Fr Rosica: are liberal and conservative blogs cesspools of venom, hatred, and vitriol?

Conflict is inevitable. Here is the Oxford Pro-life Witness last Saturday, with attendant
counter-demonstration, who try to stop us praying by playing music.

Never one to ignore the mote in someone else's eye, Fr Dwight Longenecker has used comments by Fr Thomas Rosica about how horrid the internet can be to attack 'traditionalists', and lists his least favourite blogs as examples.

It is interesting to note, however, that Fr Rosica does not single out traditionalists, and I think it is extremely unlikely that he has ever sampled the wares of little-read, marginal figures like Mundabor, 'Novus Ordo Watch', and 'TradCathKnight', mentioned by Longenecker. The Crux article reporting his remarks noted, instead, his conflict with 'conservative and pro-life' sites. This is Fr Rosica's description of what he doesn't like:

the obsessed, scrupulous, self-appointed, nostalgia-hankering virtual guardians of faith or of liturgical practices are very disturbed, broken and angry individuals, who never found a platform or pulpit in real life and so resort to the Internet and become trolling pontiffs and holy executioners!

Obviously, that can apply across the spectrum of opinion. Fr Rosica's personal conflicts aside, the interesting question is where we find this kind of 'venom, hatred, and vitriol' among those who are widely read, who are taken seriously, who are respected as mainstream voices among their ideological fellow-travellors: as opposed to those who are not.

About blogging on this blog

St Jerome in his study.

I need to free up some time for an academic project, so I am going to take a bit of a step back from this blog for a few months. The most-read posts - such as the ones over the last few days on Montessori and clericalism - are very time-consuming to write. I don't regret using my time in this way, as it has proved very valuable to me in developing my thinking, with the aid of reactions and comments, but I need to take a break from that for a few months.

I'll continue to post announcements and some topical material. What I propose to do to replace the posts I've been doing on liturgical and theological issues - which are the ones, as I say, which generate a relatively big readership - is selectively to re-post material already published on this blog. I hope that doesn't seem like cheating! If so, I apologise in advance.

I will fairly soon be able to post on a brand new Position Paper, however, on the Extraordinary Form and the Laity.

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War among the trolls

Every time something scandalous happens in the Church, whether it be a bishop, priest, or prominent lay person who does something public which is objectively and seriously wrong, or says something objectively contrary to the teaching of the Church, reports and comments on events are decorated, so to speak, by people who will foam at the mouth in comment boxes and on Facebook about sinfulness.

It is annoying that people like that should call themselves Catholic, it might bring the Church into disrepute among those extremely naive about social media, but the reality is that trolls attach themselves to every cause and the Catholic ones are not the worst. Those with powers of moderation on social media platforms should switch them off. They don't tell us anything about the health of the Church, or the nature of debate. Nevertheless, they exist; let's call them 'rigorist trolls': they want to enforce the rigour of the law.

What needs to be remembered is that there is an opposing group of foamers who say that it is the people reporting and commenting on the stories, as well as the rigorist trolls, who are causing scandal, simply by talking about the sins of others. We are being judgmental, giving a bad example, dragging the Church down. This can be illustrated by the comments on recent posts of my own, although the juiciest ones have been deleted by their authors after, I suppose, a fit of conscience (or perhaps just a fit of common sense). Let me bring one back to life, the brainchild of a commentator calling himself 'Anselm Strudley', complete with typos and sentences which don't make sense.

Attacks on the 1969 Mass

I have just blogged about Dom Sebastian Moore OSB complaining about 'calix' being translated 'chalice'; in the background is the issue that the Roman Canon actually says 'praeclarum calicem' - 'precious chalice' - and the translation Fr Moore prefers simply ignored the 'precious' bit and use the most prosaic word possible to render 'calix'. It similarly ignored the 'holy and venerable hands' which, in the Roman Canon, comes next.

What is at the bottom of this is, as I have said, an attack on the Roman Canon itself: the most important liturgical prayer of the Latin Church. The text of the new Novus Ordo missal is not an immediate issue for me or the Latin Mass Society, but the Roman Canon certainly is.

Fr Andrew Cameron-Mowat SJ is pulling the same trick, and it is clear this time. He likes the old translation of

'Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tanto dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea'

simply as

'Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.'

The new translation says

'Lord I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.'

His arguments evade the fact that the words 'under my roof' are simply a translation of the Latin words 'sub tectum meum'. Leave aside, for a moment, the issue of whether we want a more explicit reference to Matthew 8:8, or if that is too complicated, or indeed whether the faithful are too stupid to understand difficult words like 'soul'. The question is: do you want a translation of the Mass at all? The 1973 text simply does not translate the words 'sub tectum meum'. As a translation, it is a failure.

With that in mind, we come back to Cameron-Mowatt's arguments. These aren't arguments about felicity or fidelity of translation. They are arguments that this ancient Mass text (as Cameron-Mowatt observes, this particular Latin text is unchanged from the 1962 Missal) was liturgically defective, and that the 1973 translation was an improvement, not in style but in substance. It is interesting to see that he says that the text may have been appropriate in the context of a liturgical practice in which the faithful received communion only infrequently, so it would not have been defective in 1570, but was in 1970. (His argument as to why that is does not seem very clear to me, but let it pass.)

Obviously the 1969 Mass text, what was called the 'Missa Normativa' at the time, in Latin, was reformed in the context of the modern practice of frequent communion, and retained the full version of this particular text, including 'sub tectum meum'. Fr Cameron-Mowatt thinks that this was a mistake.

From time to time traditionalists are asked: do you attack the 1969 Mass? Do you accept its theological merits? Speaking for myself, and as a matter of LMS policy, the answer is: our concern is to do as the Holy Father has requested, which is to give a place of honour in the Church to the 'riches' represented by the Church's ancient liturgical tradition, not to engage in polemics about the reformed Missal. But here is someone, Fr Cameron-Mowatt SJ, who really is attacking the theological aptness of the Missa Normativa, and doing so from a liberal direction. Less explicitly, Fr Sebastian Moore is doing the same thing, and so are a whole gang of liturgists on the 'Pray Tell' blog and elsewhere, who are kicking up a stink about the new translation. In their view, clearly, Bugnini and his collaborators who put together the Latin text of the Novus Ordo got it badly wrong.

They were wrong to include the phrase 'pro multis'; they were wrong to include 'praeclarem calicem' (and maybe even the whole Roman Canon, as an option); they were wrong to include 'sub tectum meum' and to use the word 'anima' (soul); and so on in case after case. They were wrong in precisely those cases, I suppose, that they retained elements of previous editions of the Roman Missal in the new one. Insofar as there was continuity, there was error.

I begin to feel sorry for Archbishop Bugnini. Who is going to speak up for him, I wonder? But the bigger picture is that these liturgists are attacking the entire liturgical tradition of the Latin Church, even as represented by the post-conciliar editions of the Roman Missal. This is a fact which should be exposed.

(Pictures: Christ hearing the petition of the Centurion to heal his servant, by Veronese; Archbishop Annibale Buggnini.)

Criticism and Mediocrity

This may sound harsh, but following on from my last post I am convinced that the major reason so many people in the Church jump up and down with annoyance and accusations of lack of charity whenever someone voices criticisms is a love of, or at least a deep desire to tolerate, mediocrity. Some geniuses have been thin-skinned but excellence of all kinds requires criticism. Students in Oxford would learn nothing if their work was not criticised. Performing artists need to know the difference between a good performance and a bad one: they need to hear more than just 'Oh that was marvellous darling!!' every single time. 

I'm not talking about vulgar abuse, which as I said in my last post should be swiftly deleted from coments boxes, and simply ignored when the abuser has his own blog. By contrast, criticism can be fair or unfair, it can be accurate or misguided, but all of it tells us about how what are doing comes across, what misunderstandings we need to guard against, which techniques we are using work on a particular audience, and what we have missed. Great centres of artistic and academic excellence are centres of insistent and fearless criticism. It can hurt but you learn to live with it and you improve, or maybe you stop wasting your time and try something else. 

Working without anyone to criticise is extremely difficult: you can run off into highly elaborated schemes based on flawed foundations and waste years of work. Criticism of practical projects is particularly important because no one has a mastery of all the aspects of a big project and critics can offer much-needed expertise, or at least point in the direction where more attention is needed. Fundamental criticisms, when one finds one's very basic assumptions are being questioned, are essential to avoid 'group think': the situation in which a group of people who share fundamental attitudes also share blind spots about potential pitfalls or objections. Organisations which foster innovation have got to tolerate criticism at every level of generality, ends as well as means. 

Being open with criticism is not necessarily correlated with being unwilling to help with a project. Indeed in my experience they are inversely related. After all, criticism is a form of help: it is spending time thinking about a proposal and coming up with objections to it. I have tried and in some cases succeeded in getting many projects off the ground in the Catholic context and it is not the people who think carefully about a proposal and ask 'have you thought of X?' or 'what are you going to do about Y?' who are the problem; it is the people who say 'that sounds nice' but then refuse to help. Worst of all are the people with grave misgivings who are too frighttened of a confrontation to articulate them: in some cases they could be cleared up by explanation, in other cases the project needs to be adapted. Certainly, when people bring me worthwhile proposals I aim to give, insofar as I can, both attentive criticism and practical help.  

So why are people so against criticisms, and so critical of critics? It is partly because they are in state of 'group think' themselves: they think their position in their group is imperilled by criticising a pet project, and is reinforced by rejecting the criticisms of others. Rational considerations are rejected in favour of social ones. But a major reason is that the mediocrity which results from accepting everything uncritically is actually regarded as a good thing. It is regarded as a good thing because an intellectual and artistic engagement with the Church is regarded as an important form of 'participation', and the great majority of people are not cut out for intellectual and artistic endeavour of great value. Worthwhile art and serious intellectual output is the result of many years of specialist training and practice, as well as native talent, and this is obviously something very few people have. Only at the level of mediocrity can you have members of the parish without serious training creating visual religious art or leading liturgical music, or leading the RCIA course or contributing to discussion groups about Church teaching. And these kinds of participations in parish life are regarded as terribly important; by no means should the parish amateurs be displaced by, or placed under the supervision of, professionals. 

Why, one may ask, would any Catholic think that it was important for their (or their children's) ghastly artistic creations to disfigure the church's walls, for their cracked voices to pain the congregation's ears in the liturgy, or for their half-baked ideas about faith and reason to be taken seriously by other members of a discussion group, or, heaven forbid, catechumens? A good question, but notice that they do think so: and they can get very shirty if they sense you don't agree. It seems to be their right to do these things; this is their contribution to the parish. The implication is that if you stop them doing these things you leave them without an outlet for their devotion. 

One purported justification of mediocrity is the Protestant-Romantic idea that the product of deeply-felt passion and spontaneity is actually of greater worth than the product of training and skill. This of course is deeply at odds with the Catholic artistic and intellectual traditions, but it is a widespread notion. With this you just have to be tough: you as an individual may be offering all you have to God, but that doesn't mean it is the best we as a community can offer Him. 

Another justification, and this is the more important, is that the ordinary parishoner's spiritual participation in the liturgy is no longer understood or valued by many Catholics, and appropriate outlets for Catholics without special artistic or intellectual skills have largely been destroyed: the guilds and sodalities which used to characterise parish life, particularly those devoted to the corporal acts of mercy. All that is left is apologetics and catechesis, and artistic contributions to the liturgy.

Of course I'm all for as many Catholics as possible learning about the Faith and learning about singing and art, but we have the situation today in which catechesis, as well as music in the liturgy, seems too often to be directed by people without serious knowledge or training: the well known stereotype of the modern Church, the lay RCIA director, being something to bring a chill to every spine. 

I was delighted to find this last image on the web: 'Mediocrity Empowers'. That is absolutely right. To be crass about it, we desperately need to disempower the people who have been empowered by mediocrity. We also need to have more training in music, art, and theology and other subjects, and this is perhaps beginning to happen. But the people with real skills can actually be feared and hated, because they spell the end of the tyranny of mediocrity, and the return of criticism. Catholics don't need less mutual criticism, they need more - far more.

Far too many people, particularly good-natured priests, feel they need to endure the second-rate to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. This policy is understandable but it is disastrous, since it quickly leads to the tyranny of the mediocre and the loss to the Church of the genuinely talented. 

Now I've got going on this theme, I'll post about this last point tomorrow: how the mediocre drives out the excellent.

On being critical

"If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand." (Ezekial 3:18)

When I posted my reaction to Michael Voris, I said that since I thought he was basically a Good Thing I would show my appreciation by criticising what I took to be the main point of his talk. I wasn't joking: since I am basically well disposed to what he had to say, it is useful to him (in the unlikely event that he reads it) and to others to make a critique of what he said. In fact I thought his message should have been more nuanced and balanced.

Inevitably I was criticised myself in the com-box by some of his many fans - since this blog is pretty obscure I got off lightly, I know others who've criticised Voris have been deluged. These fans say that I shouldn't criticise Voris for the very reason that I think that it is important to criticise him: that is, because despite his limitations he is basically a Good Thing.

Presumably Voris himself agrees with me, since he is famous for being critical, and indeed for criticising not just the lunatic fringe liberals but apparently conservative groups like the Knights of St Columbus. Those fans of his, who infest the com-boxes of bloggers who dare say anything critical of Voris, don't seem to be alive to the irony of attempting to silence criticism of a man whose entire apostolate is based on the justification and indeed necessity of criticing fellow Catholics. If we shouldn't criticise Voris, then a fortiori Voris shouldn't criticise anyone else, especially bishops. If these fans had any sense, they'd welcome criticism of Voris in the spirit of a healthy and charitable debate.

The bigger question is whether a healthy and charitable debate is indeed an ideal, or whether we Catholics should be stifling public criticisms of each other in the interest of presenting a united front, or (where applicable) respect and obedience of legitimate authority, or simply because we think that charitable debate is impossible and we want to avoid acrimony and divisiveness. Let me address these objections in turn.

1. If we criticise fellow Catholics, we give scandal to non-Catholics.
This may indeed happen, but it is a far greater scandal to non-Catholics to see a public sinner or dissident being treated as if nothing were amiss by his fellow Catholics. When theologians who publicly dissent from Catholic teaching, or politicians who vote for abortion, are feted in Catholic institutions and lauded on Catholic blogs this very clearly and directly undermines the witness of the Church to the truth of her teaching. St Paul repeatedly says that the Christian community should ostracise and eject such people (2 Thess. 3:14; 1 Cor. 5:13; 1 Tim. 1:20). A community united by a set of beliefs will simply cease to exist if it tolerates as fully-paid up members those who do not share the beliefs.

Catholic bloggers are not the most important line of defence here - it is for bishops to reprove formally, and ultimately to excommunicate - but they do have obligations. They should not contribute to the idea that people are model Catholics because (like the Kennedy clan, for example) they are so rich or well-connected or otherwise influential that everyone is too frightened to point out that they have departed from the Faith. A vigorous rejection by a wide range of Catholic voices of the views of dissident Catholics is the best possible witness we can give to non-Catholics, given that we can't make the dissidents disappear.

2. Criticism is incompatible with respect and obedience to legitimate authority.
St Paul criticised St Peter; St Catherine of Siena criticised a series of popes. This is certainly something which has to be done with great care, and I'm not recommending it, at least in normal circumstances (normal for today, I mean). It can easily be counter productive, for one thing. But criticising those in authority is certainly not ruled out in principle by obligations of respect and obedience. Our bishops give us very clear teaching on this, by (rightly) criticising the civil authorities. We owe the civil authorities respect and obedience. We can still criticise them, and indeed we often must. However, it is usually enough to criticise ideas rather than individuals, if we want to avoid the impression of disrespect for those in authority. The point should never be a personal attack, but a point of principle.

'Conservative' Catholics and liberal Catholics sometimes seem to share a blindness to the distinction between dogmatic and prudential matters, and also to between authoritative public teaching and off-the-cuff or private statements. On issues of faith and morals, authoritative statements by those in the Church with authority to teach have prima facie force and should be accepted by the faithful, although the faithful can't be expected to accept contradictory statements, as would happen if a priest or bishop contradicted another authoritative statement. And here it should be noted that the docility of the faithful is as much, indeed more, to be measured by their acceptance of the decrees of Lateran IV or the Athanasian Creed as by the latest pastoral letter from their local ordinary. On prudential issues, matters of policy, tradition has a lot to say and priests and bishops have the grace of their offices in governing their flocks, but they are not preserved from error and debate may be an essential part of getting things right. (Also see my series about obedience.)

3. Charitable criticism is impossible so we should have no criticism at all.
It is certainly a problem for bloggers that sweet reason can be overwhelmed by the 'crazies'. The internet, it can seem, belongs to those who are least averse to staying up all night ranting. I actually think that this is a passing phenomenon: increasingly blogs are refusing to accept anonymous comments and swift moderation should mean that rants are online, attached to respectable blogs, for a very short space of time. The most widely read sites are the ones which are reasonably sane and the internet makes it easy to show that really crazy ideas contradict on-line Church documents and the like.

The other thing we all need to get used to is the instant publication of our views. The internet is a hasty forum and people blurt things out in a way they might in a saloon-bar discussion, and it is there for the whole world to see forever. I have said it before, we have to accept that the blogs are more like people sitting round in a pub than a carefully researched monograph; while being careful ourselves we shouldn't get too upset when other people seem to fly off the handle. Certainly we shouldn't forget the advantages of the medium: the instant correctability, the ability to link to photographic or video evidence or textual sources, the linking up with scholars and specialists as well as ordinary Catholics.

Debate about the application of the Church's teaching to new situations, and to prudential matters, has always taken place in the Church, and it is not only inevitable but frequently very important. When St Bernard of Clairvaux said that St Peter the Venerable was wicked from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, or when A.W. Pugin said that the classical style of architecture was unfit for Christian worship, they were getting a bit too excited. But you can't stop them, and you shouldn't want to stop them, engaging in criticism and debate. What we might want to do is make the debate more calm and charitable.

There is an deeper issue here, however, and that is mediocrity. The love of mediocrity leads to a hatred of criticism; I actually think this is a more important motive in the attempt to stifle criticism than concerns about giving scandal and charity. I'll post about this next.

Pictures: Voris, St Catherine, St Bernard.

Michael Voris in the flesh

So now I've seen him. You pick up a lot more from seeing someone without the mediation of an internet video, and editing. Voris is just as energetic as he seems on his website, but not as carefully scripted.

Michael Voris is not a particularly good speaker. I don't say this as a criticism, it is just a fact; we all have different talents. I've given lots of talks and my concern is always to make a coherent, structured case; I don't know if I always succeed, but for all his charisma Michael Voris didn't. His talk meandered; at one point he made an aside and never got back onto the main point, as far as I could tell. Nevertheless he had lots of interesting things to say. He spoke without notes, with urgency, making points of principle and relaying some helpful and amusing anecdotes.

He is clearly not theologically trained. A number of times I thought: 'No, that not quite the right way to make that point': he's no heretic, but gets betrayed into saying things which aren't exactly right, he doesn't always use the right terms or express things in the right way. He said all the other sacraments exist for the sake of the Eucharist: no, that's not quite right. They exist for our salvation. Baptism shouldn't be subordinated to the Eucharist; one could as easily say the Eucharist exists for the sake of Baptist, for the sake of the Christian people brought into existence by Baptism. (And how does Matrimony fit in?) However he was making a point about the importance of the Eucharist; we knew what he was driving at and I'm not going to be reporting him to the CDF.

The fact is that the people who are theologically trained, or most of them, have left it to an enthusiastic auto-didact like Michael Voris to defend the faith, in its fullness, in an appealing way to a mass audience, addressing issues of immediate concern and relevance. Yes this has often happened in the Church before. The theologians, priests and bishops who don't like Voris' style should get off their backsides and do what he is doing, better. Frankly Voris is a hero for taking on this apostolate, all the more because of his limitations; that doesn't mean he shouldn't be criticised, but he should also be appreciated.

The overall impression was good. The audience loved it. And to show my appreciation I'm going to criticise (yes, that's my way of showing appreciation) what I take to be his central point: that we should all focus all of our energy on 'being Catholic', to the exclusion of things like (his examples) stamp collecting or football.
I wish more Catholics spent less time on frivolous matters, but there is an opposite worry too: that of religious mania, obsessiveness. As Catholics we see the value of artistic and cultural things, of friendship, and of simply playing games, in themselves. They aren't the most important things, but neither are they excluded from a well-lived life. It is interesting and can be useful to relate these things to Catholic history or culture where applicable, but we don't need to do that in order to justify them. Michael Davies used to say (I think I read this somewhere, someone who knew him can correct me) that Traditionalists needed sometimes to take some time off. Davies was a rugby fan. It is actually necessary for our mental health that we aren't always wound up in a state of religious enthusiasm--even if we do try to be aware, always, of the presence of God. We shouldn't see the state of spiritual fervour as an ideal to which we only sometimes attain, but as a part of a life of varied mental states, a life which includes playing with our children, reading a trashy novel, going for a walk, having a cup of tea... and maybe even collecting stamps.

As I say, I wish more Catholics put aside their video games or gossip columns to read up on the faith, to attend devotions, to get involved in Catholic activities of all kinds. But there is a different message to be given to the kind of people who were attending Michael Voris' talk last night, the 'generous souls'. As Voris said, Catholics believe in the goodness and the salvation of the body as well as of the soul. Live a complete life; religious observance and Catholic activism may be the most important things in your life, but they shouldn't be the only things. Otherwise, you'll get burnt out and then you'll be no use to anyone. Yup, religious mania can be a danger to the Faith: your own, and other people's.

This is difficult today because everyone under the age of 60, if they care about their faith, is desperately trying to catch up on the religious formation they did not have as children and young adults; and the situation in the Church and the World is just so bad it can feel like living in a war zone. Do you take time off for pleasant excursions when the enemy is fighting their way in to your front room? Well, if you know the war is going to last at least for the rest of your life you have got to.

So! Talking of devotional activities, I'm now off to Walsingham. Look out for my live blogging from the road.

Michael Voris in London tomorrow!

I've listened to a few of his video broadcasts and I must say I'm fascinated to see him in the toupée - I mean in the flesh!

Oddly enough I saw a picture of him on a recent visit to Warwick Castle. They called him Prince Toby for some reason - it was in part of the castle dedicated to entertaining children. He looked a little younger.He'd like Warwick Castle, in fact, judging from this photo of him.
Well done to Smeaton's Corner for arranging the event - go to him to get a ticket.

The Spirit of '58

There is a very interesting discussion over on Rorate Caeli about the participation of the faithful in Traditional Low Masses. In the rules in force in 1962, reference is made to a document of 1958, Musica Sacra, which gives a series of options for different forms of participation, not only in terms of music but also in terms of the faithful making responses at Low Mass. The difficulty is that these recommendations were new, in 1958, and were overtaken by events only a few years later. They can hardly be presented as the timeless wisdom of the Church, indeed, they are clearly experimental. Many people attached to the 'former liturgical traditions' in the English-speaking world have a very strong preference for the most basic option, which was the norm before 1958 (at least in the English-speaking world): silence from the congregation. The dialogue is conducted by the priest and the server alone.

In my (considerable) experience of the Latin Novus Ordo, I was always conscious of the limitations on what the congregation could really manage: the odd 'Amen' is fine, but asking them to say 'Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis, ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram, totiusque Ecclesiae suae sanctae' (which the rubrics of the Novus Ordo does ask them to say) is just silly. They simply can't do it. Even if they knew the words, which few of them do, or were comfortable reading Latin aloud, which few of them are, a block of text as long as that recited by a good number of people might start together but will sound like a swarm of bees long before the end. The only way to avoid this would be to do with the congregation what we do with the servers: drill them.

Musica Sacra goes further, however: the most advanced option includes the congregation reciting the propers (the changing parts of the Mass, such as the Introit) as well as responses (in Latin, obviously). The idea that they could declaim these even longer texts, which are different every day, is absurd, unless, in a seminary or monastery, the congregation is again seriously drilled.

Do I need to point out that drilling people in their responses (said or sung) at Mass is patronising, embarrassing and lame? If they can't pick them up naturally, perhaps with the help of a handout, forget it.

The less advanced options allow the congregation to say only the simpler responses, but at this point the whole thing becomes complicated. Which responses? Are there natural distinctions between the parts of the Mass in which the congregation is responding and parts in which it is not? (No. The longest is the Confiteor, which comes in the middle of a lot of easy ones.) Is the distinction marked in missals? (No.)

It is obviously true that the 'dialogue Mass' can function when people have got a handle on what is expected of them, and that itself can be established by custom. It takes place in many parts of the world and people seem content with it. Like the document Musica Sacra itself, however, it does embed the unfortunate idea, which is at the heart of the debate about 'participatio actuosa', that the interior participation of members of the congregation is aided by them making a conscious effort to perform an outward task connected with the Mass. It is an unfortunate idea because it has a certain plausibility, but is false. It seems plausible to suppose that if the congregation is saying aloud 'Et cum spiritu sancto' or singing the Gloria they haven't gone to sleep but are actively engaged with the progress of the ritual. It is false, however, because (unless, perhaps, it has become second nature) reading the responses or the music from a book or sheet or for that matter remembering them is an intellectual task, and this task is not the same as the spiritual task of engaging in the Mass. As such it is a distraction from real, that is interior, participation.

To see that this is so consider the more involved kinds of participation, that of serving or singing at Mass. I know from my own experience, and it is certainly not only my experience, that trying to avoid making a mistake in serving or singing requires concentration. What you are concentrating on, as you kneel by the priest as a server, is 'Is it time to lift the chasuble?' 'Is it time to ring the bell?' 'I must stand up and go to the credence table in a moment'. If you are not concentrating on those things you will make a mistake. When you are singing you are focusing intensely on the music, listening to your fellow singers, looking at the conductor, and often keeping an eye on what is going on in the sanctuary. Either that or, again, you are going to make a mistake. In each case you have to fit your spiritual participation in round your ritual or artistic task.

Singing and serving are wonderful ways to assist at Mass, because they are ways of 'assisting' in the most obvious English sense. The intellectual or artistic effort you are making is something necessary to the Mass and you are offering it to God for His glory. It is a great privilege to be able to make this kind of contribution to the sacred mysteries. From the point of view of spiritual participation, of offering oneself with the Body and Blood of Our Lord offered by the priest to the Father, they are, however, distracting. Few servers and singers don't prefer, from time to time, to attend Mass as a simple member of the congregation. In the old days people would routinely attend Low Mass before attending Sung or Solemn Mass on a Sunday; you would be able to participate in different ways at each one.

It is just my opinion, but I agree with those criticised as 'neo-trads' who prefer the silent Low Mass. Don't try to make the congregation do what trained singers and servers do: let them participate in their own way, in their own time, and if they prefer with their own, interior, words.

Here's an aposite quotation from C.S. Lewis.
There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

Low Mass at the Holy Name, Manchester, celebrated by Fr Ray Matus. (More photos.)

Religious Liberty: a fresh approach

Over on Rorate Caeli there is a fascinating and truly important article by Dr Thomas Pink on the question of religious liberty. Please read it.

Just to give you a taste, rather than substitute for reading the article (which is not terribly long) in full Dr Pink explains that the debate about religious liberty since Vatican II has been based largely on a misunderstanding. Most liberals and Traditionalists seem to agree that before Vatican II the doctrine or policy of the Church was based on the idea that states had the right and sometimes the duty to suppress the outward manifestation of religious error (this would include for example stopping evangelisation by Protestant sects, not allowing public processions by Satanists, policies which were uncontroversial in Catholic countries up to the 1960s). They saw this as encapsulated in many pre-Vatican II documents.

The Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae says that the role of the state is the 'natural end of man': justice and peace. So the state has no right to get involved in religious questions.

So both liberals and traditionalists further agreed that there had been a change; the question was whether it was a change of policy, or whether the old documents had dogmatic authority. If the latter was the case, then Vatican II was in error.

What Dr Pink points out that a more careful reading of the pre-Vatican II documents reveals that they never said that the state had a right to limit religious liberty. They did say that the Church has the right, over baptised Christians, to hold them to their baptismal obligations (and to protect them from attack by non-baptised zealots), using coercion. An equally careful reading of Dignitatis Humanae reveals that this proposition is not denied there.

What was happening in Catholic states up to the 1960s is that the State was acting on behalf of the Church: the state was not exercising its own rights. The State was both an instrument of the Church, and also leaders of the State were themselves baptized Christians and members of the Church, and were acting in that capacity.

It is true that Dignitatis Humanae recommends a new policy: a policy in which the Church's use of coercion (directly, or through the State) is very limited. But it is not abolished: the Church still uses temporal penalties against those who deny the Faith, under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, such as depriving heretical teachers in Catholic insitutions of their jobs.

In short, the liberals who denied that coercion can ever be used in defence of the Faith are wrong: in fact this position is infallibly ruled out by the Council of Trent. They are also wrong that Vatican II supports them. But their error has been entrenched by the mis-statement of the doctrine by Traditionalists: it is not a question of the teaching of the Church on the State, but the teaching on the Church herself, which is at issue.

This point is completely missed by, for example, Michael Davies' 'The Second Vatican Council on Religious Liberty', which is an admirably detailed and clear explanation of the debate as Traditionalists have usually understood it. Davies ends his book saying that there is a problem which can only be resolved by a further, and authoritative, act of the Magisterium. This impasse now looks at though it was based on a misreading of the key texts - not just by Davies, but by pretty well everyone, on both sides of the debate.

Dr Pink is to be congratulated on coming up with a solution to the apparantly insoluble problem of Vatican II vs. Trent, Lateran IV and a string of papal documents. This solution ought to be helpful not only to the SSPX in their doctrinal discussions with the Vatican, but to all faithful Catholics who have struggled to read Dignitatis Humanae in the light of Tradition: with the hermeneutic of continuity. Let me give the last word to that document:

Indeed, since people's demand for religious liberty in carrying out their duty to worship God concerns freedom from compulsion in civil society, it leaves intact the traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ.

More very interesting commentary can be found on The Sensible Bond.

Smashing the TV

Since William Oddie's post on 'Catholics Unplug Your Televisions' (CUT) I've noticed a couple of other interesting articles on the subject of why so much programming is socially liberal, and so inimical to the Faith.

Tim Stanley, an English academic specialising in American history, is actually in Hollywood to research a book about the film industry. He has a fascinating post about the culture of the place, which, he thinks, explains the liberal tenor of its output better than any conspiracy. He writes:

No, the problem that the conservative faces isn’t intellectual, it’s social. Conservatism tends to be raw and unfiltered. In conversation, it punctures the Zen equilibrium that sustains everyone in Los Angeles. The industry works by networks and anyone who can’t sustain a long conversation about the importance of raw carrots and natural fibers to the functioning of Yin and the flowing of Yang won’t fit in. One Right-wing writer told me that following 9/11, he found work dried up. There was plenty of interest in his output (he’s deservedly famous) but when it came to small talk before pitches, or the gossip at the writers’ in LA Farm, he was immediately frozen out. “People would open with, ‘Isn’t George Bush a moron?’ And I would say, ‘No, I voted for him.’ And I could feel I was losing their respect.”

True, this suggests that Hollywood has a leftward prejudice. But the real problem with what the writer said wasn’t the content but the act of disagreement itself. Hollywood conversations deal in hyperbolic affirmations covering for lies: “You’re amazing. That pitch was the best ever. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Adam Sandler is the funniest man alive!” Disagreement and contradiction are acts of verbal rape.

I find this all too credible. It explains how typical Hollywood output is not just liberal, but self-affirming pap. Something pretty similar, I would wager, is going on at the BBC.

The seriousness of the problem should not be underestimated. The characterisation and plots of TV shows and films can consistently affirm liberal attitudes without the viewer even noticing. This is discussed in the other article which has come up recently, via CFNews, a book review in The Washington Times (see it here). The book is 'Prime Time Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV' by Ben Shapiro; it is reviewed by Jeffrey Kuhner. Kuhner writes, of this historical development of the problem:

One of the watershed programmes was All in the Family. The character of Archie Bunker symbolised the progressive caricature of Conservatives -- ignorant, racist and xenophobic. The show frequently denounced the Vietnam War and even celebrated draft dodgers as heroes. It also broke new ground in portraying the father figure, Archie, as a working-class bigot who was less enlightened than his anti-war, socially permissive son-in-law, Meathead (played by the odious leftist Rob Reiner).

'All in the Family' was first broadcast in 1971, and set the tone for the decades which followed. How often have you seen socially conservative or religious characters portrayed in a favourable light? Let me rephrase that: have you EVER seen such a character portrayed in a favourable light in a mainstream film or series? How often have you seen such characters ridiculed and outwitted? How often have such characters turned out to be hypocrites? If there is anything attractive about them, or a streak of honesty, how often have they been converted to a more relaxed, progressive, liberal approach to life? (Has the opposite ever happened?)

This is insidious and poisonous. There are intrinsic problems with TV as entertainment: the tendency of people simply to switch it on and watch whatever pops up, even if rather bored by it, for hours on end. What Shapiro is talking about, however, is a problem not intrinsic to the medium, but accidental: the fact that the people making so much of the programming are peddling a relentless liberal agenda. It makes it even more boring than it would be otherwise.

There are lots of good films, and from time to time there are good series on TV. All of them can be seen on DVD, for hire or for sale. Vast quantities of stuff is becoming available on YouTube and Gloria TV. It is becoming possible to access films and programmes by downloading them (legally, and temporarily) from the internet for a small fee. All in all, the telly is losing its indispensibility as a window onto popular culture. Popular culture is itself increasingly fragmented: it is no longer the case that 'everyone' is watching anything in particular as it is broadcast.

All of this opens up the possibility that instead of making provision for the entire sewer to be delivered to your sitting room every day, you can be selective and choose some decent things to watch from time to time, and stop paying the TV License at the same time. Kuhner concludes his review:

Conservatives have one powerful weapon: They can flip their TV sets off. I have not watched television in years, sparing my senses - and soul - from the ubiquitous onslaught. Hollywood has declared war on Middle America. It's time we declared war on it.

So go on: Catholics: Unplug Your Televisions!

See the CUT website here.

Norway's tragedy: don't blame Christianity

Update: I just love this photo of Breivik in his Masonic garb. H-t Bones!

While we are all in shock from the appalling events in Norway, the Norwegian police, the BBC and the international media have taken the opportunity to label the mass murderer, Breivik, a 'fundamentalist Christian'. What mix of laziness and Christianophobia has led to this is anyone's guess. What is clear is that the killer had no developed theological ideas and no discernible links to any Christian groups. See here.

There have been mindlessly violent Christians over the centuries: think of the Donatists in Africa, the somewhat Christianised gnostic Cathars in France, the Anabaptists in Germany, or Cromwell in Ireland. But Breivik was not one of them.

The initial basis of the claim was the fact that on Facebook he called himself a Christian. This is a minimally meaningful gesture but it fits in with his wider views, which have since emerged, to the extent that his motivating idea is opposition to multi-culturalism. You don't have to be a Christian to hate immigrants - on the contrary, being a Christian is an impediment - but if you want to oppose multiculturalism with some notion of native European culture, then you may want to lay claim to Christianity. And that is what is happening here.

Breivik also seems to be keen on Odinism. Are we going to hear that he is a pagan fundamentalist?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Understanding what goes on at Mass, Opera, and Shakespeare

I recently re-tweeted a link to a nice blog post comparing the liturgy to Italian opera, quoting the narrator of the film The Shawshank Redemption, talking about the few minutes the film's hero gets control of a prison PA system to play a Mozart duet.

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

The blogger at 'Shameless Popery' says this tells us how important music is at Mass. Actually, it tells us much more than that. It tells us about the value of non-verbal participation.

'Red', the film narrator, doesn't even want to know what the words meant. The music and the sound of the Italian were expressive in a way that a translation could not be; one might add that offering the listener the meaning of the words at the time would have distracted him from listening. I am a big opera fan, and I'm not against 'surtitles' at the opera on balance, but one must acknowledge their disadvantages: one can easily end up staring at the words instead of looking at the singers, attending to the English and not listening to the song. It is the same with using a hand missal at Mass: Missals are good things, but sometimes one wants to put the thing down and engage with the Mass wordlessly.

Because you can engage with things in many different ways. This point has been driven home to me recently because I've started taking my eldest daughter to Shakespeare plays. She's seven years old, so it seemed the obvious thing to do. Every Summer there are many cheap productions in quirky venues in Oxford. We've been to Twelth Night in Blenheim Pleasure Gardens, Midsummer Night's Dream in Oxford Castle and As You Like it in the Bodleian. She has enjoyed them hugely, but she's clearly not understanding every word.

Now I'm in favour of people understanding what's happening at Mass. We have wonderful catechetical materials for this purpose. I'm in favour of understanding Shakespeare: we have a book explaining the plots and I have the BBC complete Shakespeare on DVD so we can watch them at home first. But having done a reasonable amount of preparation, you need to go along and let the experience reach you where you are.

The fact is, no-one at a Shakespeare play understands every word. No one at Mass understands every word. That is true of a liturgical expert attending a Mass in the vernacular where the translation has used baby-talk to get the message across, as much as a small child at the Traditional Mass. Great works of art and the liturgy are not sponges, to be sucked dry, but wells, from which one may draw water every time one experiences them. To experience them fully, it is necessary at a certain point to stop analysing, take one's nose of the book one is holding, and just let it sink in.

Children receiving 'first blessings' from Fr Matthew McCarthy FSSP in St William of York, Reading.

Fame at last: LIFE and non-directive counselling

The pro-life charity LIFE has clearly been stung by my blog post on non-directive counselling and has issued a statement, which has been reported in the Catholic Herald, about it.

Hanging a story on someone without even asking them for a quote looks like shoddy journalism, but there you are. However I've never been described as a 'leading Catholic figure' before so I can't complain.

In my post (on my deeply obscure 'Casuistry Central' philosophy blog) I summarise objections to non-directive counselling under four headings. I don't say that their policy is wrong; I just seek to identify what the fuss is about. I end the post by saying that LIFE needs to address the arguments, particularly the last, key argument about cooperation with evil, and I explain what form the justification of such cooperation with evil can take, in Catholic ethics.

So do they provide such an argument? Or any argument? No.

Instead we get a quotation from Dr David Albert Jones, the Director of the Anscombe Centre (of which I am a Governor). He chooses his words carefully, and I wouldn't disagree with any of them. Indeed, they are little more than a paraphrase of what I wrote to qualify the 'moral' argument at the end of my original post. This is not as surprising as it looks, since Dr Jones was not responding to my views when he wrote these words: when asked by the Catholic Herald for a quote, he just sent them something he'd written earlier on the general topic.

“There is a certainly a role for directive parents, teachers, preachers, and judges. Nevertheless, from a Catholic perspective, there could also be a role for a non-directive counsellor, if this means someone who aims to help people to come to see these things for themselves. Catholic counselling should always be value-driven but may express these values also by giving someone space to reflect on what their heart tells them.”

Yes, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with not jumping down a client's throat to say things which will make the client more inclined to have an abortion. There is a time to speak and a time to remain silent (Eccl 3.7). The question, which Dr Jones does not address here, is whether faithful obedience of the rules of NDC would prevent a counsellor from avoiding an illicit cooperation with evil under certain concrete circumstances.

Remember, NDC requires counsellors to be non-directive not only when that would aid a pro-life outcome, but also when it would aid an anti-life outcome. It is neutral between outcomes: that's the whole idea.

Here are a couple of examples.

1. If the counsellor knew that information about the nature of abortion, the developmental stage of the baby, or the consequences of abortion for the mother, would influence the client in a positive way, would the counsellor be able to offer this information without being asked?

2. If the client asked the counsellor whether she, the counsellor, thought that abortion was morally licit, and the counsellor knew (having established a rapport with the client) that an tactful but honest answer would influence the client in a positive way, would the counsellor be able to answer?

Neither I nor Dr Jones knows the answers to these questions. They depend on the detailed nature of the NDC guidelines which LIFE uses. What I suspect, however, is that whatever the real answer is, LIFE would prefer its government partners to think that the answer to each question is 'no', and would simultaneously prefer its Catholic supporters to think that the answer to each question is 'yes'.

The hermeneutic of rupture

I blogged recently about finding Medieval wall paintings in an Anglican church. What can they think, I said? I managed to offend some-one leaving a comment, though he or she didn't pause long enough to explain how it is supposed to work. Anglicans are proud of these medieval vestiges (after a few centuries of trying to expunge them); these churches often play down the Reformation, saying things like 'we have worshiped here for 900 years' or whatever. And yet they can't claim that the theology and spirituality of a Medieval Doom painting is in continuity with modern Anglicanism (the calvary to the right was near the Doom; it formed the reredos to a nave altar). Ironically, it would be more in continuity with the theology of the people who first white-washed it over in the 16th Century, but that's another story.

But some people in the Catholic Church have a similar problem. Catholics who openly reject the first 19 Centuries of Catholic practice, spirituality and theology exist, but they are no more common than the fire-eating Protestant Anglicans who would still prefer to erase the Medieval paintings in the parish church. A much larger number of Catholics talk confidently about the Church's great history, and even point proudly at our artistic heritage, while wanting to hear as little as possible about the praxis, theology and spirituality which went with it. Indeed, when talking about the past, they would like to pretend that certain awkward facts did not obtain. Those facts are embarassing.

This is part of what the Holy Father condemns as the 'hermaneutic of rupture'. For a nice example, see this illustration from the Catholic Truth Society's children's book, 'Saint John Mary Vianney, the Cure D'Ars.' Don't get me wrong, I like these books; I own the full set and have read each of them many times to my children. And then again I am very aware that they are translations from the Italian - presumably the illustrations were not commissioned by the CTS, but come from Italy too. (The illustrator is a certain Giusy Capizzi.) However, it illustrates the point all too well.
Looking in the St Paul's Bookshop in Westminster the other day, I saw a very similar illustration in the children's Life of St John Vianney published by St Pauls. Is it too embarassing to allow children to see that priests used to say Mass facing East, with the altar against the wall? (Let's not say anything about them wearing proper vestments, having a corpus on the cross, using altar cloths, candles, a Missal, etc. etc.)

If we can't be truthful with our children about the past - and this is the recent past, remember, and indeed the present too in many places - then we clearly have a problem.

Non-Directive Counselling

I contribute to the very interesting debate about this here.

Comment on the PEEP fiasco

I've avoided commenting on the cancellation of the Faith of Our Fathers Conference organised by Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice (PEEP) because it has nothing to do with me or the LMS, and Daphne McLeod and the PEEP Committee have already paid handsomely for their mistakes. William Oddie's recent blog post has got things so back to front, however, that I feel I must say something.

According to Dr Oddie's narrative, Mrs McLeod is a voice of moderation in an organisation beseiged by traditionalist nutters, and she needs to clear them out to avoid PEEP disapearing into a black hole. The basis of this idea is McLeod's habit of attacking traditionalists from time to time.

(She does this because she believes that bad catechesis is the sole cause of the problems in the Church today; Oddie agrees, unlike the Holy Father when he wrote (in Milestones) 'I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy'.)

Oddie's narrative is derailed in his own comments box by Daphne McLeod herself, who takes full personal responsibility for the decision to invite the two speakers whose reputations caused the Rev Swindle, the booking manager of Westminster Central Hall where the conference was due to take place, to decide that the talks would not be in accordance with Methodist doctrine - whatever that might be - namely Fr Paul Kramer and Robert Sungenis. She equally took responsibility for the advertisement which promoted the talk to be given by Cardinal Burke which said that the Bishops of England and Wales are 'intransigent', a description which led Cardinal Burke to pull out.

This taking of responsibility is an example of the honour and courage for which Daphne McLeod is so well known. It also reflects the reality of the organisation: PEEP is essentially a vehicle for Daphne McLeod. The notion of her being led astray or put under pressure by dark forces within or without her organisation is laughable, as anyone familiar with it or her could attest.

Daphne McLeod is not a traditionalist. Not all the people who get carried away into injudicious public remarks about the Bishops are traditionalists. Not everyone who gets caught up in the nightmare world of conspiracy theories is a traditionalist, or indeed even a Catholic: indeed, most are not. If Oddie thinks that you can insulate yourself from the nutters by shunning the Traditional Mass, the PEEP fiasco ought to show him that you can't.

Reflect on this. When we heard that Cardinal Burke had agreed to address the conference, there was talk, which later faded away, of his saying a Traditional Mass while in London. Well the LMS knows a thing or two about the liturgy in the Extraordinary Form, so we offered to help with that side of things. Daphne McLeod made it quite clear that she didn't want to have anything to do with us: she didn't want us associated with the conference, or Cardinal Burke's trip, in any way. Fair enough: it was her train set, as they say. But if we had had any involvement with the proceedings, and had had any influence over them, we would certainly not have allowed the frankly idiotic advertisement wording or the appallingly misguided choice of replacement speakers. I don't know much about Kramer and Sungenis, but I know they are widely regarded as dangerous lunatics, and with justification.

They are on the lunatic fringe. I think it is rather insulting to call them 'radtrads', but the main point is that their supporters are numerically negligable. They cross-fertilise with secularist anti-semites, Protestant creationists, 'birthers' and every kind of fruit-cake on the internet. Is this scene attractive to mainstream traditionalist groups? Has it got a grip on the typical EF congregation? The answer to both is an emphatic 'no'.

Our A&B Rep takes on The Tablet

Annie of the Arundel & Brighton Latin Mass Society blog takes on The Bitter Pill with characteristic gusto:

"I have never ever felt second class in the Catholic church because of a male priesthood. In the eyes of some people this probably tars me as a no-brainer with an inability to see 'unfairness' when it's staring me in the face every time I'm at Mass. Er, no, actually it means I believe Priests should be male, and will always be male. Oddly, that's what the Church teaches."

See the whole post. Let's see if the Editrix of that appalling publication has the courage to publish Annie's letter...

The limits of tolerance

Please sign the petition to Cardinal Schonborn against this 'Western Mass'; have a look at what Fr Tim Finigan has to say about it, and watch the GloriaTV clip he's got: all here.

Why are sane people like Fr Tim even thinking about what a Cardinal has permitted to take place on an island in the Danube? Because the liturgical abuses which are integral to this celebration are a scandal to all Catholics, and all Catholics have a duty to oppose them: if, that is, they know about them and can do something about them. The internet has fulfilled these two conditions for us.

Why do some liberal Catholics oppose celebrations of the Traditional Mass, even when they are not obliged to attend and the celebration of it in no way inconveniences them? The answer is given by the Holy Father, in his brilliant contribution to the Fontgombault liturgical conference in 2001. Speaking of the rejection of the language of 'sacrifice' in the context of the Mass, he explained:

"It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the strongest, and thus (for them) the most intolerable contradiction of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist formulated by Trent has lost its value." (Full article.)

The very toleration of the Traditional Mass is a scandal, a rebuke, to those who reject the Church's teaching on the essential nature of the Mass. Even to tolerate it is make too much of a concession, for the people referred to by the then Cardinal Ratzinger.

This gives the struggle for a restoration of the Church's liturgical traditions a greater significance than simply aesthetics, nostalgia, or even personal spiritual benefit. It is a service to the Church because to celebrate the 1962 Mass is ipso facto to re-emphasise the Church's teaching on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, a teaching which is sorely needed today.

But to return to the parallel, or lack of parallel, between traditionalists and liberals, which I have discussed before: what traditionalists can't tolerate is the negation of the Church's teachings; what the liberals can't tolerate is the re-affirmation of the Church's teachings. Make of that what you will.

Novena for the reconciliation of the SSPX

Rorate Caeli is passing on an urgent request for a novena for this intention for the Octave of Pentecost. They have appropriate prayers to say for this.

There is a sense arising from various public statements that the discussions may be reaching a critical moment. This may turn out not to be the case, who knows?, but the prayers will not be wasted.