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Organist Job Opportunity

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on May 10th, 2013

Just in case there are any organists out there for looking for work, here is the official job notification for a position at Prince of Peace, my parish!

Prince of Peace Catholic Church in suburban Greenville, SC is seeking qualified applicants for the position of Parish Organist. This parish community prays the Mass in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms on a daily basis with 4 sung Masses per weekend in a beautiful church dedicated just 10 years ago. Sung Vespers, Stations and other seasonal and devotional services are included through the church year as well.

The 3-manual Allen Renaissance (2003) organ, located in the gallery, was skillfully installed and voiced
to take full advantage of the spectacular acoustical properties of the space. The successful candidate
will work with a full-time Director of Music with extensive knowledge and experience in sacred choral
literature and chant.

The current work load for this position is approximately ¾-time in scope, qualifying for the Diocesan
benefits package. Some collegial duties are necessary to assist in administration of the music program.
The salaried compensation will be tailored to the individual with careful attention to AGO guidelines for
education, work-load, skills and experience.

This position is available as of 1 June and applications will be closed as of 31 May. Qualified applicants
should submit their resume to: [email protected].

In case you want to know more, Prince of Peace is a 1900 family church in the buckle of the Bible Belt. We have an interesting church building which is a blend of modern and traditional elements. The parish has a long history of liturgy and music after the school of Pope Benedict XVI. We have a lot of sung liturgies, in the context of a Reform of the Reform English liturgy as well as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite which does sung plainchant and organ masses. It’s a lot of work, but it is also a great environment for the right kind of person!

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Allen Renaissance, parish community, Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace Catholic Church

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Bringing the Campion Missal to our Parish

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on April 23rd, 2013

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In theory, one of the most attractive things about the Extraordinary
Form is that is the same everywhere.
Yet the liturgical culture that any particular place has, and all kinds
of practicalities, dictate how it is celebrated. There are places where Low Mass with one server in absolute
silence is the standard practice.
There are places where the Dialogue Mass has caught on, or where Low
Mass is buried under (shudder) hymns.
And there are those beautiful places in the vineyard of the Lord where
there are Sung or even Solemn Masses where the propers and the ordinary are
sung. Even then, is there a
schola, do the people sing, is there polyphony and/or chant, is it Rossini or
the Graduale?

My parish, Prince of Peace (www.princeofpeacetaylors.net),
is an interesting place. We have
consciously modeled the life of the parish and her liturgy on the teaching of
Pope Benedict XVI. We have both
forms of the Roman Rite every day (except for the occasional practical reason
when we go down to one English Mass).
On weekdays, we have Low Mass.
On most Sundays of the year, we have a Missa Cantata, where a schola
sings the propers and a choir the Ordinary. During the summer, we usually have an Organ Mass.

The EF has had a stable presence in the life of the parish for about
10 years now. Some of those who
come regularly experienced the rite in a dizzying array of different ways (but,
Father, in the 1950s in New Jersey we didn’t do that…). The vast majority, however, have come
to appreciate and love the EF here in our parish. We have tried to make strides in getting the people to sing
the Mass, but I confess that has been a hard sell. Even though many of our people love the Sung Mass, they also
love for the choir (we frequently have paid choral scholars) to sing their
parts.

From time to time, we give a class in how to follow the Missal. There are those who bring their hand
missals with them to the Mass. In
the pews we have had the red Ecclesia Dei missalettes (Mary Kraychy be
praised!) for years, and many people have remain glued to them, even as they
fear the recent Angelus Press hand missals that we have been encouraging our
people to buy. For all sung
Masses, we do a music sheet with the Latin and English texts for the Mass and
the Ordinary in chant.

So we have experimented with a variety of ways to help people
participate in the Tridentine Mass.

I have been looking, however, for years, for something that we could
put in the pews. A sturdy,
pew-ready book that had everything that you could possibly want to participate
in the Latin Mass, which was also stunningly beautiful. But who had ever seen such a thing as
what I had in mind?

Well, apparently Jeff Ostrowski.
His knowledge of the liturgy and its music, his aesthetic sensibility,
and his publishing know-how met right on with a keen sense of pastoral
responsibility and what people need.
The St Edmund Campion Missal is the fruit of an amazing work which has
been incredibly done.

But, even if such a beautiful thing had been made, how could we ever
afford it?

I have a parish of some 2000 families, and we get around 200 at a
Sunday EF Mass. Many of those
families are homeschooling families with many children. And, with a church that
seats 1200, how could I ever make this work?

One Sunday, I put a sample copy of the Missal in the narthex for the
people to view, and kept it out there for a couple of Sundays. I was amazed at the response. “It’s beautiful!” “It’s just what we need in the pews!” “Can I contribute towards the cost?” And so, I launched out into the deep
and asked for donations. Within 72
hours we had not only covered the cost, but also had more donations than we
could possibly use for that project.

We have lived with the Campion Missals in the pews for a couple of
months now. The instructional
video on how to use the Missal was posted on our website and Facebook pages,
and people viewed it. The response
has been incredibly positive. What’s
more, parishioners who never frequent the EF, and who never picked up the red
misalettes in the pews, are using it for their private prayers and
meditation. I had more than one
person say, “I wish we had something this nice for the Novus Ordo Mass.”

In short, the adoption of this Missal in my pews, one book per rack,
has been incredibly popular. The
people use them, and like them, and it has also brought the community together.
It has also had the added benefit of introducing people to the EF who might
have never known anything about the Mass at all if it weren’t for a book that
was attractive they couldn’t help but obey that tiny voice saying, “Tolle,
lege!”

Of course, now I am wondering what to do for the Ordinary Form
Masses. I hate disposable missalettes
as a general rule, but they do have the advantage, being dated material, of
being very user friendly. Of
course, none of them approach the beauty of the Campion Missal. I also am facing the possibility of
adding Spanish Masses to the schedule as well. My original intent to also purchase the Lumen Christi Missal
for the OF has been put into question by the need for bilingual materials. I’m not sure how many parishes have EF
and OF in English and Spanish, but we do, or will soon, and there is only so
much space in a pew rack. Maybe
Jeff and his team at Corpus Christi Watershed can bring their brilliance to
bear on that thorny pastoral problem, too. In the meantime, however, the Campion Missal was one of the
most successful projects our parish has undertaken. Just watch how the people respond!

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Campion Missal, Solemn Masses, Tridentine Mass

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Benedict XVI: Towards a Liturgical Theology of Liberation?

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on April 13th, 2013

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It was especially the Latin countries that developed
the idea that the Church is the “Church of the poor.” This assertion undoubtedly lends itself to many
interpretations and misinterpretations.
A certain sentimentality could lead to a kind of romanticizing of
poverty, which is harmful to nobody as much as the poor themselves. But the idea is essentially sound and
may be seen as the expression of an important spiritual reawakening. The Church has for a long time looked
like a Church of baroque princes. It is now returning to the spirit of simplicity which marked
its origins – when the “servant of God” chose to be a carpenter’s son on earth
and chose fisherman as his first messengers . . . In the footsteps of Christ
the Church is sent especially to the forgotten and to the outcasts.

I just read this quote to a
friend of mine and asked her, “What Pope wrote this?” She did not hesitate to respond, “It sounds very Pope
Francis to me!” In reality, they
are the words of Josef Ratzinger in Theological
Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2009, 77), the
collection of the young German theologian’s thoughts after each of the sessions
of the Council.

Those who see Benedict and
Francis as matter and anti-matter are going to have problems understanding
this. A carefully constructed
mythology has painted Ratzinger as the dying gasp of the Counter-Reformation
papacy, with its monarchical trappings.
They liken the Bavarian theologian’s appropriation of symbols put in
abeyance to the hyperdramatic rituals of Julian the Apostate who failed to read
the signs of the times in reviving pagan rites no one cared about anymore. Benedict’s successor’s apparent dislike
for what are being called the trappings of the papal office has even led senior
churchmen to declare that the monarchical papacy and the pomp of the
Renaissance court, briefly revived, is dead. “Moving from HIGH church to LOW and humble church! What a
blessing that we are encountering Jesus without all the trappings!” “So long, papal ermine and fancy
lace” “SIMPLE is IN, extravagant
is out.” These were all tweets
supposedly from a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.

So how did we get from the
Ratzinger who spoke so eloquently of a spiritual reawakening of the Church of
the poor to a Ratzinger who is implicitly criticized by cardinals on Twitter
for aggrandizing himself with the detritus of a sixteenth century court, which
he himself earlier had recognized as inauthentic as an expression of the Church?

An oft-repeated response
refuses to consider that question and says that, since there must be continuity
instead of rupture, what seems to be the discontinuity between Benedict and
Francis isn’t really rupture at all.
In fact, these are all externals that can be changed by papal fiat
anyway. None of the essentials of
the faith and morals are affected, so what appears to be two entirely different
expressions of the exercise of papal authority in terms of liturgy and protocol
is a non-issue. As a result, the
choices of Pope Benedict XVI to recover certain ritual elements and vesture
appear as personal taste, and indeed, as an eccentricity. The choices of Francis need not even
look like a contrast, for they are also merely personal choices, and hence,
don’t matter all that much.

Yet, for all that this
position indicates that they don’t matter all that much, there surely has been
rather a lot of blogink spilled on trying to understand what those choices
mean.

A few weeks before the
abdication of Pope Benedict, commentator George Weigel issued a book called Evangelical Catholicism. In it he advances a theory that the
entire Church since Leo XIII has been struggling to free itself of the
stranglehold of the Counter Reformation, with the weight of its pomp and
circumstance on the papal office.
Once the Church is free at last from all of that, she will come into her
own as truly evangelical Catholicism, as Catholicism pure and undefiled.

I will refrain here from
commenting on Weigel’s invention of an entire historical hermeneutic which he
proposes as the Urprinzip of a
carefully elaborated proposal by which he assures us the Church can be
saved. Hans Küng in Infallible? and Marcel Lefebvre in Open Letter to Confused Catholics both
attempted, in their own ways, much the same thing.

I will zero in on some comments
he made about the liturgy on p. 168 of his book: “The reform of the reform of
the liturgy will not be advanced by a return to the use of the maniple, or by
the widespread revival of fiddleback chasubles, or by a proliferation of lace
surplices and albs, or by other exercises in retro-liturgy.” He contrasts this with “evangelical
Catholic liturgy” which he describes as “high” but “not precious, and it is
most certainly not prissy.”

As I read this chapter of
Weigel’s book, which does contain many profound insights, I wondered how Weigel
would explain all of those actions attributed to Benedict by others as
“exercises in retroliturgy.” Also,
how would he explain a cardinalatial tweet which implies that we return to the
Gospel precisely in moving from “high” to “low” Church, and that Francis’
return to simplicity requires the abandonment of “high” Church?

The age has dawned upon us
when the fractious system of parties within the Anglican Communion has been
grafted onto the Catholic Church as if their existence were a fait accompli, and I have yet to see
anyone object. The acceptance of
this division has produced a widely accepted narrative describing two disparate
concepts of ecclesiology and liturgy: There is a High Church party which does
retro-liturgy because it is on a pharisaical nostalgia trip and fears modernity,
so it takes refuge in Counter-Reformation Renaissance pomp. And then there is the True Church of
Jesus, the True People of God, the Evangelical Full Gospel Catholic Church
which is being led by the Spirit to shed all of that as they joyfully sing a
new, relevant Church into being.

Then, I guess there are
those in between. But where does
Benedict fit in with all of this?

One of the questions I have
asked myself is: why did Benedict choose to restore some things and not
others? For many people, why he
did doesn’t matter, because any pope has the power to come to a different
conclusion anyway, and it’s all in the realm of the unimportant. Yet, if anything, those of us who have
spent time with Ratzinger’s theology can attest that the way he has acted as
Pope has been very much in coherence with his theology. He restored the papal fanon, but not
the tiara. He adopted acres of
man-lace, but declined to be carried in the sedia gestatoria. Did he just not have time to bring back
all of the accoutrements of the Counter Reformation papacy? Or is there something more going on
here?

I would like to suggest
something that my readers might need time to grapple with.

In 1977, Josef Ratzinger
gave a speech that has recently been republished as “Primacy of the Pope and
the Unity of the People of God” in Fundamental
Speeches From Five Decades (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012, 13-33). In it he discusses Reginald Pole’s book
De summo Pontifice. In a dense section on what he calls
the martyrological structure of the primacy, he discusses the titles of Christ:

“The majestic titles pertain
to Christ as God by nature; according
to his humanity, however, he receives them only after his humiliation. Analogously, this is true for the
representative: the majestic titles are effective and possible only in and by
way of humiliation. The only way
to participate in Christ’s majesty is concretely through sharing in his lowliness,
which is the sole form in which his majesty can be made present and represented
in this time. Hence the authentic
place of the Vicar of Christ is the Cross: being the Vicar of Christ is abiding
in the obedience of the Cross and thus repraesentatio
Christi in the age of this world, keeping his power present to
counterbalance the power of the world.”
(p. 29)

What does this have to do
with vesture and symbols? At a
superficial level, it may seem that Benedict restored an ambience reminiscent
of a Baroque prince, and certainly associable with the papal court of the
past. Yet, we have ample evidence from
his own writings that the papacy should not and could not be a Baroque
court. Was he being incoherent or
disingenuous? I think not. He very carefully avoided those things
which could be confused with purely earthly power, such as the tiara and the
sedia gestatoria. But he did bring
back, or use at a very high level, other things.

A priest blogger recently
commented, “Many of the trappings of the hierarchy are
derived from Imperium more than from Evangelium, and from time to
time it is useful for the Church to ponder this distinction and make whatever
changes will bring the Gospel more clearly to the center of the Church’s life.” Here
we have several things: 1. the externals of the liturgy are already put into
the realm of trappings, and hence are disposable by the Church. 2. a distinction between Imperium and Evangelium. At first glance, it may seem
obvious that the two are different and distinct. And we must acknowledge that some of what are called the
trappings of the papacy have their historical derivation from the Imperium.

Should not then the Church
in the modern world dispense with the symbolism of the Imperium, which seems so arcane and out of touch with modern
sensibilities, especially when that symbolism does not touch the essence of the
Faith?

On the surface, it would
seem so. The entire thrust of the
postconciliar period seems to argue for it. The battles over ecclesiology and liturgy, the books written
by Küng, Lefebvre and Weigel, much of the last 50 years all manifest the
struggle to understand where Evangelium will
begin (again) and Imperium (should)
end.

I contend that, Benedict has
done something so revolutionary the effects of which have yet to be
discerned. If one reads the
recovery of symbols in the context of Ratzinger’s theology of the primacy and
of liturgy, something very interesting emerges: a liturgical theology of liberation.

In our age, the monarchical
spirit has yielded to democracy, for better or for worse. The Church is one of the last places
where the trappings of Imperium exist. Are they a confusing relic of the past,
destined to obviate the Church’s progress into the future? On the contrary, Benedict, in choosing
the elements are not incompatible with the office of pope, has desecularized
them and oriented them all towards another end. The ceremonial grandeur of the Benedictine papacy has
redeemed the time in historical continuity with the past and put all of the earthly
signs of temporal power not contrary to the faith at the service of the sacred
liturgy. He has sacralized them,
the same way that the organ or Latin or clerical vesture, none of which are
sacred of themselves, have been removed from profane use and set apart for divine
worship.

But why these elements,
which seem so closely associated with the Age of Absolutism? Let us remember Pope Pius XI’s
encyclical Quas primas. This letter on the kingship of Christ
has often been interpreted (and hence affirmed or rejected) as an attempt for
the Church to perform a hostile takeover of the secular world and the
State. Is it possible for Benedict
to do something radical, and read Quas
primas in the light of Lumen gentium,
Dominus Jesus, and Spe salvi,
thus taking the symbols of earthly power, desecularizing them, sacralizing
them, and orienting them towards the liturgical celebration of the sovereignty
of Christ?

From Quas primas: “Men
must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that We
promised to do as far as lay in Our power. In the Kingdom of Christ,
that is, it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor
fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our
Lord” (1) and “It
was surely right, then, in view of the common teaching of the sacred books,
that the Catholic Church, which is the kingdom of Christ on earth, destined to
be spread among all men and all nations, should with every token of veneration
salute her Author and Founder in her annual liturgy as King and Lord, and as
King of Kings. And, in fact, she used these titles, giving expression with
wonderful variety of language to one and the same concept, both in ancient
psalmody and in the Sacramentaries. She uses them daily now in the prayers
publicly offered to God, and in offering the Immaculate Victim. The perfect
harmony of the Eastern liturgies with our own in this continual praise of
Christ the King shows once more the truth of the axiom: Legem credendi lex
statuit supplicandi. The rule of faith is indicated by the law of our
worship.” (12)

The pope, far from being personally
self-aggrandized by the pomp and circumstance of a Renaissance court, finds himself
truly as Vicarius Christi in
obedience to the Cross of faith and handing on the Tradition. The papacy becomes the repraesentatio Christi in the world not
as an earthly potentate, but as Christ the King. The person of Peter’s successor disappears into a symbolic
reference to the Prince of Peace.

The Scriptures present this kingdom of peace as one which
men enter through the interior regeneration of faith produced by the external
rite of baptism. This kingdom,
opposed to Satan and the world, demands detachment from riches and earthly
things, a spirit of gentleness, hunger and thirst after justice which comes
from the carrying of the Cross in penance.

The papacy which presents
this Kingdom to the world, in this optic, is relativized and minimized in terms
of power, and instead manifests the pope’s function as the first Leiturgos. The pope disappears into Christ the King, and performs a
holy work through the sacramental economy entrusted in a special way to the
Bishop of Rome.

The pope as a mere world
leader with some temporal power and recognized spiritual power now appears as
something else, something mystagogical.
Christ the King in persona Papae
Romae, presiding over His Church in charity, through the Sacred Liturgy
ushers in the Kingdom of Justice and Love, which is the true liberation of man
from sin, oppression and injustice.
The Church of the Poor then becomes, not a Church of wealth, but truly
free. The sacraments and the
liturgical tradition become no mere human traditions, but the way to
liberation, a liberation of the human person which will then in turn affect
human society.

Far from being a blip on the
screen as the dying gasp of the Counter Reformation Church, the Benedictine
papacy, with all of its liturgical richness, is actually a powerful theology of
liberation. It frees human
attempts at liberation from romanticized patronizing of poverty and the
futility of earthly means. Orienting
the human desire and activity for liberation liturgically and sacramentally in
communion with the Roman Pontiff develops a truly powerful theology of
liberation. It is powerful not
because of the man who wears the Fisherman’s Ring and exercises spiritual and
temporal power on behalf of humanity, but because the grace of Christ the King
acting through and with the Pope, and the Church in communion with him, in the Civitas Dei which replaces the City of
Man deep in the heart of each one of us through grace.

No greater symbols can I
find of this high theology of liberation than the ferulae of Francis and
Benedict. The brutal, grey
Scorzelli staff is an image of ugliness, of human suffering, of pain. It is where the Church begins, and on
this earth always dwells, at the side of the poor and the marginalized, the
sick and the lost. But the glorious
gold ferula of Benedict , stamped with the Agnus
Dei, classical symbol of the Lamb slain for sin, reflects the eschatalogically
fulfillable glory which is ours in the liberation of the Cross (cf. Revelation 5.6-14). They are not before and after, they are
not pre or post, they are both inseparable parts of the life of the Church, and
of the ministry of Peter.

Superficiality fails to
recognize the history and the symbolic import of Benedict’s reappropriation of
certain elements, his recontextualization and even sacralization of them. A deeper look into them reveals something
terrifyingly beautiful, the revelation that the Kyrios of Glory and the Servant of the Slums are one and the same
Lord. They are both part of the
same mystery where latria is ascribed
to the Lamb/Ancient of Days (cf. Revelation 5.8-14). A hermeneutic of continuity has no need of contrived
explanations for differences in the Church Visible under Benedict and
Francis. It need only take account
that a humble German professor has integrated the last of the Imperium into the Evangelium, read not in the Good Book but in the whole life of the
Church, and that an Argentinian pastor makes that Christ of Glory present in
humility and charity in those places that need it most.

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Benedict XVI, GEORGE WEIGEL, Holy Roman Church, pope benedict

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Is There a Rupture Between Benedict and Francis?

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on March 15th, 2013

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We are only a few days into the reign of Papa
Francesco, and already there are many people trying to scrutinize the tea leaves to
read into every word, action and gesture some interpretation of what the
Franciscan papacy will be like. The
blogosphere has already become a battlefield with people taking sides based on
their interpretation of what they have seen.
The basic narrative, however, seems to be this: there is a rupture
between Benedict and Francis. For some,
this is a source of joy, because they like the latter and did not like the
former. For others, it is a source of
great anxiety, and because of it, they are tempted to question the motives of
the new pope. Then there are many who
see all of this as just ridiculous and that the people who are freaking out on
either side need to “get a life” and do something more useful with their lives

I should like to offer an observation which
undergirds my contention of why all three reactions are misplaced: it shows what
is wrong with an essentially Ultramontanist view of the Roman primacy. It is no secret that, after the loss of the
Papal States and the accession of Blessed Pius IX to the Throne of Peter, the
influence of the papacy and Roman administration has become more prevalent in
the daily life of the Church. After the
proclamation of the doctrine of papal infallibility and the rise of modern mass
media, the influence of the papacy would be increasingly felt throughout the
world. Vatican II sought to do what was
supposed to have happened at Vatican I, but which was made impossible because
of the Franco-Prussian War: place papal infallibility in the context of the
ministry of all the bishops. At Vatican
II itself, there was quite a war between what we call papal maximalists in the
Ultramontane vein and papal minimalists in a basically Conciliarist vein.

Vatican II chose to see the relationship
between Pope and bishops in terms of collegiality, and the relationship between
Pope, bishops and People of God, less in terms of papal absolutism and more as
a communion. The reality, however, is
that how this theological vision is lived in the Church has also competed, to a
certain extent, with the brilliant personal charisma of many of the Popes of
the post-Vatican II period, particularly Blessed John Paul II. People now have certain expectations of how
the Pope should act because of the way in which Papa Wojtyla incarnated the
post-Vatican II papacy.

So when Josef Ratzinger became Pope, many
people were watching very closely to see how he “did” the papacy. In an age in which visual images and
soundbites are supremely important, everything he did was up for scrutiny. One of the principal themes of Pope
Benedict’s pontificate was the “hermeneutic of continuity.” His principal point was that the Church of
post-Vatican II is not radically altered or different than the Church of
pre-Vatican II, a corrective against the revolutionary rhetoric of both
progressive and sedevacantist alike. But
that vision was also seen in the gradual reintegration into papal vesture and
liturgical celebration of visible elements in continuity with the papacy before
and after Vatican II.

He was alternately celebrated and pilloried for
the ferula, for the fanon, for ad orientem worship, for chant and polyphony,
for lace and for fiddleback chasubles.
The prophets of rupture saw these things as a return to the pre-Vatican
II Church in all of her ecclesiology and liturgy. Those who interpreted these things in this
way celebrated or pilloried him as a result.
Yet, anyone who has read Ratzinger’s theology in depth also knows that
his theology of the Roman primacy is anything but a facile reappropriation of a
supposedly pre-Vatican II ecclesiology of papal monarchy. It is anything but Ultramontane and anything
but revolutionary at the same time, and is much more.

Yet, the post-Vatican II reincarnation of the
Ultramontane spirit welcomed the recovery of these signs and symbols as
beautiful and as highlighting the papacy.
Yet it was not that spirit which animated Benedict XVI to reintegrate
these things into the liturgy. It was
quite another.

What do I mean?
The classical liturgical movement of the 20^th century,
particularly as influenced by men such as Louis Bouyer, Pius Parsch and Josef Jungmann,
had a severe allergy against Tridentine Baroque liturgical form. They saw it as a decadent devolution from a truer
liturgical spirit which breathed only in antiquity and which needed to be
rediscovered and retranslated in modern idiom.
I think we cannot underestimate the power of this allergy against the
Tridentine Baroque in the thought of the liturgical reform. Because they saw the papal court with its
traditions and liturgy as fossilized into that form, they loudly called for its
rejection. The aesthetic crafted under
Paul VI and Virgilio Noe sought to bring about the de-Baroquicization of the
papal liturgy and the formation of a papal vision coherent with the pride and
prejudice of that classical liturgical movement.

That aesthetic was a powerful exercise in a
hermeneutic of rupture, even as it was intended to give visible form to the
ecclesiology of Vatican II, which in many ways was a continuation of the
theological development of papacy, hierarchy and ecclesiology of the
preconciliar period and Magisterium.

Previously, there was a powerful idea that the
Pope bore the weight of the tradition, not just in sense of what Congar would
see as Tradition versus les traditions,“ but in all of its particularities of
vesture, behavior and the papal rites.
It is probably apocryphal, but Blessed Pius IX’s “Io sono la Tradizione”
incarnates that idea. In some ways, it
is analogous to Louis XIV’s, “L’etat, c’est moi.” For an American, unused to the highly
stratified and specific culture of court etiquette, it seems all a bit effete,
overwrought, and hardly in symphony with evangelical simplicity.

Yet, monarchy perpetuates itself, not like an
inspirational idea like the American Dream, but as a complex language of rites,
customs and symbols into which monarch and ruled live and dwell and use. The papacy has always had that kind of weight
of tradition assigned to it. That is why
every single visible change to the way things are done around the Pope has
weight. For many people, the visceral
reactions to Pope Benedict and now Pope Francis, prove this principle, but
others do not grasp their importance: they see it as all adventures in missing
the point. They do not understand the
weight of the ceremonial life in which the Roman Pontiff goes about being Peter.

With Pope Benedict, we had a rich theological
treasure and Magisterium which helped us to understand why he insisted on
recovering aspects of the papal liturgy and ceremonial as an exercise in the
hermeneutic of continuity. He was
profoundly influenced by the classical liturgical movement, but also clearly
saw its tendency towards rationalism and puritanism. His cultural idiom was forged by the Bavarian
and Italian Baroque, and he was able to see these elements of continuity for
their own beauty and shorn of any sinister ideological interpretation.

Pope Francis, however, is an entirely new
player on the papal stage. He is a
Jesuit, first of all, and we all know the conventional wisdom about Jesuits and
liturgy as being like oil and water. And
he also comes from Latin America, a continent which I would offer is the land
that the liturgical movement, both classical and new, forgot. It is important not to jump to conclusions
about why the first steps of his papacy seem to be so radically a rupture with
the last steps of his predecessor. But,
at the same time, the weight of tradition, volens nolens, upon the Roman
Pontiff is so serious that he cannot for long continue to “do his own thing”
without it being interpreted in various ways not according to his intention. Perhaps that is why the Popes for so long
were content with being their own men, but conforming to the expectations of
the ceremonial life of the Pope of Rome.
Such conformity may (and arguably should) be personally uncomfortable, agonizing
and even annoying. It is also a reminder
of Our Lord’s words to Peter in John 21.18, Truly,
truly I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where
you would: but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another
will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go. Papal conformity in this way avoids individual holders of the office arbitrarily and eccentrically undertaking words, gestures and rites which may be interpreted in a way far from their actual intention. Far from glorifying the papal office overmuch, it actually conforms the man to the office and holds him accountable to it and not his own preferences. It causes him to disappear behind the office and become Peter and less himself.

It is also important to note that in the
Church’s life, there has always been a tension between visible exuberance and
simple austerity. In the Middle Ages,
Bernard of Clairvaux with his Spartan Cistercian simplicity arrested Europe
just as much as Abbot Suger with his soaring riots of color and glass and precious
materiel. Yet Bernard and Suger belonged
to the same Church. The same Church
produced the rococo churches of Austria and the mud huts of the
Tamanrasset. The tension between the two
must not be capitalized upon by ideologues who see only one or the other as the true
Gospel: they must live in communion with each other.

Three people in the Church’s tradition saw this
very well. The great Jesuit Robert
Bellarmine lived in a time in which the Church desperately needed great
reform. His personal life was one of
unmitigated austerity. The people knew
that underneath the pomp and circumstance of the office to which he was called,
his was a life of penance and interior and exterior mortification. Humility for him was not casting aside the
weight of his office, with all of its expectations, but an interior virtue of
obedience to it all. And it was that,
combined with a life of piety and zeal, which made him into the great
reformer. Blessed John XXIII was
concerned to made the Gospel accessible to modern people, but he loved the
ceremonial and liturgical splendor of the Church. He embraced it and reveled in it, but his
human warmth and virtue made all of it seem, not alien and weird, but even more
beautiful.

The deacon Francis was a servant of the Church
because he was a servant of God. His
love of poverty and simplicity did not cause him to go off on revolutionary
crusades against the Church’s rich liturgical and artistic patrimony. He instead infused all of that patrimony with
the presence of Christ. Now the Pope who
has taken his name, and seeks to rebuild the Church which has fallen into
ruins, has the chance to live the virtue of humility and obedience by taking up
the weight of the papal tradition in a hermeneutic of continuity. If he infuses that tradition with his own
personal love for the poor and the marginalized, his own personal simplicity
and desire to not be on the world stage, he just might be the most incredible
witness for Christ and His Church we have seen in a long time.

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: liturgical movement, Papal Infallibility, pope benedict

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The Unfinished Liturgical Work of Benedict XVI

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on February 14th, 2013

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One of the things that I
hoped against hope for during the pontificate of Benedict XVI was an encyclical
on the liturgy marking the 50^th anniversary of Sacrosanctum concilium.
That will now never come to pass.
Only the future can tell how much the liturgical theology of Joseph
Ratzinger will continue to enter into the life of the Church via the Roman
Magisterium. That liturgical
theology, of course, is itself the heir of the classical Liturgical Movement, applied
to the problems of today in such a way as to herald a New Liturgical Movement. This renewal movement, like its early
20^th century predecessor, has not been a uniform one by any stretch
of the imagination. But it clearly
reflects the thought of Joseph Ratzinger.

But there are also some
significant lacunae that present themselves at the end of this papacy as well,
that his successor will have to in some way address. There is much in Ratzinger’s theology, which never saw
itself translated into anything concrete via the munus regendi of the Roman Pontiff and the Curia. There are other things which found
their counterpart in things the Pope did by way of example, but were never
enshrined in any other way. A
question burning in the hearts of many a disciple of the Pope of the Liturgy is
whether any of those things will find their way into the next pontificate. Or will they remain as they were in the
papacy of Benedict XVI: quiet provocations to thoughtful people to integrate
them into the ars celebrandi, not by
force but by their intrinsic worth becoming more visible (or not) with
time? It can also be asked, and
must be, whether the Reform of the Reform was a “quixotic movement doomed to
extinction” as a priest friend once said of the Traditionalist Movement, a
force which will lose its guiding star, fading before the burning sun of
secularist might? Or is now the
moment of its greatest epiphany, as Pope Benedict leaves to his followers the
shadow of a blueprint for how to go about it all?

I don’t think anyone can
adequately answer these questions.
But we can look at the work that has been done in the years of Pope
Benedict’s papacy and then surmise what is left to accomplish if we are to
advance the goals of the New Liturgical Movement.

Reorientation of the Liturgy

If I had to say what I
thought is the single most important accomplishment of Pope Benedict’s
liturgical magisterium, I would have to say the reorientation of the
liturgy. That might surprise you. After all, the only public papal ad orientem celebrations were on the
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, in the context of what otherwise might have
been an ordinary Italian Novus Ordo parish Mass. No edict issued forth from Rome encouraging the type of celebration
that Klaus Gamber and Joseph Ratzinger argued had an inherent and irreducible
liturgical symbolic weight. What
has come to be called the Benedictine
arrangement, which in reality is just the post-Tridentine arrangment of
cross and candles on altars in Roman Basilicas where a confessio precluded celebration of the Mass in front of the altar,
appeared in the papal liturgy and was imitated all over the world. It had no legal force behind it.

But Ratzinger/Benedict was
very clear on the christological orientation of the Sacred Liturgy. The Mass had to be oriented towards the
Christ of the Paschal Mystery. His
insistence on this principal was a needed corrective to a one-sided emphasis on
self-celebrating community and the meal aspect of the Mass. It serves to reduce the temptation of
clerical presiders to be protagonists in creating the liturgy, and puts priests
and liturgy commissariat apparatchniks in their place, which is not in the
center of the celebration, but in its service.

Yet how is this principle
translated into action? It is
foremost a spiritual principle which can be made visible in liturgical
celebration in various ways. The
challenge for the future is that, now that more and more celebrants are
choosing to celebrate the Mass facing what is now described as liturgical East, will it remain an
eccentric option able to be marginalized, and hence manipulable by those who
claim it causes division? Will it
grow unencumbered by discriminatory retributions on the part of those who despise
it in principle and in action? Or
will a future edict of the Pope, the Congregation for Divine Worship, or
Bishops’ Conferences mandate or proscribe it?

Leadership from on high will
be needed if the movement towards ad
orientem worship is going to contribute to the unity of the Church and not
detract from it. And that
leadership cannot ignore the fundamental Christ-centered liturgical action of
Benedict’s teaching.

Two Forms of the Roman Rite

The 2007 document Summorum pontificum and its 2011
follow-up Universae ecclesiae introduced
a radically new notion into the life, and the law, of the Church. The Roman Rite was henceforth to
consist of two forms, an ordinary one (the 1970 Missal of Paul VI) and an
extraordinary one (the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII). This declaration is unparalleled in the
history of the Church.

But what has it actually
done? First of all, it has removed
the stigma that ambiguously marked millions of Catholics who were attracted to
the classical form of the Roman Rite.
No longer second-class citizens, traditionalist-minded faithful all of a
sudden found themselves (at least most of them) no longer questioned for their
loyalty to the Church. What’s
more, the traditionalist critique of men such as Lefebvre and Siri and their
heirs has once more began to be heard in the open, and no longer in secret
enclaves. Whether this should be
the case or not, it is, and a newer generation of clergy and young people are
asking questions that were stifled only a decade ago.

Second, it has enshrined the
principle that there is such a thing as legitimate liturgical diversity even
within the one Roman Rite. This
has been used to free other ancient uses as well, such as the rites of the
religious orders, and can be applied also to other historic uses.

Third, it puts the Missal of
Blessed John XXIII, and the pre-reformed rites, front and center in the
Church’s life again. It is no longer marginalized, and cannot be. The steady increase of the older
missal’s adoption marks a new stage in the faithful’s expectations of liturgy.

Yet, since the proclamation
has done all these things, it also brings up numerous unresolved issues. Will the Church revisit Vatican II and
seek out its authentic interpretation?
How will the Church do this?
By another council, by the Synod of Bishops, by theologians laboring to
bring it forth, by Roman decree?
How can the traditionalist critique that the liturgical reform was a
rupture be integrated into a Church which has been oriented by Benedict XVI to
seek out a hermenutic of continuity?

The diversity of the Roman
Rite also presents its own challenges.
Does that diversity only apply to preconciliar expressions of worship,
or can it also apply to things like the Zairian Rite, the newer liturgical
customs of individual monasteries, LifeTeen Masses and the Neocatechumenal
Way? In what does the Roman Rite
consist now?

Greater access to the Missal
of Blessed John XXIII also has had the effect of raising some searching
questions about the preconciliar liturgical reform. How will the Church address the growing momentum to
reconsider the reforms of the Pontifical and Holy Week before Vatican II, and
liberate the usage of previous forms of them? Likewise, how will the Church address the ways in which Liturgiam authenticam inspired
translations of the Ordinary Form which have not always been received well by liturgists and pewsitters alike and through processes which
have not always been accepted by them either? Will any of the indications of Sacrosanctum concilium, such as the use of the vernacular, be
brought to bear on the Extraordinary Form?

Pastors, theologians and
liturgists have a weighty task now in evaluating how the christological
reorientation of the liturgy in this papacy, and its accompanying
recontextualizing of the Roman Rite, looks in practice.

Reform of the Reform

Ratzinger had indicated that
the time was propitious for there to be a Reform of the Reform. But in what does that consist? For all of the rumoring of various
propositions that were supposed to be coming out of the Vatican which would
give flesh to a Reform of the Reform, nothing has ever seen the light of
day. Did Pope Benedict have a
Marshall Plan for the reform of the liturgy, or was that a fanciful notion
driven by wishful thinking and some inside knowledge? Regardless, the motor which drove forward the whole project,
the person of Pope Benedict XVI, has now been removed from the vehicle of the
liturgy. Can that motor be
replaced by another charismatic person who understands what must be done, or by
a series of liturgical and legal proposals to bring the liturgy to a state of
what would make its Christocentric nature more apparent?

“Something must be done” has
been on the lips of many Catholics about the liturgy for a very long time. But the question now becomes what that
something is, and how it can be done in a way so as to not compromise the unity
of a Church which finds itself pressured from inside and out by dividing
forces?

Can the proposals for how
the liturgy should be reformed enter into a dialogue with the whole Church,
with theologians, liturgists, pastors or lay faithful? Or will they be imposed by the
hierarchy? Will their imposition
by the hierarchy yield long-time benefits despite short-term discomfiture? When do the Pope, the Curia, Bishops
and pastors know the time is right to advance the Reform of the Reform, and in
what does it consist?

Mutual Enrichment

The placement side by side
of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Missal was done with a
hopeful view to mutual enrichment.
Some people have claimed that such enrichment has been too
one-sided. How are the two Missals
supposed to enrich each other? How
can they do so if the mixing of the two forms is forbidden? Is there a tertium quid which will recognize the merits of both and combine
them in some fashion into a once again unified Roman rite?

Sacred Art and Music

The Liturgical Art and
Sacred Music Commission of the Congregation for Divine Worship has been formed
under the leadership of the Pope. But
what is its competency? What is it
supposed to do and how can it be used as a tool for the Reform of the
Reform? Will black lists of music
and art be published, or will general guidelines for the arts in church be
crafted? How can they take into
account what actually exists in the Church and the many different situations in
which the Church’s worship is celebrated throughout the world? Will the Congregation for Divine
Worship oversee the Reform of the Reform as Consilium did the original
reform? How will the new
commission be integrated into that project, if it ever sees the light of day?

Inculturation

Theologians and liturgists
continue to puzzle over the guiding principles of inculturation in various
spheres of the Church’s life: theology, liturgy, discipline, clerical
formation, and more. They also
continue to puzzle over what that looks like in the concrete. Where are the boundaries of such
inculturation? What limits do
Revelation, canon law, or common sense impose on the experimentation which
drives inculturation? Will
inculturation increase the diversity of the Roman Rite, or will there cease to
be a recognizable Roman Rite? Does
inculturation apply only to mission countries in the developing world, or is
there a sense in which the nations of Old Christendom need their own
inculturation of the Gospel as well?

Ceremonial

The Pope, in all of his
thought on the liturgy, avoids discussion of minute details of how the liturgy
should be celebrated. An
exaggerated rubricism seems hardly amenable to the spirit of the times, but how
does the papal vision look when it is celebrated according to the principles
which guide it? If it is up to
individual interpretation, it is hard to see how the liturgy can remain a
unifying factor in the Church’s life.
The Reform of the Reform advanced in an individualistic way can risk the
same type of protagonism alien to Benedict’s conception of the ars celebrandi. Greater guidance is needed from the Roman Curia on how
to craft a workable ceremonial which incarnates the principles. Greater guidance is needed to see how
such a ceremonial may be adapted to the different situations in which the
Church worships. Is it too much to
hope that a new General Instruction of
the Roman Missal and an accompanying Ceremoniale
Presbyterorum, rich in catechetical and theological depth alongside the
necessary rubrics, may end the stop-and-go gradual transformation of the
liturgy according to Benedictine principles and create a harmonious whole for
the Ordinary Form just as the old books did for the Tridentine liturgy?

Reception of Holy Communion

The various indults allowing
Communion in the hand have continued to exist and be granted, even in the
papacy of Pope Benedict. The norms
for the reception and distribution of Holy Communion under both kinds remain
what they are according to the third typical edition of the Roman Missal. The norms for standing and kneeling
remain what they are. Yet, Pope
Benedict himself chose to distribute Holy Communion to communicants who knelt at
a prie-Dieu and received under the
form of bread alone and directly on the tongue. This mode of reception of Holy Communion, so closely
associated with preconciliar practice and the rubrics of the Extraordinary
Form, was clearly preferred by Pope Benedict XVI. Books like that Athanasius Schneider’s Dominus est! provide a loud call for a return to that mode of
reception.

In what sense can that mode
be called traditional and preferred when there are many counterindications to
its perduring historical presence?
What does it mean when the Roman Pontiff mandates it at his Masses, does
not allow those receiving at his Masses to exercise all of the options allowed
to them by liturgical law and at the hands of every other celebrant in the
Roman Church, and clearly prefers it?
Do other modes merely indicate greater diversity in liturgical practice,
and are they helpful for unity in worship?

The way in which Pope
Benedict XVI distributed Holy Communion at his Masses reflects much of the
thought in traditionalist and Reform of the Reform quarters, and goes against
everything the Liturgical Establishment has said for 50 years should be the
norm. Perhaps during this Year of
Faith there can be a reflection on how modes of distribution of Holy Communion
should be located in the context of what it means to be properly disposed to
receive, and how they have positively or negatively affected faith in the Real
Presence. It is time to address
whether, and to what extent, Communion in the hand, Communion under both species,
and Extraordinary Ministers have contributed to the growing crisis of
faith. It is also time to address
whether aspects of the liturgical celebration, such as the mode of reception,
should be conformed to the practice of the early Church, to pre-Vatican II
practice, or to current needs, especially in light of confusion as to
sacramental theology. For decades
now the Roman Magisterium has urged proper catechesis to go along with what has
become accepted practice in many places for the current modes, but can a case
be made for the modes themselves obviating or obscuring what is done in the
catechesis?

Also, given that we have
this struggle between norms in liturgical books and indults, local exceptions
and eccentric practices, is it too much to ask that the Roman Magisterium
clarify or mandate one form of reception for Holy Communion for the Roman
Rite? If Holy Communion is
supposed to be a sign par excellence of
the unity of the Body of Christ, can this bewildering diversity of practices in
the modes of reception of Holy Communion really manifest and help preserve that
unity?

Papal Liturgy and the Roman Tradition

People for centuries have
looked to Rome for how to celebrate liturgy (or how not to, as well). Modern media have made it possible for
everyone to analyze and imitate (or react against) what they see, particularly
at papal liturgies. The aesthetic
cultivated under Pope Paul VI and Virgilio Noë became a standard for what the
post-conciliar liturgy should look like, and how it should be celebrated. Continuing under Bl. John Paul II and
Piero Marini, this aesthetic formed opinions about how the reformed rites
should be celebrated.

Under Pope Benedict XVI,
however, something different has happened. While the Noë look continues to a certain extent in the
Vatican Basilica liturgies and in international celebrations, there has been a
progressive adoption, at least in papal liturgies at the Roman Basilicas, of an
ars celebrandi, from vesture and
vestments to interpretation of rites, which to many recalls the papal liturgy
before the Second Vatican Council.
To those who live outside the clerical culture of Italy, this has become
a source of concern. Many have
interpreted it as a symbolic repudiation of the ecclesiology and liturgical
reform of Vatican II. Some have
charged that it is a return to triumphalism, mediated by the restoration of a
style associated with the now-abolished Papal Court and too tied to Baroque
ceremonial traditions. While many
of those who make these comments are of a reformist, self-identifying liberal
bent, this is not the case of all of the detractors.

Even conservative columnist
George Weigel in his recent book Evangelical
Catholicism identifies this trend with what he sees as “Counter-Reformation
Catholicism” whose time has come and gone, and is no longer applicable to
today’s needs. As more and more
younger clergy reproduce this new/old style in their own spheres, he intimates
that it is “precious” and “prissy” and must be rejected as an unwelcome
effeminate accretion to the liturgy.

It can be easy for critics
of this Benedictine style to charge that these elements are all exercises in
“retro-liturgy.” Because many
people associate so-called fiddleback chasubles, lace albs and surplices and
birettas with the pre-Noë aesthetic, they also surmise that their use is
evidence, at best, of nostalgia, and at worst, of moral degeneracy.

Yet, outside of the Vatican,
these same things are not interpreted, at least in Italian clerical circles,
the same way. The dichotomy applied
to them is not liberal/traditionalist, but antico/moderno. The choice for their use depends on a
complicated calculus which includes the aesthetic of the church building (are
you in a Baroque building, a Bauhaus church, or a Neo-Gothic chapel), the degree
of solemnity (is it a feria of Lent or is it Easter Sunday), and the rank of
the celebrant (is it a permanent deacon doing a Baptism or the Pope at a
canonization). While to outsiders,
it may seem entirely too much falderol, it does represent a certain continuity
with what came before. It is a
cultural thing which is peculiarly Roman, and has little to do with
ecclesiology and liturgical questions in
se.

The Roman basilica aesthetic
and ars celebrandi is a tradition
which has been handed down. Gromier
and Dante’s cultivation of it had its successor in Franck Quoëx’s application
of it to the Extraordinary Form in our time and in Guido Marini’s reapplication
of it, d’après la scuola liturgica
siriana-genovese, to the papal liturgy.

But is the cultivation of
this style in the Benedictine papacy a secret attempt to force effete nostalgia
via Counter Reformation frocks upon an unwilling Pilgrim Church? Is it an exercise in the hermeneutic of
continuity, by stressing that the post-Vatican II papacy is in communion with
that, both of Paul VI and Pius XII, at least in some visible way? Is it simply bringing forth things new
and old from the Church’s storehouse?
Or is it just a sign that polyester is out and brocade is back in? And why have many younger people,
particularly clergy, responded so enthusiastically to it?

Part of this question also
involves concrete actions which have a symbolic weight. Until recently, the Pope in the
reformed liturgy was the only person who did not wear a Eucharistic vestment
proper to his rank. The restoration
of the fanon brought back an important liturgical principle. That action was rejected by many,
because they depart from an esentially conciliarist principle that the Pope is
really primus inter pares, and if
anything should dress like any other Bishop, or any other Christian. Difference is interpreted as a sign of
willful clericalist discrimination.
Or the fanon is seen as an incomprehensible piece of nostalgia for
people who like dressing up.

In reality, the fanon is the
liturgical complement to the nota previa to
Lumen gentium. Just as the conciliar constitution on the Church had to
have an appendage to salvage a proper understanding of the Roman papacy against
the just clarification of the episcopal office by Vatican II, the fanon
underscores the papal office against the anti-papal court style of the reformed
rites.

Even though the Holy Father
himself neverly celebrated the Extraordinary Form publicly, his unleashing of Summorum pontificum has led to a renewal
of interest in both the papal and pontifical forms of that liturgy. But that has led to some thorny
issues. Are celebrations of
Bishops and the Pope in the Extraordinary Form to be brought in line with Pontificalis Domus of 1968, for
example? Are they subject to the
1983 Code of Canon Law (forbidding Mass coram
Ss.mo)? Or are they carried
out according to the terms of the old liturgical books without reference to
current legislation? The fact that
these are happening is already leading to calls for a revision of the austere
pruning of Pontificalis Domus and the
gutting of the Pontifical and Ceremonial in the revised rites.

In short, is the
reappropriation of certain elements of Roman Basilica style in this reign a
blip on the screen? Were they just
pushed by the private taste of Marini II and Gänswein? Or are they part and parcel of a Reform
of the Reform which will continue on into the next pontificate?

Conclusion

Nobody doubts that
Ratzinger’s rich teaching and Benedict’s beautiful practice of the liturgy has
been tremendously influential in a brief space of time. But has it had time to take root, and
will it be appreciated and advanced in the next pontificate? The liturgy in our time is in a delicate
situation, in a time of transition.
Only the Spirit can say how the next generation will engage the Sacred
Liturgy, and whether Benedict’s unfinished work will morph into an enduring
legacy.

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, pope benedict

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Benedict XVI and the Mustard Seed

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on February 11th, 2013

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On 19 April 2005 I
made it into Piazza San Pietro just as smoke was coming out of the chimney of
the Sistine Chapel. It was a grey
cloudy day, so it was hard to make out whether the smoke was white or
black. The bells were supposed to
ring to announce the election of the successor to John Paul II, but nothing
happened, so we were all confused.
The Piazza began to fill with more and more people, seminarians, sisters
and laypeople running down the Via della Conciliazione as fast as they
could. The atmosphere was
electric, because we all knew that we were going to participate in something
historic.

Rome had been my
home for almost seven years by that point. I had moved there after graduating from Christendom College
because I wanted to live in the heart of Christendom, close to the Holy
Father. I also was desperate to
find my place in the Church, to find my vocation. When I entered seminary a
year after my move to the Eternal City, I passed through the portals of the
Roman Major Seminary, the house of formation for the Diocese of Rome. I was bonded to Rome, to Peter and to
the Church, and began to find my place in the Church and in the world.

Those were the
declining years of John Paul II’s reign.
I had several opportunities to meet and serve the Pope, and I was always
awed in his presence. To see him
so sick and suffering, but carrying on as he did, was amazing. But there was another figure who had
always been close to me: Joseph Ratzinger. Even as I was always close to John Paul II, it was Ratzinger
who inspired me from an early age.
I had read Vittorio Messori’s The
Ratzinger Report when I was in high school, and at college read deeply from
the rich canon of Ratzinger’s theological works. I knew that to be steeped in Ratzinger’s thought was not always
to make oneself appreciated.

Shortly after I
entered the seminary, Ratzinger’s long awaited The Spirit of the Liturgy came out. I had devoured all of his other writings on the liturgy, and
longed to see how his teaching on the sacred liturgy and music could be lived
in the heart of the Church. But
the other seminarians warned me that to identify myself too closely with
Ratzinger was “career suicide.” All I had ever wanted to be was a parish priest anyway, so I was not
worried about that. Yet I was a
New Man at the seminary and so I exchanged the Ignatius Press cover of that
seminal work for a 1970s bookcover of the encyclicals of Paul VI. Needless to say, I fooled no one. That book sparked endless discussion at
the seminary, in favor and against, and I increasingly began to imbibe the
Ratzingerian view of the world, the Church and theology. A professor at the Gregorian nicknamed me Ratzinger because I always invoked his name, a moniker of which I was humbled and proud, even if it was meant as a light-hearted jab.

For a seminarian in
Rome in the early years of the Third Millennium, Ratzinger was a formidable
personage. I heard him speak
several times, and wanted so much to spend hours in a room picking his brain on
so many things. The only regret
that I take with me from those years in Rome is that I was so struck by his
humility I could never bring myself to crowd around him like the others
did. But my devotion was
total. From time to time, I would
serve the early Masses at St Peter’s Basilica, and come across the Prefect for
the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith as he ambled across the Piazza to
go to to work. And I always
shouted out, Buon giorno, Eminenza! hoping
one day to serve him in some capacity.

After John Paul
II’s death, Ratzinger’s presence, quiet, serene and hopeful, dominated the
Roman scene. I participated in so
many Masses both for the mourning for the passing of the only Pope I had never
known and the election of the next Peter.
As the cardinals filed by, there were sounds of enthusiasm from the
faithful. But whenever Ratzinger
walked by, the sound was deafening.
If vox populi, vox Dei had any
weight with the porporati at all,
they could not have ignored the visible and audible response of the People of
God to the Bavarian theologian.

He is a theologian
of incomparable stature. When the
Bishop of Charleston assigned me to study dogmatic theology for my license, it
was not my first choice. I had never thought of it before; I wanted to be a
liturgist. But in Ratzinger I
uncovered the fact that liturgy, and its reform and restoration, finds its
deepest meaning in the Christ which dogmatic theology encounters in awe and
wonder. Dogma became the academic
road ecclesiastical obedience laid out for me, and it bound me even more to the
man who would be elected as the Successor to St Peter.

I cannot adequately
describe what I felt to hear the word Joseph as the Dean proclaimed the new
Pope. I knew it had to be
him. I knew for weeks it had to be
him. I count the day of his
election as one of the happiest of my life, because it was so personally
significant to me. A man who had
inspired me to be a priest, a theologian and a Christian engaged with both the
Tradition and the modern world at the same time now reigned from the Throne of
the Fisherman.

The Mass of the
Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry and his Enseatment at the Lateran Basilica
were moments of pure joy for me. I
wanted to call them coronation and enthronement, they were so glorious. But more impressive than the ceremonies
surrounding these historical events I was privileged to take a part in, was
listening to him teach as Peter.
Clear, distinct, and poetic all at the same time. A master class with one of the greatest
professors in human history was being offered to all of humanity, if we would
just listen and learn.

During the Mass at
the Lateran Basilica, I was given the great honor to distribute Holy
Communion. I was upset, however,
to discover that I was to go all the way outside of the Basilica and down the
Piazza and out into the streets to perform my appointed task. Selfishly, I balked at the idea of not
being able to participate in the end of a liturgy which meant so much for
me. But as I looked back at the
grand doors of the Mother and Head of all the Churches of the City and the
World, carrying Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in my hands, I was
flooded with a sense of completion.
Formed close to the heart of the Church, I was imbued with spirit of
Eternal Rome, the vision of Pope Benedict XVI and the mission of the
fishermen. It would not do for me
to tarry around Rome while the man I revered as my greatest Teacher made the
world into his classroom. Like any
good student, I had to go back into my mission field to hand on what I had
received.

The only Pope I
have ever named in the Canon has been Benedict. Today, the day on which he announces his resignation, I
offered the Ordinary Form in English and said his name like I have every day of
my priesthood. I offered that
Mass, on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and prayed for him, knowing he was
sick, and all the sick on this World Day dedicated to them. After Mass, I discovered the news by
text message from a friend I had called from the Piazza on Election Day. Later that day, I offered the
Extraordinary Form in Latin. I’m
not sure if what I did was rubrically correct, but to the prayers of this day’s
feast I added the prayers for the Pope.
And I freely admit how hard it was for me to say that name that I have
pronounced every day since my Ordination shortly after his election with such
gratitude.

I am a priest of
the Benedict XVI Generation.

The way that I
approach theology, liturgy, preaching, pastoral life, everything, has been
profoundly influenced by this amazing man. I will always thank God for his constant presence in my
life, and in the lives of those I touch because of his example to me. I have enough sentiment in me to want
to write the Holy Father personally to tell him all this, but I know that he
will never receive it. But even in
that he continues to teach me.

Few understood the
rich symbolism involved when Benedict XVI visited the grave of the oft
misunderstood Celestine V and placed his pallium upon it in 2009. Now, in hindsight, it comes across as a
prophetic moment. As the Sovereign
Pontiff, our sweet Christ on Earth, transitions into a life of prayer and
penance, in a hidden Nazareth within the walls of the Vatican, he shows us that
the Church belongs to Christ. The
sign of the mustard seed becomes a reality in the 265^th successor to
St Peter.

In 1996, in his
famous interview with Peter Seewald, he said, Maybe we
are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where
Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it
will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an
intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in.

It is the hallmark
of a man who practices what he preaches. Pope Benedict XVI shows us the
way by example of how to live as a Christian in a world increasingly hostile to
the Gospel and the Church: as mustard seeds of faith. He may not know it until the Final Judgment, but Joseph
Ratzinger has inspired countless young men and women, priests, religious and
laypeople to be just like those mustard seeds. We are privileged that he has shown us the way. Viva il Papa!

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, Piazza San Pietro, Ratzinger

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Vespers and Compline in a Southern City

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on December 3rd, 2012

My first assignment as a
priest was at St Mary’s in Greenville, SC, the parish that was mentioned in
George Weigel’s book Letters to a Young
Catholic. One of the first
projects the pastor, Fr Jay Scott Newman, and I had was to find …

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Advent, Choir, compline, Fr Jay Scott Newman, lent, Prince, the Divine Office, Vespers and Compline

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Léon Gromier: Liturgical Reform Between Rupture and Continuity

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on November 19th, 2012

Msgr Léon Gromier (1879-1965)

Up until a few years ago, any
peep of concern about the 1970 Missal of Paul VI was adduced as evidence of
schism and obscurantism. Klaus
Gamber’s The Reform of the Liturgy,
first published in 1981…

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: altar, GOOD, Gromier, idea, liturgical reform, solemnity

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Pontificia Academia Latinitatis

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith on November 12th, 2012

Latina lingua, Pope Benedict XVI’s recent motu proprio establishing the Pontifical Latin Academy, is a great gift to the entire Church. It recalls that almost unknown document of Blessed John XXIII, Veterum sapientia , a document many p…

Posted in Build Your Faith, Music

Tags: Academia, Academy, Catholic, Catholic Church, Latin, Pontifical Latin Academy, scholarship, work

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