such vestments were being thrown away, and who were blessed by God with the sight of a burgeoning new demand for the same?

Indeed, even “those who are not priests” still “reach out and touch the sanctuary and rejoice in it” by the labors of their hands and by the love in their hearts. What is needed today is not a feminist advancement of laywomen into higher and higher bureaucratic posts or more and more semi-clerical occupations—the same is true, mutatis mutandis, of laymen—but a revolution of mentality, a metanoia, a putting on the mind of Christ, Who came not to be served but to serve, and Who gave Himself as a ransom for the many. This is the true model of the priesthood, both ordained and baptismal. It is a model that has become well-nigh indecipherable in the postconciliar period’s smoke and mirrors, culminating in the booby hatch of the Synod on Synodality. May we find our way once again to the humility of tradition by a future servus servorum Dei who does not subscribe to the utilitarian horizontalism and depersonalizing functionalism of the modern West.

Photos of the Guild of St Clare by Joseph Shaw.

50 Years Ago Today: Paul VI’s (Attempted) Abolition of the Subdiaconate and Minor Orders

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most tragic of the ruptures introduced into the Church by Paul VI: the abolition and distorted reconfiguration of the minor orders and subdiaconate by means of the apostolic letter Ministeria Quaedam released on this date in 1972, and bearing no relationship whatsoever to anything that had been said in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Or, we should say, the attempted abolition, for the minor ordines and subdiaconate, which have belonged to the heritage of the Church for at least 1,700 years (their actual origin, like that of many other ancient things, remains hidden to our eyes), have never ceased to be used in the liturgy of the Latin rite, even after Paul VI’s document. Archbishop Lefebvre continued to confer them in the 1970s and beyond, and all communities that took their origin from him or allied with him did the same. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, and the Institute of the Good Shepherd have done and do likewise. There have even been occasional diocesan ordinaries who have conferred these minor orders on diocesan seminarians and clergy, especially under the beneficent influence of Summorum Pontificum.

The liturgical ministries of the minor orders and the subdiaconate are not rooted simply in baptism (as some have speciously claimed) but rather in are extensions or distributions of the servanthood of the diaconate, as Bishop Athanasius Schneider demonstrates so well (here and here). [1] In the absence of the traditional sacramental-liturgical account, the ministries of lector and acolyte cease to have any rationale other than providing jobs for the unemployed, avenues of “active participation” that instantly divide the congregation into gold stars and silver stars and bronze stars and black dots.

Ordination of acolytes

It may well be believed that a pope has no authority to abolish a bimillennial approved and received tradition. This had already been recognized regarding the venerable Roman Mass when Benedict XVI stated in Summorum Pontificum and Con Grande Fiducia that the old missal was never abrogated — even though nearly everyone, except a tiny number of traditionalists, acted as if it had been. In light of the perennial doctrinal principles declared in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum and its accompanying letter, the subdiaconate and minor orders have no more been abolished than has the ancient usage of the Roman Rite itself, nor could they be. The old rites, when used today, confer the minor orders and the subdiaconate that they intend to confer.

Catholics have long been told that they should engage in ecumenism, but the one ecumenism that was oddly forbidden was respecting the traditions we hold in common with the Eastern Churches. The lectorate and the subdiaconate still abide in the East. Rather than thinking they have somehow vanished into thin air, it is far more plausible to assume that they abide — and must abide — in the Roman Church as well, albeit in a condition of widespread underappreciation and underuse.

Blessing of a reader in the Eastern rite

A beautiful culture and highly practical asceticism goes with the minor orders: they set their recipient apart for liturgical offices and activities and prepare a man step by step, through lower forms of ministry, to receive the higher forms of the major orders (subdiaconate, diaconate, and priesthood), by which he is decisively inserted into the servanthood and priesthood of Jesus Christ.

The conferral of the minor orders is more than a mere delegation but less than a sacramental ordination in the full sense, which inscribes an indelible mark or character on the soul. If (as in the most common theological opinion) the minor orders do not confer a character and are not part of the sacrament of order but are instituted by the Church, they should be classified as sacramentals. [2] This seems in keeping with the definition of sacramentals given in the 1917 Code: “things or actions which the Church uses in a certain imitation of the sacraments, in order, in virtue of her prayers, to achieve effects, above all of a spiritual nature.” [3]

Specifically, the ceremonies are constitutive blessings that permanently depute persons to divine service by imparting to them some sacred identity, by which they assume a new and distinct spiritual relationship. These blessings entitle their recipients to actual graces for the performance of their ministries, much like the sacramental graces associated with the reception of the sacraments, and similar to the blessing of an abbot. [4] This makes the men in minor orders to be sacramentalia permanentia — blessed and consecrated objects of a sort! For instance, the blessing of a rosary is a sacramental; the blessed rosary itself is a sacramental; the use of the blessed rosary is a sacramental. Likewise, we can say that the ceremonies conferring the minor orders are sacramentals, those in minor orders are sacramentals, and the exercises of their offices are sacramentals.

Wijding van mensen binnen de rooms-katholieke kerk, Bernard Picart (atelier van), 1722 [Note that "porter" is called here "sacristan"]

So the ceremonies of the minor orders and of the subdiaconate confer both the right to perform the ministries and also the promise of actual graces in carrying them out. [5] If we humbly allow ourselves to be guided by the traditional rites of the Pontifical, we can see that there is a solemn imparting of new responsibilities and the assurance of graces to fulfill them worthily. The Church has always endeavored to follow the exhortation of St. Paul: “Let all things [in public worship] be done to edification. . . . Let all things be done decently, and according to order.” [6]

Following apostolic and ancient discipline in regard to the ordines or ranked ministers of the Church ought to matter to us. To hold it as a thing of no worth would be an imperfection, even a vice, for we must never treat longstanding ecclesiastical tradition as deserving of contempt or rejection. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the thirteenth century, a time when minor orders would already have seemed extremely ancient: “The various customs of the Church in the divine worship are in no way contrary to the truth: wherefore we must observe them, and to disregard them is unlawful.” [7]

In a magnificent passage from the Summa theologiae, the Angelic Doctor holds forth on the appropriateness of the Church’s manifesting an orderly diversity of offices and ways of life, as she did throughout her history and well into modern times, and as she will continue to do, wherever sound theology prevails. The vision presented here is at the furthest possible remove from the democratic egalitarianism, traffic of interchangeable functionaries, and lack of architectural and ministerial boundaries characteristic of the postconciliar era. Thomas writes that the differences of states and duties in the Church regards three things:

In the first place, it regards the perfection of the Church. For even as in the order of natural things, perfection, which in God is simple and uniform, is not to be found in the created universe except in a multiform and manifold manner, so too, the fullness of grace, which is centered in Christ as head, flows forth to His members in various ways, for the perfecting of the body of the Church. This is the meaning of the Apostle’s words (Eph. 4:11–12): “He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors for the perfecting of the saints.”
          Secondly, it regards the need of those actions which are necessary in the Church. For a diversity of actions requires a diversity of men appointed to them, in order that all things may be accomplished without delay or confusion; and this is indicated by the Apostle (Rom. 12:4–5), “As in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ.”
          Thirdly, this belongs to the dignity and beauty of the Church, which consist in a certain order; wherefore it is written (1 Kings 10:4–5) that “when the queen of Saba saw all the wisdom of Solomon . . . and the apartments of his servants, and the order of his ministers . . . she had no longer any spirit in her.” Hence the Apostle says (2 Tim. 2:20) that “in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth.”[8]

The beauty of hierarchical order

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A Roman Rite Pontifical Mass in Church Slavonic

Here is an interesting thing I just stumbled across via a friend on social media, a video of His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider celebrating a Pontifical Mass in the Roman Rite, but in Church Slavonic, rather than Latin. The Mass was celebrated in Friday, September 16, 2016, for the feast of St Ludmilla, a martyr of the very early years of the conversion of Bohemia in the later 9th century.

One week before this Mass was celebrated, we published an article about a Glagolitic Mass, as it is called, celebrated in Croatia: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2016/09/glagolitic-mass-celebrated-in-zagreb.html. This tradition of celebrating the Roman Mass in a Slavic idiom rather than Latin goes back, of course, to the missionary activities of Ss Cyril and Methodius among the Slavs. On Monday, I wrote about a Saint named Procopius who is very important in Bohemia, and whose religious community in the later 11th century may very well have celebrated the Roman Rite in Church Slavonic. Without prejudice to the importance of Latin, or to the importance of preserving its liturgical use, as both St John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council wanted, this custom can be a useful reference point for continuing the essential work of correcting the botched post-Conciliar reform, since it uses a form of “vernacular” without compromising the ceremonial or textual tradition of the rite.

New Book Defends All-Male Liturgical Ministry, Subdiaconate/Minor Orders, and Proper Roles of Clergy and Laity

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest book, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Crisis Publications).

When this project was first conceived over a year ago, my initial idea was to write a critique of Paul VI’s attempted suppression of the subdiaconate and minor orders, of John Paul II’s permission of altar girls, and of Francis’s innovation of female “acolytes” and “lectors.” During its writing, however, the scope of the book considerably broadened to include a full-scale presentation and defense of the traditional sevenfold manifestation of Orders — priest, deacon, subdeacon, lector, acolyte, exorcist, and porter — together with an explanation of the distinct but mutually supporting roles of clergy and laity. In order to accomplish this, I stepped back further to look at the distinction and complementarity of the sexes in the order of creation and the order of redemption, a perspective that provides the ultimate foundation for the Church’s entire teaching on states of life, roles, and ministries. In this way the book serves as a response to the “gender madness” that afflicts the world and increasingly infects the Church.

The summer’s anti-TLM motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the mounting threats against the former Ecclesia Dei institutes that avail themselves of the traditional rites of ordination conspire to make the book’s overall argument more urgent still. (Fortunately, subsequent to July 16 I was given the opportunity to do some last-minute revisions to the text in order to take this new scenario into account. Nothing of substance had to be changed in the overall argument.)

Ministers of Christ analyzes the problems with recent popes’ successive innovations in the area of ministry, showing how they have created a theologically and liturgically incoherent situation—a categorical rupture from a tradition firmly rooted in the most profound anthropological, Christological, and ecclesiological principles. In this regard the Church stands in desperate need of the correct (and corrective) witness of the usus antiquior. This will remain true even if a tyrannical attempt is made to prohibit the ancient rites of ordination, an act that would have no more legal validity than Traditionis Custodes itself.

Part I, “Foundations,” looks at the most fundamental questions: how sexuality and the body have personal significance and therefore moral, theological, and liturgical significance as well; the connection between the Incarnation of Our Lord and the male priesthood and male sanctuary service; the blessing on womanhood conferred in and through Our Lady, the Virgin Mother of God; the Old Testament background and New Testament roots of the diaconate, subdiaconate, and minor orders, seen as radiating outward from the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the solemn tradition behind this ecclesiastical hierarchy; and the proper role of the laity in the great world outside the churches, where they exercise their primary responsibilities.

Part II, “Deviations,” takes a critical look at practices that entered the Church after the Second Vatican Council—above all, the attempt to sideline the subdiaconate and minor orders and the habitual use of female lectors and altar servers, whether filling in as “substitutes” or, as Pope Francis would have it, installed as ministers. It explains how these distortions and novelties misconstrue and muddle the callings of laity and clergy as well as their diverse but complementary modes of participation in the liturgy. In the course of the chapters, the notion of “active participation” is freed from its harsh captivity as a slogan trafficked by modern liturgists.

Part III, “Restoration,” charts a path out of this mess into a healthier church life, making the case for several related proposals:

– the universal reestablishment of the subdiaconate and minor orders, which have never been and cannot be abrogated and which remain in use to this day;

– a return to the traditional lex orandi of the classical Roman rite, which embodies true doctrine about states of life, ministries, and sexes;

– the wearing of veils by women in church as a sign of their dignity and role within the Mystical Body;

– the full acceptance of the supernatural and sacrificial vision of priesthood and consecrated life that attracts vocations today as it always did in the past, together with a firm repudiation of the “heresy of activism” that extinguishes the primacy of prayer and the ultimacy of contemplation;

– a reversal of the mad race of aggiornamento, to be replaced by the serene embrace of the essential changelessness of the Christian religion, which worships the immutable God in His eternal truth, reflected in traditional liturgical rites.

This book also includes the definitive versions of two essays by Bishop Athanasius Schneider: “The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy” and “Healing the Rupture: A Call for the Restoration of Minor Orders.”

Ministers of Christ concludes with three litanies for private devotional use. The first is for the clergy in general. The second and third, based on the Roman Martyrology, remind us that the Church’s history provides many examples of saintly subdeacons, lectors, acolytes, and exorcists whom we ought to invoke. Lastly, there is a select bibliography divided into topics.

Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion.
   By Peter Kwasniewski, with two chapters by Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
   Foreword by Leila Marie Lawler.
   Manchester, NH: Crisis Publications, 2021.
   xliii + 285 pp.
   Paperback $19.95.

Available directly from the publisher or from Amazon.com.

Here is a short video (by no means professional...) that has more or less the same content as the post above, for those who prefer the video format.

Bish. Schneider Celebrates Pontifical Mass in Pennsylvania

This past Sunday, His Excellency Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Maria Santissima in Astana, Kazakhstan, celebrated a solemn Pontifical Mass at the very full church of St Joseph in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Allison Girone was there, working together with her daughter-in-law Alyssa to take these beautiful photos, and we thank them for sharing them with us. (The full album of about 600 photos can be seen here.) Two of our other frequent collaborators were also present, James Griffin of the Durandus Institute, who served as the subdeacon, and photographer Arrys Ortañez (just attending this time.) As always, it is extremely encouraging to see how young most of the people are who putting in the hard work of preserving and promoting our Catholic liturgical tradition. Meet the guardians of the tradition!

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Bishop Schneider Discusses His New Book on the Mass

Here is an interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the reasons for the crisis in the Church today. The interviewer is Steve Bannon, and it was presented as part of his War Room Pandemic podcast, which is politically conservative, but not by any means all Catholic. He asks a number of open questions and for the most part, gives Bishop Schneider center stage for 20 minutes.

The interview is posted in video on Rumble, and so I can’t embed it on this platform. The link is here.

https://rumble.com/vnheat-bishop-schneider-explains-the-deepest-crisis-of-the-catholic-church-today.html

His Excellency speaks of the changes in the Mass and the crisis in the Church today. Interestingly, he calls the 1965 Mass the “Mass of Vatican II”, which, he says, was substantially the same as the centuries-old traditional Mass, with some use of the vernacular, and is an organic development. 

He then goes on to describe the Novus Ordo as a “revolutionary order of Mass that goes against the nature of the Church.” He speaks of Pope Francis’ recent motu proprio restricting the celebration of the TLM as being reflective of a man-centered and materialistic ideology, rather than a God-centered religion that offers us eternal life. It is more in line with the protestant understanding of liturgy, that is, primarily as a meal, and more informal. “Christ did not save us through the Last Supper,” he says, “but through the sacrifice on the Cross and his Resurrection.” He also says that the motu proprio has had the effect of increasing curiosity about the TLM amongst young people. This is evidence, says Bishop Schneider, that not even a Pope can overcome the Holy Spirit.

The show promoted the Bishop’s forthcoming book on what he calls the “unspeakable richness” of the the Holy Mass, called The Catholic Mass: Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy. The publisher is Sophia Institute Press, but you will have to be patient, since it is not due for release until January 2022.

“Eucharistic Concelebration: Theological, Historical, and Liturgical Aspects” — Guest Article by Bishop Athanasius Schneider

New Liturgical Movement is pleased to be able to publish online the following incisive text by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, which also appears in print in the latest issue of Latin Mass magazine. In the first part, His Excellency looks at the historical roots and theological implications of Eucharistic concelebration, while in the second part he makes a concrete proposal for how concelebration might be rarely but appropriately used and how its ceremonial ought to unfold. This rich presentation comes at a critically important time, as concelebration has once again been much in the news.—PAK

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Papal Mass (1832)

Eucharistic Concelebration:
Theological, Historical, and Liturgical Aspects

Bishop Athanasius Schneider

I. The Theological and Historical Aspect

1. The first Holy Mass was celebrated by Our Lord in the cenacle. This Mass did not have the form of a sacramental concelebration because the apostles did not pronounce the words of consecration; only the Lord pronounced them. The apostles participated in the Eucharist, celebrated by the Lord, by sacramentally receiving His Body and His Blood. We could say they “concelebrated” in the first Mass in the form of a non-sacramental concelebration.

2. From the earliest times, the universal Church (both in the East and in the West) conserved faithfully this original form of Eucharistic concelebration with these two characteristics:

1. The main celebrant alone pronounces the words of consecration;
2. The main celebrant is always and exclusively the “high priest,” i.e. the bishop (and in Rome the Pope).

3. In the beginning of the Middles Ages, in the Papal Liturgy in Rome there was a development of the original form by the fact that the concelebrants pronounced the words of consecration together with the Pope (cf. Ordo Romanus III, 8th century).

4. However, down to the present, the most ancient Oriental churches—the non-Catholic Greek Byzantines, the non-Catholic Copts, and non-Catholic Nestorians—have conserved the norm that only the main celebrant pronounces the words of consecration.

5. Until recent times in the universal Church, a priest never presided as the main celebrant of a Eucharistic sacramental concelebration.

6. From the seventeenth century on, the Byzantine Catholic churches introduced an innovation, that is, the form of concelebration among priests without a bishop as the main celebrant. Thereby the concelebration among priests became usual (cf. the article “Le rituel de la concélébration eucharistique” of Aimé Georges Martimort in Ephemerides Liturgicae 77 [1963] 147–168).

7. Such a form of Eucharistic concelebration only among priests was alien to the universal and constant tradition of the Church. Therefore the Roman Church forbade such concelebration among priests (cf. can. 803 of the Code of Canon Law 1917).

8. Only the Catholic Oriental churches adopted the custom that all concelebrants pronounce the words of consecration.

9. Until the Second Vatican Council, in the Latin Church a Eucharistic sacramental concelebration, where all concelebrants pronounce the words of consecration, was practiced only on three occasions:

1. Episcopal consecration: only the main consecrator and the newly consecrated bishops concelebrated.
2. Priestly ordination: only the bishop and the newly ordained priests concelebrated.
3. Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday in the Cathedral of Lyons (France): the bishop concelebrated with six priests.

10. For the Chrism Mass, the Roman Church conserved until the Second Vatican Council however the most ancient form, i.e. the words of consecration pronounced only by the bishop, although twelve priests assisted him clothed with all the vestments required for Mass. With this form, the Roman Church perhaps wished to recount the first Holy Mass on Holy Thursday, where the main celebrant, Jesus the High Priest, alone pronounced the words of consecration while the twelve apostles concelebrated non-sacramentally, since they did not pronounce together with the Lord the words of the sacramental consecration.

11. In the millennial tradition of the Roman Church, sacramental Eucharistic concelebration constituted always an extraordinary solemn act, which occurred on:

1. Ecclesiastically important circumstances, which reflected the hierarchically ordered constitution of the Church, such as in the aforementioned episcopal consecrations and in priestly ordinations;
2. When the bishop celebrated Mass in a most solemn and hierarchically structured form, such as was the case in the Chrism Mass of Lyons, or when the Pope (in the first millenium) celebrated solemnly on the four highest feasts in the year: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Ss. Peter and Paul (a custom that ceased in Rome in the high Middles Ages).

P. Villanueva, Blessing of the Chrism on Holy Thursday in the Lateran Basilica (ca. 1900)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Live Discussion Tomorrow on TC with Card. Zen and Bish. Schneider, Hosted by Aurelio Porfiri

Tomorrow, Dr Aurelio Porfiri, who has been very active in promoting the cause of good sacred music in the liturgy, will hold a discussion on the future of the traditional Latin Mass with Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, James Bogle, Felipe Alanís Suárez, Robert Moynihan and John C. Rao. The program will be live streamed on his You Tube channel RITORNO A ITACA, on his Facebook, AURELIO PORFIRI and on his TWITTER account. The program will begin at 3pm Italian time, which 9am on the East coast of the United States.

Easter Mass with Bishop Schneider in the Cathedral of His Diocese

On April 7, Easter Wednesday, His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider celebrated Mass in the usus antiquior at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Nur-Sultan (formerly called Astana), the capital city of Kazakhstan, while His Excellency Tomash Peta, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Saint Mary in Astana, assisted in choir on his cathedra. This was the first time that a Mass was celebrated in the usus antiquior as a normal scheduled parish Mass in the presence of an Ordinary in central Asia. This day was also Bishop Schneider’s 60th birthday, and we offer him our best wishes and prayers for his continued ministry to the Church - ad multos annos!

How Do Sins Against the Eucharist Cause Our Lord to Suffer?

On June 16, 1675, Our Lord said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial:

I ask of you that the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi be set apart for a special Feast to honor My Heart, by communicating on that day, and making reparation to It by a solemn act, in order to make amends for the indignities which It has received during the time It has been exposed on the altars. I promise you that My Heart shall expand Itself to shed in abundance the influence of Its divine love upon those who shall thus honor It, and cause It to be honored.

It has never been a matter of doubt that the Lord Jesus can be sinned against in the Holy Eucharist in a variety of ways — unbelief, indifference, the contempt of irreverence, reception in a state of mortal sin, sacrilege — and that He is rightly offended by these actions, for human sin and divine righteousness cannot cohabitate. As Cardinal Ratzinger exclaimed in his 2005 Via Crucis in Rome:

Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the Holy Sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency!

What we read of the Israelites in the Book of Numbers may be applied to the faithful who act unfaithfully: “Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Everyone who comes near . . . shall die” (Num 17:12–13). The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Lord’s Passion. Those who approach and receive worthily are united to His mystical death and receive some share of its fruits; those who receive unworthily die the death of compounded mortal sin. All who come near can be said to die — some in order to live forever, and some, to incur the danger of dying forever (cf. Rev 20:6).

A much more difficult question arises, however, when we ask whether it is possible to say that Our Lord suffers when He is thus sinned against. Many such texts, from private revelations and from the works of theologians and spiritual writers, can be collated, all claiming that He can — as, for example, in St. John Vianney’s remarks about how an unworthy communicant crucifies the Lord again. To put the question more precisely: is there a way in which Our Lord may be said to suffer now, after His resurrection, by the things we do to His Most Holy Sacrament?

On the one hand, we know that Christ, having conquered sin and death, is no longer subject to suffering in His glorified state. The Protestant troops who desecrated hosts during the Reformation, trampling them underfoot or feeding them to the beasts, did not diminish Jesus, did not lessen His perfection or His glory; rather, the troops made themselves guilty of a horrendous crime for which they would have to suffer either in this life or in the next. On the other hand, in many approved private revelations over the span of many centuries, beginning in the Middle Ages and coming down to our own times, the Lord says that the sins of men cause Him to grieve, sorrow, and suffer. We must accept this as true in a mysterious way that we will never fully grasp in this life.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider recently weighed in on this question in the text of his “Sins Against the Blessed Sacrament and the Need of a Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation,” which was published many places online (e.g., here) and which was also published an an appendix to my last book The Holy Bread of Eternal Life: Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety (Sophia, 2020). His Excellency writes, inter alia:

To say that the Lord is not suffering because of the outrages committed against Him in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist can lead to a minimizing of the great atrocities committed. Some people say: God is offended by the abuse of the Blessed Sacrament, but the Lord does not personally suffer. This is, however, theologically and spiritually too narrow a view. Although Christ is now in His glorious state and hence no more subject to suffering in a human way, He nevertheless is affected and touched in His Sacred Heart by the abuses and outrages against the Divine majesty and the immensity of His Love in the Blessed Sacrament….
          Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité gave a profound theological explanation of the meaning of the “suffering” or “sadness” of God because of the offenses that sinners commit against Him: “This ‘suffering,’ this ‘sadness’ of the Heavenly Father, or of Jesus since His Ascension, are to be understood analogically. They are not suffered passively as with us, but on the contrary freely willed and chosen as the ultimate expression of Their mercy towards sinners called to conversion. They are only a manifestation of God’s love for sinners, a love which is sovereignly free and gratuitous, and which is not irrevocable.”
          This analogical spiritual meaning of the “sadness” or the “suffering” of Jesus in the Eucharistic mystery is confirmed by the words of the Angel in his apparition in 1916 to the children of Fatima and especially by the words and the example of the life of St. Francisco Marto. The children were invited by the Angel to make reparation for offenses against the Eucharistic Jesus and to console Him, as we can read in the memoirs of Sister Lucia: “…He gave the Host to me, and to Jacinta and Francisco he gave the contents of the chalice to drink, saying as he did so: ‘Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console your God.’”…
          Jesus Christ continues in a mysterious way his Passion in Gethsemane throughout the ages in the mystery of His Church and also in the Eucharistic mystery, the mystery of His immense Love. Well-known is the expression of Blaise Pascal: ‘Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time.’… Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic mystery is not indifferent and insensitive towards the behavior which men show in His regard in this Sacrament of Love. Christ is present in this Sacrament also with His soul, which is hypostatically united with His Divine Person…. “Christ in the sacramental state sees and in a certain divine way perceives all the thoughts and affections, the worship, the homages and also the insults and sins of all men in general, of all his faithful specifically and his priests in particular; He perceives homages and sins that directly refer to this ineffable mystery of love” (Cardinal Franzelin).

Let it not be said that such language is exaggerated, sentimental, or imprecise. The mysteries of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ endure as long as His glorified humanity endures, which is to say, forever; and our behavior toward the Sacrament is our way of receiving Him or rejecting Him (cf. Prologue of St. John’s Gospel), of entering with love into His Passion, as did St. John at the Last Supper and upon the hill of Golgotha, or, conversely, of turning our backs to Him in company with Judas and the high priests, clamoring: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” We are all present to His soul and all have an effect on His soul.

All the sins that men have committed or will commit from the beginning of time until the end of time were distinctly present to Our Lord’s mind and heart throughout His Passion, from the Garden of Gethsemane until He breathed His last  upon the Cross, and therefore He has truly received injury and suffered pain from each of our sins, until the present order of creation shall be no more. Through the perfections of His human intellect (beatific and infused knowledge), Our Lord had knowledge of men’s sins, whenever they had been or would be committed, and for each sin He suffered pain. So what St. Alphonsus says in his traditional Stations of the Cross, viz., that it is my sins that are driving in the nails, etc., is perfectly correct. The mystical reality of this Passion — in its source, which is the charity of His heart; in its effect, which is our redemption; in its primary external sign, His wounds — remains present and active for all eternity. For Christ as our High Priest is “always living to make intercession for us” (Heb 7:25).

Moreover, we may say that Christ’s power of memory, being hypostatically united to a divine Person, has a greater depth and intensity than even our primary experience, dulled as it is by the limits of our nature and of our fallen condition. His ever-living memory of His Passion is more intensely real than the experience of the same suffering and death would have been to any other human being. Could we not say that Christ’s memory of His suffering during His mortal life is more truly called suffering than our actual sufferings are? And if this is true, would they not deserve the strongest words we could give them? Yet this point could be argued against by stating that the mere memory of suffering (as St Thomas points out in speaking about the causes of pleasure) seems rather a cause for happiness, if the suffering itself has passed by.

A theologian suggested to me the following (admittedly highly speculative) possibility. We know that the possession of the beatific vision would “normally” render the possessor immune to all pain and all sadness, and yet that during His earthy life our Lord prevented the beatific vision from producing all its effects in His soul, for the sake of the Redemption. Is it impossible that in heaven, out of charity, and to provoke our charity, Christ allows some part of His soul still not to benefit from the normal effect of the beatific vision, so that there may be still some drop of sorrow, of want, in the midst of the joy of heaven? Might the same be the case for the Blessed Virgin, since private revelations seem to speak of her in very much the same way?

I conclude once more with words by Cardinal Ratzinger in his Via Crucis meditations:

His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison — Lord, save us.